I don't own Supernatural. Darn. I do own Asher Michaels and this story, excluding the bits from the show. My friend Shauna owns Amelia Shaw, and I am using her in my story with her permission. This fic is rated for violence, blood, language, drinking, sexual situations and, hopefully, some scary shit. I don't know how good I will be at writing scary stuff since I've never actually tried before. Enjoy the stories.

Monster Hospital, Book Three: Werewolves.
Chapter Two: Panic.

Amelia had paced the motel room as she waited for Sam and Dean, wringing her hands and seriously contemplating all the horrid possibilities that could have befallen Asher since she'd attacked her and run off, half-changed and completely feral; that image would never leave Amelia's mind—Asher, eyes nearly white in a face that could no longer be called human and fingers more like claws raised, ready to strike. When midnight had come and gone and there was still no sign of the boys, Amelia had sat with her back against the wall and stared out at the room: the two beds, only one of which was made, the mess spreading out from Asher's bed and bag, the disaster Asher had turned the kitchenette into while looking for something to eat...

Asher was dead. She knew it.

She knew they boys would get here, they'd track Asher to wherever the hell she was and they would find her body, probably torn apart by something supernatural or shot by some unsuspecting human who had just seen a threat that needed to be stopped, or perhaps even by herself in order to stop herself from doing something horrible. She started hyperventilating as the gory images raced through her mind. Amelia wrapped her arms around her knees, which were already tight against her chest, and tried very hard to curl into a tiny, tiny ball so no one else in the connected rooms of the motel would hear her cries. She felt it was her fault that Asher got away. Amelia had known the full moon was coming, but she had put off chaining Asher up because she had seemed so in control; normally, she wouldn't have had to endure the silver chains until at least midnight, but the added influence of the other werewolf in the area must have pushed her over the edge. Or whatever it was that was causing all the attacks. Something had pushed Asher over the edge, had driven her mad.

By the time Sam and Dean had arrived, Amelia had passed out from exhaustion on the floor of the motel, cheeks tight with dried tears, blonde hair a rat's nest above her head and her cowboy hat, which she rarely took off, had fallen to the floor beside her. She was still curled into a tight ball. She awoke when Sam crouched beside her, a hand in her hair and a concerned look on his face. "Sam," she breathed, fingers scrambling to get a grip on his jacket.

He lifted her into an upright position easily and held her in his arms; she moaned in pain as her stuff joints moved again. "It's okay, Amelia," he said, brushing her tangled blonde hair from her eyes.

"No, no, no..." she breathed. "Something's happened to her..."

Sam continued to hush the distraught woman as his eyes drifted to Dean, who was poking around Asher's side of the room, expertly shifting the clothes and food wrappers and other debris that marked the disorganized state she entered close to the full moon; clearly, the girls had been here for a while before Asher had run off.

"She didn't take any weapons," Dean informed them, the tone of his voice indicating just how wrong that fact was.

Most hunters wouldn't go anywhere unarmed and Asher took that concept to extremes. Dean dropped onto the bed and retrieved Asher's sawed off shotgun from the space under the bed where she kept it when she slept and held it on his lap, staring at it as if he could get answers from the weapon. Sitting by his knee, retrieved from somewhere else, was the small high-silver content knife she kept strapped to her calf at all times in a special sheath that kept it from touching her skin and burning her. Almost absently, Dean picked up the knife and started fiddling with it.

"Tell us everything you can about what happened, Amelia," Sam said, shifting so his back was against the wall and he could still hold Amelia close, staving off her panic.

It took her a few minutes, but eventually the young woman started talking. "Well... we got into town and to the motel and everything seemed fine, just another hunt. Asher was angrier than normal, but I expected that... she's always angry when the full moon gets near..." Amelia sucked in a deep breath that shook slightly, but she didn't cry. "We started doing our research and figuring out a plan to find the wolf we were after. Around nine, Asher started to feel the change coming on and told me to get the chains... I should have guessed something was up. She's normally fine until closer to midnight..." When Amelia took a deep breath this time, her eyes filled with tears and the horrific images of her sister's demise were back. She took a brief moment to calm herself down and then continued, knowing the details of her story would likely prove important. "When I came back with the chains, Asher had started to change. The noise of the chains startled her and she turned and attacked... I smacked her with the chains and kept her from doing much damage, and then, just before she was about to attack again, she lifted her head and turned towards the window and then she ran and jumped through the glass and then she was gone." A few tears trickled down Amelia's cheeks and she pressed her face into Sam's shoulder, breathing a little heavier than before.

Dean sighed loudly and got to his feet, the sawed off still dangling from one hand and the knife from the other; the weapons were as much a part of Asher's human side as anything, and Dean was clinging to that. "It sounds like she wasn't in control," he said.

"She's never attacked me before," Amelia admitted, agreeing with Dean's assessment.

"What could control a werewolf?" the older Winchester asked.

