A/N:

A big thank you to Secretwrittenword, radpineapple, and Jennifer Tingley for the reviews! Thanks for sticking with it, even when posting is a little on-and-off. Your views on the story are awesome to read. :) Sam thinks he's being too lax, while Dean believes just the opposite... ah, angsty emotions. Gotta love 'em.

Oh, and a quick heads up: this chapter will get a bit more suggestively gory than usual.


Sam felt around for his gear as he surveyed the scene. There was no blood; just the material of the bag Dean had worn, torn to ribbons over a thin layer of peanut butter and crumbs coating the grass. It was like Dean had vanished into thin air. Sam's only tools were a silver knife, flashlight, holy junk, and a couple stowed-away guns loaded up with silver bullets. They had come prepared for werewolves and wackos, and though he pulled out a pistol, he doubted the silver would do anything more than slow down a wendigo. He didn't exactly know if that's what the monster was, but it seemed the best bet of any, especially if it was able to attack Dean without a sound or trace.

It could have gotten to his brother five minutes ago. Or half an hour ago. Sam shook his head, trying to lower his heart rate. He needed a solid plan. The internet hadn't provided them with many good maps, and Sam had committed what little information there was to memory. The territory had been largely left alone and unexplored. Maybe that had pleased some activists at one time or another, but for Sam, it only meant that Dean could have been taken practically anywhere. He breathed in. Assuming it was a wendigo, it would have a cave. There might be dozens of little caverns deep within or around the park's borders, despite the fact that this park wasn't exactly something you'd call mountainous. There wasn't very much time for searching, either. It was bound to get hungry soon—and he really didn't want to see those effects.

There was supposed to be a lookout area of sorts, a ways past the campsite where the families had disappeared. It was the closest hill that he could remember, but even as he glanced around, the overly tall trees made it impossible to say if any raised ground existed. That was partly why the hill had wriggled its way into being mentioned by the article; it would be a good place to meet in case of poor weather, and investigators thought that some friends and family might have gone up there. People who stuck around to continue searching the camping area or to look for the hill hadn't been heard of again, though. Sam assumed that the noise of a group of people brought the attention of the killer. Now it just seemed like the whole surrounding forest was a danger zone, whether you had the safety of numbers, or kept to yourself.

That brought up a different train of thought he'd rather not entertain at the moment. He'd been watching too much of the History channel if he assumed the wendigo had targeted Dean like a lion would target its prey, by going after the weak. Because Dean wasn't weak… per se. Moving on. Time's ticking, dammit.

Sam was forced to branch off from the paths and trails in order to head in—at least what he hoped—was the proper direction of the hill. It probably had a name, but he was much more preoccupied with surveying his surroundings every few seconds. He had no way of knowing if it would be in the cave, or have left to try finding other couldn't allow himself to become another victim. Depending on what the creature had done, Dean might need help getting out—and preferably, he'd be able to get other survivors out, if some still remained. Sam wasn't liking the idea that they'd been followed without either of them picking up on it. Wendigos were incredibly fast, smart, tricky things that substituted people for canned goods while it hibernated. There were a few hunters in the community known for prowling the northern states and occasionally Canada, with wendigos as their speciality. In contrast, he and Dean had never quite gotten the hang of MREs and toting tents on their backs. Apart from his general knowledge of wendigos, he had nothing to go off of for their hunting habits or cues, and to say walking around a forest with just a pistol for company was unsettling would be an understatement. Guns really only irritated a wendigo for a short amount of time—but it was all he had.

The sun had begun to hang lower in the afternoon sky by the time Sam realized the ground was shifting upwards. Despite his heart rate always jumping whenever he whirled around to swaying grasses or falling nuts, the forest was just as deceptively peaceful as ever, and there had been absolutely zero markers of struggle, footprints, or that there was a territorial creature around. The last one made a bit more sense. A wendigo had nothing to fear, and since it was pretty inactive, he doubted those things cared much if certain animals came and went within their hunting grounds. He'd been hoping for prints, blood, ripped clothing—any sort of sign that it had passed along here with a victim. Right now, the wendigo might be somewhere else in the woods, or in the cave, doing something with its recent catches… and as bad as it sounded, he secretly hoped the missing families took its fancy long enough for Dean to escape, or for him to find the cave. Some of this may have been Dean's fault, but Sam knew he should have pressed the issue and been more responsible about it. After all, someone had to pick up Dean's slack if he planned on continuing the immature silent-treatment. He was just baffled that his brother would get attacked without mentioning anything.

