8 - Land of the Lost

Considering how wrong things could have gone, Sam supposed they should take this as a victory. Weird how it didn't feel like one.

What they knew: someone was hiring monsters and a hitwoman witch to take out the homeless and reformed monsters in a five mile radius. Why? Unknown. To say that wasn't a lot was a slap in the face to nothingness.

Lyla left to walk home at about three in the morning. They would have worried about a young woman walking home this late at night, except she just rage stomped a bunch of vampires without breaking a sweat. They probably needed her to protect them.

Dean waited until she was no longer in line of sight to ask, "What the fuck is up with that?"

"I know, I don't get it either."

"Could she be juicing or something? Dean wondered.

Sam almost laughed. "What? You think she's doing shapeshifter steroids?"

He shrugged. "Got a better idea?"

Come to think of it, he hadn't. He'd never heard of a drug that would enhance a shifter's power ... but did it have to be a drug? "She could have a spell on her."

Dean closed his eyes and dramatically dropped his forehead to the steering wheel. "Hitwitch partner."

Sam nodded. "Hitwitch partner."

"So we have to assume she tipped off whoever was on the end of that text message."

"I doubt they needed to be tipped off if she's with us already."

Dean sat back with a sigh. Should he tell him he could be as dramatic as Ramon, and whoever Lyla was pretending to be? No, Sam decided to simply keep it to himself. "We can't beat her in a straight fight."

Sam shrugged. "So it can't be a straight fight. It's not like we haven't fought shifters before."

"True." Dean pulled another candy bar out of his pocket, and Sam shook his head.

"Dude, seriously."

"It's one of those energy bars," Dean argued, as if that made any difference. Most of them had so much sugar in them, a candy bar would actually be better for you. But that was yet another fight he didn't want to have with him again.

They called off the stakeout when the sky started to lighten. Monsters could attack during the day, sure, but the increased number of witnesses was often a natural prohibition.

On the way back to the motel, they stopped for food - of course - but to be fair, Sam was starving by then too. He wanted caffeine, but didn't allow himself to have it, as he had to get some rest sometime.

Dean went right to bed, but Sam stayed up, doing a bit of research. It went without saying that shifters were stronger than humans, but that strong? He found some lore in the database that suggested shifters could actually become stronger if they withheld from shifting, but it was speculation more than anything else. There was also some debate on whether a shifter could actually stop from doing it. There was so much not known about them it was kind of crazy. But they were a species that really didn't like to share.

It was a shame he didn't know Lyla's last name so he could do a search for her, but that had to be deliberate. She didn't want them looking her up. Which was why he had to figure out how to get her surname next time ... although, why was he assuming Lyla was her real name? All of this could be a fraud.

Sam was too frustrated and tired to go on, so he went to bed feeling absolutely no wiser. This deep in an investigation, they should have had more by now. The fact that they hadn't felt like a personal failure.

Sam woke several hours later, feeling like he'd hardly had any sleep at all. Dean was sitting at the small table in the room, loading several guns with shifter killing silver bullets. When he saw Sam was awake, he shrugged. "Might as well be prepared."

That was Dean's actual motto. Hence his jacket of way too many weapons, and what Sam had taken to mentally calling his "pockets of mystery". When he was a kid, he used to wonder if Dean was a magpie, just picking up shiny objects at random, but looking back, there was a method to Dean's madness. He tried to prepare for everything, because he never knew what Dad and life were going to throw at him. He had to get set to take on a million impossible things, and he would always fail somewhere, because the test was rigged against him from the jump. Dad did some good things in his life, and some really bad ones, but the worst thing he ever did was put all that weight on Dean. Again, Sam would have given anything if Dean would get mad at Dad for it, but he never had. Would he ever? Also, Sam was kind of low key mad at Dean for never getting mad at Dad.

It didn't matter. No, strike that, it totally did fucking matter, but Dad was long dead, and there was so much trauma under the bridge, they probably had to be picky about what they spent their emotional energy on. Sam was honestly kind of surprised this still bugged him, but it probably always would.

