Dean sighed as he crawled into bed, practically falling asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow less than a minute after he arrived back at his motel room, only bothering to unclip Max's leash and remove his shoes. As he fell asleep, he felt something jump up onto the bed and curl up next to him. When he reached out, his hand hit something warm with rough spiky fur.
Oh, yeah, the dog. Dean thought as he drifted off petting what felt like the creature's back as he did so.
Dean awoke late in the afternoon with a killer hangover and his cell phone ringing in one ear, and his new dog softly growling in the other. Grumbling, he answered his phone to find that it was his dad on the other end, and that he had a job for him that needed to be dealt with ASAP.
"You want me to go where?" Dean groaned, not quite sure if he could believe his ears, considering what he'd thought he'd seen on the news the night before when he'd been at the bar.
He turned on the t.v. and switched it to the news to double check.
"...And Hurricane Rita is expected to make landfall in..."
Just as he thought.
He turned the t.v. off.
There was an authoritative bark on the other end of the line.
"Alright, fine dad, New Orleans it is." Dean said before hanging up on his dad and making his way to the bathroom.
An hour later, a still hung over Dean who was wincing at the light afternoon sun was dressed and ready to go. Max was already waiting by the door holding his leash in his invisible mouth.
"Alright boy, I hope you like water." Dean said as he clipped the leash to the collar which was the only visible part of his new pet. "Because there's going to be an awful lot of it where we're going."
After scraping up the scuffed salt line that protected the room, Dean and his new dog made their way out to the car.
Crowley watched the black Impala depart with what used to be his dog in the back seat. The funny thing about hellhounds was that they tended to reflect their owners' personalities and expectations of them. The animal who now had a new owner had started changing already, which shouldn't have been all that surprising considering who Dean's brother was. The story of how Azazel had handed out hellhounds to the first generation of his special kids and Sam Winchester had somehow turned his into an elderly golden retriever had practically become a legend in the millennium that was the decade that had passed since the boy had been given temporary control of the animal. According to the legend, the creature had never recovered from its transformation and had to be put down.