A/N:Alrighty, we've got one more chapter to go and we're done! Thanks again for all your reviews, you guys have been great!
Chapter Eleven
"I'm looking forward to Zack's return." Athena was bopping her head against the wall behind her the dull thud was enough to drive the trio insane.
"Why you like getting the shit beat out of you?" Sage inquired. Athena made a sad attempt at a laugh and Dean woke from his half slumber to look her over. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could really see, but you'd have thought he had Superman's X-ray vision the way he kept looking at the blonde.
"No, I'm just sick of this room."
"Being tired of this room isn't a good enough reason to die." Sage told her. Athena yawned and let her head hit the wall again.
"How long had I been here before you came?" she asked Dean.
"Almost a whole day."
"Wow. I thought I'd been here my whole life. It, seriously, was only one day?" Dean nodded.
"Yes, dude."
"Dude? You kids don't have any idea what respect is anymore. Dude." Sage shook her head.
"Sage, why don't you tell us one of your stories about walking to school with no shoes in four foot of snow up hills both ways." Before Sage could respond to Athena's cocky request the door was pulled open and light flooded the room blinding its occupants.
"Winchester, you're dad's here." Zack informed them. "Seem Autumn and Sammy just can't function on their own."
"She called him before." Dean answered no emotion just a bored statement of fact.
"What do you want with us?" Sage demanded. She was feeling powerful with Dean around, up until now they'd been able to count on beating every couple of hours. Since the arrival of the Winchester nothing had happened.
"You're just for fun. When my other guest arrive we'll be moving the party."
"Where?" Athena was feeling ballsy too, apparently.
"West, not that you need to worry, dearest. You won't be making the trip. Car's not big enough for any more than three extra passengers." No one asked what would be happening to the extras not making the trip they already knew.
Autumn leaned into the nearest tree to hold herself up while she caught her breath. The Winchester men were close by, leaning, hands on their knees, eyes locked on the rottweiler. John-dog kept his nose to the ground he was walking circles around the area now. Autumn pushed herself up standing on her own and investigated with her dog. Blood on fallen leaves, and boot prints in the soft soil made it clear this is where they'd been last night.
"Whose blood?" John asked joining her where she squatted next to the red-black goo. It had clotted too much at this point to be a liquidy substance.
"The shape shifter's." she answered not comfortable with the proximity of her mentor. "Pup, where'd they go?" John-dog's hackles were on end and he kept as near the humans as possible his eyes darting through the forestry that surrounded them.
"He don't speak English." Sam reminded her.
"You'd be surprised how much he understands." She'd been keeping an annoyingly close eye on him, afraid whatever head injury he'd taken would flare up with all the activity. Sam rolled his eyes at her and avoided the bloody mess of ground his father was still inspecting. John-dog was ready to start running again, the dog refused to take it slow getting this far.
"Come on."
John stood up following the dog who'd taken his namesake. Not more than a dozen yards away they found a discarded flashlight. Autumn pocketed the device and they moved on. The dog led them through the trees, twisting their way through the maze of thorn bushes, poison ivy vines, and trees. They emerged on the road, about a mile away from where they'd parked. The dog sniffed around before nipping the coat tail of his master and dragging into the ditch. He nosed around, Autumn took the hint and sifted through the garbage, leaves, and whatever else washed off the road until the glint of something metallic caught her eye. John-dog barked, his tail waving wildly.
"What'd you find?" Sam knelt at Autumn's side to look at the object.
"And you said he didn't have a good nose." she teased plucking up a familiar ring. She placed the ring in John's palm. "Dean was here."
"Hey, Autty?" Sam picked up a slip of paper no bigger than a receipt.
"What Sam?"
"We've got an address." he handed over the Holy Grail of paper. "Where is that?"
Zack's arm was in a sling, and Athena had seen the cast hiding within, the free arm was bandaged up, the way he moved made it clear that he was sore. Athena and Sage could only guess that Dean, Autumn, Sam, and their trusty pooch had given him hell before going down. When the shape shifter left them alone again after some serious taunting, Dean told them about the vampires. Sage, despite her bodies protests, joined his pacing after that. She'd never felt more caged than she did just then.
Athena looked too pale, in the light. Sage stuffed away the thoughts of how bad they all looked in the light. She locked away how stagnant the air smelled in the room after the rush of fresh air from outside. She'd never been much for violence, not that she couldn't protect herself when she needed to, but she wanted to hit something, anything, right now. Dean stopped his pacing in front of the door and made another feeble attempt at a finding a way out. There wasn't a window in their room, no doorknob on their side of the door, Sage wasn't sure what he was looking for exactly but she didn't think he'd be finding any trap doors.
