He wasn't a morning person. Never had been, never would be. Grudgingly, Dean rolled over and glanced at the motel room's other bed, the one that should have been occupied by a scrawny, shaggy-haired man in his twenties.
The fact that Sam wasn't there didn't scare Dean as much as it had when they were younger. Sam was a morning person, and it was already past ten. He'd probably been up for quite some time. With luck, he'd come back with breakfast.
Yawning, Dean sat up and swung his legs off the bed. His feet touched cool motel carpet and he sighed. Across the room, on a table, sat a pile of print-outs about the cult that was terrorizing the town. The group had no name, no known leader, and always kidnapped the same kind of person. They were members of an exclusive club, one that involved a trail by fire at six months of age.
And that, again, was what really worried the expert hunter. Not that they were dealing with a demon-worshipping cult, but the fact that said cult probably wanted his brother. Not that Dean would ever let that happen.
He crossed the room and pulled back the curtains that hung over the yellowing window. The Impala was still parked in front of the room, meaning that Sam had gone in search of food on foot. It wouldn't be the first time he'd decided to avoid pumping the atmosphere full of pollutants and literally take a hike.
What bothered Dean, though, was the fact that his brother's shoes were still on the floor between the beds. Sam only had one pair of sneakers, and there was no way that someone like College Boy would go out into public wearing only his socks. Not to mention the fact that his favorite hoodie was slung over the chair that sat in the corner.
Panic beginning to gnaw its way into his belly, Dean ran at the door, throwing it open and sticking his head into the bright Nebraskan sunshine. No sign of Sam. No sign that he'd ever been there.
Slowly, Dean stepped out of the room, feeling a little foolish in only his boxers, and looked around the parking lot. Nothing was amiss, nothing out of place. Sighing, he turned back to the room, and that was when he saw it. Blood. A lot of blood.
The hunter ran to the door, stooping to look at the sticky red mess pooled by the doorway, dried on the fake wood siding of the motel. It was his brother's blood. He was sure of it. He was going to make those bastards pay.
Dean stumbled back into the room, grabbing a pair of ripped-up jeans from the duffle bag and pulling them on as he silently cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let his guard down with a dangerous cult like that on the loose?
He looked at the ceiling and shouted, his frustration growing with each second his brother was held captive by the demon-worshipping freaks. It was an evil he knew, an evil that had tried to tear his family apart. The demon, the Big Bad, the thing his father had obsessively hunted for so long, and he'd let its followers take his brother.
Dean pulled open the drawer on the bedside table, vaguely remembering Sam stuffing something away in there, some kind of dagger or gun, something that would take down the cult. What he found was a Bible.
Despair and fear finally wormed their way through his body, slipping from his control, giving way to anger. Dean had to lash out at something, and the thick book in the drawer gave him the perfect idea.
"There is no good in this world," he muttered, "not like Sam believes. I know this because a real force of good wouldn't have taken everyone and left me all alone in a crappy motel room." He looked up, his eyes tracing the cracks in the ceiling. "There's nothing but pain and evil in life. If there was anything good, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be safe and warm and I'd have my family."
A soft breeze blew suddenly through the room though the window wasn't open and Dean had closed the door behind him. "Oh," he scoffed, "is that supposed to be a sign? I thought You were one for dishing out plagues. Where are the frogs, the flies, the locusts? Or am I not good enough for the big stuff?"
The pages of the Bible in the drawer began to stir and the book flew open. Something was definitely in the room, Dean could feel it. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up, his stomach was clenching into knots. Something big was coming.
"That's it, isn't it?" he yelled, still looking up at the ceiling, "even after everything I've done, I'm still not good enough to even deserve Your pity, right? So You make the wind blow, You ruffle the pages. Well, that ain't enough to convince me that there's something big out there looking out for me. So, unless You do something big, like, say, real proof, I'm just not convinced."
The wind had died down, the pages in the book finished their constant flipping. "I knew it," Dean said, shaking his head, "hey, listen, I'll make it easy for You, OK? I need a sign, so, let's say, if I see an angel, yeah, an actual person with wings, in this room in the next three minutes, I'll believe. If not, well, I'll find my brother myself, just the way I always have, without divine intervention."
The wind remained quiet, and Dean felt thoroughly satisfied with himself. He began pacing the room, looking for a clean shirt, as his shoulder blades began to itch. He wiggled his shoulders around, suddenly remembering that he'd rolled down a hill in a forest during the last hunt, and had, with his luck, gotten into some poison ivy.
"Just what I need," Dean muttered to himself, still searching for a shirt, as the itch became more persistent, "something else Sam can laugh at me about."
Just as he gave up his search for a shirt and decided that his brother's life was more important than any fashion statement, the consistent itch became more. It became pain.
As the hurt began to spread down his back, Dean reached behind him, searching his skin for the source of the irritation. His fingers found two small lumps over his shoulder blades, lumps that seemed to be squirming as the pain intensified to the point that it blinded him.
The hunter fell to his knees on the grimy motel room floor as a searing burn spread quickly down his back. He screamed, for lack of anything better to do, as the sharp sensation overwhelmed him and spots swam before his eyes. He'd been hurt before, but that pain was nothing compared to this. It felt like someone was taking a knife and skinning him alive.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. Dean sat on the floor for a moment, his head spinning, before he even tried to stand. His back felt heavy, and it threw him off balance for a moment. The hunter stumbled back, running into the bed and feeling an odd pull on his shoulders as he leaned up against the lumpy mattress for support.
Breathing heavily, the man's hazel eyes traveled slowly to the mirror that hung on the wall across from the beds. He could only see half of his reflection, but that was enough to get his heart pounding faster than it already was.
Breath hitching in his chest as panic again welled up within him, Dean crossed the short distance from the bed to the mirror faster than he should have, considering the newly added weight on his back. He gazed into the reflective surface, hardly believing his eyes and realizing suddenly that God was probably laughing up the whole situation.
"Damn," Dean muttered, running tentative fingers over the soft feathers of the wings that now sprouted from his back, "should have been more specific."