Chapter 2 The Hollow Hills
The pearlescent dawn light barely outlined the furniture in the room; an edge here, a soft fold there, the sweeping curve of her lips as he looked down at her. Dean felt a deep shiver pass through his body as Ellie lifted her face to him, skin sliding over his with a whisper like silk, her half-closed eyes dark with desire.
His hand followed the curves and hollows of her body, lingering in some places, feathering over others. She arched up, and his eyelids fluttered shut at the surge of heat that filled him, leaving a deep ache in its wake, a breathless moan in his throat. He lowered his head and brushed his lips over hers, the kiss intensifying abruptly as her fingers slipped over him and he shook at the touch—
"Dad! Dad!"
The door burst open and John shot across the room, leaping onto the bed and cannoning into his father's back.
"Pancakes! You promised, pancakes for breakfast! Today!"
"'cakes! 'cakes!" Rosie stood by the edge of the bed, arms raised and John turned, gripping her wrists and pulling her up, dragging her over the edge onto the bed.
Dean rested his forehead against Ellie's shoulder. His heart was pounding, the sweet, deep ache had compounded and when he lifted his head to look into his wife's eyes, he saw the same regret, overlaid somewhat callously by laughter, in them.
"You promised pancakes for breakfast?" Ellie asked, one brow rising.
"I might've." He shook his head. "It all happened fast."
"Wow, and you didn't see this coming?" She was shaking with repressed laughter now, the bed shaking as well as John and Rosie bounced up and down behind them.
"Yeah." He glanced over his shoulder. "No jumping on the bed!"
"Oh, good, you're up."
Dean twisted around toward the door as Sam walked in, a thick file in one hand. He sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Twist got a call from his cousin in Kentucky. Louise says there's something happening in the cave systems around their area, people going missing, strange lights, strange noises—"
"Do I look like Danny Glover?" Dean snapped at his brother as he moved sideways off Ellie. "Do I?"
Sam looked at him, brow wrinkling. "Uh, no, not particularly."
"Then why are you Lethal Weapon-ing my bedroom?" He sat up, glaring around the room. "Everyone…out!"
"But Dad! Pancakes! You promised!" John stopped mid-bounce to stare at his father.
"'cakes! 'cakes! 'cakes!" Rosie shrieked, and kept bouncing.
Sam looked at Dean's face and closed the file, catching the waving hands of his niece and nephew. "Uh, come on, you guys, we'll go downstairs and start making the pancakes, your dad can catch up in a bit."
"You promised!" John stared rebelliously at Dean, lower lip stuck out.
"I'll be down in a minute. Go with Uncle Sammy, and get the stuff ready." Dean exhaled as John slithered off the bed and followed his uncle and sister out of the room.
Ellie was sitting up, legs drawn up under her chin, grinning widely at him. "There was something you were going to do…now, let me think…were you supposed to get onto it last month? What was that job? Something to do with the door, I think."
He gave her a sour look. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I'll get 'em on today."
"After the pancakes." She smiled at him. "And whatever it is Sam was talking about."
"No. The lock takes priority." He shook his head, trying to find a comfortable position to sit. "I don't suppose there's enough time to…?"
"Not unless you want a repeat performance." Her expression became sympathetic. "And that'll make it worse."
He nodded, getting up gingerly. "Yeah. Locks today, you'll see."
Dean sighed as he looked around the kitchen, more than half of it a debris plain of pans and plates, serviettes, spilled maple syrup and strawberry jam. He sat down at the non-sticky end of the table, opposite Sam, his hand curled around a cup of coffee. Ellie had taken John and Rosie down to visit Talya, and they'd have a couple of hours of quiet until they got back.
"All right, let's hear it."
Sam pulled out a map of Kentucky, red circles marking various areas surrounding the small town of Fisher Ridge. "These are the locations Twist gave me. Bodies found, noises heard, visions. They all lie in the area between the Mammoth cave system and the Flint Ridge system."
Dean looked at the map, noting the distances. "Something living in the caves?"
"That was my first guess, but I don't think this is a monster." He pulled a sheaf of police reports from the file, passing them over the table. Dean pushed his coffee to one side and looked at the first one. Sam watched his brother's brow rise as he got the bottom and started skimming through the rest.
"Are these right? Deputy hasn't been chugging the local moonshine?" Dean looked at him.
Sam shrugged. "Coroner's reports agree with them. They got in a team from Quantico after the last body was found, in case they were dealing with a whacko serial, but after they got all possible screens back, they said it was impossible for a person to do…what had been done to those people."
"Okay, so…"
Dean looked over the reports, flipping through the coroner's photographs of the bodies. Two bodies had found, both without a single internal organ and no incisions to indicate how they'd been removed. Three more people were missing.
He frowned as he flipped slowly through the photographs and diagrams of the crime scenes. "These are pretty big caves…any chance that the missing people just got lost?"
Sam gave him a dry look. "Yeah, sure, but the police have been searching for weeks, and the cave systems are pretty well mapped out."
"Huh." He looked up at Sam. "These, uh, dates…they're…uh…all—"
"Yeah." Sam ran his hand through his hair. "All major witch Sabbath dates. Beltane in May was when the first couple went missing. Then Litha, for midsummer's eve, Lammas was August, Mabon in September and the last one was Samhain, October 31."
"When's the next big day?"
"Yule."
"They have a Sabbath at Christmas?"
"Not Christmas, midwinter's eve, the winter solstice," Sam corrected automatically. "December 22nd or 23rd."
"These are sacrifices then?" Dean frowned down at the police photographs of the bodies.
"I don't think so." Sam looked at them too. "They don't match any ritual sacrifice that I can find."
"You know, I just got done with witches, Sam," Dean said.
"Yeah, well, you can't pick and choose which monsters are going to be coming out of the woodwork at any given time." Sam shrugged, getting up to refill his cup.
Dean finished the contents of his cup and followed his brother to the coffeepot. "What'd Louise say about it?"
"Disappearances started in May. The cops are treating it very hush-hush; they think they've got a serial hiding out in the caves somewhere." Sam poured a fresh cup and returned to the table, sitting down. "They've done multiple searches and come up with nothing so far, and people are starting to get worried."
He turned to look at Dean. "Twice now, she said she's heard a groaning noise from the caves. Her place is two or three miles from the nearest entrance, off the Flint Ridge caves. She said it didn't sound like anything she'd ever heard, and it had spooked her animals."
"Anything else?" Dean leaned against the counter.
Sam nodded. "People who live around there have been reporting seeing things, like, uh, visions."
"What kind of visions?"
"Something coming out of the caves, lights around it." He gestured at the file. "Louise said she'd seen it too."
Dean drained the second cup of black coffee as he tried to make the pieces fit into some kind of pattern. It wouldn't. "Okay, I got nothing."
"Me either." Sam shrugged. "We could be in Kentucky in a couple of days."
"We?"
Ellie sat on the edge of the couch, one leg tucked under her as she leaned forward and read through the file. Slouched into the armchair across from her, Dean watched her read, listening to the approaching mutter of thunder of the storm that had been building all day, and brooding.
He and Sam hadn't really pulled a job together since they'd stolen the Semtex from the naval base in California. He didn't want to hunt with his brother. That wasn't it, entirely. There was nothing wrong hunting with Sam, it just didn't come with any of the perks of hunting with Ellie.
A penetrating low rumble caught her attention, the lights flickering as the sky outside lit up, and she stopped reading, lifting her head to listen.
"They'll be fine. They're sound asleep," he said, listening himself. A big storm had brushed by them at the end of summer, and since then both John and Rosie developed a fear of thunder. The house remained silent.
She looked at him, the corner of her mouth tucking in as she caught his expression. "Are you sulking?"