The young blonde woman was dozing in and out wrapped in Dean's coat. Anything that could be used as a weapon or for communication had been taken from them but Dean still had his coat. Athena curled deeper into the jacket's warmth and muttered something in her sleep. Sage was sure the girl would make it, if they got out in the next 24 hours. After that she couldn't promise much, coughing up blood had never been a good thing.
"Can you do anything for her?" Dean asked not looking away from the door.
"Not from in here." Sage answered. "How good is your family at finding people in this situation?"
"They've got Dad, now. He can find just about anything."
"Exception being that damned demon, of his." she mumbled."He's stringing them along isn't he?"
"We were strung this far, why change tactics if its working?"
"This is exactly why I live alone." Sage sat down next to Athena, the girl was burning with fever. "People are all bad. Even when they're not, they make bad things happen." she didn't care that she sounded like a five year old afraid of clowns, she was pretty sure sanity left their room a long while ago.
John scribbled the address down onto a piece of paper that wasn't smeared with blood, mud, and funk. The idea was to find a local and ask for directions, but locals weren't going to be keen on talking to the mud splattered hunters anyway, let alone give them directions to a place written on bloody paper. Autumn was going through his glove box trying to find the ibuprofen for Sammy. Sam was sitting in the pressed against the passenger door of the truck, with his arm over his eyes.
"Here, Sam-man." the redhead shook a couple of pills from the bottle and put them into Sam's hand. "That should do it for now." she said regretfully.
"Red, why don't I drop you two off at the motel, you can put John up and I'll call you with the directions. We'll need more than the truck to get them home."
"Yes, sir." he tucked the clean address into his pocket before starting the engine.
The high school baseball coach wrote down directions for John, promising him that he wouldn't be able to miss the house. It was apparently a big eye sore. When he called Autumn, he could hear her scramble to copy down the directions herself. He had her and Sam park a block away, incase their buddy was watching. Coach was right. All the other houses on the street were well kept, little houses. Low income homes, but still the lawns were mowed ever Saturday, Christmas lights went up the day after Thanksgiving and came down the day after New Years, the children played games in the street without having to worry. John waited until he saw his kids before he emerged from his truck.
Sam was surprised how much silver was left from the werewolf upraise. He and Autumn were armed to the nines. John was waiting for them in the driveway. Sam's father was staring the house down as if it were the big baddie of the week. The curtains were all pulled, the driveway's concrete was cracked and eaten with weeds, a light dusting of snow covered the yard, thus proving the unpredictability of Midwestern weather, and the door stood a jar. The three hunters exchanged grim faced looks. Nothing about the house seemed very inviting. Just their kind of place.
"Ready or not here we come?" Autumn made it sound like a question. He was ready to go in guns blazing and take out anything that stood between him and his brother and friends. John nodded, determination filtering through the normal void mask he wore. Sam wasn't sure how his dad knew they were in trouble, or why he'd come. The fire after Thanksgiving, he understood, the demon had been involved. But this wasn't demon related, this was just no man left behind.
John led the way, Autumn took the end of the line as they marched on the house. Sam followed his dad into the house, John checking every room before waving them in. The entry hall was contained a bench, and coat rack, Sam was glad to see the beaten brown coat hanging up. The next room had an old black and white TV set, stained couch, and TV tray with a half eaten frozen dinner. Autumn drew closer, and Sam felt the prick at the base of his neck, John tensed his shoulder ready to fire, they were being watched.
They went down a short hall, bathroom, bare master bedroom, nothing to send up alarms, and still Sam couldn't shake the eyes on his back. The kitchen was clean too, and they were about ready to call it quits, thinking they'd been fooled, when John opened the pantry door. He reached in flicking on a light, revealing a set up steps. The two men and woman padded softly down the stair case, a room had been built taking up half the room, boxes, old patio furniture, and a couple garden gnomes littered the opposite half of the basement.
"Hello." a voice said behind them.
"Zacky nice to see you again." Autumn greeted the broken man.
"I knew I could trust you, Daemon. So, predictable." Zack started his descent down the stairs and John took his place in lead, keeping his son and Autumn behind him.
Dean stepped back, jumping out of the light that pooled under the door as if it were liquid death. Sage eased passed him and pressed herself to the door trying to hear what was going on. Zack was definitely out there, she couldn't make out the other voice. But she caught the word Daemon.
"Dean, wake Athena up and get her in the far corner." Sage instructed. The boy snapped into action, following orders quickly. Someone needed to teach him to question things.
"Son of a bitch!" Sage caught the voice that time, it was her little red haired hunter.
Zack's young face wrinkled and took on the little pig eyes of her physiatrist. John and Sam were bewildered more by her outburst than the change. The shape shifter laughed.
"You have always been too trusting, child." he chided her.
"Autumn ignore him." John said from the corner of his lips. Sam moved between her and his father, they were freezing her out. Zack gave the Winchesters an appraising look.
"So what is it you did to piss the vampires off?"
