Chapter 12

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Phil continued to stare at the waiting brothers in disbelief. He had thought this pair were likeable and, well, normal. Now it seemed like they were both one bagel short of a picnic!
"Am...Am I a?...A?...Excuse me?"
Sam sighed, reaching into one of the back pockets of his denims, he produced a small antique silver pocket knife which he offered to Phil.
"Would you mind holding this?"
Phil swallowed hard, believing he was now facing a crazy man with a knife. He quickly decided he'd rather be the one holding the knife and accepted it from Sam.
"Um...Should I put this in the hotel safe for you?"
Dean gently relieved the shaken man of the knife.

"Phil, this' silver. If you were a werewolf, you wouldn't have held it so casually. Neither of us is here to harm you in any way at all, totally the opposite in fact. All we want is for you to listen to us...I've spent time meetin' with the Sheriff this morning discussing the murders, an' Sam here has got a map which the young lady he spent time talking to about the Moonlight Murderer has kindly marked the locations of where she knew bodies had been found, including your two guests. Phil, your Moonlight Murderer isn't human. It's a werewolf, an' we're gonna do our damnedest to find it an' kill it. It's not the first werewolf we've hunted, it won;t be the last...We get rid of this monster? No more killings. Think about it my friend. The town and this hotel can start to recover. That's somethin' ev'rybody wants. Right Phil?"

Dean and Sam waited for Phil to gather his thoughts and respond in some way. Finally, he did.
"Monsters? Werewolves?...Real?"
Sam rolled his eyes.
"Yes Phil, they're real, get over it! Tomorrow night's a full moon."
Real fear suddenly flared in the manager's eyes.
"Oh my God!"
Dean turned to Sam.
"By George, I think he's got it!"
"'Bout time."
"Monsters! Real! Oh...My...God!"
"Yup. He's definitely got it Sammy."

Having pulled the Impala off the road, Sam and Dean climbed out of the car. Dean glanced at the back seat where there was a vacuum flask and a good sized lidded plastic tub.
"Think old Phil must've decided we were coming out here for a picnic!"
Sam laughed.
"Come on Dean, the guy desperately wanted to help. Makin' sure we don't go hungry's about the only thing he could do for us. It was a nice thought."
Dean smiled.
"I know, an' I appreciate it really. I do. An' I really appreciate him insistin' we stay at the hotel free gratis. I'm gonna enjoy breakfast all the more knowin' it ain't costin' us."
Sam chuckled.
"You think if we told him the only way to kill this thing was for him to come on the hunt, he'd be here?"
"Yup. Shittin' his pants but, if we needed him, he'd be here now. He's one of life's genuine good guys."
Sam nodded his agreement.
"Well, let's pay him back by makin' sure we gank our mark's shaggy ass...C'mon, first known vic's body was found up this track."
Dean scowled as he glared at the forest surrounding Sam and himself.
"I S'pose it'd be too much to hope our fugly's holed up somewhere close so we can get this over with tonight?"
"Huh. You wish."

Joel closed the hatch in the kitchen floor that gave access to a man made underground one room hiding space. He wasn't prepared to be chained and vulnerable in the face of a potential leadership challenge from his headstrong niece in her wild form. He knew that he would have to go out with her tomorrow night, however much Hope didn't want him near her, and however much he would rather she stayed safely in the hide with him.

Sam looked up at the visible patch of sky that was encircled by the tops of the fir trees which formed a circle around the clearing he and his brother were standing in.
"This' good Dean. We should set the bait camp up in this clearing. The full moon will pass right overhead, lightin' the tent up like a beacon for a bit; hopefully long enough to be spotted by our werewolf."
"Great, so let's get the tent an' stuff set up then get back to the hotel. I wanna shower an' check weapons before hittin' the restaurant. Then tomorrow we can relax for the day."
Sam grinned.
"Sounds good. I saw a couple of antique stores in town I'm curious to check out."
"Whoa! Can I just be clear here? When I said 'relax', shoppin' ain't what I had in mind bro'."
"Think of it as a new weapons hunt."
"Ok, I can handle that."

The Hunters pitched a small two man tent and set the camping space up to look like the tent's owners were off hiking somewhere and intending to return to the area later. Dean gathered firewood and left it at the side of a shallow fire pit he dug. Sam mussed up the inside of the tent with a couple of sleeping bags, a battery lantern and other sundry pieces of camping equipment. He hung a couple of towels over a low tree branch to look like they had been put there to dry. By the time they were done, the area looked as though someone had been camping there for at least a couple of days. At last satisfied with their efforts, the brothers returned to the hotel.

The hotel manager had been given strict instructions to act and carry on as normal by both brothers but it quickly became apparent that Phil had been either thinking a lot about what Sam and Dean had disclosed to him, or he'd been doing some research. At every possible opportunity, as well as persistently asking if the pair needed anything, he also took to intercepting the brothers and muttering the names of random monsters in their ears. The first time it happened he had leaned towards Dean over the reception desk and asked in a whisper, 'What about vampires? They can't be real?'
Dean confirmed they were. Next time it was Sam,
'Banshee?"
"Yes."
This happened a few times until it got to the point at which he even knocked on the door to their room. Dean answered.
"Hi Phil. Wassup?"
"Um, Chupacabra?"
"Phil, you gotta stop doin' this man! You'll never sleep at night, an' yeah, that's real too."
"Just one more?"
"Jeeze! Ok, what?"
"Daemons. Are they a real thing too?"
"You really want me to answer that?"
"Yes, please."
"Fine, but this' the last time Phil. Yeah. Daemon's are real an' they're douche bags. Nasty, evil douche bags. An' now we're done, right?"
Phil looked hesitant.
"I said we're done, right Phil?"
"Um...So, if daemons are real, does that mean...?"
"Stop! Desist. Enough. Halt. Can it. Whoa. Cease. No more Phil. We are done!"
Dean closed the door on the manager and called through it to him,
"Go away, there's nobody here."

Phil duly restrained himself from that point on, until Dean, last to leave the bar again, was about to follow Sam up to their room and go to bed. Phil made Dean wait while he trotted into the kitchens to get something he said he thought would be helpful to the pair. When he came back. Phil was carrying a large but shallow rectangular shaped mahogany box. Putting the box down on the bar counter, he proudly opened it's lid, to reveal a complete eight person set of silver cutlery, including ladles and serving spoons. Dean stared in silence at the gleaming pieces and then at the beaming hotel manager.
"Phil, this' real kind of you. It is. But what you gotta understand my friend is, I'm gonna kill this thing; not invite it to dinner...G'night dude."

Hope woke early, her stomach churning in excitement, much like it used to do on Christmas mornings while her parents were still alive. Tonight the moon would be full. Joel had once explained to her that it wasn't her human self that the excitement belonged to. She was simply responding to the building excitement belonging to the creature within her, and that creature would gradually become more wakeful as the day moved towards night. Once it first truly dawned on Hope what she had been turned into, she developed the desperate need to find a way to keep her humanity foremost and safe. In the end she had concluded that the only way for her to continue to feel primarily human was to give a name to that other unnatural, unwanted part of herself. So that's exactly what she did. Hope called the wolf-monster coiled up inside her, 'Parasite'.

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Chick. Hugs to all xxxxx