Author's note: Happy T-Day, Amuricans! And my continued thanks to everyone for the wonderful reviews. Keep enjoying!
"I'm sorry," the woman murmured, and the rifle drifted toward the floor. She flopped the birds on a table and regarded Sam longways.
"About what? I'm sure I owe you my life right about now."
"About dragging you into my troubles, Angus or Sam or Donald or whatever your rightful name is."
Ah, so she'd been through his wallet. "Sam. I'm Sam."
She propped the gun in a corner. "Olivia Campbell."
"Campbell?"
"I know you're not lame in the ears. Sam."
"I—I have cousins named Campbell, is all."
"Small world." She grabbed a pair of bottles from a shelf and turned her back on him, pouring golden liquor into two short glasses. The pungency of whiskey floated through the room. Maybe she was beginning to trust him. "My husband is the Campbell."
"Was that your husband yesterday? The man you were talking to?"
She looked perplexed for a moment. "Ah, no. That was a…neighbor."
"Where's your husband, then?" Sam found it uncomfortable—and alright, admittedly sexist—that a man would leave his wife, however capable, alone in this isolated land. There were so many perils, both natural and not. He sat down at her table and she slid a glass in front of him.
"He's out there, fixin' to untangle this mess." Her eyes flicked to Sam's injured shoulder. She swirled the liquid in her glass and took a long sip.
Sam stared at his drink. "It was a werewolf, wasn't it?"
In his periphery, he saw her dip her head just once, without comment.
"And he's trying to take it down alone? He might be a damned good hunter but that's not—"
"It's him," the woman—Olivia—said softly.
Sam's jaw snapped shut.
"I'm…sorry," she said again, meeting Sam's stare.
He couldn't find the words. Her eyes were suddenly glossy and nose, pink. He wanted to be furious, rip her a new asshole for letting this particular flavor of monster roam the world because Sam knew better than most how uncontainable, how lethal, these beasts were. He remembered Madison, her dark eyes when they closed and how her lashes had brushed his cheek. He remembered the talons erupting from her nail beds. He remembered pulling the trigger.
When you were a hunter, you had to do certain things.
Deep in his gut, though, he'd figured it out. He wasn't a simpleton; he knew what the bite likely meant, but he'd been clinging to a thread of hope. Threads had a funny way of snapping just when you needed them to hold tight.
Sam picked up his drink and slammed it back in one swallow, craving the burn. And fuck, did it burn. Cheap, harsh poison.
Olivia sniffed and scrubbed at her face, composing herself. "But we're not played out yet. We have leads. I have asked for help. Prayed for it."
"Prayed?" He laughed uncharitably. "I sincerely don't think God has His ear to the ground these days. Probably never did."
"God? I couldn't possibly attempt a spell that powerful!" Her brows shot up in alarm.
"Wait. You cast an actual spell?" Sam's gaze whirled to the séance mat and the room kept right on spinning. He grabbed the edge of the table. "Who—?"
"An archangel. I might live to regret it though, since I just drove him away a fortnight ago but desperate times …"
Sam lumbered to his feet. He squinted at the chalked sigil again, fighting an insistent wash of heat and vertigo. Archangel, archangel. Come on, brain, work. His vision was getting smeary and he wanted to be alarmed by this, knew he should be, but he could only muster up confusion. And a fair amount of clammy sweat.
Then two things hit him.
"Oh, crap. That's the … the mark of Gabriel."
Olivia nodded. Or at least he thought she did. Either that or the room was bouncing up and down, making him lose the ability to stay vertical. Sam found himself kissing the floor, the bitter taste of bad liquor on his tongue.
ooOOooOOoo
Dean was not anxious to get back on the horse. Well, he was and he wasn't. Sam was here somewhere, and if Dean knew his brother—and he certainly did—Sam had left a trail for him to follow. The longer they delayed, the more likely the desert winds were to erase those precious signposts. Dean ached from the middle of his back to his knees, and all parts in between. Who knew sitting could be such a grinding exercise? His horse nickered softly upon his approach, then knocked him solidly in the forehead with her deceptively velvety nose.
"Good morning to you too," he muttered, curbing the urge to thump her in return. Cars, even stolen ones, didn't smart back like this.
Lom repacked the rest of their things and tossed Dean a hard lump of barely edible bread. Coffee would've been nice but it was Dean's own fault there wasn't any; he didn't want to spare the time. Lom refrained from comment but made a point to gaze longingly at the tin pot tied to his saddle whenever he thought Dean would notice. Just to be a pisser.
Hours worth of homogenous scenery later and following Lom's vaguely acknowledged sense of where the witch lived, Dean hadn't seen a single indication Sam had traveled this direction. Saw plenty of sun-baked nothing, but Dean was beginning to think Lom had misled them. Valid concern. Five minutes ago, Lom had taken the compass from his pocket and given it furrowed scrutiny, avoiding Dean's stare.
Lom steered the horses over a small rise, which brought with it a whole new treasure trove of dull pain in Dean's thighs. He grunted and groaned with each rocking step of his mount until catching up with Lom at the crest. The land grew grassier in sparse spreads across the expanse, and maybe a mile away, there sat an isolated building. Lom was beaming.
