Hello again everyone! Thanks for all your lovely reviews last week, I'm really glad to be back with this story (although I was told it was a bit mean, ending it where I did last time :P). I hope you'll enjoy reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.
More notes at the end.
Chapter 4
He had to hand it to Sam, Dean thought bitterly, he was a good strategist if nothing else. He seemed to have taken complete advantage of Henry and thrust the helpless civilian upon Dean, fully aware that Dean would have to take Henry to safety before he returned to look for Sam. By then, Sam would have probably joined the Wild Hunt and would be more difficult to find.
Dean drove to the edge of the forest and stopped in front of the young man huddled on a fallen tree.
"You Henry?" he asked, getting out of the car.
Henry watched him warily.
"Are you Dean?"
"The one and only," Dean quipped lightly. "Listen, the guy who told you to call me…"
"He never told me his name," Henry said. "I just realized that. He gave me your name and number and told me to call you, but he never told me his name."
Dean nodded.
"Yeah, but he was young, right? Long haired? About yay high?"
He made a vague gesture way above his head. Henry nodded.
"Yeah, that sounds like him. I told him to come with me. He refused. He said he'd distract them from me like that."
Typical, Dean thought sourly. Sam had always been good at sacrificing himself – for Dean or for random strangers. Dean figured it was overcompensation for all the times he and Dad had called Sam selfish during his childhood whenever Sam had dared to say he wanted something other than hunting. Whatever problems Sam had, whatever problems John had hinted Sam would have in the future, Dean was ready to assume responsibility for some of them. He was not sure John would have ever done that, though. Not if one thought about his ultimatum to Dean.
Dean dismissed that last thought. He had no intention of allowing Sam to spend eternity traipsing around with the Wild Hunt. First, though, he needed to deal with Henry.
"Listen, this is very important, so you'd better answer truthfully. There was a procession in the woods, right? Did you join it?"
Henry hesitated.
"That guy told me it was the Wild Hunt. Like in that video game."
Dean shrugged. Why not? Civilians had their own way of processing such things.
"They weren't human, man," Henry said, staring into nothingness. "Even the ones that should have been. Even sheriff Walker."
Dean took a deep breath.
"Did you join them?" he asked, shaking Henry slightly. "Stay with me, man, and tell me what happened out there."
Henry shook his head.
"No, I…it wasn't for lack of trying. I didn't really want to join them, but something was pulling at me. It still is. I'm half-tempted to turn back to the forest."
Dean grabbed him and steered him to the car.
"No, you won't. First, I'm gonna get you somewhere safe. Then, I'm going after my brother."
He nearly added: I'm going to kill him, but given John's warnings, that was a little bit too close to home.
Henry was looking at him skeptically.
"Where are you gonna take me that's so safe?"
Dean hesitated. That was a good question. He could not simply leave David alone. He might decide to wander off into the forest again. There were two people in town he had interacted with. Sheriff Alma Larson was an obvious choice. She could put Henry in lock-up. But Alma seemed the no-nonsense type. Besides, she had bonded more with Sam. If Dean went to her, he would have to explain Sam's disappearance, and the truth probably would not work with her.
Well, Dean had another option. He just hoped he was not making a bad judgment.
xxxXXXxxx
Alfred was now probably regretting his "first-name basis policy" as it had led to Dean recruiting him on what could only be described as a babysitting mission. Alfred had heard about Henry going missing, as well as about Annette and Klara's deaths.
"So, last night, you weren't just making small talk," he accused Dean. "You wanted information. Just who the hell are you?"
Dean shook his head.
"Look, it would take a lot of time to explain, and that's time I haven't got."
Alfred grabbed his arm with unexpected strength.
"You'll make time, and you'll make it now. Otherwise I see no reason why I shouldn't call the cops on you."
Dean shook his head.
"Look, I have to be out there. Sam…"
He stopped when he saw understanding in Alfred's eyes.
"Sam's fallen victim to what's out there in the woods, right?" he asked.
Dean hated to hear Sam's name in the same sentence as the word "victim".
"He's…there, yes. But I'm gonna get him back, but for that I need someone to look after Henry."
Alfred glanced at the young man now sitting in an armchair in the room behind the reception area. He looked completely shell-shocked.
"How do I know he won't turn violent?" Alfred asked.
"Not all of them do," Dean said quickly. "Besides, he never joined them. He never ran with them."
Alfred looked impatient.
"You keep saying them. Them who?"