But he wasn't going to assume anything about that, knowing how the old phrase went—assholes and all. It had its merit. He had assumed that with everything going on, Dean would take proper care of himself; and on the flip side, Dean must have assumed Sam kept a polite distance because he didn't, and wouldn't, care—when Sam really just didn't want to be overbearing or obnoxious. But you know what? He was screwing that polite-distance crap. Assumptions were getting them nowhere—Dean had been refusing to actually talk to him recently, and that was exactly what they did not need right now. They had to be finding a cure for the curse and the Mark—not exchanging words like they were new hunting acquaintances, as they were doing now. Because of that, they'd managed to find themselves here. Or, more accurately, Sam was here—and Dean was in trouble, in parts unknown. He was done with all of it. He wasn't going to be the fuel to the fire of Dean's self-sabotage, and if helping his stubborn brother meant pushing right back… so be it. Dean didn't want to treat it like a curse, and they weren't going to. They were going to use the new grace period to its fullest extent. Nothing ending the world, no Mark-induced rage fits, just a whole lot of time to find a solution. He suspected Dean was searching for hunts in order to take his mind off stuff. Well, that's what Netflix is for. Sam had a hard time believing it—but he was going to have to sideline his brother.

OOO

He'd been doubtful there was anything around, until the smell hit him.

It was wafting out from a pretty good distancing to the mouth of the cave, if that was what you wanted to call it. It was more like a dark tunnel that stretched away into a silent, rotting abyss. He could only hope it was safe to enter as he clicked on a flashlight. Nothing indicated that the wendigo was home right now—but who knew how long it'd take for the thing to return, or if it was noiselessly creeping around the cavern while Sam walked in. The walls didn't expand very far out. Though there weren't any stalactites on the ceiling or drops of water forming puddles on the floor, it didn't need those classic elements to be immediately foreboding. The smell, of course, was a major factor. Shit, piss, blood, and a couple things he couldn't place were extremely strong, even outside. But as he drew himself into the cave, inch by inch, other disturbing things made themselves known. The air was denser. The sound of light shuffles came from time to time, and at each one, Sam froze, though knowing that the flashlight's beam made it impossible to hide—especially from a creature that was able to make things out in the dark.

Eventually he forced himself to walk in far enough to see the first few corpses. Bodies were strung up by rope along either side of the cavern. Sam played his light over their forms for a minute, not understanding what seemed so off. They weren't dead. They breathed, ever so slightly, though they made no movement and didn't respond to the light. Their clothes were soaked with blood, both their hands and feet used to hold them up like ragdolls. And then the disfigured shadows made sense—fingers, hands, feet, whole areas of arms and legs ripped off half-living bodies with an unnatural strength. Other areas had been skinned, with some parts requiring the removal—or rather, messy tearing away—of clothes.

Sam swallowed. He'd stop looking, now.

Past many more of these unfortunate cases, and after having walked by them all, the darkness and faint forms of bodies on the edges of the flashlight's range added to a deepening sense of claustrophobia. Towards the end of the cave, people were merely tied by their hands instead, and seemed to be in much better shape. This deduction was apart from the fact that they all remained unconscious and showed bruising around their cheeks and temples.

When he finally found him, Dean proved to be no exception. His brother's face had developed blue areas that suggested the wendigo had simply deployed brute force to knock out its victims. It seemed pretty strong; one woman's eye had swelled shut from what was probably quite the number of concussions.

The once-human creature was left-handed. Who would have guessed.

"Dean?" he whispered, wondering how much chance there was of getting all the survivors out of here before the wendigo returned.

His brother reacted minimally to the light by turning away. He was trying to blink, but clearly didn't know his surroundings yet.

Sam shoved the flashlight into his mouth and took out a knife to cut at the ropes holding Dean's hands suspended over his head. It seemed like he was muttering something, but while rushing to slice through an old, thick rope, and listening for signs that the wendigo was coming back, it was impossible to decipher. With a snap, it finally unravelled from around his brother's wrists, and Sam expected Dean to lean on him before he got his sense of balance back. It didn't exactly turn out that way. Instead, Dean tumbled right into him and would have fallen if Sam hadn't grabbed him by the armpits, holding this awkwardly-straining position for a moment before it occurred to him that Dean might not be regaining consciousness. Apart from the incoherent murmurs, nothing showed Dean to be awake. The flashlight was still clenched between Sam's teeth as he kneeled down and pulled one of Dean's arms across his shoulders. The cave's entrance was highlighted by the sun, and its exit was straightforward, so he tucked the lightsource away and replaced the knife to sit within easy reach at his hip. "Dean," he muttered again, shaking his brother a bit. It was amazing how little he weighed now. "Dean? Hey, wake up." But his brother refused to acknowledge his pestering beyond a couple of grimmances.

Sam sighed quietly, knowing there was no other choice. He maneuvered around along the dark stone of the cave's floor and stood up, holding Dean bridal-style. Depending on if Dean woke up on the walk back, it would take them the rest of the day just to return to the Impala. They didn't have the materials to properly kill a wendigo, and if all of the victims were in a similar state to Dean—or worse—there was no possible way Sam could manage to get them all out of the wendigo's vicinity. He drew what few Anasazi symbols he was able to remember at the front of the cave to hopefully prevent it from returning. Then, he turned towards the thick brush and grasses, and thanked God they hadn't run into anything while inside the cave.