The phone rang twice more on the way home to Kansas. Both times Alec listened to the familiar song before hanging up. After the third call, he gripped the phone in his hand and refused to meet Sam's confused gaze.
"It's just Joshua," he said. "Playing around."
"Who's Joshua?"
Alec shrugged. "An old roommate."
"From camp?"
Alec tensed up. "Yeah, from camp."
Sam let it drop.
Back in Kansas, Mary hugged Sam and John on the way through the door, and Alec managed to avoid it because he was carrying too many bags. He tried not to notice the disappointed look in her eyes when he went upstairs to drop off the stuff.
He was pulling the guns out to clean them when his phone rang again. He let it ring; he could hear the music in his head anyway. No need for another reminder.
Once the guns were out, he dumped the rest of the stuff and sorted through it, then started to repack. It was time to get out of Kansas before the shit really hit the fan.
The phone rang again, and then again.
John appeared at the door to his room.
"It's just going to keep ringing," he said.
"What?"
"It's Max, right? On the way back to Kansas the first time, you and Sam were out and Max just kept calling until I answered."
"You talked to Max?"
"She was trying to protect you. You should just answer it already."
Alec opened the phone and put it to his ear as he watched John disappear. It wasn't Max. He wished it was Max.
He took the Impala. He could feel bad about that later, he thought, or he could bring it back, someday. Maybe. Someday when he wasn't Alec anymore, when he was ready to just be Dean.
In Seattle, he ditched the car on the outskirts and covered it up. He figured John had left enough mojo on it that no one would get near it anyway, but the branches made him feel better.
In Terminal City, Max gave him a look that said, Haven't we done this already? But she let him crash and didn't say anything out loud besides to offer him some food. She put him up on a couch in her tiny apartment, sans Cindy because Terminal City would harsh her groove, and when Max settled into the few hours of sleep her shark DNA still required, he slipped out the window.
A while later he was standing at the gate to a mansion he'd once dreamed could have been his reality, instead of the barcode on his neck. He let the security cameras get a good look at him, then vaulted over and blurred into the house. It seemed so familiar, but this time there wasn't Rachel on the staircase, or a fake Rachel waiting upstairs. There weren't even security guards there for him to take out. Upstairs, he found the piano, and the room was empty, as well. He sat down at the piano in the dark, and brushed his fingers over the keys, imagined her fingers there, imagined her there, smiling at him.
The lights came up in the room, and he looked up quickly enough to see it wasn't Robert Berrisford before everything went black.
His head hurt, and he was an utter fool. Those were the first two things. The third was that he recognized the cage, and the forth was that he was so so tired.
"X5-494. Nice of you to join us."
"Thanks," he muttered, sitting up slowly and hoping everything would stop spinning. "I always appreciate it when you invite me over, Ames."
White chuckled. "You are the invitation, Dean." He smiled, and Alec could have sworn that his eyes flashed yellow.
John was pissed when he saw the car was gone, and even more pissed when Dean was gone, too. He almost wished someone had just stolen it and he could hunt their asses down and take care of that shit. But instead, his wayward lost-and-found-again elder son had taken it, which, yeah, he had offered it, but this was different, and now he'd have to chase after him and he really wasn't a fan of Seattle on a good day.
Sam found him in the garage and handed him a phone, stood in the place where the car had been, shrugged a little, and went back inside.
He put the phone up to his ear and he was thinking it would maybe be Max, maybe even be Dean, but it wasn't.
"John? I'm sorry about this."
"Where is he, Don?"
"There are things going on here—things I think you know more about than I do."
"You and your fucking good will mission. Where is Dean, you son-of-a-bitch?"
"X5-494 is exactly where you think he'll be, John. But you have other things to worry about. Stay away. Manticore with take care of Manticore, and you take care of Sam."
"It's too late for that. I think you know that. I think you knew that the first time you fucked with my family."
Lydecker was silent for a long time.
"I'll call you when you're close."