It was Sam's turn to speak, displaying his not unimpressive knowledge and memory. "A witch could probably cook up a spell to control werewolves, same with demons or priests of some religions. I would imagine there would be voodoo spells for controlling beasts, but those are always tied to certain times of year or cycles of the moon—I guess that could be what we're dealing with, but this is the wrong part of the country for a lot of voodoo." Sam paused, deep in thought, one hand idly running over Amelia's hair. "I wouldn't say it was impossible for a more powerful werewolf to control less powerful ones—Asher's shown us that we don't know everything about werewolves, or much at all." He sighed, pulled Amelia a little closer as she sobbed, and said, "We'll find her Amelia."

"What if something's already happened to her? What if she's already dead?"

Dean's snort of laughter seemed to carry throughout the room. "Asher? She's too stubborn to die."

"She's not invincible Dean," Amelia barked, her grief and fear getting the best of her.

"Okay, say she is dead. She wouldn't have gone without taking whoever did this to her with her." He bared his teeth as he stared out the window—the gesture was oddly reminiscent of Asher. "But she's not dead."

"Dean," Amelia called with a different tone in her a voice, a tone of resignation. When the older Winchester was looking at her again, she spoke the words Dean had been waiting to hear. "If it comes to it... Will you..." She struggled to find the words, her eyes brimming with more tears. "Will you kill her?"

Even though he had known the request was coming, Dean wasn't really prepared for it. The bottom dropped out of his stomach and he couldn't stop his mind from seeing Asher's face at the end of the barrel of his gun. "Yeah," he said through the lump in his throat. "Yeah, I will."

Amelia nodded once and then leaned back into Sam and nothing more was said about Asher's inherent demise or her possible current state of life.

A tense moment passed and then Dean scrounged up some liquor for Amelia as Sam began to clean up the motel room, craving the organization in which he did his best work. Two glasses of scotch in, Amelia was passed out on the floor and Sam carried her to her bed, one leg hanging over the edge and her chestnut cowboy hat—which she'd retrieved at some point—on the pillow beside her head. Dean finished the nearly empty bottle of booze and then dropped onto Asher's bed, the sawed off on the bedside table, metalwork shining softly in the lamplight; the knife was sitting on top of the gun, it's blade gleaming dully. Sam settled himself on the couch, laptop open and fingers already moving as Dean kicked his boots off and tossed his jacket on the floor.

"Hey Dean," Sam called.

"Mhm?" Dean didn't open his eyes or even roll over.

"I'm sure Asher's fine. We'll find her."

Dean didn't respond to that, but part of him was glad for Sam's reassurance.

When Dean awoke the next morning, faint sunlight was streaming through the window and falling across his face. He sat up and blinked a few times before heading to the bathroom where he splashed some water on his face to wake up. When the last of the blurriness from sleep from gone, he looked at his watch and found that it was only eight-thirty in the morning and there wouldn't be much they could do except research and interviews to see if anyone had seen anything weird around town. As he walked back into the main room of the motel, he found that Sam had moved to Amelia's bed at some point in the middle of the night, and the young woman was curled tightly into his brother's chest and one of Sam's long arms was draped across Amelia's hips; the sight brought both a smile and a grimace to Dean's face. He had known something was going on between Sam and Amelia, but this was the first he'd actually seen of it.

It made him a little worried for Sam, who tended to get attached, and it made him miss Asher more.

He sighed and began searching for something to eat in the kitchenette. What he found was about what he expected from knowing Asher and Amelia—a half-eaten loaf of bread, a small jar of peanut butter, a small jar of jelly and a box of cold pizza. He pulled the meagre stores out and made himself a sandwich after opening the pizza box and meeting a nasty smell. The garbage Sam had cleaned up the night before was comprised mostly of fast food bags and wrappers and Dean knew that was because Asher could eat three times as much as Dean on a normal day and probably close to five or six times as much when she was close to changing, and most of that had to be protein. Watching the werewolf tear through a pile of burgers was something else—something that had made Dean laugh.

Sam was the next one to wake up and he followed Dean's example of making a PB&J sandwich. The only difference was that he made one for Amelia as well and set it aside for when she awoke.

"Did you find out anything?" Dean asked as he set about making a second sandwich. "I wish I had some milk."

Sam swallowed and said, "Yeah, actually. I was going over what Amelia and Asher had found and what had brought them here, and it sounds like they were dealing with more than one werewolf."

"What did bring them here?"

"A bunch of sudden attacks in the area where the victims were all missing their hearts," Amelia said from the bed. She took the sandwich Sam offered her and leaned into him as he sat down beside her; she seemed to take great strength from the presence of the younger Winchester. "They started suddenly about a week ago and there were seven victims in the first two nights, all of whom were missing their hearts and had been neatly torn limb from limb. Lots of blood and gore that Asher identified immediately as more than likely being caused by a werewolf. Asher and I had only gotten around to going to the latest crime scene—there were bloody paw prints everywhere that confirmed Asher's suspicions. The local police think it's a pack of rabid or wild dogs."

Sam nodded, but Dean asked, "Why didn't you call us right after Asher left?"

Amelia shrugged with one shoulder. "I thought she'd come back. She always comes back."

Which implied that she'd run off before, but sensing the emotion lurking just under the surface, Dean dropped that line of questioning and turned his attention back to Sam. "What else did you find?"

