The girl plopped down on her sofa and took a sip of her coffee. "John Winchester? Didn't dad want to-- oh?...oh. Sounds like bad vibes. I'm sorry." She glanced at the two boys sitting beside her dinner table. "Really? So all that stuff-- oh. You finally finished that panic room?" She chuckled. "Oh, you'd love my house. I threw in the kitchen sink." Suddenly, she jumped to her feet. "You're in a wheelchair?! I know a really cool doctor down at--" It took a second for her to sit back down. "No way. Seriously? Apocalypse. That's what's been going around?" There was a chuckle. "I don't know, Uncle Bob. Pestilence? I'd believe you more if you said Shtriga-- which it's not." The girl cringed. "Yes, I have most of their books but seriously? They just--" she replied, putting her feet up on the coffee table. "Oh, stop with that brimstone bit. Look, I'll prove to you it's not Pestilence just listen--" She argued. "No, not herbal. I checked for that personally. And that stuff leaves a trace if you know what to look for. I bet you that doctor did not check your hair." She suddenly sat up. "Actually, when was the last time you went for a check up?"
Twenty minutes was about all he can handle. This girl shoved Sam inside a closet and almost busted his knee cap without a second thought and now she was discussing the finer points of their lives over a mobile line they pay for. He looked around the faded sky blue walls of her living room, the nice white painted furniture, shelves filled with books, the comfortable looking dark leather couch set, the large red rug underneath her coffee table stacked with magazines and the frosty pink tinged tiled floor and shook his head. Walking around barefoot in her torn up jeans and black camisole while playing with her teardrop pendant, she neither had the hard line Ellen always held, or the tough way Jo always carried herself. She definitely was nothing like Bela or Tamara. She wasn't as suspicious or careful as his own mother. Even the dearly departed, blind Pamela Barnes felt a hundred times more intimidating. Summer Wind McKenzie, in his opinion, lived a normal, carefree, domestic life. She could yak away with Bobby all she wanted, but it didn't change what he thought.
Despite what she knew and how she held herself in their fight earlier, that girl was no hunter.
And time was wasting away. Dean stood from his seat and marched over to the couch where the girl was still listening to whatever Bobby was telling her. "Dean--" Sam started his reproach in vain. He had already snatched the phone from the girl.
"Hey Uncle Bob," Dean greeted in the sweetest sarcastic voice he could manage, "could you maybe give the girl the cliff notes version of things so we can go on our merry way?"
"You're a piece of work, Dean. You give her my number and tell her to call," Bobby replied sourly before he shut the phone.
"So," Summer stood up from the couch with a small amused smile on her face, "Winchesters, huh?"
"Yeah. What about it?"
She grinned. "Your dad... hit on my mom infront of my dad once."
Much to Dean's surprise, the girl gave him a quick small hug before walking over to Sam to do the same. He stared wide eyed as she walked to the adjacent kitchen to prepare a cold compress for his brother's banged up head. "First you want to kill us and now you're hugging us?" he asked, confused.
"By the sounds of it, you guys needed a hug," she answered placing a glass of water in front of Sam. "Here you go, tough guy. Painkiller and a cold compress. Sorry about that," she apologized.
Dean narrowed his eyes with suspicion. She actually sounded and looked sincere. There was no tinge of sarcasm or an accusation that they deserved what they got. This was new.
"We should be the one apologizing. We're the ones who broke in," Sam said before popping the pill.
"I know. But still..." She trailed on before giving them another shrug. "Toast? Coffee? Sausage? Eggs? Hash?" She asked going back in the kitchen.
"What?" Dean asked confused as she placed a pan over her stove and placed bread in her toaster.
"Breakfast," Summer answered, simply enough. "It's ten past ten in the morning. Would you like some breakfast?"
"Uh, Sure?" Dean finally answered after a moment of silence.
"Great. Park yourself on the dining table beside your brother and give me a few minutes," she said breaking a few eggs in the pan.
"So did Bobby tell you--" Sam tried to break the ice after a few more seconds of silence.
