2 – Woke Up In My Future
The one thing the Paradise Motel had going for it was a pool. Too bad it hadn't been cleaned in years.
It looked like there was a year's worth of pine needles, leaves, and other parking lot detritus making a covering for the top. Dean had overheard someone complaining to the manager about it, and supposedly they were getting it skimmed today, but who knew? There could be water sprites hiding under there. He should probably get a piece of driftwood and carve it into a stake, just in case.
Despite Sam's whining, they did some sparring after breakfast, and he wasn't too bad, especially considering his size. He was careful to modulate his praise, 'cause all he needed was Sam thinking he knew everything about fighting. Sammy was already smarter than him book wise; he didn't need him getting a swelled head about his fighting skills. Cockiness could get you killed in any respect.
Dean checked his phone, in case Dad called (he hadn't), and then walked Sam to the library. He agreed to meet him at three. He supposed he should have stayed; the library had air conditioning and one kinda hot librarian. But Dean was too restless, and needed to get out and stretch his legs. He needed to get more booze too.
Walking down Desert Bluffs' one main street, he saw nothing but sad shops, and many of the same places he saw in every other town. Maybe it was just nostalgia, but he could swear he remembered a time when towns were a little more distinct. But strolling past a consignment store, he saw a tiny shop with a placard reading "Madame Jade's Fortunes and Formulas", and stopped. A fortune teller? Damn, he loved winding them up. Dad claimed that there were one or two that might be genuine, but most were just scammers. Dean didn't mind that, as he was a bit of a scammer himself, but it could be really fun to fuck around with them.
He went inside, brass bells jingling over the door, and he was hit with the sweet reek of patchouli and sage, with some added lavender for good measure. The store was tiny and cramped, full of dark wood shelves chock full of tiny bottles and crystals, as well as glass figurines. Dean was studying the unicorn one – there was always at least one unicorn – when he heard a beaded curtain clack, and a woman's voice say, "Welcome."
He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but not what he saw. Madame Jade was a young Asian woman in her early twenties, wearing a Nirvana t-shirt and worn jeans. Her only nod to the hippy dippy lifestyle was a flowing bright green scarf that she used to tie back her long black hair. Upon seeing her, Dean wasn't so eager to fuck around with her, or at least not in a bad sense.
He tried on his best smile. "Hi. You're not the typical kind of fortune teller, are you?"
"I'd hope not. You want a reading?"
"Yeah." Anything to be close to her.
She swept open the beaded curtain with her arm. "Come in the back."
"Yes ma'am." He followed her, admiring her ass. It was the best looking thing in this place.
The back was a tiny room decorated with old art deco style fortune teller posters and crystal wind chimes, and dominated by a tiny round table with two chairs. Jade took the chair facing the doorway, so Dean had no choice but to sit with his back to the door, which was not the way he generally liked to sit in a strange place. But he had no choice.
The table was covered with a gauzy red and black cloth that looked like it could have come from Stevie Nicks's wardrobe, and as Dean took his seat, Jade busted out a pack of standard Tarot cards. "I usually don't give readings to men your age. Or men at all."
Dean shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a Renaissance man."
She smirked. "Uh huh. Twenty dollars up front."
He pulled out a twenty and tossed it on the table. He had enough cash for the next few days, and Dad had left him two credit cards, both for Elliott Brodsky. She shuffled the cards expertly, before putting the deck in front of him. "So, what's your question?" She took the twenty and tucked it in her pocket.
He grabbed the deck, which was bigger than your average playing cards, and shuffled them like he was about to scam her in a poker game. "What's my future look like? I'm curious."
Dean had done this enough that he knew this bit by heart. He shuffled the cards three times, then cut the deck, and handed the pile back to her. She started laying out the cards in a pattern he knew was called the Celtic Cross. Again, he'd been sitting in chairs like this way too many times. Although she was the prettiest fortune teller he had ever encountered.
He recognized many of the cards being laid out, and he couldn't help but chuckle. Death, The Devil, The Hanged Man, The Tower (his personal favorite), that one card with the fluffy winged angel on it, The Hermit, some assorted sword and wand cards.
She gasped, and he quickly turned, in case something ugly had stepped inside the room. But it was just them. "What is it?"
Jade gazed at him, slack jawed, wide eyed. It seemed to take her a moment to find her voice. "You poor, poor boy. You're haunted by death, aren't you? So much violence. Stop thinking it's all on you to save everybody, 'cause it isn't. Let some battles go before you're all chewed up and spit out before you're twenty. God, this is so sad. You're so sad."
