It took Trudy the better part of the day to call in enough favors to score a pair of horses for an extended chunk of time. Dean got the impression there was very little she couldn't scam when she put her mind to it, and he was determined to stay on her good side for this very reason. Lom snuck back to the room he let at a boarding house and returned with a broad-brimmed hat for Dean and canteens for the both of them. He reported he'd seen Harper and Bales in town from a distance, so the douchebags hadn't roasted in the fire after all. Not even a blister, apparently.

They set about packing rations of hardtack, jerky and dried fruit, but no guns. Lom didn't own one. He reasoned, rightly or wrongly, if you lived by the gun, you died by the gun. He was probably right but Dean wanted a God-damned gun anyway. Annoyed with his cajoling, Trudy dug up a poorly conditioned shotgun and a fistful of shells. Lom wouldn't touch any of it.

Lom did, however, own a big knife and sizeable pouch of silver bits that looked relatively pure. Dean spent the remains of the day stuffing shells with the silver nuggets; some of the chunks were big enough to fashion slugs that would surely drop a were, as long as the shot flew true. It sucked to be burning daylight with Sam out there somewhere, suffering who knew what, but they couldn't get far without transportation and Trudy's 'negotiations' took time. Dean was blatantly annoyed with having so much hope pinned on this supposed White Witch. It was a huge leap to assume that she was anything more than a huckster and there was no guarantee that once they got to her lair, she'd help them at all. As soon as the words 'witch', 'lair', and 'help' filtered through his brain, the scheme sounded doubly futile.

By the time Trudy returned with their rides, it was too late to head out. The fat moon had risen, chasing the townspeople indoors. Night belonged to the wolves. Dean would've hit the hay early, readying for a dawn start time, if not for the uncomfortable noises coming from Trudy and Lom. Not uncomfortable to them, but certainly to Dean. He pressed an old feather pillow over his head and eventually dropped off into exhausted sleep.

Morning came too soon. Regardless, Dean was glad to be moving … glad until he realized how much he missed the luxury of four wheels and an upholstered seat. His horse walked—trotted, cantered, whatever the stupid animal did—with a lumpy gait and there wasn't nearly enough padding between Dean's ass and the saddle. How Lom tolerated it was a mystery. Guess the guy had developed calluses, or whatever. Dean forced his imagination to meander in a different, less butt-centric direction. Just made things worse.

They crossed a rolling series of large hills—small mountains, really—that had Dean clenching his knees around his horse to the point his thighs were trembling. He'd almost pitched forward on at least three separate occasions, hands fisted around the pommel to stay vertical. Lom wisely pinched back any smirk at Dean's expense. Once across the ridge, Mongrel was hardly visible any more. The vastness of the land was quite suddenly disconcerting. Dean got why they called this "God's Country"; it was harsh and boring and went on for fucking ever without comment.

They didn't talk much because the heat and dust would hang on the tongue and suck it dry. But when they did, Lom had questions. He'd look at Dean, his glasses reflecting the sun, and wonder aloud how such things as monsters and folklore could be real. He'd been to a spiritualist once, on a bet, when passing through Rochester, New York. The woman claimed to speak to departed relatives, manifest ectoplasm and foresee the future—which usually involved liberating her customer of a dollar or ten. The ectoplasm turned out to be cheesecloth soaked in gelatin, and the ghosts were just her bare toe knuckles, knocking and pinging on the floor. Not a wholly convincing performance.

Dean didn't have any good answers for him. Just that there'd always been monsters, always would be. He didn't dare get into the whole Eve, Mother of All thing; felt too much like tempting fate. That satisfied Lom up for another half-hour, until the guy got curious again.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"What's it like? Your … time? It certainly does sound peculiar to say that: 'your time.' But then, men transmorphing into some horrific sort of beast by the light of the moon is peculiar too."

"Yes, Lom. Yes it is."

"So?"

Dean fidgeted in the saddle, used a borrowed bandana to swipe at the back of his neck. "Well. Everybody's got electricity, if you can pay for it. And indoor plumbing. God, I miss my indoor plumbing. Deodorant. Bacon cheeseburgers, when you can get 'em without …" Leviathan sauce inside "… eh, never mind. Our whiskey's better. Oh, and cars. Everyone's got a car. I have a beauty, a '67 Impala. Well, had. She's locked up in storage 'cause she's one of a kind—a rose among thorns, my man—and me and my brother, we're kinda Monsters' Most Wanted right now. Got to stay off the radar. Off the grid. Uh, out of sight."