Dean hesitated. Alfred's curiosity would have sounded natural, but there was an urgency in him that had Dean's alarm bells ringing. That kind of desperation was familiar to him. He could very well guess when something was personal.
"You've been affected too," he discovered.
Alfred stiffened.
"I told you last night…"
Dean nodded impatiently. He did not have time for avoidances.
"Yeah, your employee's friend, dead of exhaustion. I think there's more to this. Who did you lose?" His eyes widened as he remembered something else Alfred had said the night before. "How did your wife die?"
Alfred turned away from him abruptly. Dean could see the tension in his shoulders.
"She was killed," he said at length.
"Who killed her?" Dean pressed.
Alfred gasped.
"I did. I had no choice. She was…she wasn't her anymore. I had no choice."
It was the last thing Dean wanted to hear.
xxxXXXxxx
Sam had lost all notion of time. He knew he and the others of the Hunt existed somewhere in the forest, that they were tracking something, chasing it, going round in circles without getting anywhere. Running was all Sam knew now. He thought at first that he could find a way to stop the Wild Hunt from within, or at least to help free some of its newest additions, but he could only concentrate on running. The presence of their leader was in his head. Maybe she could not read his thoughts, but she definitely knew enough to be suspicious of him. Her hold on him was growing stronger. If she wanted to, she could kill him by simply wishing him to die.
The information he had on the Wild Hunt was sketchy. There were many variants scattered all over Europe. The hunt did have a leader, only no one could agree who that was. Some said it was death, others that it was a god of the underworld. More modern variants talked about historical figures such as King Arthur or Charlemagne. But this was neither.
A Germanic version of the Wild Hunt said the leader was a woman. Holda, if Sam remembered correctly. He wondered what would happen if he said her name. After all, she knew his, and names had power, as she had rightly suggested. If he knew who she was, would she have power over her?
Sam doubted it would be so easy, though. Holda was a name people had given her. It could not be her real name. She still knew more about Sam than she knew about her.
A woman that was running beside Sam suddenly stumbled and fell. Sam bent over to help her. She looked at him with wild eyes.
"What are you doing?" she asked. "You can't…"
"Listen," Sam said urgently, "You've gotta break away. You're gonna die otherwise, you hear me? Break away."
The woman shook her head. She was older than Sam, probably slightly older than Dean, too, wearing the remnants of a professional office suit. She must have had high heels at some point, but she was barefoot now.
"You can't stop," she said. "You must know that. If we stop, something terrible happens."
"How long have you been here?" Sam asked.
The woman shrugged.
"Since last night."
Annette had been missing for three days. Many of the others who had turned up and gone violent had been gone for roughly that period of time too. This woman had been taken less than twenty-four hours, though, and she looked less under the influence of Holda's control than many others. There were few chances she would become violent, if she returned.
"There's still time for you," he insisted.
The woman wrenched herself from his grasp.
"There isn't. I belong to her now. We all do."
"That's right, you do."
Sam flinched at Holda's voice so near him. She was now standing beside him and the woman Sam had stopped to help. The rest of the Wild Hunt had surrounded them. Sam wondered if they were going to tear the two of them into pieces.
Holda shook her head. She seemed sad.
"I don't think I like you, Sam. You're too defiant."
Sam snorted.
"Then do us all a favor and let us go. And then crawl back from whatever hole you came from."
Holda ran her hand over Sam's face. Sam tried not to slink away in disgust, not wanting to give her the satisfaction.
"Bad things happen to people who are too defiant. You'll see."
She turned her attention to the woman, who started choking and staggered into Sam.
"No wait," Sam said. "Wait, it wasn't her fault. She wanted to go on. It's me. It was all me. I approached her. It's not her fault."
He fell to her knees, trying to get the woman to keep breathing. She was looking at him with a strange expression, half-glad that it would be all over, half-blaming Sam that he'd caused her death. Sam looked up, expecting Holda to stop as she had done with him.
"You've made your point," he said. "Let her go. Please."
Holda remained impassive.
"You need to be taught a lesson, Sam. And I think this is how you'd learn best."
The woman in Sam's arms gave one more gasp then went limp. Sam desperately felt for a pulse, but he couldn't find any. She was dead. Sam had caused her death.