"No." He looked away. "Me and Sam, we haven't done this for a while, together. We could make mistakes."
"Like a riding a bicycle." She smiled. "You'll figure it out. Anyway, Trish is due in two weeks, and she needs some help right now, so you're stuck with it."
"Looking after Trish is Sam's job," he said stubbornly. "Your job is looking after me."
Ellie laughed. "I didn't see that on the job description. John has his orientation at the end of the week, and I have to be here for that, anyway. Unless," she said thoughtfully, "you'd like to stay and give Trish her iron shots, take John to kindergarten and look after the kids, and I'll go hunting with Sam?"
"Hilarious." He gave up, exhaling loudly and stretching. "Anything in that file make a lick of sense to you?"
She looked down at the papers strewn over the table. "No, nothing leapt out. I don't know that the Sabbath dates are all that significant."
"They're the only things that are significant!" His brows shot up.
She shook her head. "Those dates are all seasonal…I just mean that whatever is in the caves might be working on nature's calendar, not necessarily anything to do with witches or witchcraft."
"Seasonal?"
"Beltane is the Spring Equinox; Litha is the Summer solstice, the longest day of the year." She picked up the last three reports. "Lammas used to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest, midway between the Summer solstice and the Autumn Equinox. Mabon is the Autumn Equinox, when most of the harvest is in. Samhain marked the finish of the year's labours. In the northern hemisphere, these dates revolve around seasonal events. People just added their own festivals to them because they were natural milestones in the year."
"So…you think it might be a monster?" He leaned forward, setting his beer on the table and looking at her.
"I don't know." She shuffled the papers together neatly, returning them to the file. "I wouldn't rule it out based on the dates."
"You do realise that you've trashed our one lead." He stood up with her as she picked up the file.
"Sorry," she said, heading for the door.
"You think 'sorry' is going to cut it?"
Ellie stopped and turned around. "Now, did you get the lock on the door today?"
He felt his mouth drop open at the neatness of the trap. Every thought of the goddamned job had gone out of his head through the day. Ellie shook her head and tsked, turning back for the door and walking out.
"Doesn't matter," he said, waving his hand airily as he turned out the lights and followed her. "Everyone's asleep, we've got all night."
Ellie returned the file to the gear bag on the hall table. The next clap of thunder was right over them and the house shook, and they both turned to look up the stairs as a plaintive wail started.
Dean rolled his eyes as he caught her quickly averted look, lips pressed tight against an ill-timed laugh that crinkled her eyes. He sighed.
"I'll get him."
By morning, the storm had passed over, leaving the air clean and fresh, and the ground saturated and bejewelled in the early light. Dean dressed silently by the light of the hallway as it came through the partially open door. He looked at the three sleeping shapes in the big bed for a long moment before turning away, going out and closing the door behind him.
Sam looked at his brother as he got into the car, taking in the shadows under and around his eyes.
"What happened to you?"
"Thunderstorm last night, woke the kids." Dean started the engine and rubbed a hand over his face. "Didn't get much sleep after that."
"You want me to drive?"
"In a couple of hours," he said shortly. It wasn't the lack of sleep he was missing, he thought aggrievedly, thinking of the days he'd be counting until they were done.
"Twist headed out an hour ago, said he'd meet us there." Sam tried to remember where his legs used to go with some amount of comfort.
"Three of us?" Dean pulled around and pointed the car down the narrow road.
"Just backup. He had to go out for Colin's funeral anyway."
"Huh." Dean thought of the tall, lanky hunter regretfully. Louise's husband had been a good man, and a good hunter. Another one to fall. "Louise going to be okay?"
"Probably not, but she's taken care of," Sam said, twisting himself into a new position.
That'd been Ellie's idea, back when they'd sold short on Dick Roman Enterprises. The Hunter's Death and Injury Fund. The pensions weren't huge, but they covered living expenses and meant that families weren't left with financial distress as well as emotional.
"Ellie said that the dates might not mean witch involvement," he remarked to his brother, glancing sideways at Sam's fresh contortion.
"Yeah, I was thinking about that last night." Sam gave up, leaning back against the seat and crossing his ankles awkwardly. "We'll have to wait and see, I guess."
It was surprising how quickly they fell back into the way it used to be, Dean thought as they crossed out of Idaho, following the 84 south toward Salt Lake City. Sam had rolled his eyes as Zeppelin filled the car. They'd had the same argument about where to eat when they stopped for gas, almost word-for-word, as he remembered. The conversations were different, he allowed, no more talk of the end of the world or what the angels were doing, or if they were driving into a trap. That was a relief.
Beside him, Sam shifted and cleared his throat slightly.
"You know, the way we're living now…do you think if Mom hadn't felt so strongly against hunting, we might have grown up like this?"
Dean glanced at him. "I was thinking that a while ago."
"When you went back…did she say why she hated the life so much?"
"Not specifically." He thought back to the conversation he'd had with his mother in 1973. "She, uh, said she wanted out, and she wanted a family and she wanted to be safe."
"Knowing what she knew? What was out there whether she looked at it or not?" Sam's brow wrinkled up.
Dean looked at him. "Yeah, well…I thought the same thing."
"Yeah, you did." Sam leaned back, looking at him sideways. "And you said it felt like you'd lost your purpose."
"I did." He looked at the road. "I guess it wasn't the same for Mom."
Sam pulled into the motel parking lot in Laramie at nine. He picked up the keys and parked the car in front of the room, waking Dean as he got out, walking to the back of the car to open the trunk.
Dean rubbed his eyes, looking at the damp black asphalt parking lot, the identically coloured row of doors, the flickering fluorescent light that lit the concrete sidewalk that ran between the two. He got out of the car as the trunk slammed shut, hooked his duffle bag from the back seat, and followed his brother into the double room, yawning, hungry and disoriented.
"You see anywhere open that was still serving food, Sam?" he asked as he dumped his bag on the floor by the bed next to the bathroom automatically. He noticed Sam had taken the bed closest to the room door out of habit as well.
"There's a bar down the street."
"I'm starving." He looked around the dingy interior. "Man, this is depressingly familiar."
Sam looked around, brows raised as he set his laptop on the small table. "Yeah, I guess it is."
Dean picked up his beer, washing the last of the burger down. "How come you're doing this?"
Sam looked at him, then around the quiet bar. "What do you mean?"
"Well, Trish is due in a couple of weeks, and you've never been happy doing this…you really could just quit and turn your back on it, get a job, be really normal, so why?"
The question had been sitting in the back of his mind for months now.
Sam looked down at the remains of the salad on his plate for a moment. "I guess I could. It's not the hunting itself." He looked up at his brother. "Trish asked me if I wanted to, you know, retire, go do something normal, before we moved back to Oregon."
"What stopped you?" Dean leaned on the small table.
"Something Trish told me. She said she'd heard Ellie talk about it, sometime." He ran his hand through his hair. "That the people who are capable of doing the job have a responsibility to see that it gets done."
Dean nodded. It was the cornerstone of his wife's commitment to the life.
"There can't more than a few hundred hunters in the world, maybe a couple of thousand, but probably not." Sam continued, picking up his beer. "And the attrition rate is pretty high. We—you and me—we were trained for this since we were kids. That makes us rare even in such a small group. Most hunters learn on the job, pushed into the life by whatever happened to them."
Dean leaned back in his chair, watching his little brother. That was true too. Bobby, Rufus, Twist and Marcus and even Garth hadn't been looking to hunt the dark side of the world.
Sam shrugged, then tipped up the bottle, swallowing a mouthful and wiping his mouth. "I just figured that having that ability, having those skills…I also have a responsibility to do the job the best I can."