"Did you leave a lady behind? I mean, apart from your Impala." Lom grinned, quoting 'Impala' with a grand flourish.

Dean was quiet for a moment. "Not smart to bring a family into this life."

"But your brother is in 'the life'?"

"Yeah." And then Dean resettled his hat lower down on his forehead. Conversation over.

Time sludged on. Dean never craved a pair of cheap, gas-station sunglasses as much as he did in that moment; his eyeballs ached from the bright and dry and endlessly boring spread of blanched scenery. Wouldn't surprise him one bit to see camels or Ali Baba. He'd asked Lom at least a half-dozen times if they were heading in the right direction, like a kid in the backseat of the family car on vacation: Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Lom would shrug a shoulder and bob his head, which wasn't exactly glowing confirmation. Dean would mumble an insincere "Awesome" and take a swig from his canteen, wishing it was Johnny Walker.

The sun rolled farther across the sky, bathing everything blind. Dean hardly noticed when Lom pulled his horse up short; all he saw was dirt and infinite plugs of crispy plants, all wound up in his irritation. He kept straying to the possibility that a human being could stumble through this terrain for a day, maybe two, before succumbing to the elements. Before turning into something twitching and withering. Something like what Hell did to souls.

Lom had to whistle to break the trance, a shrill warning. Dean blinked and looked to the noise.

The piano man was staring to the north-northwest, at miles of nothing.

"What?" Dean snapped.

"See there?"

"See what? There's a shit-ton of empty."

Lom tilted his head, spoke carefully. "There appears to be a dead thing."

Instantly alert, Dean now recognized movement. Birds, big ones, milling around a piece of earth too far away to parse detail and obscured by distortions of heat. He drove his heels into the horse's side and leaned forward. "Yah, mule. Get the lead out."

Lom caught up easily, being the better rider. As they neared the spot, all they saw were birds—no carcass, no open ribcage bared to the sky, no bits of hide or skin turning black in the sun. For just a heartbeat, vacating adrenaline left Dean clammy and faint.

"Well that's curious," Lom said.

Dean rolled off his horse, hopping once to dislodge his foot from the stirrup, and took a good long stretch to let his vertebrate slot back into place. He stomped at the vultures and they bounced away, wings spread and beaks snapping, but only so far as Dean couldn't reach them with a swift kick. Crouching, he poked a finger through their left-overs.

"Not curious," he said, a grin starting. "Fucking amazing." He stood up and practically skipped over to Lom, sore ass be damned. Pinched between thumb and forefinger was a tiny sand-crusted peach stone.

xXx

Sam wasn't difficult to track; the treads of his huge boots stood out like footprints on the moon. Dean clung to the appearance of every step, scowled when he found dents the size of a body in the softer drifts which meant Sam had fallen, picked himself back up, and kept plodding. On rare occasion, it paid off to be stubborn and his brother was the king. They continued for what had to be miles. He and Lom ate on horseback, pausing only to water the horses and then vacate a little water themselves. Shallow, flat-bottomed clouds began to collect at the horizon as the sun dropped, and Lom announced they'd better set up camp somewhere before it got too dark. As much as Dean objected, the horses were not cars nor were they truly theirs to mistreat. Trudy would beat Lom to within an inch of his life if he brought the animals back in woeful condition.

Sam must've had a similar idea. His trail led to a hulking stand of wind-sheared boulders that once fully visible, parted in a cave opening. Dean dismounted and shoved the reins into Lom's hand. His knees throbbed but he approached the cave's mouth slowly, noisily. Purposefully. Lom gave half-hearted objections behind him that went ignored.

"SAMMY." Dean's yell bounced between the rocks and in reply, there came a noise from inside, a faint rustling. Might've been the scrubbing of cloth against cloth, but he didn't dare let himself feel hope. He bounced the tarnished shotgun in his hands and inched into the entrance. "Sam, it's me," he said, getting nothing but relative silence in return.

