*sntl*spn*
Blair wanted answers, Jim wanted back to work and Dean wanted no plane rides. Having been both a Sentinel and a plane passenger, Jim could understand. Dean and Sam were willing to drive the distance, but that was twenty-plus hours one way and Sam had just started his job and didn't have any vacation accrued. He would have to quit his job.
That was the final straw to get Blair to slow down. There was no reason for anyone to quit their job. Jim thought longingly of returning to work to have Simon bellow at him, but Blair wanted him there as a lie-detector and was willing to pay his plane ticket to Sioux Falls. Jim braced himself for the vibrations, smells and lack of leg room.
The trip was worse than imagined.
Dean was waiting at the end of in a beautiful black Chevy Impala, circa 1960s. Jim had seen and admired the car the previous time they had exchanged books, but still, it was a car to be admired many times. The facts of Dean driving and that Sam, his Guide, was somewhere else, were just the first indicators that the younger Sentinel had control of his senses.
"Where's Sam?" was the first question out of Blair's mouth.
"Home," and the anger that saturated Dean's voice was impossible to miss.
"What happened?" Blair asked quietly. His very tone calmed Dean down. Never say that Blair didn't know how to handle an angry Sentinel.
"When I got dragged down to Hell, I asked Sam to do one thing: stop using his demon powers."
Jim and Dean had talked enough in preparation for this trip that the individual words were believed, it just accepting the whole. "Sam has demon powers?" Blair asked.
Dean waved his hand. "He got them when he was six months old, when my mom died when a demon burned down his nursery. They were getting stronger right up to the Special Kid Death Match. Sam was Runner-up and I sold my soul to bring him back. He hasn't used them since I came back because he was too busy taking care of me and he left the demon bitch in the dust when he took me to Cascade… and it's a good thing too."
"Back to why Sam didn't pick us up at the airport?" Jim asked. He knew the information was important but Dean was seething in anger.
"He was deliberately exercising his demon powers when I was 'Down Under.' He was drinking demon blood to get stronger."
"The black snake we pulled out of his veins," Jim realized. "Sam put it there."
Dean gave Jim finger guns as a sarcastic reward. "Bingo. The Demon head in his body, not his fault, he was six months old for that, but how far it burrowed in? Totally his screw up. When my last, my dying request was that he let it go."
"Was it with the goal of freeing you?" Blair asked.
"That's his explanation," Dean snapped, "but from what we saw in the Red Land, the demon bitch had a different plan."
"How are your senses?" Blair asked.
"Why?"
That was enough of a confirmation that they were out of control. "During times of emotional stress, the senses tend to fluctuate wildly. Maybe Jim should drive?"
Jim turned to stare at his Guide in astonishment; Dean was already a Sentinel with another Sentinel in is territory, under high amounts of stress and Blair wanted him to surrender the one thing that Dean had been territorial about before being activated, from all accounts?
"I want to get there so that I can get my answers," Blair grumbled.
"The supernatural is real, the monster in the closet is real and Winchesters have been Hunting them since Mom was killed by a demon. Anything else?"
"Were you really activated in Hell?"
The car swerved and Dean pulled it to a stop on the edge of the road. The glare he leveled was impressive. "What makes that an appropriate question?"
"I have this theory…"
"And I have trauma," Dean shot back. "Any discussion of Hell is off the table."
Blair raised his hands in surrender. Jim had been ready to jump between the two, but seriously, Blair knew how touchy Sentinels were about trauma. "Therapy…"
"Name one therapist I can be honest with," Dean cut him off. He had a point.
"How are you going to get better?"
"I run," but the glance he gave Jim hinted to the help in the dreams. Jim just nodded. He had no regrets about that particular battle. He had freed a captive. He would do it again even if it meant that he would suffer the pain when waking up.
"How do you know that you're getting better?" coaxed Blair.
"I'm sleeping now. So ghosts are real and spirit animals can tear them to bits," Dean changed the subject without even trying to segue. "Black dogs smell like graveyard dirt, but you kill them the normal way."
"Normal?" Blair echoed blankly.
"Hack'em. Don't know how anything else related to the Sentinel thing. We've been staying near and Bobby's not one for letting the dangerous hang around."
"So what's real out of all the stories?"
"Some version of everything."
"Vampires?"
Dean huffed. "Do not sparkle; 99% evil but there're always the exceptions."
"Werewolves?"
"Half of them don't know that they are the killer in that dog attack down the street."
Blair balked at the idea of being both innocent and guilty at the same time.