"No one would blame you or think less of you for wanting to get out, you know, Sam. You really paid your dues," Dean said, leaning forward to snag his beer.
"I know." Sam shook his head. "It's not that."
His gaze dropped to the plate again. "I looked up Sarah a year ago. I don't really know why, but I just felt like I wanted to see if she was okay."
Dean frowned, hunting through his memories for the name. "The chick from the auction house? In New York?"
"Sarah Blake, yeah." Sam nodded. "She was killed in a car accident, two years after we'd been there."
Dean set his bottle back on the table softly. "I'm sorry."
Sam looked at him, a half-smile twisting up his mouth. "It was a long time ago. But it wasn't ghosts or monsters that killed her, Dean. Just a drunken driver on a Saturday night." He shrugged. "It kind of hit me that I could live my life in a normal way, and still lose the people I love, or get wiped out myself, and I might not have anything to show for it at the end anyway."
He leaned forward. "I'm not like you and Mom. I can't pretend that what's out there in the dark doesn't exist. I can't even pretend that living a normal life would be safer than what we're doing. It wasn't for you."
"Yeah," Dean admitted, his gaze cutting away. "I kind of went through a lot of stuff to do with Mom. I wish she'd told Dad about hunting, about the demon and the deal. Maybe it wouldn't've changed anything, but I wondered if they could've handled it better, if they'd been together on it."
Sam blinked in astonishment. He'd never heard his brother admit that their mother had been anything other than perfect.
Dean looked at his face and smiled wryly. "I know." He finished his beer. "No one's perfect. We're all just doing the best we can."
Sam nodded slowly. "We're good at this, Dean. And for the first time, we've got back up, we've got a home, we've got people we love and trust who're also good at this. We're not on our own anymore. It feels about as safe as it can get."
"Yeah." He looked around, stretching a little. "Let's grab some shut-eye. Still another twelve hundred miles to go."
Driving up the steep and winding gravel road, the headlights picking out odd detail of twisted trees and slumped boulders as they bumped over the ruts and holes, the storm's runoff sluicing down the slope, Dean thought his brother's suggestion of stopping for the night in Evansville and doing the last hundred miles in the morning might have been a good one.
The wipers were barely keeping up with the rain, and he had no idea if he was even on the right road, the last house had been two miles back.
In the passenger seat, Sam sat braced between the seat, the door and the firewall, mouth clamped shut as they made each hairpin turn, sending a shower of gravel off the edge of the road, the engine revs rising as his brother was forced to change between first and second to keep their momentum.
"Where is this place?" Dean leaned forward, peering through the silver sheet of water over the windshield.
"Five miles from the turn." Sam looked at the trip counter on the dash. "Another quarter mile."
The road twisted again, and Dean tapped the brakes as the headlights lit up the bare rock in front of them, water cascading over it from the runoff higher up the ridge.
"Come on," he muttered, going back to first and easing the car over the smooth rock, praying the tyres would cling to the slick surface. The Impala's weight and torque dragged them slowly over the humps, water spraying to both sides, then the nose dropped and they could see the road winding downwards again.
As he drove down into the valley, trees closed up on both sides again, pine and cedar giving way to maple, hickory and oak, the rain no longer blowing sideways into them in the shelter of the forest.
"There." Sam pointed through the windshield as they slid a little on the muddy edge of the road, at a light that appeared intermittently through the trees.
"About time," Dean growled. Now that they were off the rocky slopes of the ridge, the road was turning into a quagmire of thick mud, and the car slid a little each way with every turn of the wheel.
He drove slowly through the gateposts that marked the property's boundary and pulled in beside Twist's pickup, in an open-sided shed, built onto the side of the barn. From the car, they saw the front door of the house open, the warm, yellow inside spilling out onto the porch.
"Come on in, 'fore you boys drown out there." Twist's voice floated over to them, barely audible over the staccato thunder of rain on the tin roof. They got out of the car, pulling their duffels and gear bags from the back, then picked their way across the muddy yard as fast as they could to the house.
"Leave your boots here." Twist gestured to the stretch of porch to the left of the door as he glanced over his shoulder into the house. "Louise is a mite house-proud at the moment."
Looking down at the clumps of mud adhering to the bottoms and sides of his boots, Dean shrugged inwardly and pulled them off, his wet socks leaving a damp trail as he followed Twist down the wide hall to the kitchen at the back. He could hear the thump-thump of Sam's stockinged feet behind him.
The house was warm and when they came into the kitchen, they shed their jackets, hanging them over the backs of the nearest chairs, the air thick and warm and dry from the wood-fired stove, the smell of baking adding to the hominess.
Louise May Allen turned around from the stove and ran her gaze over them. "Y'all sit down, Twist, get them a coffee and slice up that bun cake, it should be cool enough now."
She was a tall, lean woman in her early forties, thick brown hair clipped back from her face, a faded floral apron covering her from neck to knee. Sherry-brown eyes were surrounded by laugh lines, but now had deep shadows under them, and her face was thinner than the last time they'd seen her, a little over a year ago.
"I'm sorry about Colin, Louise." Dean leaned back as Twist put a cup of coffee and a thick wedge of cake in front of him.
"Happens to us all sooner or later, sweetie." She turned quickly back to the stove, stirring the contents of the pot on it. "He didn't have any regrets, and I shouldn't either."
Sam and Dean exchanged a glance as Twist settled himself at the table.
"You'll have to excuse me while Twist catches you up, boys. I cook when I'm anxious, and there's another family in town who lost someone yesterday, so I'm doing some meals for them too." She glanced back at them. "Twist, tell 'em about Ellen's boy."
"Ah, yep." Twist looked down at the table for a moment. "Curtis went into the caves yesterday mornin', helping out with the search parties. He didn't come back out, and the police found his body this morning. Same as the others. No organs. No marks on him, just one round black burn on his arm."
Dean stopped chewing. "A burn?"
"Yep. Here." The older man pushed up his sleeve, pointing to his arm just above the wrist.
"What?" Sam looked at Dean.
"I don't know." He shook his head slightly. "That just…rang a bell, somehow."
"We'll go up the caves in the mornin'," Twist said, picking up his cup. "The lights were back there last night. I looked earlier tonight, but must be too wet for whatever it is, 'cos there was nothin' tonight."
There was a noise by the doorway and he turned around, Sam and Dean turning as well. Three tow-headed faces peeked out at them, one above the other up the doorjamb.
"It's past midnight, you boys get back in your beds or you'll be sleeping on your bellies for the next few days!" Louise's voice cracked like a whip across the kitchen and the faces disappeared, the sound of heavy footsteps retreating back up the hall and thumping up the stairs.
"About the dates, Twist…" Dean finished the coffee, looking at the man over the edge of the cup.
"Yep, I got your message 'bout that." He rubbed his jaw. "Thing is, there is a coven operating around here somewhere. From all accounts, just granny magic and cantrips." He glanced at Louise's back. "We don't know all of them, yet, but they've been messing around in the caves, on this side of the ridge, for a couple of months now."
"Last room on the right at the top of the stairs is ready for you, if you're ready to hit the hay." Louise turned back to them. "Sorry it ain't much, but it's a pretty full house right now, with all that's going on." She looked at them apologetically.
"I'm sure it'll be fine, Louise." Sam got up and walked over to her. "I'm sorry about Colin. He was a good man."
She smiled up at him briefly, her eyes very bright. "He was, Sam. He was."
Dean looked around the room then turned to his brother. "Cowboys or spacemen?"
Sam peered in past him, looking at the bedcovers with a sigh. "Spacemen."