It got dark, fast. With his body blocking the light, Dean strained to recognize even the roughest shapes. It sounded and felt like a tight space until his breath began to move more freely, about ten feet in. He inched forward, tapping the ground with the toe of his boot in case something—someone—laid across the path. He was too focused on the ground and didn't notice the narrowing of the passage. He knocked his skull against a jut of rock, lost his hat, let out a choice expletive, and the cave exploded with noise.

The screeches of what had to be a hundred bats lit up the crevice. Their foul little wings pummeled about Dean's head in the sliver of an opening, and he spun and hunched his shoulders. He squinted and watched the black tongue of creatures escape, en masse, into the dusk.

Lom smirked, peeking in the entrance. "You get 'em all?"

Dean gave an insincere 'ha-ha' lip curl and continued deeper into the cave. "Can't see shit."

"That's amendable," Lom said. He untied the small lantern he'd attached to his pack and fired up the light, following Dean now that the hole was free of varmints.

Dean wormed his way through the cavity though he had to bend over like an old man. The space ballooned opened and in the dead center of the cave was a small pile of ash. Paydirt, or least indications of it. He crouched and sifted through it with his fingertips. It was long since cold but he could still smell smoke, and along the edges of the pile he found charred bits of paper. He dusted one off and pulled Lom over, angling the scrap closer to the light.

Salander was afraid of no-one and nothing. She realized that she lacked the necessary imagination - and that was evidence enough that there was something wrong with her brain. That's all he could make out, but it was modern printing and if Dean wasn't mistaken, Salander was the psycho-genius chick with the dragon tattoo. They'd seen the movie at a half-price cinema in Tulsa one frivolous weekend—felt like a decade ago—and he and Sammy had begrudgingly agreed that sometimes, metal rings and pins stuck through a person's dangly-down parts was kinda hot. "Yeah, he was here."

Lom nodded and lifted the lantern until his knuckles brushed the stone roof, illuminating as much space as possible. Dean rocked back on his heels and looked around. The dusty floor had the occasional treaded footprint and there was a big, shoulder-sized smear of rusty red on one of the walls.

As his gaze wandered the perimeter, he also noticed animal shapes and stick figures: fingerpaintings, not likely Sam-generated because Sam couldn't paint worth a damn and certainly he would've had more pressing issues than interior design. They were in shades of orange and slate and dirt, the sorts of colors expected of the desert.

"This is good shelter for the night, yes?" Lom asked, to which Dean grunted. "Here, then; I should settle the horses before we've lost all the light." He passed off the lamp to Dean and disappeared back out the fissure.

Dean was left, briefly, alone. He hadn't been alone since he'd crash-landed in the wrong time, the wrong place. Alone sucked. He didn't like being alone in the best of circumstances, and this was not them. He crouch-walked to the fingerpaintings, if only to give his mind something to do and keep from feeling so gut-wrenchingly, hope-killingly alone.

When he drew closer, the paintings actually impressed him with their level of detail. Must've used sticks, not fingers. Some of the four-legged figures were markedly herd animals, like cows or buffalo. Their stumpy legs were splayed in a collective gallop, stampeding away from the second set of figures which were humanoid and armed with simplified bows and spears. The scenes told little tales, stories of day-to-day living. Hunting, mostly, making Dean snort wryly. As the narrative progressed, the humanoids became the prey, and their pursuers turned distinctly dog-like. Or at least that's the way the cartoon began. The large, canine shapes evolved until they stood upright, bulky things with long-snouted heads. Dean reasoned that they were lupine, not canine at all. Werewolves were not unknown to Native America. This really didn't surprise him, but what did were the figures that followed the wolves. Again, humanoid. But these two-legged creatures had wide, gaping maws where their heads should've been. Their tongues, deeply forked, flailed out of the mouths like tentacles. Dean pushed out a hiss of breath.

What. The. Fuck.

Leviathans. Something that felt a hell of a lot like panic squeezed his lungs.

But that wasn't where the paintings ended. As the crude Leviathan images made short work of the animals and humans, and splashes of red-brown were introduced into the color scheme, the half-wolves turned their bloody attention from the easier hunt to that of the Leviathans. From what Dean could tell, the werewolves were tearing the Big Mouths to shreds . And eating them.

Lom returned with an armload of foodstuff and provisions to start a fire. "I could use a dangerously strong cup of coffee right now," he said, fatigue making his voice rickety.

Dean decided Lom didn't need to know about the Leviathans. Not tonight. Not ever, if he could help it.