"And I didn't even know her name," was the only thing on his mind.
xxxxxXXXxxx
Dean had been struggling since his dad's death with the possibility that he might have to kill Sam – because the last thing his father had told him was that this possibility existed. There were times when Dean scoffed at the thought, dismissing it and calling it ridiculous, because there was never a situation when Sam would turn evil. John had underestimated Sam, Dean thought, had seen the stubbornness only as rebellion against him and not as Sam's greatest advantage. There was no scenario, Dean was sure, where Sam would give in to whatever darkness had been planted in him and turn dark.
Then came times like this that reminded Dean things were not that simple. There were often times when they had to kill because they had no choice. Hadn't Gordon Walker done the same when his sister had been turned into a vampire? And now Alfred, who wasn't even a Hunter, he himself had killed someone he had loved. And Dean knew there had been a reason, but he did not want to ask about it, because he was sure it would cement in his mind the fear that maybe John had been right, and maybe he also would find himself in a situation where there would be no choice but to take Sam's life.
"What happened?" he finally asked, his voice steady even though his mind was a whirlwind of panic.
Alfred shook his head.
"One day she started acting strange. Erratic. Something was bothering her, but she wouldn't tell me what. Then she disappeared. I called the police, put out flyers, everything. There was no sign of her."
"But she returned," Dean answered.
Alfred nodded curtly.
"About ten days after the disappearance. She seemed fine. Exhausted, but fine. She spent some days in the hospital. They said she'd be alright. Except she wouldn't tell me what happened to her. It was like she couldn't."
"So what happened?" Dean pressed.
"I knew there was something wrong with her," Alfred went on. "She was acting differently. Detached. Removed from us. I thought it was just shock. Thought she just needed time and therapy, you know."
Alfred paused and turned away. This time, Dean did not press, allowing Alfred to reach the end of the story in his own time.
"Then on the third night since her return, I caught her trying to drown our youngest son. He was six at the time. Had no idea what was happening." Alfred swallowed harshly and went on: "I panicked. I did not think, I wanted her off him. So I grabbed her and pulled her away. That's all I wanted to do, Dean, I swear. Just pull her away. But I must have underestimated my strength. She fell, hit her head against the sink. Before I knew what was happening, she was dead."
Dean listened in growing horror. He did not miss the timeline – Annette had also killed Klara that herself three nights after returning. He was starting to think that maybe the returns were not accidental. This was not people escaping and then losing their minds. This was part of the Wild Hunt itself.
"Sherriff Walker knew what happened," Alfred went on. "He tried to cover it up, make it look like an accident. He was already following the theory that this was the work of some cult, re-enacting some strange ritual. But it wasn't that, was it?"
Dean hesitated, then nodded.
"It's not a re-enactment," he said. "It's the real thing."
Alfred stared at him dazed.
"Who are you, then?"
"We're here to help," Dean answered. "Me and my brother, we stop this kind of things."
Alfred looked stunned. Then, his eyes widened.
"So Sam…"
Dean nodded quickly.
"Yeah, he went to the Wild Hunt. He's the one who helped Henry make his way back here. I'm going to get him back."
Alfred grabbed his arm.
"Haven't you heard a word I said?" he hissed. "Dean, if you get him back…he might not be your brother anymore. You might have to…"
Dean wrenched himself free. He did not have to hear this from someone else as well.
"Don't you dare say that to me. Yeah, I heard you. You chose between your wife and your kid – that's understandable. You're supposed to protect your kids from anything, right? Well, I'm supposed to protect Sammy. Now, this is different. Your wife was a civilian. Sam's been a Hunter all his life. He knows a few tricks. He'll probably try to stop the Wild Hunt from the inside. And I'll help him."
Alfred drew a step back.
"And what should I do? I want to help, too. I want to stop this thing."
Dean motioned towards Henry, hunched at the table.
"Look after him. The hunt may call him again and he might not be able to resist. Keep him here. That would be a great help."
Alfred nodded and headed towards Henry. He grabbed a blanket from one of the chairs and placed it over the kid, then started talking to him. Dean watched them for a moment, then nodded. He had chosen well. Now he could focus on Sam.
xxXXXxxx
Sam thought he had discovered a pattern to their movements. They were skirting the edges of several towns. They had not picked up anyone else yet, but Holda looked confident she would have more people soon.
"To replace those we have lost," she said.
Sam refrained from scoffing. She acted like she cared. Only Sam remembered how she had killed an innocent woman just to prove a point to him.
Two more people dropped out over the course of that day. Sam did not try to help them this time. He hoped they had at least made it out the forest and someone stumbled upon them. The only thing anyone could want from them right then was for them not to die alone.