They walked into the boys' room and dumped their bags by the ends of the beds. It was a generously proportioned bedroom, but filled with the detritus that only two small boys could generate, toys scattered over the floor, posters covering the walls, a number of finished model airplanes hanging from the ceiling at Sam's eye level, endangering his eyesight at every turn he made.
"Monster or witches?" he asked his brother as he sat on the side of the bed and pulled off his socks.
"Beats me." Dean stripped down, pulling back the covers tiredly. "Twist said that what the coven was doing was pretty much penny ante stuff. Maybe they raised something they can't control?"
"Hell's pretty much locked down now," Sam said doubtfully.
"Well, it looked that way," Dean agreed, feeling the soles of his feet against the footboard of the bed and bending his knees with a resigned exhale. "Might not be a demon, might be something older."
"And that's a happy thought to go to sleep on."
"Yeah." He looked over at Sam, suddenly realising that if the bed was on the short side for him, his brother would be worse off.
Sam slid beneath the brightly coloured quilt and felt his feet hit the foot of the bed. Dean watched him twist around, drawing his legs up as he wriggled down, his snort of laughter clearly audible.
"Tomorrow, we get a room in town," Sam said tersely.
"Yeah."
Dean rolled over in the narrow bed, banging a foot against the footboard. He opened his eyes and stared in mystification at the perfectly cherry but miniature '73 Mustang resting at eye level on the nightstand next to his head. He could even read the licence plate: 613 HSO.
From the other bed, there was a low moan, and he shifted his gaze past the car to see his brother sitting up slowly, one hand pressed against his ribs. He couldn't help the slow grin that was spreading over his face at the sight.
Sam looked at him. "Yeah, hilarious. Get up."
They walked down the stairs and turned down the hall toward the kitchen, brows raised at each other at the level of noise that was coming from the back of the house.
"Doug, get the lunches ready…NOW! Michael, stop teasing your sister!"
Louise looked up as the men entered, rolling her eyes as she pushed a pan full of scrambled eggs into a warming dish on the table "Grab yourselves a coffee, boys, it's on the stove. This mayhem'll be over in a minute."
She turned back to the stove and deftly transferred the broiled bacon strips to a plate, adding it to the long scrubbed table and going to get another four pieces of toast out of the toaster. "Maryann, sit your butt down in that chair and eat your breakfast. You too, Connor. Move it."
Twist gestured to the end of the table as Dean and Sam poured themselves cups and manoeuvred their way through the children who were eating, making lunches, leaping up suddenly from the table with their empty plates and crawling under the table.
"Six of them'll be on the school bus in five minutes," Twist said, his expression calm but his voice raised to be heard. "Jes block your ears till then."
Dean looked along the table, counting three girls and four boys in view. They ranged from the baby, sleeping obliviously in a bassinet close by the woodstove, to a tall fourteen-year-old boy, sharing the same sherry-brown eyes of their mother and the fair, freckled skin of their father. He glanced at his brother, who was watching the chaos and listening to the volleys of rude comments criss-crossing table and room with a wide grin.
There was a sharp toot from the road, and the children raced out of the kitchen, a shouted chorus of farewells echoing down the hallway over the thunder of their feet, the slam of the front door delineating the silence that fell over the house.
"Help yourself to breakfast, more biscuits on the way." Louise pulled a batch from the oven and set them on the table, wiping her hands, checking the baby and clearing the remainder of the plates from the table in one, efficient sweep.
"Louise, set down and take a break," Twist complained. "You're making me tired jes watching you."
She smiled at him and stacked the plates next to the sink, then filled a cup and sat down. She saw Sam wince as he leaned across the table to get the dish of scrambled eggs.
"Oh…shoot, I'm sorry, you two. I forgot how tall you are. There're full sized beds up in the attic, you should switch over tonight." She frowned at the cup in front of her.
"That's okay, we thought we'd look for something in town today, get out of your hair."
Twist looked up sharply, sending Dean a small shake of the head. "Nothing much in town, boys. You'll be more comfortable here when we can find long enough beds for ya."
Sam opened his mouth to argue and saw Dean's warning look. He looked down at his plate. "What—exactly—did you see near the caves, Louise?" he asked as he piled a heap of scrambled egg onto his toast.
She looked at him, her eyes a little distant as she tried to remember everything about that moment. "It was just on dusk, so the air looked kinda purply, y'know where you cain't see the details of things? Seamus and I'd bin up there looking for tracks, and we come out of the cave that the tourists visit, and had turned downtrail to get off the ridge. There was this sound…this groanin' sound, comin' from down below our feet it felt like. An' we stopped, to listen like, and this woman walked out the cave entrance. It were pitch black behind her and she was glowing, almost white. I couldn't see her face, just this white dress and long black hair, all twisting around her in the wind. We started to back up a bit, thinking we had no salt on us, just our knives, and we weren't sure if she were spirit or what, and she kept walking t'ward us, then she disappeared. The sound stopped at the same time."
Dean tucked his food into his cheek. "What kind of sound was it?"
"Sounded like the earth was opening up under us, Dean." Louise looked at him, and he realised she was afraid.
The storm had left the day chill and dark grey, heavy clouds scudding before a strong wind. The road was still slippery with loose mud as they followed Twist's truck up the road and over the ridge line, turning north to get to the Flint Ridge cave system. The Lego blocks rattled cheerfully in the vents as Sam fiddled with the heat, just the sight of the damp, drab countryside making him feel colder.
"You know, if this was England, I'd think someone was trying to raise Morgan le Fay."
"You say that as if I should know what it means," Dean said dryly, staring at the road.
"Well, the literature isn't what you'd call concrete, but she was, variously, a supernatural spirit of Wales, half-sister to King Arthur, a powerful witch who studied under Merlin and the mother of his child, Mordred, who eventually killed him."
"King Arthur? Really?"
Sam shrugged. "The legend is that she trapped Merlin in a cave, to prevent him from stopping her from overthrowing Arthur. And she was herself trapped in a cave by a spell from a dragon under the earth after Mordred killed Arthur."
"Camelot and dragons…I think I'd prefer Lord of the Rings." Dean flicked a sideways glance at his brother. "And we're not. In England. Despite what the weather looks like, we're in Kentucky."
"Yeah." Sam rubbed at the condensation misting up his window. "Well, I'm just saying', we've got witches and caves and a monster."
Dean ignored him and followed the truck into the parking area for the main cave at the beginning of the Flint Ridge system. Sam snorted as they drove past the sign. The Crystal Cave.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Well, that was a big fucking donut." Dean leaned against the cavern wall, looking at the mists that were rising and swirling in the parking lot, hiding the black car and Twist's truck effectively.
They'd gone through the caves systematically, following the maps that Twist had brought, exploring every hollow and nook and cranny in the place. The rivers had risen inside many of the caves, blocking entrances to some, but none of them thought it was likely that a monster, or a coven of witches for that matter, would use a cave that was going to be flooded in a rainstorm.
His legs and back were aching from walking, doubled over most of the time, for miles with nothing to show for it.
Twist had showed them where the three bodies had been found. Aside from what the police and the coroners had left behind when they'd processed them, there was absolutely nothing else to see. The three people still missing had disappeared in different areas of the cave and Sam hadn't been able to find a single connecting thread between them. Two of the families were still in town, the next thing they had to do would be talking to them, see if there was any additional information they could get, and then go and have a look at the bodies still in the morgue. The reports had been thorough, but neither the coroners nor the police knew what they knew, what they might see.
Dean looked at his brother. "Families and morgue?"
Sam nodded. "Do you want to split up or take them together?"
"Split up." Dean looked at his watch. "We can be back before dark." He glanced at Twist who nodded.
"Thanks. Louise has enough to worry about at the moment."