The line went dead and John hurled the phone at the garage wall as hard as he could.
"I heard you got your asses kicked at Jam Pony," Alec said, pulling himself up into a crouch—as high as he could get in Ames's fun little metal box. He gripped the bars and braced himself against the sway. "Sorry I missed it."
White walked up to the cage, suspended like a chandelier in the Berrisford lobby, and stared in at him like an insect, like a thing. White was so good at that, and so close, Alec was absolutely sure that his eyes were yellow.
"Is that so? I thought you were having a good time hanging out with mommy and daddy. Or don't they want you there? Not human enough for them? Not Dean enough?"
Alec stared into those eyes, those ugly yellow eyes, and knew it wasn't White he was talking to. He felt a little bad about that, because at least Ames he knew how to deal with.
"You should lay off the hooch man, jaundice is a killer."
"You're not coming."
"Like hell I'm not!" Sam said, and he was up in John's face like had never happened before. There had been angry, and snide, and even downright disobedient, but this was righteous fury like he should have expected from his own flesh and blood. He should have seen this coming.
"It's not safe," he said, teeth clenched and voice guttural. "You need to stay out of it, Sam. You need to stay home with your mother."
Sam's jaw was a rock, and John suddenly wondered when Sam had gotten so tall.
"Alec is in trouble," he said. "I need to be there for my brother."
Lydecker showed up at her place while Max was stripping blankets off the couch, complaining about ungrateful house guests.
"Do you know where he went?" he asked.
"Do I care?" she snapped back.
"John is on his way," he said. "I think White has him."
Max dropped the blankets and sighed, sitting down in a heap on the couch. "He got a phone call, but it was only music... Not Berrisford again?"
She stood up, grabbed her coat, and was out the door calling back, "That boy is so damn predictable. Come on, I know where he went."
John said goodbye to Mary, pulled her into a tight hug and whispered promises in her ear. She cried on to his shoulder, and he whispered all the assurances he could think of that weren't lies. There weren't many.
When he pulled away, she grabbed his arm. "Wait," she said. "I have something you might need."
He stood in the kitchen, trying not to tick precious seconds off his head. When she came back, she handed him a gun case.
Inside, he recognized it as another one of those things that supposedly didn't exist.
"How…?"
"Just trust me," she said. "I love you."
The mansion was dark, but they could still tell it was occupied. White was clearly there, and not even bothering to keep a low profile.
"Should we wait for John?" Max asked. "He doesn't even have much back up. I could take him."
Lydecker shot her a look, and opened his mouth to tell what he now suspected, and why they needed to wait for John, but the manor door opened up just then and the thing that came out was White, but it wasn't. Max could tell from beyond the gate, just like Don had been able to tell weeks ago, when he ran into the thing before making his way out to Kansas.
"I'll do you a favor, little girl," it yelled. "Get me Sam Winchester and you'll never have to worry about this meat suit again."
"Where's Mr. Berrisford?" Alec asked at some point, sitting in his cage, bored despite the whole life-and-death situation thing.
"I sent him away," it responded, facing away from him and watching the door. Just waiting, and not impatiently. It was unnerving. "Aren't you glad?"
"Why would I be glad? Mr. Berrisford was good to me, mostly." And he had been. He'd trusted him in his home, with his daughter. Until Alec had screwed things up there'd been nothing there to make him wish the man hurt or gone, as he likely was now.
"Even after he tried to have you killed?"
Alec said nothing. He always ended up regretting his heart-to-hearts with mad men. And he never learned.
"What's the matter? You think you deserved it? You think you messed up that family and you'll mess this one up, too? Well guess what. This family was already messed up, from crazy deal-making parents to inhuman kids." White looked up at the cage for this first time since Alec started their conversation. He was smiling. "I liked Rachel, Dean. Don't think I'm not mad at you for taking her out of the picture. But imagine my surprise when I come looking for her, and I find out all about little Sammy instead." His grin got even bigger. "I knew you'd make it up to me somehow."