It was almost midnight when they stopped. Sam did not think they were close to the town where he and Dean had stopped but to another town that had been less hit by disappearances than others in the area. Holda turned to one of the runners. A middle-aged man who looked like he had been a trucker in another life.
"You know what you have to do," Holda told him.
The man's face was expressionless.
"I know, my lady."
Holda smirked.
"Don't hesitate. Don't think about what they meant to you once. You don't belong to them now. You belong to me. You belong to the Hunt. And the Hunt must go on."
The man nodded.
"The Hunt must go on," he repeated blankly.
He walked away. Sam watched him go, wishing he could call out after him. Still, since Holda's little demonstration, he was afraid to get anyone else hurt.
"What are you doing?" he asked Holda. "You're sending him to kill his family, aren't you?"
Holda glanced at him.
"The Hunt must go on, Sam. I see you still have doubts about it. Don't worry. You won't soon."
Sam wished he could somehow reach Dean. Dean would need to know what was really happening, if he had not figured it out for himself. More than anything, Dean would need to know that if Sam returned to him, then that was bad news. It meant Sam had fallen under Holda's control and was probably beyond hope.
xxxXXXxxx
Much as Dean wanted to rush into the forest and simply yank Sam out of the Wild Hunt, he knew that would not work. He needed to understand more of what was happening there. Dad's information was a start, but it was obviously not enough. For some reason, Dad had stopped short of establishing what was really happening there. At first Dean had thought Dad had been looking for ways to keep Sam away from the world without actually harming him. Now, he was not so sure. John must have realized the people who took part in the Hunt were sent out to kill their families.
Dean glared at the journal, angry that it would not give him any answers. Like so many times since that day at the hospital, he wished his father had left him and Sam with more than a cryptic ultimatum. Well, no – Dean realized. He was wrong. Dad had left the ultimatum only to him. He had left Sam with nothing. Dean shook his head. No wonder Sam was the way he was about Dad's death. There was grief, Dean could see that, and he wished he couldn't, but he knew Sam would never really want Dad back if it meant trading Dean for him. Sam had never said it – he knew better after all – but Dean knew that his brother was secretly glad that John was the Winchester who had died in that hospital and not Dean.
"Thanks, Dad," Dean muttered. "Thanks for leaving me all alone in this mess and making sure I can't trust even the one good thing I've ever had in my life."
Dean clenched his fists. No. Whatever John had wanted from him, it would take more than cryptic warnings and rumors written in a journal for him to lose his faith in Sam. Yes, Sam was missing, but Dean still had three days to find him before, presumably, it would be too late.
"Well, I guess I'll just have to make the most of those three days," Dean decided.
He needed more information and one place would be available to him. Sheriff Alma Larson had shown herself agreeable to them – well, to Sam more than Dean, but Dean knew how to take advantage of that. He needed to find out if any of the missing people who had returned had mentioned any details about the Hunt.
xxXXxxx
Ted knew he had three days to kill his wife and daughters. That was what she had told him, the woman in the forest. The one who could kill with just a look, who gave life and death as if she was mistress of all. Who had wormed her way in Ted's mind and now her thoughts were his thoughts and her will his will. She had a mission for him, that was what she had said. It was up to him to fulfill it. That was his part to play in the new order she was promising.
Still, a small part of him was protesting. It was wrong. He loved his family. He had sworn to keep them safe. How could he hurt them? Why?
His wife had been so glad to see him again. Lydia had thought he had run off after that stupid fight. She did not know about the woman in the woods. She did not know about the Hunt.
I am your mistress now, she had told him. I am the only one who matters. You will kill who I tell you to kill. You will do it for me – in my name.
Three days. Ted had three days before he killed Lydia and the girls. He did not want to, but he knew he would be unable to stop himself when the time came.
Yes, I do love my twists and turns and putting the boys through hell and back. Don't worry, I'll get Sam and Dean together eventually (only not for a few more chapters, oops!). And we'll see Bobby soon (probably in chapter 6).
Holda (or Hilda or Hole or other such variations of her name) is supposed to be one of the leaders of the Wild Hunt (there are many variants to who the leader is, some say Odin, some say the Celtic god of the underworld or King Arthur, some legends even have the Wild Hunt led by Cain or the devil himself). I chose to go with Holda since she's more obscure.
And to all of you who suspected Alfred was more involved than he was initially saying, as you've noticed, you were right. Congratulations and have a cookie ;)
Join me next Sunday, I'm just getting started here :)