Dean dropped Sam off at the single motel in town, and drove down to the funeral home with Twist.
"Who was the first vic, Twist?"
"Uh, that'd be the fella from Florida, went missing on a cave tour, hasn't been since." He opened the file and flipped back through the pages. "Mort Grayerson, 59."
"No body found?" Dean stared through the windshield.
"No." Twist turned the pages over, one by one. "Second vic was Pamela Jenkins. 33 years old, went missing from a picnic with her boyfriend."
"What?" Dean looked over at him. "What does the boyfriend say?"
"Uh…says they were picnicking outside one of the cave entrances and they…uh…decided to have a game of hide-and-seek in the cave. After half an hour he couldn't find her, and he got worried enough to go find the park ranger and call the police."
"Huh."
Twist glanced up at him. "Yeah. Next one was…Phil Burrows. Accountant from Cleveland. 48 years old. His was the first body found."
Dean pulled into the parking lot of the funeral home and stopped the engine. "And when did he go missing?"
"Uh…huh. Actually he was the first one reported missing. Tour guide said he was on the afternoon tour and didn't show up when they came out."
Dean frowned. He hadn't paid much attention into the different dates for the missing vics and the bodies found. But there might something in that.
"Let's see the bodies and then we'll figure out those dates." He opened the car door and got out.
Twist nodded, closing the file and getting out.
The funeral home was only holding the body of Curtis Williams. Dean took a dozen photographs of the burn mark on the young man's arm. There was nothing else to see on the body.
"We had to release the body of Mr Burrows to his family." The funeral home director, also the local coroner, looked up from the file on his desk.
"Did you do the autopsy on Burrows?" Dean asked.
"Oh, no. Doc Ryan is the medical examiner for this county, he did all the autopsies."
"Do you have his notes on them?" Twist leaned on the desk. "Or does the doc take 'em with him, Mr Luttrell?"
"We keep all the reference material pertaining to the investigation of the body in this office," Luttrell said primly. "We're responsible for all evidence and findings."
Dean smiled patiently. "We'd like to see those notes, Mr Luttrell."
"Well, you can't exactly see them, Mr Plant."
"Why not?"
"They're tapes. Doc Ryan prefers to dictate all his findings to a machine and then write up the notes himself. That way he has a copy and he returns the tapes to me."
"Okay. Can we sign out the tapes for the other three autopsies?"
"Of course. I have the forms right here." Luttrell bent down to the filing drawer in the desk and pulled out a number of forms, handing them to Dean. "Just fill them in and I'll bring out the tapes."
He got up and walked to the door. As it closed behind him, Dean looked at the bundle of papers in his hand and sighed.
"You got a machine that'll play those?" Twist looked at the tray of small dictating tapes sitting on the seat in between them.
"Yep." He glanced down at them. Each tape covered about half an hour. It was going to be a long night.
He drove back to the motel, pulling into the parking lot as Sam came out of one of the rooms.
"Any luck?"
"I'm not sure. Where's the file?" Sam folded himself into the back seat as Dean pulled out.
Twist passed the file back to him. Opening it, Sam started reading again, as the car pulled out and Dean headed out of town.
"You gonna keep us in suspense, Sam?" Dean looked at his brother in the rearview mirror as they started to climb the ridge.
"No. Sorry." Sam frowned down at his notes. "Amy Kitteridge was camping with her family near the entrance to one of the unmarked caves. Her sister said that she got up around dawn to go to the camping ground restroom and didn't come back." He flicked over the page. "Harold Palmer was with his wife on a cave tour, and his wife says they weren't more than about two hundred yards from the end when he disappeared. He was walking beside her, and then he was gone. No one else on the tour noticed a thing, and it was getting dark, Mrs Palmer said that the group was pretty tight together, because the caves were spooky."
He met his Dean's gaze in the mirror. "How do you vanish a three hundred pound man surrounded by people less than two hundred yards from the end of a tour?"
"Good question." Twist shook his head. "I told you two that none of this makes any sense."
Dean sat on the sofa, headphones on his ears, making notes as he listened to the tapes, while Sam and Twist spread the file over the dining table and went through the information in it again.
"No tearing or trauma to the exterior or interior of the anal canal. Same for the superior concha, the nasalpharanx nor are there any indications that the throat was the access point. Hmmm… Frances, move that light around here, would you? Yes, there. Hold it steady. There is a small area of damage to the side of the head. Can you get a picture of that? There. Didn't see it in the hair. It looks like a burn, and is approximately the size of a nickel. Pass me that bag, no, the other one. Hair samples, evidence bag 0014. Follicular damage, possibly consistent with a burn. Location, temporal squamus. The burn has penetrated all dermal layers. Excised—I need another bag for this?—thanks."
Dean stopped the tape, frowning down at the handwritten notes he'd just taken. Another burn.
"Dean, there's one connection between some of the victims." Sam turned from the table, looking over his shoulder at his brother. Dean lifted a brow questioningly.
"Four of them disappeared around dusk, from the cave tours."
"And the other three?"
Sam shook his head. "They went missing at dawn. One from the camp grounds, the other two from just inside the cave mouths."
"That's it?"
"So far."
He nodded and turned the tape back on, listening to the rest of the autopsy on the first victim. Aside from the burn, there didn't seem to be anything that the doctor had noticed. He pulled out the tape and put in the next one, looking at the name written on the tape.
He thought about the burns as the doctor's voice filled his ears, describing the preliminary examination, the Y-incision procedure, the examination of the victim's nasal passages. Taser? He rejected the idea quickly. They left two marks, and they weren't black, no matter what the voltage. And they sure weren't nickel-sized.
"What's this? Dammit, I can't see it properly, too much bruising here. Wait a minute, alright that's better. Victim has a small, round black mark on the underside of the jaw."
Dean's attention sharpened.
"Consistent with a possible chemical burn. Frank, what were the results from pathology on that burn we saw on the scalp of the last victim?" He couldn't hear the murmured response from the mortician. "Get the file out, would you? The face and jaw have significant bruising and the mark is difficult to see."
Another burn. Chemical burn. He stopped the tape again and turned to Sam. "You got pathology reports in there for the bodies that were found?"
"Uh…no. I don't think so." Sam looked at Twist, who shook his head.
"I talked to the doc after the second autopsy, he didn't mention any pathology reports."
"We need to see 'em. All three of those bodies had some kind of small chemical burn on them." He felt a jolt of a connection in his gut, a memory or some piece of knowledge lurking just at the edge of his consciousness, something that he knew about that.
Twist pulled out his cell and called the funeral home, getting up and walking to the other end of the room as Luttrell answered.
Sam looked at his brother's expression, his brow creasing. "You know something about this?"
Dean shook his head. "I don't know. I keep getting the feeling that I've seen this before, somewhere, sometime, but I can't remember the details."
Twist turned back to them, tucking his phone back in his pocket. "Luttrell says that the doc ordered pathology for all three bodies, for chemical burns he found on the body. Says the reports came back with an unknown toxin as the cause of the burns."
"Well, that's not particularly helpful." He looked down at his notes and added the detail anyway.
"Unknown toxin?" Sam looked back at the file. "Back to a monster?"
Dean shrugged, looking up at him. "I don't know. But we better take that afternoon cave tour."
Sam looked at his watch as they followed the group through the echoing chambers under the ground. Dusk would be in a half an hour, and so far, aside from learning a great deal about the formation of limestone caves, nothing had happened. He glanced at his brother, recognising the tension in his face. Dean was feeling bored and impatient.
On cue, he scowled. "Whaddaya have to do to get attacked by a monster around here?"
Two people in the group just ahead of them turned around to look at him and he smiled reassuringly at them, the scowl returning when they turned away.