Once Sam had showered and changed, and Dean had loaded up all the weapons into the car, they went out for breakfast, although it was actually lunch since it was afternoon. They went to a small cafe that seemed to be attached to some small apartment building? It was hard to say. But the coffee and pastries were really good, no matter how weird the set up.

Checking out the local paper, there was zero mention of what went on under the overpass last night. Sam marveled at it. People had definitely seen them. Men with machetes taking on other men with way too many teeth, and no one said anything? Maybe someone had, and they were assumed to be drunk or something. On the one hand it was good, because at least they weren't in a police station trying to explain they were stopping a vampire attack. On the other hand, it was terrible, because the human ability to ignore something going on right in front of them seemed endless.

Was he in a bad mood? He chalked it up to getting so little sleep. When this case was over, he was just going to sleep for twelve hours.

They decided to check out the bar beforehand, just to get an idea of it, but since the Impala was such a distinct car - Ramon had a point about it sticking out, although he was dying to know how he would know it did it as much as a narc at Hempfest - they parked it in on the next block and decided to reconnaissance on foot. It wasn't uphill, so that kept Dean's bitching to a minimum.

It was a good thing they did, because unlike most bars, Hanrahan's seemed to do its best not to be noticed. It was a small, barely marked building beside a closed consignment shop at the end of the block. There was a tiny sign beside the door that read 'Loiterers Will Be Eaten'. Sam bet everyone thought that was a joke.

"Demon bar?" Sam asked Dean. He was the unfortunate expert in this.

He frowned at the building like it wasn't answering his questions. "If it is, it's pretty visible for one." At Sam's disbelieving look, he added, "Relatively speaking. Maybe they like snacks wandering in."

"You realize, if this is a demon bar ..."

"Yeah, we smell like food. They'll know we're here to screw them. But if it's a trap, it doesn't matter, right?"

"Yeah, we're screwed either way."

As they walked back to the car, Dean suggested, "Let's wire Lyla up. She can go in and we can eavesdrop."

"Until the connection mysteriously drops, so she can have a long talk with her co-conspirators."

"So we bug her twice, and only tell her about one."

Sam glanced at Dean out of the corner of his eye, once again equally impressed and horrified by his brother. It was funny how often those two feelings went together. "And how do you figure we do that?"

Dean shrugged. "You're the tech guy. I figured you'd know."

Sam sighed, and didn't want to admit that yeah, he had a couple of ideas. It felt devious, but then again, if she was the witch's partner, she deserved nothing.

By the time they returned to the car, Dean got a call from Ramon. He put it on speaker. "Okay, guys, I think they got another friend of mine, Didi. They sometimes worked a corner on 7th, but they also have a place they're squatting at here. No one's seen them since last night, their stuff is still at the squat, and I just found their phone in the gutter." He said it all in a rush, and his voice was pained, like he was trying not to get upset, but it wasn't working. "The vampires said something about clearing out everything between here and 10th. Did they ... was 5th the last place they went?"

Sam had been wondering about that. Had they caught them at the tail end of their wilding spree, only because Sarge knew to call Ramon if things got weird? He shared a look with Dean, and knew he'd wondered the very same thing. "We don't know," Dean said. "You might be in as better position to tell us."

Ramon made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a sob. It was hard to hear. It wasn't their fault, and yet it still felt like a personal failure. "Fuck." It was a whisper, with barely any strength at all. "We gotta end these motherfuckers."

"That's the plan." Dean said.

Ramon was quiet for a very long moment, and they could hear traffic in the background. "I know what you said, but I gotta come with you tonight."

Dean shook his head, even though he couldn't see it. "No, you gotta guard Tia's place."

"What?"

"We have no idea how long this is gonna go, and we won't be there to keep a watch on the house. That's gonna fall to you."

"Uh ..." Ramon was silent again, and Sam assumed it was something that hadn't occurred to him. "What do I do? I mean, do you need to invite vampires in?"

"No, that's they want in, they're coming in. Put salt down in front of every window and door, so if they try and sic a demon on you, they won't be able to get in."