John answered the phone while sitting at a checkpoint, waiting to get into Seattle, Sam a seething mess beside him.
"Where?" John said.
Sam couldn't hear the other end of the conversation, couldn't hear much because of the worry buzzing in his ears.
"You'd better be telling the truth, or I will hunt you."
John hit the gas and they blew past the others waiting and down into the belly of the beast. No one even bothered to give chase.
They found Max waiting for them, with Lydecker, and Logan, and Joshua, and some others John didn't recognize, but knew would all lay it on the line for his son. But Max's eyes were sad, and most of them look spooked.
"It's White," she said.
"Where's Alec?" Sam asked.
"With White, but he's not…right."
"What do you mean?"
Max shrugged, and there was a creak of worn leather and the world crashing down on his ears.
"White is different now. He looks like a nomalie." Sam looked lost, confused, and Max waved her hand vaguely. "He has yellow eyes."
John wished it were a Manticore problem. He really did.
The door slammed shut behind them, and only John and Sam were left standing on the warehouse floor, looking up at Alec in his cage and White waiting for them. He could hear Max and the others banging on the door, and then silence. Max would work out a plan.
"She's crafty, that one," White said. "I wish she were one of mine. But we probably don't have much time."
"Alec!" Sam yelled, and ran towards the cage, only to find himself flying through the air, right into White's arms.
"Sammy," he said, "you're all grown up. My how you've changed."
"Let him go!" John screamed, leveling the gun towards them, the one his wife had pulled from nowhere, no way, no how, but unable to get a shot past Sam.
White held the knife against Sam's cheek, then slid it down slowly, breaking the skin and letting the blood well against the blade, before putting it up to his mouth so he could lick at it. He smiled. "Almost ripe, Sammy. You taste like me."
"What the hell are you talking about?" John asked, shooting a glance up at Alec, suspended above them and trapped, shooting a glance for anyone, anything, that could help.
"You married into this," White said, "and after all this time, you still don't really know what you're messing with." He caressed Sam's cheek.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Ask Mary, John. Go home and ask your wife about that pretty little gun, and about what she did. Ask her what she did to Sam."
He leaned in towards Sam's ear, and Alec could hear him whisper "See you soon."
John leveled the colt, but White's head was thrown back and smoke poured out of him, thick and stifling, then rushing up and out of the warehouse. Alec could swear he heard it laughing. Sam stumbled away, holding a hand to his bleeding cheek.
Sam's face, when Alec looked down at him, was stricken.
Sam climbed up and got Alec out of the cage. He stood up and every bone in his spine popped. He smiled a little at Sam, and their eyes never met.
They got back down together, and John was on the phone. Sam started forward, but Alec grabbed his arm and held him back.
Alec could hear Mary's voice on the other end of the line. She was quiet, but he was better.
John was saying, "What did you do?"
She was replying, "I saved your life, and mine, and together we can save Sam. Come home and we can talk about it. It's safe here."
"What did you do?"
Mary talked about deals and kisses and demons and babies and blood. She talked about protection spells and charms and magic guns.
Alec kept his hand on Sam's arm and thought about Rachel and her father and didn't repeat any of it. Too many families were going to end up ruined because of this. The more time they had, the better.
Max gave Alec a hug and told him to stop being so stupid, that next time he showed up in Seattle she was going to put him in a cage herself until his family came to collect him.
Lydecker held his hand out for John to shake, but John walked away, got in his truck, and silently fumed the whole way back to the car.
Sam and Alec didn't say anything until they were done pulling the branches off the Impala, John still sitting in the truck, watching them in the rear view mirror and waiting, gun gripped tightly in his right hand.
When they got into the car and Alec turned the engine over, even that didn't settle the hairs on the back of his neck. Sam clenched and unclenched his hands beside him, and waited even after John started pulling away.
He finally said, "I'm not human."
Alec shrugged. "Join the club."