-1A/N: Just want to put out a quick thanks to Seer for the delicious angst you made me. It was very good, loved the recipe too. I give you a Sammy Rag doll for your troubles!
Plug: Samantha-Dean is writing a sisterfic and needs some love so go R&R and for another take on the Phantom 309 go check out Loopynlovinit's Phantom 309, its much more innocent than anything Athena could ever find.
Chapter Five
Sam dropped Dean off at the farm, and went on to see Bud. He pulled up to the brick house, parking the Impala by the pick-ups and went to the door. A short round woman with a butch hair cut answered, she seemed skeptical of a grievance councilor but allowed Sam in just the same. She introduced herself as Marie, Bud's mother, and led him straight to Bud's bedroom. The boys room had been saturated in John Deere, everything was green and yellow, the bed had been made to resemble a tractor. Sam was half expecting a seven or eight year old to be stretched across the bed with the chocolate Labrador next to him. Instead a blonde sixteen year old laid there, eyes open staring blindly at the ceiling.
"Honey, this is Sam. He's here to talk to you about Iris and Scott." Marie coaxed, brushing her fingers through her son's bangs and sitting on his bed. "How do you feel? Do you want anything?"
"No, Mama, I'm alive," the boy's voice was dry and cracked from not being used. Marie gave him a weak smile, as she stood and passed Sam she ran her hand over his shoulder with a desperate look in her eyes.
"Is that a problem?" Sam asked pulling a chair up to Bud's bed, after Marie had left.
"Not for long," Bud's lips matched his voice, and the smile he pulled made the previous cracks bleed again. "He says if I prove myself he'll take me with him."
"Who says that?" Sam asked.
"J.R., he can't keep protecting us like this," Bud sat up cocking his head to the side and studying Sam in a way that would have given him cold chills a few years ago.
"How is your brother protecting you?"
"I'm not allowed to say, if I tell people they'll think I'm crazy. J.R. says that'll get me locked up where he can't take me."
"Where does he want to take you, Bud?"
"With him, to the better place, like he took Iris and Scottie."
"How do you have to prove yourself? What do you need to do, Bud?"
"Iris and Scott had to sacrifice, I'll do the same."
"What sort of sacrifice?" Sam pushed further. Despite the rasping of his voice and the blood that was now trailing down his chin, since he'd made no attempt at removing it, Bud seemed fully energized now. As they spoke he seemed to be being filled up with all the energy he'd wasted laying in bed the past week.
"Pardon me, Sam," he sneered the hunter's name. "But its time for you to leave, I can't just lie here any longer. Tell Mother you did your job." Bud stood ushering Sam quickly from the room and allowing no room for protest. Something wasn't right here, and Sam had no intent on leaving just yet, even if it would appear otherwise. He went out to the Impala, after a few words with Marie, and went to hide the car in the nearest convenient location.
"John, baby, you make us wreck, and I'll make you think being neutered was a walk in the park." Autumn threatened the dog who was howling in the backseat. John settled down in the seat going from howling to whimpering. "That's my boy," she reached a hand back to pet the her baby. Autumn wanted to scream, if she was being honest with herself, which she rarely was. She'd made a mistake in being all open and chick flicky with Dean, and she never should have dragged her sister in to this life. Both errors were raging war in her head, and the dog's constant noises were grinding away the frayed ends of her last nerve. Her eyes caught on the clock, three hours. Three hours since she'd burned rubber out of the parking lot leaving the Winchester brothers in her review. She'd hit the interstate and with the CB on avoided the cops as she pushed her Mustang to speeds she rarely allowed the car to dream of.
It wasn't much longer before John gave up completely and fell asleep in the backseat. The hum of the engine and the tires on the road were music to her ears. Sweet, soothing, music. Soft and gently like a lullaby. DAMN IT! Autumn swerved back into her lane. She'd gone more than three hours before, alone even, she wrote it off as being distracted and reached for her phone. She needed to call Darcy anyway, might as well put the call to good use.
"Big Red, how's it hangin'?" Darcy greeted cheerily. Autumn bit back a groan already regretting her choice in entertainment.
"By a thread," she answered not really feeling like dancing around the point. "The truck that picked Teenie up hasn't been running since the seventies."
"Oh," Darcy deflated over the phone line. "Well shit. You've go a local?"
"Yea, I'm headed there now, I had to leave the boys behind, we were already on a hunt."
"Can they handle it?" she asked with all seriousness.
"They've handled everything else. They're big boys; I can leave them home alone."
"Right, I forget that you've not always been in the same sand box. You want...do you need help?"
"I don't know yet, all I know right now is some phantom trucker has my sister and maybe involved in the disappearances of a bunch of hitchers," Autumn swallowed back the rest of her words not wanting to admit to being lost and maybe a little over her head. She knew she was going to let emotions take too big a part in this game.
"Okay, I've got to dump this car I'm in before the piggies spot me, how about grabbing me and I'll shadow you?"
"I don't need a babysitter, Valover."
"Good, because your parents couldn't afford me. You're not the only one with stakes riding on Teenie." Autumn drew another deep breath, she was about to accept help from a Valover, this was about like inviting someone with the Black Plague to have dinner with you.
"Where are you, Darcy, I'll pick you up?"
Dean reluctantly agreed to leaving Sam to watch over the questionable Bud and went to the library. It wasn't his favorite place on earth, in fact if Sam hadn't made such a good argument he'd still not be here, but Sam had and he was. He knew more about researching than he'd ever let on, and he knew exactly how to get the information he needed. Dean strode right up to the thirty-something librarian, leaning casually over the desk and smiled at her. Her grey eyes flicked over him briefly forming mistrust before he had time to let lose any of his infamous over used lines.
"Sir, don't lean on the desk, please," she said looking back to her computer screen, shoulders hunched over the keyboard. "Can I help you with anything?"
"Yes, actually," he laced more charm into his voice, this wasn't going according to plan.
"And what would that be?" her tone was flat and bored like she'd seen him coming a mile away.
"I'm looking for bird's eye photos of a property and a history of it."
"That will all be in the back left corner, there's a catalogue on the desk to look up the property you want," she waved him off without looking away from her computer. Dean stalked off muttering under his breath, to make an attempt at research.
He'd discovered a heaping helping of nothing at the farm, though the trip didn't lack in its ghostly run ins. He distinctly got the feeling that no one was going to believe them about the number of ghosts in one residency. If it were a hospital or battlefield, sure, but not a farm in a small town with, as he researched, no history of multiple deaths. Sam was working the more immediate problem of J.R. telling his friends and family to off themselves, while he dealt with the soul trap aspect of the case. Dean copied the pictures and read over the history of the land the farm was on briefly. Natives had sold the property for next to nothing, without ever giving a reason.
Athena shifted, waking up. She tried to move her arms but they ached too much to be worth the effort. She filtered through the past twenty-four hours for a reason to be so sore and came up blank, which gave her a pang of fear. The lack of reason for pain and the eyes she knew were glued on her combined with the hum of a large engine and the vibrations of a moving vehicle didn't help the fear to reside. Her eyes opened adjusting to the light almost immediately, of course there wasn't much light either. The tinted windows of the made the twilight sky look even darker. She twisted herself to face the driver, with an innocent smile.
"Hiya, darlin', glad to see you decided to wake up," the balding, beer gutted truck driver grinned at her.
"Where are we?" she mumbled pushing herself up in her seat and staring out the window at the flat expanse of nothing that surrounded them.
"Just over the boarder heading east."
"Why east? That's back where I came from?" Athena asked years of hunting keeping the panic and despair out of her voice.
"Don't worry, darlin' we'll get you taken care of," he promised.