"What do demons look like? Please don't tell me human."

"Sorry kid, they possess humans. Basically they look like black smoke that forces itself into people."

"Sounds fun."

"But a possessed person will occasionally have all black eyes, as well as an aversion to salt and holy water. Also, these people become homicidal bastards."

"Ah, well, at least that's a tell." More street sounds, and a noise away from the phone. Hard to say if it was a sigh or a sob. "Does this ever get any easier?"

"No, but you do get used to it," Dean said, not unkindly. "But if this breaks your heart now ... walk away. You try and get used to that, but it's like reopening a wound every goddamn time."

Sam glanced at Dean, but he was looking out the passenger window. It was always odd, these moments. Dean wasn't one for talking about anything really, but it always surprised Sam in those rare times, to realize his macho meathead brother was actually all soft and squishy in the middle. It was a weird dichotomy, and Sam didn't know how he lived with that. You'd have thought he'd break apart under the strain. Maybe that was expressed in the fact that in general, Dean had a hard time processing emotions, and utterly hated to use his words in that context. If emotional constipation was a physical condition, Dean would have been dead for over a decade now, maybe more.

"God, this sucks," Ramon said.

"Yeah it does," Dean agreed.

"Are you gonna come by and drop off weapons at least, before you do the bar thing?"

Dean considered that a moment. "Yeah, we can drop off some stuff, but absolutely nothing you don't know how to use. Remember what I said?"

Ramon sighed. "That gets you dead quick."

"Right. And also, nothing that Tia will kill us for giving you."

"Ah, man ..."

"C'mon, which would you rather face? A vampire or an angry Tia?"

Ramon's voice became sullen. "A vampire."

"Right. See you later, kid." Dean hung up, and let out his own deep sigh. "We gotta get these motherfuckers ASAP."

"Without a doubt," Sam agreed. They still had no idea what their endgame was, what they were looking for, and how close they were to finding it. "We are not giving that kid a gun."

"Yeah, I know. We gotta figure out something, though."

That they did. About everything.

In the end, they gave him a machete, and several defensive hex bags to put around the house in strategic locations. He wanted more, but they couldn't give it to him. There was simply too much potential for an innocent person getting hurt, or Ramon himself. He didn't push too hard though. Ramon seemed a bit overwhelmed, but he wanted to try and do this. Sam told him he'd do fine, and checked to make sure the camera feed of the backyard was still functioning. It was. So at least he could keep an eye on the house while not there.

After that, they rendezvoused with Lyla at the motel, and told her that Hanrahan's was most likely a demon bar, which left them out. "No it doesn't," she said.

"What, we supposed to go in there as willing food?" Dean snapped.

"You don't smell perfectly human."

Dean looked genuinely surprised by that. "What?"

"I mean, it's at the end of your scent trail. It's like human, and then there's this ... weird note. Have you been cursed recently?"

Oh. Sam knew instantly what this was. "The Mark of Cain."

It was Lyla's turned to be surprised. Her brown eyes widened, and Sam belatedly realized he'd almost never seen an expression on her face that wasn't related to anger or contempt. She pointed at Dean. "He's been cursed with the Mark of Cain? How in the fuck was that witch almost able to kill you?"

"I don't have it anymore," Dean said. "I had it. Past tense."

That seemed to settle her, but Sam could see questions in her eyes, like how he got rid of it. Why didn't she ask? "You can still smell it on you, at least a little bit. We can play with that ambiguity."

"What do you mean?"

"If they ask, you're a human tainted with the Mark of Cain."

Sam shook his head. "Can't be done. He doesn't have the Mark anymore."

"We can fake that," Dean said. "I lived with it long enough I can probably draw it with my eyes closed."

Sam glared at him. "What if they ask you to prove it?"

Dean shrugged. "I can fake that too."

Lyla shook her head. "Not good enough. If we don't want these guys to kill us, you're going to have to act the part. Faking it isn't an option. Can you do it or not?"

Dean's jaw set, and his eyes seemed to harden like stone. "Of course I can."

Sam had a bad feeling about all of this.