The sun glinted off the windshield of the Impala, temporarily blinding Dean. He squinted and waited for it to pass.
"So…you didn't sleep in your room last night." Stated Sam, as he rifled through some printouts Kat had given him.
"Who are you? My mother?" deflected Dean. He was continuing to fight with the sunlight that was exploding through the tree branches hanging over the road.
Sam shut his folder and stared straight ahead. He put his elbow on the edge of the open window and smiled contentedly. "Just sayin'" he said in absolutory tone.
"Well I'm saying nothing happened. We talked" Dean responded curtly, defenses raised.
At this Sam turned to face his brother, his face full of mock surprise. "You talked?"
"Yeah." Said Dean simply, still focused on driving.
Sam was still looking at Dean with knowing eyes. Dean was already painfully aware of how different Kat was to him. She made him feel entirely out of character and he wasn't prepared to admit that to Sam.
"…with a girl?" Sam continued.
"Yes Sam, are we done with the interrogation?" snapped Dean with exasperation. Sam shook his head at Dean and faced forward. He smiled, in spite of himself, for his brother. Sam knew Dean better than he would care to admit, and Sam couldn't help but be happy for something good actually coming Dean's way.
They knocked on the door of the crummy motel room Mark had sent them to. He answered the hunter's way; with a gun pointed at them and a curt hello. He ushered them inside, sticking the barrel of the gun slightly out of the door, checking both sides and retreating in after them.
He was slightly older, maybe late 50's but retained a youthful zeal. Despite being a hunter he seemed happy, they didn't know if he had a family. It never occurred to Sam or Dean to ask; but whenever they worked with Mark he—cliché though it may be—was a breath of fresh air.
Now, he looked tired but still greeted them with a smile that reached his eyes. He placed the gun down on the table.
"Nice to see you again boys. All that business in St. Louis worked out?"
Sam smiled deliberately at Dean and said, "For now. We think what's going on here might have something to do with it actually."
"No way is this witch your girl. She's sloppy." Mark corrected
"How so?" said Dean stepping forward and dropping his duffle on one of the beds.
"Well, for one I know she's using a hex bag, and that it's in the water. That's how she's getting people sick. Which leads me to believe she works in government, with access to public water. And she's bad at magic to boot." He added with a laugh. "Some people are surviving this and their chalking it up to good diet or whatever. Not that I want people to be dying but, she's gotta be low level…talk about performance issues."
Dean laughed heartily and said, "Alright. So we find out who she is. And we find her hex bag. Case closed."
Back at the bunker Kat was staring at the cauldron. She couldn't read it. She'd tried everything, and spent the day moving around in frustration. She stood, she paced, she sat, and she lay. And no matter what she did she couldn't reconcile the conflicting runes carved into it. She could read primitive Irish fairly well. So she knew the ingredients that the cauldron required to access its power. But she hadn't studied the Celtic Zodiac, and therefore could not for the life of her understand why there were two tree signs depicted on the rim. They were faded…and perhaps over the years something had been lost. Something Kat would never get back and this attempt to decipher it was futile. Here, in the interminable library of the bunker she was trapped.
She felt her skin crawl with anxiety like small ants, prickling over her. Kat grabbed her keys and stormed into the garage. Got in her car, and drove away.
"Jeanine? The witch's name is Jeanine? Well I've gotta say, I'm not very intimidated." Derided Dean.
"Jeanine Throop. Public Works, Department of Water." Sam intoned.
"Well, can we catch her off guard? Jump her after work or something. Get her to tell us where in the water system the hex bag is?" suggested Mark who was chewing on a toothpick and cleaning his guns.
"I would definitely like to ask her a few questions…" said Dean "I'd say that's the best option.
"So tonight, then." Sam said with routine finality. "I'm gonna grab some stuff from the trunk." He swiftly shut the door and left Dean and Mark alone with their thoughts.
Dean's phone rang out abruptly but he answered it, remaining placid.
"What's up?" he said coolly.
"So, I translated some of the cauldron but there are two runes on it that conflict and I couldn't figure it out. So I went to the library and ended up getting a job there." Rushed Kat. She seemed to speak quickly, hoping Dean wouldn't register her words.
"Hold on, I'm just going over how many different ways I can ring your neck." Replied Dean, dripping with sarcasm.
"Look, I know what you're gonna say, but it's only two days a week…and I'm the kind of person that needs to be active all the time…and I just couldn't sit there anymore…and you're not my babysitter Winchester—" Kat rambled, only to be cut off by Dean who retained his uncharacteristic composure.