Okay, that was weird. Most fortune tellers liked going on about positive and vague things, unless they wanted to scare a customer into forking over more cash for some discount hoodoo that wouldn't work. He hadn't pegged her for that kind. "What do you mean?"
"Something evil is after your family, yes? Someone's died because of it. It scarred you." She ran her hand through her hair, putting the rest of the deck down. "You aren't a hunter, are you?"
"What?" Oh shit – was she the real deal? He'd never lucked into one before.
"A demon hunter. That's what your family does, yes?"
Dean wasn't ready to lay all his cards on the table yet, metaphorically speaking. "You really believe in demons, lady?"
Her hazel eyes flashed with impatience. "Yes, and so do you, so stop trying to play it so cool, kid. I know what you are."
Dean sat back, curious. "So tell me my future."
She scoffed. "It's awash in blood and pain. You will be betrayed by people you love, you will fail, you will fall apart, you will die. I see torture and darkness."
"That's cheerful." He also felt a twinge in his stomach. It was pretty much what he expected. Hunters didn't live full and peaceful lives.
She tapped a card with her fingernail. It was the Knight of Swords. "You are strong, and brave, and tenacious as a starving dog with a bone. Too much of a smart ass and impetuous, you act before you think, but you can't have everything, can you? You'll survive longer than anyone would think was possible, including maybe you. You have an angel on your shoulder, but that won't reveal itself until you hit absolute rock bottom. You have a substance abuse problem, probably more than one. You're big into vices."
He grinned. "Guilty."
"I don't honestly know how, but I think you're going to die more than once. You are … don't take this the wrong way, but you are completely fucked up, and just fucked in general. You're loyal to a fault. I think that kills you at least once."
"You say that like it's a bad thing." She was making up that die more than once stuff, right? Selling the drama. Nobody could die more than once. Well, okay, maybe if you died on the table and were brought back or something, but he didn't see himself going under the knife any time soon.
She stared at him, her eyebrows lowering in a stern manner. "You're what, seventeen, eighteen? I know you feel invulnerable. But you're not. Far from it. How long are you in town for?"
He shrugged. "Couple of days."
"Get out now." She started sweeping up all the cards. "Something's coming, and it's not good. Get out ahead of it."
"Wait. Are you serious?"
She scowled. "I'm not making shit up. I don't care if you believe in the cards or not. You just need to get out of Desert Bluffs ASAP."
Dean shook his head. "Look, lady –"
"I think your first death is here," she said, and suddenly threw his twenty back on the table. "Take it back. Consider this a freebie."
"What?" Okay, that never happened, unless they wanted you to come back and order something more expensive, like love potions that were mostly corn syrup. "Hold on a second. You can genuinely see the future in a bunch of cards?"
"Believe it or not, some of us do exist, just like demon hunters. And I'm telling you to leave while you still can. What's your name?"
"You can't see that?"
Her frown came back, twice as deadly as before. "Funny, the cards didn't emphasize how big a dick you are."
He swallowed a grin. He deserved that. "My name is Dean."
"Fine. Dean. I am begging you to pack up and leave. Don't wait. Go now."
"What's this thing that's supposed to be coming for me?"
"I don't know. I can't give you specifics. All I can tell you is it's mean, it's ugly, and it's too much for you. I know you think you can fight anything, and maybe you can for a while, but this is like fighting a tidal wave. You can't do that, no matter how well your father's trained you."
He sat up straight at that. "Wait … is this a con? Do you know who I am?"
"Except a hunter, and a tremendous dick? No."
"Then how did you know my father trained me?"
She scoffed. "All male court cards. You have, like, zero female influence in your life. It was your mother who died, right? When you were young?"
He stood up, torn between rage and confusion. She was too good. Either she was the real thing, a genuine psychic Tarot card reader, or this was all a set up. "Are you a demon?"
She rolled her eyes, and held up her hand, where multiple bracelets jangled. He saw a pentagram, a Star of David, a crucifix, an evil eye, a Hindu symbol he'd seen before but didn't know the name of, and a rosary bead wound up like a bracelet. "And if you didn't notice, I have a devil's trap in front of the door. No demon comes in my place."
He'd missed a devil's trap? Dean took out his flask of holy water, not sure he should splash it on her or not. "Is that holy water?" she asked.
