(Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to post a chapter today! BAD AUTHOR, BAD! Thank you for the nice reviews, gang; it's music to my ears. Please continue to give me feedback-good, bad, or otherwise. Thank you!)

No one knew what was going on but Dean, and even he was stunned silent. He'd seen skinwalkers drop their hide into piles of snotty matter and hair, seen corpses move in ways bodies really shouldn't, but this was … this was a man shedding his humanity and becoming a mindless, rabid thing, made of muscle and magic and hate, right before his eyes.

The man's torso churned and expanded to the sound of flesh stretching, creaking. His wails lowered into guttural snarls and the clothing split into shreds, away from the sheer bulk of what he was becoming.

And what the fuck was he becoming? Dean's brain raced through its mental tome of monsters and there was simply nothing that matched this description. His best guess was werewolf, so that would have to work as a starting point. But this hairy-scary was far unlike any werewolf he'd hunted before.

The men in the far cell pressed themselves against the bars and screamed. They begged for release but the deputy wouldn't come within ten feet of the locked door. He had taken the keys off his belt, however, and was gripping them in a trembling fist. He'd also pissed himself, a dark stain spreading from the crotch of his trousers.

Metal rattled and wood groaned, but the cell held firm. Dean felt Lom quivering beside him, and one glance confirmed the piano man was a heartbeat away from passing out.

The probable werewolf made a low noise in its throat that almost sounded like amusement, and raised itself up to stand on twisted hind legs, newly-formed eartips brushing the ceiling. Hair—stiff, mangy and thickening—was visibly sprouting from what remained of its human flesh and Dean saw the flash of claws, each as big as his thumb, swipe at one of the screaming men. In a spray of red, the screaming stopped.

That was bad enough, but what bothered Dean further was the man who had come up behind the creature, the same guy who'd busted Dean's nose when he'd first timewarped into Nevada. The asshole wasn't terrified or fixing to crack the werewolf upside the head with a piss bucket. He was cupping his hands in the beam of moonlight, like it was a mountain stream. He began trembling and breathing rough. And then he grinned with a mouth full of long, sharp, yellowed teeth.

"Oh, hell no." Dean made a snap decision. "Open the doors," he yelled at the deputy, but the man stumbled into his desk, almost toppling the lantern. "Open the God-damned doors!"

"Open the doors, Seth!" Lom pleaded, trying to be brave and the fact he spoke at all boded well for his untested courage.

Deputy Seth's glassy-eyed gaze skittered over to Lom and he threw the keys. They jangled across the floor, stopping short of the cell, and then he ran. He bolted out of the jail like his ass was on fire.

Dean lunged his arm through the bars but his bicep stopped him cold, the ring of iron keys a good foot out of reach. He strained until his already battered face throbbed and the bars pressed bruises into his arm. No dice. Shitty time to be well-muscled. Across the room, men were still screaming and Dean smelled the cloying odor of blood and ammonia in the air. His throat tightened with the urge to vomit. Hissing, he pulled back and quickly rolled the ache out of his shoulder. He shot a glare to Harper and his gang of two.

"Please tell me one of you fucknuts have got … uh …"

They were all staring at him with eyes that glimmered gold as though caught in the headlights of a truck. Reflective. Like wolves.

Dean snapped his bootknife free of its ankle sheath and prepared to be knee-deep in bad luck.

He figured from observation that direct moonlight was an accelerant. Since the sole pair of windows in the joint was on the opposite wall, he had time before the other infected men—though he definitely balked at the notion that they were human any longer—morphed into killing machines.

Without taking his eyes off of Harper and company, he reached back and grabbed Lom by his thread-bare shirt, pulling him forward. A fleeting look confirmed that Lom was still just a regular joe, albeit on the verge of full-blown panic.

"Do you have anything silver on you, anything at all?" Dean said, low and fast.

Lom tore at his collar and pulled free a chain with a crude charm on the end. St. Jude. Funny.

"That's it?"

Lom bobbled his head.

"Awesome." Dean sniped. "Get the keys. I'll buy us time." He bounced the weight of the knife in his palm and forced himself to push the sound of men dying in the other cell out of his mind.

Harper leered at Dean and his knife. He didn't look the least bit concerned; he looked twitchy and eager, eyes the color of doubloons and getting lighter by the second. "Dandy pigsticker," he lisped, distorting mouth making speech slippery.

"Come get you some," Dean taunted.

Harper, coward that he was, shoved the nameless kid forward into range and Dean didn't waste the opportunity. The kid was off-balance and scratching at his own skin; Dean sliced without discretion. The blade caught Nameless under the chin and it sizzled when the silver plating touched the magic in the werewolf.

Harper and Bales had the smarts to back off. The kid shrieked, wild-eyed. Blood fountained out of the gap in his throat, through clutching fingers. He made gurgling noises and red bubbled bright over his lips. Dean grabbed a fistful of greasy hair and forced him onto his back, pinning him to the floor with a knee to his bony chest. The knife clutched in both hands, Dean plunged it into Nameless' heart. He felt ribs snap. The glow fell out of the kid's stare like a streetlight flickering dark.

Dean yanked the knife out of the body and leveled the dripping blade at Harper and Bales. "Lom … keys …"

"Al-almost!" Lom sounded breathless and Dean figured the piano man had been lanky enough to squeeze more of his arm through the bars. He heard the clink of metal and the scramble of boots.

Harper snarled, incapable of forming words any longer, his shoulders beginning to lump and roll on their own accord. Bales was already tearing at his coat, his face some smeary combination of beast and man. Both were markedly filling the space with muscle and the powerful stink of dog.

Swaying the knife and balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, Dean was readying for the next volley of stupid when the whole building rocked. Lom gasped and fumbled more desperately with the keys in the lock. The fully formed werewolves in the other cell were launching themselves at the bars. Prison, circa 1870, was not in any way prepared to contain giant, man-eating, pissed-off fleabags.

Another slam, and mortar flew in bits across the jail. Wood splintered. Dust rained down from the roof. Bales howled and the pitch made Dean's skin prickle.

The fiend that had been Harper shook itself, slavering. As Lom flung open the cell door, the jail house careened one last time and the other cell exploded outwards, ruined. The force sent the deputy's lamp crashing off the desk; it struck the floor, kerosene splashing wide and fire devouring the dry wood.

The werewolves flinched away from the flames, almost as one unit, and this gave Dean and Lom the opening to run like madmen.

And run, they did.