They walked toward the entrance of the cave, hanging back from the rest of the group as the softly lit twilight sky became visible. Dean stopped abruptly, feeling the prickling on the back of his neck, his hand slipping to the butt of his gun in his pocket. Sam stopped and looked back at him.
For a long moment, they stood still, waiting, then the prickling disappeared and Dean looked around, mouth twisting sourly as he realised that the monster—if that's what it had been—had decided against appearing.
"What?"
He shook his head, and started to walk slowly for the entrance. "Nothing. I thought I heard something but I guess not."
They came out and nodded to the guide, walking to the car.
"Maybe it waits until someone's alone?"
"Yeah, maybe." Dean frowned, that elusive memory floating around just beyond his grasp again. Something about the way the dim light had filled the cave entrance, and the cave's silence had been filled with something else, for a moment. He sighed, opening the car door.
They got back to the house in time for dinner. Sitting at the long, scrubbed table, watching the semi-controlled chaos of the children while they ate and passed the food from one end of the table to the other, listening to the babble that filled the room as the meal progressed, Dean realised he missed his family. Ellie and Rosie and John. He looked down at his plate.
"You okay?" Sam's voice was low. He looked up and nodded, mouth twisting into a wry smile.
"Yeah. Sure."
"Miss Channing didn't show up for school today." Tyler's voice broke in the middle of the sentence and his siblings laughed.
"Was she ill?" Louise frowned around the table at them, the maternal scowl stopping the laughter instantly.
"Earl says she got taken to hospital, down in Glasgow, yesterday." Ella looked up at her mother. "Says his daddy had to do two runs last night, took Mrs MacLeod down as well."
"Myron told me that his ma were awful sick yesterday too." Caleb looked up the table to his mother, his eyes wide. "Said she was a'screamin' in the night."
"I'm sure she'll be alright, Caleb," Louise said quickly, seeing his worry.
Twist looked at Louise, brows rising. "They were all…?"
Louise nodded sharply at him and looked around the table at her children. "Finish your dinner, there's cobbler and ice-cream for dessert."
"They part of the coven?" Dean looked from Louise to Twist.
"Yep." Twist finished his dessert, wiping his mouth. "I'll get down to Glasgow, check at the hospital."
He got up from the table, leaning over to drop a kiss on Louise's head. "Don't you worry, they were meddling in something they shouldn't have, but whatever it was, it didn't go after their families, or anyone else, just them."
Louise nodded slowly. Since Colin had passed, she couldn't help worrying about the things that happened, things that might be coming for her family. Dean saw her face smooth out as she put the thoughts aside.
He and Sam went over the file again, sitting in the quiet living room, the children in bed and Louise cleaning up kitchen.
"Phil Burrows went missing in April. His body was found in May." Dean looked at the reports.
"So the dates aren't connected at all, not even to the Sabbats," Sam said, setting out each victim's notes. "But the times seem to have significance."
Dean nodded. "Dusk and dawn."
They looked up as Louise came into the room and sat down on the armchair opposite the sofa.
"How many in the coven, Louise?"
"Nine that we're sure of," she said, leaning forward. "When they started, seemed like they were just dabbling, you know, the bored housewife kind of thing, almost. But the last few months, they got more organised, started going up to the caves."
Sam looked at her then at Dean. "This might not be connected at all, you know."
"Two monsters in the one area at the same time?" Dean raised a brow. "When have we ever seen that?"
Sam shook his head. "Yeah, I know." He looked down at the files in front of him. "But the coven side of it doesn't fit anywhere with the rest."
"Yeah, no argument." He looked at Louise, seeing the shadows under her eyes. "You should get some rest, Louise. We'll take care of the protection tonight."
She nodded, gratitude in her eyes. "Thank you, Dean. Twist fixed up the attic beds, you boys should be more comfortable tonight. Quieter up there too."
She got up and left the room, climbing the stairs.
Dean's phone rang, the sound shrill in the quiet room. "Yeah?"
Sam stared at the files, looking for something, for anything that would make sense of the few facts that they had. The burns. The times of the attacks. The bodies that had been found. He shook his head slightly.
"You're kidding?"
He looked at his brother, seeing his face screw up in disbelief as he listened to the other hunter.
"Yeah, okay. See you in the morning." Dean closed the phone and looked at Sam.
"He saw them. Same thing for both women." He shook his head slightly. "They were both poisoned, by some kind of gas, the doctors think. Caused lesions on their brains and gave them hallucinations."
Sam's brow wrinkled up. "What?"
"Yeah." Dean shook his head, rubbing a hand over his face. "I gotta get some sleep, I'll do the ground floor, Sam, you take the bedrooms."
"Right." He put the files back together, and picked them up as he stood. "You think Louise is in danger here, Dean?"
"No." He shook his head, gesturing toward the front door. "Whatever it is in the caves, it's staying there. And Twist was right. What's happening to the coven isn't affecting anyone else. But I don't want to be proved wrong and losing anyone else from this family."
The attic was enormous, running the full length and breadth of the house. Half of it was dedicated to storage; boxes and chests, baskets and suitcases and shelving holding the family's excess possessions. The other half had been divided into bedrooms, lined and furnished with beds and furniture not required downstairs. Dean lay on the old-fashioned brass double bed in the first bedroom next to the stairs, shifting around slightly on the soft mattress. Sam had breathed a sigh of relief when he'd seen the big beds, and had taken the second bedroom with a cheerful grin.
Eyes closed, Dean listened to the faint murmur of the wind outside, the occasional creak of the beams and rafters, smelled the freshly laundered, lavender-scented sheets, and below that, the musty scent he associated with attics, old books, old clothes, old furniture…and sleep stole in.
The room was lit by moonlight, the shapes and shadows, smells and sounds comfortingly familiar. He tasted her skin as his mouth moved slowly down her body, heard the little catches in her breath and the soft moans forced out of her and felt his arousal growing and deepening. They had all the time in the world and he loved the slow build, lingering on every sensation, loving her until they were both aching with the need to be joined, inseparable. He breathed in her scent deeply, feeling the rush through his body, his muscles beginning to tremble as he dipped his head to taste her, a high voltage hit as Ellie arched under him, his tongue diving into her … something was different. He opened his eyes and saw the shimmering reflection on the walls, a glittering pattern of light that gilded the smooth skin and dark blonde hair of the girl beneath him. She looked up at him, eyes half-closed and dazed with pleasure and pulled him close, and he slid into her, feeling a molten heat enclosing him, surrounding him, taking his breath away completely as she arched up, driving him deeper. It felt different from what he'd imagined, so intimate, so unbelievably good … "Hang on, just a bit longer," her whisper brushed his ear and he tried, he was really trying. He felt her start to shake, a violent trembling that seemed to ripple down her body, then he felt the ripple inside, running straight up him, a feel like fingers gripping him, and he thrust in through it, as she shook around him, unable to tell what he was feeling and what she was feeling, the sensations drowning him as the muscles contracted, and his balls tightened and he came inside her, hard and helplessly.
Dean woke abruptly, sitting up in the bed, the rush of desire the dream had aroused ebbing slowly.
Tash.
He knew what had caused the small burn marks on the victims. Knew what had drawn the internal organs from the bodies without leaving a mark. Knew what it was, how to find it, how to kill it. He sank back on the pillows, his heartbeat slowing, his body heavy and loose with release.
"Sex isn't love. It's great, and it makes us feel close and intimate but we're not, not really. Love is being able to be yourself, completely. Not having to hide anything. "
He smiled in the dark at the memory of Tash's words. She'd been right about that, he thought.
"A what?" Sam looked at him.