"Bet that's it," he said, and Dean gritted his teeth. The fucker really wasn't sure where they'd been heading. Christ on a cracker. Dean took a swig from his canteen and gigged his horse forward, wincing.
It was a small homestead with a solemn air, tattered curtains sucking out the open windows and thin smoke leaking from the chimney. Scrawny chickens plucked sporadically at the dirt. Roughly thirty feet from the property, a horned skull sat atop a fence post in a crooked sort of greeting. And here I thought plastic flamingos were weird, Dean mused. It didn't exactly scream, 'Welcome to the Neighborhood'.
And neither did the ping of a bullet ricocheting off a rock to his left. He heard the shot a fraction after the ping—a trick of the echoes against the hard land—and his horse bobbled away from the sound, nearly sending Dean plummeting. Lom reined in his own horse to calm the creature as another bullet whistled between them, close enough to feel its passage and make both man and animal flinch.
Dean sputtered curses but apparently threats did nothing to settle a horse's nerves. "God damn son of a bitch STOP! Stupid fucking—" With a twisting hop, the horse threw Dean from the saddle and dropped him solidly on his tailbone, forcing all of the breath from his lungs. He saw white spots of agony and the dust beside him puffed from yet another close shot. Lom jumped off his horse into a crouch as a voice—a woman's voice—hollered from the inside of the cabin.
"You'd best be telling me your business or I'll send lead through your bellies!"
"Columbus McCallum, ma'am," Lom shouted back, as Dean was still trying to get his chest to inflate. Lom used his horse for cover, pressed to its shoulder, peering under its chin. "And Dean Winchester. We…we need your help mightily. On my honor, I am not armed!"
The last of Lom's words faded and there was silence from the cabin. Then the door flung wide and a man stepped out. "Dean?"
Lom cocked his head and Dean dragged himself upright, stumbling. His knees threatened to buckle from the pain, the riding, and the sudden nerve-melting feeling of relief.
"Dean!" Sam, bedraggled but sturdy, loped the easy thirty feet to Dean and slammed him with a sweaty hug.
Dean bit back a grunt and as soon as he could untangle himself, he held his brother at arm's length and gave him a serious once-over. Sammy looked…surprisingly hale. Still leaner than he had been in years and a little sunken around the eyes, but he wasn't sun-fried or limping. His clothes were borrowed and unbloodied, and he grinned without hesitation. "Dude, you all right?" Dean demanded. "What the hell happened? How did we get here?"
"I have a theory about how we got here, and you're not gonna like it."
"I already don't like it; you mean it gets worse?"
"Oh yeah. Substantially."
Lom cleared his throat and stepped forward, both horses' reins collected in his hands. "I surely wouldn't mind catching a piece of shade," he said with a nod to the cabin.
"Sam, this is Lom. Met him in town."
Lom squinted up at Sam, his glasses dusty. "Well aren't you built like a snake on stilts."
Sam looked baffled for a second. "Thanks, I think? Anyway, you say there's an actual town around here?"
Dean began walking toward the building. "Yep. Bumfuck, Nowhere. Great place to visit, but…"
"Right, right."
"Seems they've got themselves a little werewolf problem. I swear, what are we, monster magnets?"
Sam chuckled humorlessly. As they drew up to the house, they were met at the door by the shooter, a woman with striking blonde hair and eyes like chips of glass. If she wasn't the White Witch, Dean would eat his hat. She was attractive in the way of small birds of prey, fragile but sharp. He gave her a nod and a grin out of habit, and she shifted the rifle in the crook of her arm just to be sure he knew she still had it.
"Olivia Campbell, this is my brother Dean."
"Campbell? You don't say."
Sam shrugged. The woman stepped out of the house to allow them passage. "Come. You can put the horses up 'round back," she said, ushering Lom away.
Dean whirled on Sam as soon as they were out of earshot. "Dude, Campbell?"
"Oh, it gets better." Sam led the way into the small home, ducking under the doorframe. "She's been futzing around with Gabriel. Asked for his help, even. I'm gonna guess that's why we're here. We're The Help."
"But Gabe is dead—"
"Not in the 1800's, Dean."
"Awesome." Dean stared around the room, at the hunter-themed paraphernalia on the walls, at the shelves of creepy jars and plants and tomes. There was even a cauldron and a broom, though the big black pot was boiling away with something that smelled amazingly edible and he suspected she actually used the broom for, you know, sweeping. Two sizable birds were roasting on a spit in the oversized fireplace and Dean decided Sam definitely got the better end of the deal, here. "Okay, so if our favorite Trickster is still alive and kicking, he can send us home again, right? We just yank his chain back here like she did, and wham bam thankya ma'am, we're golden."
Sam stopped talking. He got that look, that 'Sam's thinking big thoughts' look, the one that ran troughs in his brow and had him chewing the inside of his cheek. The one that most always made Dean's brain hurt, and sometimes his heart.
"What?" Dean demanded.
"There's a…complication."
The room suddenly felt too quiet. Airless.
Dean didn't have to ask; he just stared, expectantly. Sam pulled aside the collar of his shirt. The skin around his tattoo wasn't smooth. It was pink and angry with healing punctures, a bite mark of massive proportions. Unnatural proportions.
To call this a 'complication' was a fucking understatement.