"No, I'm not. I just hope you know where you're going with this." He got up and crossed the room, Mark eyeing him warily. "I'm gonna call Cas, have him keep an eye out until we get back." He said somewhat quietly. He ran his hand over his face as if to wipe it of all emotion. Everything that came along with this girl was entirely out of his comfort zone.
"What, why? I'm fi—"Kat started.
"Because you matter. That's why." He sighed. She had created a dichotomy inside of him. Every part of him wanted to scream at her, curse her, and release of the anger he felt about everything. But he couldn't. The other half was a control...possibly empathy he had never experienced before.
"When are you going after the witch?" she shifted the subject quickly.
"Tonight, why?" he questioned.
"Because you matter too. Please be careful." She said evenly and hung up the phone.
He shut his own and went back to the table which held the plans for the Public Works office, Mark had gotten. Her sudden shift from defiance to compliance left him feeling…buoyant; but without the ability to identify it. More so, than he had with any other woman in his life. More than Lisa, because it wasn't an attempt at normalcy. It was real. There was no façade of what he believed life was supposed to be. It fit, exactly into the life he knew now he had been meant to live all along.
"Can I say something?" said Mark, interrupting Dean's delirium.
"Shoot." said Dean, sitting down.
"That was the girl right?" he asked gently. Dean nodded. "I've seen that look before. Little advice son; you get sober a lot faster than you get drunk. And it'll leave you feeling empty."
"Good thing, I don't get drunk." Dean cajoled.
"You say that now." Said Mark with a knowing smile.
The three hunters waited in the Impala outside the office building where the witch, Jeanine worked. It had been an hour since the office closed and she did not appear from the doors with the other workers who had walked away, carefree.
Twenty minutes went by and Sam saw a shadow flit quickly between the bushes that lined the building.
"Look, did you see that?" he whispered. Dean and Mark snapped their heads in its direction, but it was too fast. "Something moved in the bushes. We should move in. She might be planning something in there."
"Let's go," said Dean "I'll go through the front as a distraction, and you two take the the back for surprise." He finished. Before Sam could say anything he got out of the car and jogged towards the door.
"Hey! Come and get me you bitch!" he yelled brandishing his gun, and dropping it to the ground. Sam and Mark ran as swiftly as they could to the back of the building, staying in the darkness as much as they could. Just as they were out of eyeshot, they heard a vicious, grumbling snarl and Dean saying "Well, hello ugly."
The monster standing before Dean was something he'd never seen. It looked as if its legs were rooted in the ground. It had defined features; feet, legs, hands, but they were slightly misshapen. There was a thin layer of skin laid over what seemed like tree bark. Its grainy pale coating was dry and cracked. The eyes glowed dimly, yellow as a cat's. It snarled and revealed a set of fangs. Each of the teeth were jagged but reached a single point. They were humanoid, but brown almost like twigs. Dean stifled the fear in his chest, he had no idea what this was or how to defeat it. He was only armed with bullets, he and Sam made of the betony Kat used to blow up her apartment, and a machete.
The creature lunged forward, breaking its legs from the trunk-like roots it stood upon. Dean side-stepped it and extended his knife arm. And, in one movement took off the creature's head. It tumbled off but as soon as the body hit the ground roots seemed to spring from the neck, and crawl towards the lost appendage. Dean grunted in disgust and turned to run in the direction of the door.
He burst through, to three or four more of the creature, but no witch in sight. The room was large and open, with the waiting area divided by a waist-high wall. The creatures stood behind the wall, giving Dean the advantage. He fired one of the bullets at the head of the one standing nearest him, shooting it dead between the eyes. It crumbled and fell, creating a pile of ash. The other two lunged, as the other one had, their bodies creaking and groaning under their weight.
The furthest one got to Dean first, landing a punch on his cheek. Dean felt it split open and the warm and sticky blood flow into his mouth. He ducked and the cumbersome creature's own weight worked against it, tumbling it forward. Just as the second one got to him however, Dean aimed and shot it at point blank range, causing it to crumble like the first. Dean stooped and scooped up some of the material and shoved it into his pocket.
The door crashed open and he immediately snapped up his gun, but it was Sam and Mark that came through. He let out a huge sigh and asked "Find anything?"
"She's not here, but we found her office and we know where she hid the hex bag.
The next morning Dean stood at the edge of a hospital bed, posing as a CDC agent. They had destroyed the hex bag the night before, but all Dean saw in his visit to the hospital was death.
No one was getting better. They remained stagnant. As he stood in the room of a boy who looked dangerously like Sam did as a child, Dean felt compelled to end this here and now. As the doctor Dean had spoken to turned to the parents of the boy, he turned on his heel and whipped out his phone. "No one's better. Destroying the hex bag didn't work." He spoke into it.