Jim had other questions. "St. Louis and Milwaukee?"
"Freakin' shapeshifters took on our appearance. Huh, but I bet that they would smell the same no matter what." Dean was grinning, anticipating the Hunt. "They actually tried to trick Sam by pretending to be me. And finding them is a bitch since they can change their appearance at a drop of a hat."
"Demons?" Blair asked. "What do they look like?"
"They wear people like meatsuits. Their eye color, when they choose to reveal themselves, is important. No idea how to ID them with the senses yet."
"How do you keep them out?" Jim asked.
"Out of you or out of your territory?" Dean asked for clarification.
"Both."
"You need a tattoo. For territory, there are wards that are effective. Bobby will be the person to ask for that."
"What's the biggest area that's worked?" Jim wondered if he could keep demons out of his entire town.
"Sam Colt managed one between five towns in Wyoming. So miles."
"Sam Colt?" Blair echoed.
"Samuel Colt? You know the gun maker? He was a Hunter," Dean told them. "He did it with the railroad."
"A Hunter of the supernatural?" Jim asked.
"Yep." He pulled into a drive way proclaiming 'Singer's Junkyard.' "We're here."
Jim could hear two sets of heartbeats inside and knew that Dean could as well. He didn't tense up so it was the two rhythms he was expecting. He still smelled angry. Jim didn't understand Sam's position enough to take sides. To him, every instinct had warned him to kill the serpents and the Sentinel expected that it would have been the same outside of the Blue Dream. How did Sam end up seeking help from something that should have been destroyed on sight?
Jim walked into the house after Dean and his mouth started watering at the smell. A stranger was entering the house from the other side with a plate full of steaks fresh off the grill. Sam was chopping vegetables in the kitchen for a tossed salad. All the toppings were cut on separate parts of the chopping block and the block was washed intently between types of vegetables. Sam was doing his best to prevent cross contamination and Jim was thankful.
Dean handed the visitors a plate, fork and knife and pointed to the food. "That's Bobby. He's family. Have at the food. It's all ready."
Blair and Bobby said the standard greetings while the Sentinels dug into the food. Sam wasn't talking, but he was watching his brother with sharp eyes.
"You didn't have to come all the way out here," Bobby was saying. "We would have told you."
"You have a library," Blair answered. "I've always gotten more truth from book than from people."
Bobby wasn't insulted. "There're plenty of lies in my library too, and they've bit us in the ass. Speakin' of…" He reached out to the counter and picked up a small stack of books. "I've found record of Sentinels mixin' it up with the supernatural and I wanted your professional opinion. We know how well Dean scents things but he'll have to learn that on the job. Sight, they say that Hawks can see ghost and other beings outside of the normal human range."
"True," Jim answered.
"Hawks?" Blair queried.
"The books describe Sentinels Hunting as Hawks. I guess there used to be a couple of families that were both Sentinels and Hunters and so the description got around."
"I do have confirmation that Sentinels run in families," Blair admitted. "I want to see those."
"After dinner," Bobby promised. "You're not getting steak juice on my books."
"I can skip dinner."
"No, you can't, Chief." Jim argued. "The books will wait. Eat it while it's hot."
"Fine," Blair grumbled. He turned back to Bobby. "So tell me about these Sentinel/Hunting families."
"They always go after the most dangerous SOBs out there. The family that most recently disappeared, the Campbells, took out several demons through the generations."
"The who?" Dean demanded. And Jim had to dial down his hearing so that the other Sentinel's suddenly furious heartbeat didn't overwhelm all else.
"The Campbells," Bobby repeated. "They vanished from the Hunting community before you boys were born, but a lot of people had high hopes for the girl of the newest generation. She would have been in her late teens, early twenties when both of her folks were killed, most likely by a demon. She was reportedly a strong Sentinel and a kiss-ass Hunter. No one ever saw her after their deaths."
"What was her name?" Dean demanded.
"I'd have to look it up." Bobby peered at Dean, curious and Sam seemed in the dark too. "Why is it so important?"
"Was it Mary, was her name Mary Campbell?"
And now Sam understood. "Mom?" he whispered. "Mom wasn't a Hunter," he denied. "That's impossible."
Dean fled the kitchen and then the house as if his tail was on fire. Sam stood to follow, but Jim knew that Dean wouldn't accept any words from his brother right now. Jim glanced mournfully at the remaining steak on his plate, waved Sam back to his seat and took off after the young Sentinel. It took two miles for Jim to catch up to Dean and even then, it was because Dean decided to slow down. Then they ran, silently, footfalls matching through the grass and the woods. Soon, Dean exceeded Jim's endurance. (And it didn't seem like Dean was even winded yet, how far did he run daily as a part of his 'therapy'?)