Okay, she had just hit a hundred on his creepy meter. Either she wasn't human, or she was genuinely psychic. "Yeah."
She took it out of his hand, and poured some on her own arm. She then handed it back. Nothing happened. "Satisfied?"
"I guess so." He tucked it back in his pocket. "So you're an actual psychic?"
She shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. I need the cards to help me focus my thoughts. Otherwise I just get a whole bundle of weird shit, and I don't know how to separate it. I get impressions for multiple people at once. The cards … make it all linear."
Dean still wasn't sure if he should trust her, but he found himself wanting to. His gut had stopped sending out alarm signals. "So why aren't you making a million bucks with a phone line, or pimping yourself out to celebrities or something?"
She let out a humorless laugh as she stood up and put the cards back on the table. "You think I want to tell people their future? You wanna know the truth, Dean? Nobody has a happy ending. We all die before we're ready to, and we all die with regrets. Good people die in terrible ways, and bad people die in the best way possible. Nothing is fair, and there is no justice, unless we can manufacture some ourselves. The universe is cruel, fickle, and random. And people are fucking terrible. We don't even need demons to do bad shit, we're already doing it to ourselves." Jade realized she was ranting, and paused, pinching the bridge of her nose. "I don't want to be psychic. I want to be left alone."
"So what's with the shop?"
"The visions don't take the hint and leave me alone. This is a compromise for my sanity."
Dean wasn't sure how, but then again, he wasn't a psychic. "Would it be dickish if I asked exactly what you saw about me?"
She dropped her hand and glared at him, but she threw him a bone. "I saw blood. I saw you as a ghost. I saw you screaming in a lake of fire. I saw you enveloped by a huge ball of white light. There was something about the apocalypse, but that didn't make a lot of sense. I saw you holding the dead body of your brother. I saw –"
More than anything, this sent a cold shock of terror through him. "Wait, what? Sammy?"
"That's the boy you're taking care of? Your brother?"
He nodded. "What d'ya mean you saw him dead? When? Where?"
She stared at him for a good long moment before replying. "Oh my God. You care more about him than you do you, don't you?"
"He's just a kid."
"And you're not?"
Dean was briefly puzzled by this. "No. I mean, I haven't been a kid in forever. What happens to Sam?"
"I don't know. I can only see your side of things."
"If I brought him in, could you tell?"
She continued looking at him like he was an exotic species of insect she'd just found in her salad. "It's in the future. But it also presumes you survive the next week to worry about it. Understand these are most likely probabilities. The minutest changes could spin things off in another direction. Although I had a really bad feeling about that lake of fire. That felt … inevitable."
"He doesn't die. How do I stop that?"
She held her hands open, questioning. "Death, Dean. You die first. This doesn't bother you?"
"Yeah, of course it does. But I ain't dyin', not if I hafta save Sam."
"Oh my God. Dean, you need to save yourself first. If you're dead, you can't save anyone. And to save the both of you, you need to pack up and leave now."
"Not possible. How do I fight the thing coming for me?"
She made a noise of disgust and threw up her hands. "And why can't you leave? Tell me why you can't."
"Because our Dad is coming back. We can't leave before he does."
"Yes you damn well can. I don't care where you go, but you can't stay here."
Her insistence was troubling. Also, kind of hot, but that was on the backburner. "So tell me where my Dad is, and I'll go to him."
"Where did he say he was going?"
"All he said was the desert. He didn't want me following him, but if you tell me where he is, I'll pack up Sam and leave today."
She sighed, still glaring at him like he was the most belligerent asshole imaginable, and said, "Give me your hand."
He wasn't sure how that would help, but he did. She held his hand between hers, and closed her eyes. After a moment, he asked, "Should I do something, or –"
"Shh!"
Dean knew when to shut up, so he did. She just stood there, holding his hand, but he saw her brow furrow, like she was concentrating, and suddenly she dropped his hand like it was on fire. "Oh no," she said, opening her eyes. "Oh no no no. You don't want to go where he is."
"Where is he?"
"Kid, I just said. I am not telling you. Your Dad shouldn't have left you here, but he left you for a good reason. Let's just leave it at that."
Well, there was that plan down the drain. He would have forced the issue if he knew how, but he didn't. Besides, being psychic, she might know what he was planning to do anyway. "Can you tell me anything about fighting the thing coming for us? Anything at all?"