"A ysbryd mynydd," Dean repeated slowly, his mouth curved up in a half-smile. "Welsh mountain spirit. We took one down in '95, not that far from here."
Sam frowned, thinking back. "The tunnel? We thought it was a witch?"
"That's the one."
"Man, I'd forgotten about that." He looked at Dean. "Wasn't that the one you got all bent out of shape with that girl—"
"So, they're extremely vulnerable to iron; one scratch'll kill them. But if they touch you, even with just a fingertip, you're out cold. That's what those burns were." Dean looked down at the file in front of him. "They mark the entrance to where they're holed up with gold."
"Gold?" Twist asked.
"Yeah." Dean pushed away the memory of walking through the tunnel, his thoughts not on the hunt, the flashlight beam playing over the walls looking for that elusive gleam. "They attack only at dawn and dusk. Once the sun is up or fully down, it's safe enough, but with these cave systems being so big, we'll have a better chance of getting it if we go in just before dawn, bring it to us."
"Risky." Sam glanced from Twist to Dean. "It won't attack unless we're on our own."
"Yeah." Dean shrugged. "We've got the radio gear. We won't get too far apart."
At the entrance to the cave, the three men stood quietly, adjusting their throat mikes and earpieces. Dawn was another hour away.
"Check in every two minutes. These things are strong and they're fast," Dean said, his flashlight on, the light pointed at the ground. "The lair has to be somewhere in this vicinity, so if you do see gold, in the walls, or by an entrance, call in, don't go in by yourself."
He looked down at the small screen in his hand. "Move back a little."
Sam and Twist took several paces back from each other and from Dean. On the screen, the wavery red splodge resolved into three separate dots, close but now separated. He nodded. Frank had built the trackers after the Rome job. They each had a small transmitter tucked into a pocket, and the receiver would register the signals up to three miles away, no matter what the environment was doing. It wasn't much, given the creature they were facing, but it was something.
"Stay frosty," he said, turning away and walking into the cave, hearing the crunch of their boots behind him.
There were four tunnels leading out from the main entrance and he took the middle one, that led, eventually, to a narrow tunnel joining the two cave systems together. Sam took the tunnel immediately to the left, Twist crossed the cave and took the furthest one to the right.
Walking along the dry rock, Dean's nerves prickled constantly. He wasn't sure if it meant that he was being stalked, or if just meant that he was worried about Twist and his brother heading into the darkness on their own. He tried to damp it down, his eyes following the flashlight beam along the walls and floor, his ears straining to hear any anomalous sound in the darkness. He couldn't remember if the creature had made any noises in Spurlington. His thoughts had been on something else, and he'd only heard the thing when it had been right behind him.
Sam walked slowly down the tunnel, hearing his brother and Twist check in a minute later, his own response too soft to echo from the stone walls. He played the beam over the entire tunnel, looking not only for the gleam of gold that would mark the creature's lair, but for any kind of hole large enough to let it out behind him. At the back of his mind, his thoughts of Trish and Marc and Laura were tightly tucked away, but they were still there, reminding him that he had to be careful, he had to be right on top of everything because it wasn't just about him anymore.
Twist felt the tunnel begin its descent, feeling the incline in the pull on his leg muscles. He could hear the sound of rushing water distantly; the tunnel he was in led to a series of caves where an underground river appeared and disappeared. The first and largest of the caves was known locally as the Grotto, and it had been where Phil Burrows had been found, his body wedged by the water against the ledge of rock above the river. His hand went to the hilt of his knife, drawing it out as the darkness pressed around him, the hunter's sense stretching out through the tunnels, a chill running down his spine.
"Sam, Twist, come back."
Dean stood at the junction of two tunnels, looking down at the screen in his hand. All three dots were there; his own stopped, Sam's moving slowly maybe five or six hundreds yards down the tunnel to his left, Twist's further away, in the far right tunnel.
"I'm still here, Dean." His brother's voice whispered against his ear.
"Twist?" Dean frowned. "Twist, report in, man."
Silence was the only response. He looked at the screen and saw Twist's signal pick up speed.
"Crap. Sam, it's got Twist. Back as fast as you can."
Dean turned and started running back up the tunnel.
They met at the entrance to the third tunnel, turning together and racing down it. At the lowest end, they came out into a wide, low-ceilinged cave, the rush of water echoing from the walls, the river churning in front of them.
Dean stopped, staring at the screen, Twist's dot flickering now, brightening and fading. Sam stared at the low ledge of rock at the side of the cave, the river disappearing under it with a muted roar.
"Dean, it's taken him under there," Sam said, gesturing to the ledge.
Dean followed his brother's gesture and swore softly. "That's why the signal's getting flaky. Is there another way around?"
Sam nodded. "Yeah, but it'll take us fifteen minutes to get around that way, I don't think Twist'll have that much time."
"We'll have to go in."
"Strip right down?" Sam asked, pulling off his boots.
"Too cold," Dean said, shaking his head as he unlaced and dragged off his boots. "Just get rid of the bulky stuff."
They pulled off their coats and shirts, transferring the transmitters to jean pockets, then waded into the fast-flowing water, walking slowly to the ledge. Their eyes met as they hyperventilated for a minute, filling their lungs and muscles and bloodstreams with oxygen, then Sam ducked down under the water and Dean followed him, disappearing beneath the rock.
The water was far from clear, carrying silt and rock dust along the speeding current, their flashlights revealing the streams of murk. The stream was fast enough to keep them from crashing into the sides too much, and falling unexpectedly over a drop gave them enough time to grab another mouthful of air between the river and the ceiling of the rock before they were forced under again. When the current slowed, they lifted their heads cautiously above the water. They'd come out into another cave, this one much bigger, the river spreading out and shallowing as it curved around the long walls.
Dean pulled out the screen, surprised and relieved it was still working. Twist's signal was still ahead of them, but not as far now, and it had stopped. Dean looked up, seeing the river disappear again under the rockface and sighed.
"One more, Sam." He gestured ahead and his brother nodded. They took deep breaths and dove under the edge of the rock. The slower-moving river was clearer, and Dean realised with relief he could see his brother's flashlight ahead.
The underwater tunnel was short, only a shallow incline taking them down to the next cave. Dean reached out and gripped Sam's foot, tugging once as he turned off his flashlight, Sam's light going off a second later.
They broke the surface, surprised to find that the cave wasn't pitch black, a thin thread of grey light falling down the rockface at the far end providing just enough illumination to see the shape of the walls, the path of the river. Easing their way silently to one side of the river, they clung to the rock, and looked over the river's rock edge.
Twist lay crumpled on the stone several yards from them, his clothes dark with water, his eyes closed. Against the far wall of the cave, three bodies lay crumpled and still, and the smell of decomposition was thick in the cave, despite the chilliness of the air. Neither could see nor hear anything else in the cave. They pulled themselves out of the water slowly, and moved cautiously toward the hunter, iron knives drawn.
Sam crouched by Twist's head, his fingers resting lightly against the man's neck. He looked back at Dean, nodding. "Alive."
There wasn't any warning, not a footfall, or a breath, or even a prickle of nerves on the back of his neck. Dean saw Sam's eyes widen suddenly and dropped, feeling the wind of the creature's arm as it passed over his head, turning as he fell, and swinging out with the iron knife for anything within reach, the beam of his flashlight coming to life and revealing the creature over him.
Memory hit and for an endless second, his recall of the monster in '95 and the one in front of him overlapped…the long and stretched-out skeletal from, covered loosely with sagging skin that gleamed iridescently, shifting from black to green and back again. Sparkling insectile eyes to either side of the long skull, which turned this way and that as it looked between him and his brother. The lips pulled back and he saw the teeth, crystalline fangs, dripping translucent yellow saliva that steamed where it hit the ground. Dean registered Sam's harshly indrawn breath and shook off the memory.