Jim wasn't about to let Dean be alone with family revelations, so he retreated into his mind and let the sentinel take over. The sentinel could run for much longer. He could see and hear and smell and taste and feel the world around them, Dean's territory, but he was running on instinct. The pair ran for miles, hearing the buzz of insects and the flapping of birds. They ran through fields and woods and felt the sun and the shade on their skin. They ran near enough to residences to smell lunches and rose gardens.
Dean slowed to a walk. Jim knew that they had circled around Bobby's place but were still ten miles away.
"Jim?" Dean asked.
Jim was too far in the sentinel for a modern answer. "The patrol is not finished."
Dean raised an eyebrow at Jim's cadence, noting a difference. He nodded, though, and picked up the pace. When they were two miles away from Bobby's he slowed again and this time Jim was able to fight through the instincts.
"Better?" he asked.
"Do you think it's possible for my mom to have hidden something in my memory?" Dean asked.
"Yes."
"Yes?" Dean was not expecting such a quick and sure answer. "I was four when she died."
"It's very possible to hiding things in the Sentinel senses, especially if you don't use them for a while. And your mom was probably a Sentinel with generations of notes to search through. I'm sure she could hide something in your memory if she wished. What do you remember?" Jim added the four years old to the trauma of a mother dying, a Sentinel's emotional stress and then an unearth memory. No wonder Dean couldn't stay at the kitchen table a second more.
Dean took a breath of the air and then breathed it out. "Her asking me to find a sprig of lavender in the house. A couple times. She wanted me to sniff it out. Then she hid it and I never found it. She said that she hid a treasure with the lavender." Dean pulled in another shaky breath. "I was upset that I couldn't find it, but she said that it was hidden until I really needed it."
Jim nodded. "Sounds like she hid Sentinel stuff from you, or rather, for you. Just in case you developed Sentinel senses. Blair will be jealous."
Dean rolled his eyes.
"Speaking of Blair, can we not mention that I can slide into the sentinel like that?"
"Is that what happened?"
"Yes. It's nothing dangerous. It's still all me. It's not something else wearing me like a demon. It's just… it's running on instincts in a pure form."
"Great. Another thing to look forward to."
"It's not bad and it comes in useful, just Blair would get overly excited."
"Weren't you the one that told me that hiding things from my Guide would get me in trouble?"
"I'm not talking about spikes and zones. Those you have to tell your Guide. This is just asking for tests that I can't get out of."
"You could always tell your Guide 'no'," Dean teased.
"How often do you get away with that?" Jim asked. From what he observed, Sam got whatever he wanted out of his older brother. There might be yelling and bitching, but Sam normally got his way.
"I've been saying it a lot since Tuesday." Since finding out the truth about the black demon in his brother's veins.
Jim believed it. "Do you still own your parents' house?" he asked.
Dean looked relieved at the change in topic. "Nah. But we saved the lives of the family living there. Poltergeist. They'd let us in to sniff around, no problem."
Poltergeist.
Nope. Jim wasn't going to think about that. "That's good. Blair will want to know about the treasure, so you better send him some kind of e-mail so that he doesn't go snooping."
Dean groaned. He led the way around the back buildings of Bobby's yard and then jumped up the steps to the house. "Pack up, Samantha," he yelled, "We're going the Lawrence."
"What? Where?" Sam yelled back. He had yet to get into Blair's habit of not yelling since Sentinels didn't need it to hear. "Lawrence? Kansas?"
"Can you think of any other Lawrence that concerned Mom?" Dean turned to Bobby. "Can you fill in these to yahoos on how to keep safe?"
"Sure." He and Blair were leaning over one of his books. Blair was engrossed in the text and Jim didn't. want. to. know. Spirit animals and spirit lands were just as much as Jim was willing to handle and only when there wasn't any other option.
"All I want to know is how to keep everything Out."
Bobby smirked at him. "I've got plenty of books on wards."
"I'll take them." He was willing to build a palisade to protect his territory. He wondered how much work he'd have to put into Ellison Industries to put rail around his town. It would make his father happy if nothing else.
Jim was two pages into the first book when Dean and Sam thundered out of the house and the Impala roared away.
He didn't envy that Sentinel and Guide their journey ahead.
*sntl*spn*