"In Dad's journal, I found an account of a witch controlling a werewolf to do her bidding, but the spell is very difficult and can only be performed in December, the month of the Winter Solstice, so that's not what we're dealing with. There's a ton of lore about werewolves living in packs like natural wolves, but we've never encountered anything like that and neither did Dad."

"What about Bobby?"

"He hasn't," Amelia said. She was nibbling on the edge of her sandwich; clearly she wasn't interested in eating. "I called him when Asher and I broached the idea of this being more than one wolf. He said we shouldn't rule it out though."

Dean nodded and ran his hands backwards over his short brown hair. "All right. Why don't you two stay here and continue doing research and I'll head out into town and see if I can find anything weird? I'll do some interviews, check on the crime scenes. Werewolves don't attack during the day, so I don't need a second."

Neither Sam nor Amelia looked particularly pleased with the idea, but neither of them said anything. Dean suspected this was because Amelia knew she needed to rest and that the likeliness she'd go all hysterical wouldn't be of any help. Sam wanted to watch over Amelia; he was worried about her and Dean could see it on his brother's face.

Dean loaded his favourite nickel-plated handgun with silver bullets—they wouldn't kill werewolves, unless the bullet went through the heart, but they would slow them down—and then went to do the same with Asher's shotgun, only to find it was already loaded for wolf; Asher would have loaded the proper ammunition as soon as they had an idea of what they were hunting; the silver shells were handmade like Dean's own, and the craftsmanship was exquisite. Asher enjoyed making ammo and she was good at it. As Sam and Amelia pulled out their computers and books, Dean armed himself, shoved extra ammo into his pockets, just in case—although, if he needed more than the magazine in his handgun and the shells in the shotgun, he'd probably be dead—and then headed out to the Impala, shrugging into his light canvas jacket; he would have welcomed the comfort his father's old leather jacket brought, but it was far too hot in the late summer/early fall heat.

He had obtained a list of crime scenes from Amelia, and the first one of the list wasn't very far from the motel. Dean piloted the Impala down a narrow side street to the empty lot between two rather shabby-looking houses. It was a long, narrow stretch of grassy land that sloped down in the middle, as if someone had dug a hole for a foundation but never finished and it had just been left to go back to nature. Dean parked the car and climbed carefully down into the depression, one hand on his gun and his eyes peeled for anything of interest even though he knew most of the out-of-place things would have been taken as evidence.

When it came to the supernatural, however, there were things that couldn't be removed.

The body was gone, but there was a large, dark stain on the ground where it would have laid and the grass and weeds were flattened. Dean crouched beside the scene of attack and death, his eyes taking in the splatter on the walls of the depression and the disturbed earth that had been stirred up, likely, by the claws of the attacking werewolf—yes, there was a paw print in the dirt. Even though he had never seen a werewolf actually in the form of a wolf, Sam was right: he didn't know everything about the creatures and, if the plethora of new information that Asher have given them was correct, they knew next to nothing. Werewolves could very well transform into a wolf for all he knew.

Everything Dean could see at the scene did point to werewolves, but there was something else about the scene that pointed particularly to Asher; he tried to ignore it, but knew it was a fruitless attempt as it become more potent the longer he remained. After being so close to Asher for as long as he had, he knew what Asher's otherworldly energy felt like—he didn't know why was sensitive to it, or if anyone else was since he hadn't asked, or if he could sense any other wolf's but he could feel it—and it was all over the place.

"Ash," he breathed to the air around him, almost expecting an answer. "What did you do?"

Even as he pictured her in his mind, his imagination filled in the details. Dean could see Asher attacking whoever was loitering in the depression—probably a kid smoking or drinking—leaping off the top of the basin and tackling them to the ground; he had seen Asher on the brink of transformation before, so he knew her blue eyes would lighten until they were almost white and that the bone structure of her face and hands would subtly change. It was the only state aside from human Dean had seen her in, so that was the one he pictured tearing into the body, face covered with blood as she ripped the heart out of the chest and ran off.

As he was focusing on the horror that might have been committed by someone he cared deeply about, part of his mind rose up and screamed that it was impossible. Asher wouldn't have killed anyone. He clung to that.

She would have if she wasn't in control.

But what if someone else was with her? What if someone else had actually done the killing and Asher had just watched? What if someone had forced Asher to kill? She couldn't kill an innocent. She wouldn't.

Yeah right. She's a werewolf, Dean. She's not human and she doesn't function under the same ideas of right and wrong, under the same morals.

No, that wasn't true, not of Asher. She took great pains to keep her human side in control and Dean wasn't ready to believe the worst of Asher without hearing her side of things, without making sure she was safe again. He didn't want to have to put a silver bullet through Asher's heart. And like he'd told Sam, it would be him. Amelia would never be able to do it, and now she had actually passed the duty to Dean—he had agreed. The very thought made Dean's stomach lurch, and there wasn't much that did that anymore.

"I don't want to kill you, Ash..."

Author's Note.

So, a little bit of a morbid ending, but this is a generally morbid book. Probably the most morbid yet, but not the most morbid to come. For the record, I love that word.

Anyways, enjoy!

Next Chapter: Holy Furball, Batman!.