It moved suddenly, crossing the space between him and Sam in a second and he dropped the light, twisting onto his knees to stand as Sam rolled backwards, his flashlight hitting the ground next to Twist, knife drawn and in front of him, trying to get enough distance to avoid the long reach of the creature's hand.
In the dim cave, lit by the brightening shaft of dawn light on one side, and the still flashlight beams on the other, the fight with the corporeal spirit was disorienting and surreal. Aside from the rasp of their breaths, there was no sound; the creature moved between them like a ghost, in a series of flickering bursts, unpredictable and so fast that they were constantly on the defensive, unable to attack, their wet clothes dragging at them and slowing them further, the chill in the air of the cave sapping their strength.
Dean looked at Sam and his brother nodded, sucking in a desperate breath as he moved further away. The creature between them swung its head, first one way then the other as the distance widened. He should have been ready for it, but the spirit was too fast, and he felt the touch against his neck as he drove his knife up.
Sam watched the creature reach out for Dean, his heart jumping into his throat, unaware that he was even moving until he felt the point of his knife plunge into the side of the monster, bending and sliding off the bone under the skin. The body expanded without warning, and he spun away, throwing a hand over his face as the creature boiled furiously and collapsed into a pool of black ichor on the ground, wisps of smoke rising slowly as the last of the bubbles disappeared.
"Dean?"
Sam crawled past the stinking pool of black liquid and lifted Dean's shoulders, his brother's head rolling back, showing the small round black burn on his neck. He was alive, his heart beating steadily, his chest rising and falling, but out cold. He lowered him to the ground again and stood up slowly. He needed a way out.
"Take it easy."
Dean shook his head at his brother's quiet advice, eyelids heavy as he tried to open them. "What happened?"
"It touched you, you've been out for about three hours," Sam said.
"Twist okay?" He lifted his head and managed to get his eyes half-open, looking around.
"Yeah, son, I'm fine," Twist said. "Helluva hangover."
Dean started to nod and stopped as pain shot through his head. "I don't remember that bit."
Sam smiled. "Dad had you back in the motel and dosed up with painkillers before you came around, the last time." He'd remembered most of what had happened on that hunt now.
"That explains it." Dean looked at him blearily. "Can we get out of here without having to swim again?"
"Yeah." Sam turned, gesturing to the opposite wall. "There's a tunnel leading out. It'll take us to the first river cave."
"Well, let's do it." Dean rolled onto his knees, pausing as the pain in his head thumped harder, then got up slowly. "I'm freezing my ass off here, and the smell isn't getting any better." He glanced at the bodies. "At least we can tell the cops where they are, give the families some peace."
They walked slowly to the tunnel, Sam leading, Twist and Dean behind him.
They'd reached the first river cave, and found their gear, Sam and Dean pulling on their coat, when they heard it, a low muttering beneath their feet. The brothers looked at each other, eyes widening as they realised in unison what was happening.
Sam saw the river start to foam and boil, bubbles filling the water and bursting as they rose to the surface. He grabbed Twist and Dean, shoving them across the cave toward the tunnel.
"Hold your breath! Don't breathe!" he shouted at them, forcing them ahead of him into the narrow tunnel, both men stumbling as they ran up the rough stone path.
Bursting into the huge cavern of the main entrance, Sam kept pushing them, the rush of air from behind them sweeping past. His lungs burned with the air he still held in them running out of oxygen, his eyes and skin stung with passage of the noxious gas past them, venting into the outside air beyond the cave mouth.
The three men staggered into the parking lot and the push behind them dissipated in the open air. He exhaled the stale air and dragged in a huge lungful of air in relief, hearing Dean and Twist doing the same beside him.
"What was that?" Twist stood doubled over, his hands on his knees.
"Ground movement, under the limestone," Sam said, looking around. "There must a small fault under here somewhere, and it's been moving, releasing gases from under the crust."
"Earthquake?" Dean asked, leaning against the black car.
"Not that severe." Sam explained. "Just little fractures, maybe, something sinking further along." He gestured vaguely at the ridge behind them. "But the gases came up through the caves, through the water."
He walked to the car, leaning against it beside his brother. "That's what happened to the coven. They must have been poisoned by the fumes, and it caused the lesions, caused the hallucinations."
Twist straightened abruptly. "Louise heard it too, saw the vision of that woman. Is she –?"
Sam shook his head. "She was out here, she said. She might have gotten a small dose, but not enough to do any real damage. She'll be fine, Twist."
Sam glanced at his brother as he drove, the car roaring softly up the road. He'd been through his father's journal often, though not as much as Dean had. He wouldn't have remembered the previous encounter with the Welsh mountain spirit, even re-reading the case, he thought. Dean's memories were triggered in different ways.
"You okay?" he asked his brother, who was leaning back in the corner between seat back and passenger door.
"Yeah, painkillers have kicked in," Dean said without opening his eyes. "Burn itches."
A small white bandage was taped to the side of his neck. The doctors at the hospital had cleaned and dressed the burn, shaking their heads at the injury, but releasing him.
They'd told the police about the bodies, and had retrieved their gear from the house, Louise's gratitude a little hard to bear, although Dean had brightened at the two pies she'd given them for the drive home, now sitting on the back seat and filling the car with their rich, sweet aromas.
She'd also passed on a message from Ellie, Sam recalled. Dean had rolled his eyes as he'd read it.
"What'd Ellie call about?"
Dean looked up at him. "She thought the noises and the hallucinations might have something to do with the geological movement of the earth under the caves," he said, his tone desert dry. "Apparently, it was news in some circles for months now."
Sam snorted. "Occam's Razor."
"Yeah, well, we probably should have checked for that first." Dean leaned back, letting his head rest against the window and closing his eyes again.
Sam slid another sideways look at him. "Back in '95, with the girl…what happened?"
Dean opened an eye and looked at him. "Nothing."
"Dad said you'd learned a lesson."
"You going to keep pushing this?" Dean turned his head slightly, the other eye opening with reluctance.
"Why not? It's a long drive." Sam grinned at him.
Dean closed his eyes again, chewing at the corner of his lip. In the last couple of years, things had changed between him and Sam, for the better he thought. They were a lot closer, in a lot of ways, than they'd ever been. And the trust, that had been shattered in Maryland, and patched back together somehow afterwards, had finally begun to resemble a real bond between them again. He drew in a deep breath.
"She was…uh, we thought she was pregnant," he said, looking out the window. He'd thought it was love and a family and it'd scared the crap out of him, but had drawn him as well, a view to another life.
Dean dropped Sam off and continued up the road, pulling into the driveway and parking in front of the house with a bone-deep shudder of relief. The lights were on downstairs, and as he got out of the car, he heard the front door opening, light spilling out onto the porch, silhouetting the woman who stood in the doorway waiting for him.
"Hey," Ellie said as he walked up toward her.
"Hey." He dropped the bags to either side of him, and stepped close to her, his arms going around her as she lifted her face to his. The kiss was long and deep and soft and he shed the tensions of the past few days, felt the familiar alchemy of his strength restored, his hope replenished in the warmth of her embrace.
He pulled back for a moment and looked down at her, drinking in the sight of her face greedily. "Everyone asleep?"
He picked up the bags and followed her inside.
"Yep." She turned, closing the door after him. "Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse."
"Good, because I have been waiting for a long time." He dropped the bags in the hall, one arm going around her shoulders and the other sweeping up under her knees, lifting her against him and turning for the stairs. "And tonight's the night, baby."
Ellie's laugh was deep and low against his shoulder. "Sure you're not too tired?"
"Not that tired."
END