"Killed a couple of them." John answered simply. Sam looked from Autumn to the encasement, she caught his meaning, moving to the door on it.
"Won't do you any good, Baby doll." Sam jerked to attention when he heard keys jingling. Autumn had her gun out trained on him before anyone moved.
"I told you last night, bub, don't call me that." Zack still had the head of Autumn's shrink perched on the shoulders of a young man.
"Why does that bother you so much?" he asked.
"You know damn well why."
"Autumn! Ignore. Him." John said behind clenched teeth.
"What's going on?" Athena asked groggily.
"Batman, Robin, and Catwoman just showed up." Dean hauled her into his arms moving her as gently as he could to the safety of the corner.
"I'm telling you called her Catwoman." her pain was evident in her voice, even with her attempt at humor.
"You know who she'd rather be?" If he kept her talking she'd stay awake, and he wouldn't be ready to tear out of his skin to get into the fight about to take place outside.
"Nah." Athena went completely stiff when he lowered her back to the ground.
"Sorry." he muttered, not used to the word on his tongue.
"Well, I'll be damned." she smirked relaxing into the wall. "I didn't think you knew that word."
"Sage, can you hear what's going on out there?"
"Your girl's 'bout ready to lose it." Sage whispered back.
John kept his gun trained on Zack, who of course had his own trained on John. Sam kept Autumn covered while she fought with the door. Sam could see all patience fleeing the woman. John and Zack kept talking. John working details and motive out of the shape shifter. Zack inching down the stairs and working John into a corner.
"Autumn shoot the damn thing!" Sam ordered picking her gun up off the floor and putting it in her hand. She looked back at his father and their enemy then at the door.
"If you say so, but I don't think the insurance covers that sort of damage." she grinned lazily pointed the fun at the knob. " 3...2...1" she fired.
Zack thought John had fired the shot and pulled his trigger, barely missing the man. John wasn't happy about being shot at and fired back. In all seven shots were fired before anyone fell. Sam found himself inside the enclosed area, Autumn next to him. They peered squinty eyed at each other in the darkness. Neither ready to turn and see what was behind them or open the door and find out who had hit the ground.
"We can't get them out with Mr. Shifter lose." Sam whispered.
"Okay." he heard Autumn lick her lips nervously more than seen it. He could feel her hand tremble, adrenaline was a tricky thing to deal with. She eased open the door and they both jumped back from their huddled place on the floor, when they saw the man standing over them.
"Here." John flipped open his phone providing blue light. "Damn." he gave a low whistle and they turned around to see what had gotten his attention. "To your feet." he drug them up. The walls were covered in pictures of people. A Polaroid of before and after then below fastened to the wall would be he weapon that had delivered the final blow. Names and dates had been scrawled onto the photos.
"Sick bastard." Sam said under his breath.
"I second that." Autumn agreed.
"Where are they?" John turned their minds back to the rescue part of their hunt. Autumn pulled the flashlight they'd found in the woods from her pocket switching it on. She handed it over to Sam who swept it over the makeshift hall. There were two doors and one was already open.
"What's behind curtain number two?" Sam asked rhetorically, walking down to the closed door. John tossed him the keys.
"Red's friend wanted you to have those." It took him a few tries before finding the right key and getting the door unlocked. It was chained and bolted in addition to the regular lock.
The door eased open and a beam of light fell into the room. For a intense moment, Sage held onto Athena, Dean stood bodily in front of them and the three hunters on the other door didn't move waiting for sound. The light, shaking, found its way to their corner and an audible sigh of relief cut through the air.
"Oh God!" Autumn was at Athena's side in an instant. "You okay, Squirt?"
"Fine as frog's hair." Autumn ran a hand over her sister's arm where Sage had stitched her cuts for not shutting up.
"You okay Dean?" John asked keeping his distance from the sisters, both of whom were on the verge of tears.
"Yea, he never touched me. Teenie's legs pretty bad though, and she's been coughing up blood. We've got to get her out of here."
"Sam get Athena and carry her out to my truck. Sage how are you?"
"Oh Johnny, I've been thinking about taking a vacation, doing a little traveling. This was exactly what I was looking for. Four star experience." Sage heaved herself to her feet. Sam moved to gingerly scoop Athena up. The moment she was safely in his arms she collapsed against his chest sobbing.
"Teenie, you're okay now." Sam soothed adjusting her in his arms before he dropped her.
"Come on, Shorty, let's get her outside." Sage opened the door wider and followed Sam out to hold open doors and move anything that threatened to touch Athena. John had taken the flashlight from Sam before he'd picked up the blonde, and now he ran it over the room.
"Dean, I swear to God, you ever do something like that again I'll beat you with in an inch of your life, let you heal up and beat you again!" Autumn burst.
"Aut, give it your best shot." Dean laughed.
"We're going to have a talk later." John shined the light on the couple. "You both know better, than to let things get like this."