"She's gotta be the source of the power then. She was just using the hex bag to exacerbate it." Said Sam
"Exacerbate? Big word college boy…" mocked Dean
"Stop it. Don't do that thing where you use humor to cope. I'm not in the mood." Sam counseled.
"Get out of my head." He quipped. "I'm gonna head back—"Dean stopped mid-sentence. He saw at the other end of the hall, a woman in a cheap pencil skirt and mismatching blazer. Her large, gaudy necklace was the center-point of her ensemble however; it gleamed weirdly off of the fluorescent lights.
What had actually caught Dean's eye was her glare and the fact that she was seemingly mumbling to herself. She stood with a false sense of confidence, but faltered when she saw Dean staring at her.
"Dean, what's up?" questioned Sam on the other line. Dean forgot he was still there.
"Found her" was all he said before hanging up the phone and walking towards her.
Her eyes flew open wide and she said louder, an incantation. Dean braced himself for the blow of whatever she had sent his way. Nothing came. Instead, she winced, and grabbed her head. Her arm flew out to the counter of the nurse's station, to steady herself. She collapsed anyway though. A few people rushed to help but Dean just stood there dumbstruck at the woman's idiocy.
After Dean had explained he was a part of the CDC he'd managed to get custody of the unconscious woman's body. He sneaked it out of the hospital, and dumped it into the Impala.
When Sam opened the door he saw Dean, deadpanned, holding Jeanine over his shoulder.
The hunters bound her and positioned her upright in a chair and splashed water in her face. She awoke and began spluttering, she looked absurd as her heavy makeup started running down her face like a water color painting.
"Wha—where, where am I?" she demanded, as she gained cognizance.
"You're exactly where you didn't want to be." said Sam, "Nice trick at the office building by the way. Not so great at the hospital though. I'm gonna go ahead and assume you're not a natural born witch. You're using someone else's power, and you're not very good at it."
"I am too!" she splurted indignantly "I have moved up the ranks of the New Coven very quickly."
"New Coven?" broke in Dean.
She steeled her face and glared at them. "I am not going to tell you anything." Her voice sounded absurd making claims she couldn't back up. It was high pitched but raspy at the same time. The combination was very unpleasant. Just for that, Dean landed a nice slap on her cheek.
"Not the face!" she screamed, panicking. Mark smirked at Dean, as a signal to manipulate the weak spot she'd just revealed.
Dean pulled out a knife that shone with warning in the dim room. "An eye for an eye." He said simply gesturing to the newly formed scab high on his own cheekbone.
He took a step forward purposefully slow. "What were those things anyway? Rowena give them to you? He questioned smoothly.
Dean lifted the knife and laid it flesh against her other cheek bone. He applied just enough pressure, so that a thin cut appeared underneath it. She squirmed under it, but surprisingly retained her composure.
"Ok." Dean growled. In one swift movement the knife had left her cheek and was perched directly under her nose. This time, Dean pressed harder and she squealed loudly.
"Alright! Alright! Yes it's Rowena, she used the dark force that was released by the Mark of Cain to give power to more witches! My task was to work my way through small towns giving people her virus." She burst out eyeing the knife with dread.
"Why?" Dean asserted.
"To make more of the Fomori. She wants them as an army to kill her son! Stop it!" she wailed.
"Crowley? This is all about Crowley?" said Sam as he stepped forward. She moved her eyes in his direction too terrified to risk shifting her head.
"And the girl. She needs her for a spell. Because of her lineage, it has to be her." She added, grasping at any information she knew that might keep her nose on her face.
"What about Kat?!" roared Dean, jumping back into the interrogation. He lifted the knife up so the lower half of her face was pulled up with it. Her overlarge teeth became more exposed as Dean dug the knife into her cartilage.
"There's a warehouse! I know Rowena is keeping something in there, a weapon! It's in Boston somewhere, that's all I know I swear! Let me go!" she begged.
Dean removed the knife from her face and instantly thrust it into her chest. She fought against her bindings in a vain attempt to escape but she met the knife regardless. Its blade pierced into her center and drained her of life.
"Dude!" Sam chided
"Sam she cursed herself on accident at the hospital. She was as low-level as low-level gets. She was evil and she had to go." Dean defended.
"Dean's right. She would've gone right back to Rowena." Mark intoned, standing from his position at the table. He crossed the room and started untying the corpse. Sam sat on the couch and looked at Dean, understandingly.
"I'm not gonna let anything to get to her dude." Dean said. Sam knew the her Dean was referencing. He couldn't bring himself to let an innocent fall into Rowena's hands. Especially since he had first hand experience with her.
"Neither am I." affirmed Sam.