"That you started the Apocalypse?" she finished for him in the same easy tone. "Yes, he did."
"And you're not going to rip us one?" Sam asked tentatively.
Dean watched the girl eye them curiously. "I'm not going to kick you when you're down," she replied, filling up two plates with food. "It's too much effort," she said, laying a plate of food each infront of them and pouring them coffee in mugs before taking a seat herself
He looked over his shoulder to see Sam raise both his shoulders, equally confused. When most people in their line of work hear they've started the Apocalypse, the yelling starts. Sometimes, there were punches involved. He couldn't blame them. The brothers deserved it. Nobody ever offered to make them a meal.
He didn't know what to do. Ask him to kill a demon or two, he would do it within a heartbeat. He had witty comments stored just in case someone talked trash. But nice? Nice just wasn't in his jurisdiction. "Works for me," Dean found himself saying before digging into his food. He couldn't recall the last time he had homemade food instead of the greasy things every diner seems to give them. By the looks of Sam across the table, he felt the same. "You and Bobby--"
"We're not actually relatives. He's a friend of my parents and they made him my godfather. Haven't seen or spoken to him in close to a decade," she replied while typing on her laptop. "And like I told him... we're not dealing with a horseman," she said slowly. Her brows furrowed as she paused staring at the information before her.
"Besides from the obvious..." she started to say as she stood and take several books off her neat shelf and piled it beside her laptop. "See here? That's not Pestilence." She pointed at a yellowing page scrawled with ink, looking expectantly at the brothers.
"Kid, I don't do Latin," Dean informed her.
Sam gave him a look of reproach. "Don't mind him, Summer. He's just a jerk," he said, politely.
"And you're just a bitch," he shot back at Sam instinctively.
"...Okay, well, it's not latin. It's aramaic... but sure, evs--" she replied quietly. "So, this, this and this," she pointed at several open old books, "it doesn't name the horseman as Pestilence. It says Conquest." She gave them another expectant look.
"Potato, potato. Tomato, tomato" Dean quipped, biting on some toast. By the side of his eye, he could see Sam glaring at him.
"So it can't be pestilence because it doesn't... exist?" Sam asked.
"No, that's not it," Summer answered carefully shaking her head with a confused expression. "Conquest is a tricky guy. It may or may not be killing anything. It just needs to conquer everything in some way, shape or form. It doesn't have to be with a disease. It's just easier with a disease and there are more examples of it in history. Thus, the mistranslation of it to Pestilence. But when it hits, it gets every single living thing from amoeba to human beings," she explained. " It conquers. Like the great flood, global warming or..." she looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully for a second before snapping her fingers, "that Croatoan bit Uncle Bobby was talking about."
"That's what I thought," Dean quipped, polishing off his potato hash.
"Plus Uncle Bob said you already saw War," she added, taking her seat. "Conquest comes before War. It's already around. It's probably already started working."
"Well, I don't know about you but I feel a whole lot better," said Dean.
The girl's gaze left her laptop and met his. "Excuse me?"
"Yeah, you know," he said, shrugging, "This is a bit simpler than taking on Hell's Belles."
"Excuse me?" she repeated.
Sam cleared his throat prompting his brother to keep his mouth shut. "Not that we think this is unimportant. It's just that we've been through a lot lately and--" he tried to explain.
"I get that part," Summer interrupted. "But you have to understand, I've personally checked patient's houses and schools, talked to their parents, teachers, bus drivers... everyone. I've done medical and non medical tests I can do looking for everything. I called a friend of mine to test the water. There are no hex bags, no seals, no herbs, no crop circles, nothing rotting, nothing suddenly springing up, no mysterious light in the sky, no marks on parents and relatives and nothing connected to any Solstice lore any lore on sleeping children. I've salted beds. I've even had IV drips blessed." She sighed. "Today is the 24th. This started three days ago. Patient Zero has been, for all intents and purposes, asleep since then. By my estimation, in two days, more than a hundred pre pubescent kids will be asleep, slowly wasting away in a hospital bed," she said.