Jade was really hot when she was angry. Also, really scary. If she was psychic, it was possible she had other mental powers he didn't want to think about. Maybe she could go Carrie or Scanners on him. "Are you getting your brother and leaving tonight? You need to promise me that first."
Dean considered lying to her, but her look was just too cutting. She would know, and it might not even be a psychic thing. "Fine, yeah, we'll go. Just give me something."
She grimaced, and looked around the room before leaving. He followed her, curtain clacking as he pushed through it. "Hey."
Jade went over to one of the shelves holding essential oils and other bottles, and picked one. "This is agrimony and scorn the earth with some cat's claw mixed in. It won't kill them, but trust me, they're not gonna like it one bit."
She gave him the bottle, and he looked at it, wondering what he was supposed to do with it. Wasn't a lot to throw. "There's not a lot here."
"They're rare herbs, kid. Give me a break. If I charged you what it was worth, you'd owe me fifty bucks."
"For a bottle of spices? That's some mark up." Dean looked around, and was about to point out he didn't see a devil's trap, when he looked up, and saw it drawn in black paint on the ceiling. Wow, they wouldn't even see that. They'd be caught in it as soon as they stepped in the door. He had to remember that. That was a neat trick.
"Use it wisely. Now get out of here before –" She suddenly gasped, and he turned back to her. But she was once again reacting to something he couldn't see.
"What?"
"Now I'm in your future. Goddamn it, Dean. Get out of here before I pack up and move back to San Francisco."
"Is that good or bad?"
"Good for you, bad for me," she said, making shooing gestures with her hands. It made her bracelets clink.
Dean took the hint and left, the brass bells jingling merrily in his wake. Once outside, he pulled out his phone, and speed dialed a familiar number as he retraced his steps to the library. He got voicemail, like he expected. "Hey Dad. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I seem to have found a genuine psychic on Conover Street, and she's adamant about us leaving town right away. So I'm gonna steal a car and take me and Sam up to Uncle Bobby's. Saying it aloud, I can't quite believe I'm doin' it either, but … she was pretty convincing. Her name's Jade, look her up."
He hung up, still wondering why he believed her. But he totally did. She really did seem freaked out by whatever she saw. But how was he supposed to die more than once? He'd have asked, but Dean could guess it would be bloody and nasty each time. How'd he come back though? He'd been dying to ask, but he had a feeling she wasn't about to tell him, any more than she'd tell him where Dad actually was.
Dean returned to the library, which was at least nicely air conditioned, and looked for Sam. When he couldn't immediately find him, he called his phone and listened for the ring in the library itself. He didn't hear it.
Dean checked his watched, just to make sure it wasn't after three yet (nope, it was one), and icy fingers of panic began to grip him. He went up to the librarian and asked if she'd seen him leave, but she was no help at all.
He called Sam's phone again, and left a message. "Sam, call me as soon as you get this. We need to get out of town now." But he had a sick feeling it was already too late. A frantic search outside the library revealed nothing. He made another call to his Dad. "Change of plans. I think they may have gotten Sammy. I'm going after them."
So he returned to the motel, hoping against hope that Sam had gone back on his own. But even though the parking lot of the Paradise was relatively clear, something had set off alarm bells in his head. He had no idea what, but Dad always told him to trust his instincts. If it felt wrong, it probably was. He made sure the cap was loose on his holy water, and took the safety off his .45. At the last second, he washed the herbs down his throat with the last of the booze in his other flask.
The sun beat down relentlessly, as it had every day they'd been in California, and Dean could feel sweat trickling down his back as he crept towards their motel room. It looked like the door was slightly ajar. His urge to call out for Sam was beaten down by the fear of tipping off someone who might have been hiding inside.
He nudged open the door, raising his gun, but the room appeared empty. Still he moved cautiously inside, and wasn't overly surprised when someone tried to slam the door on him.
Dean was shoved violently back against the jamb, but kicked out, slamming the door back where it had come from, and heard the explosive "Oof!" of air leaving someone's lungs.
He moved quickly, getting in the room and kicking the door shut as he saw who had been hiding behind it. It was just a man, early twenties, with short dirty blonde hair and a patchy goatee. "Where's Sam?" he demanded, aiming the gun at his face.
The man's eyes turned black, and he made a gesture with his hand that sent Dean flying across the room. He slammed painfully into the back wall, and fell to the floor with plaster raining down on him. He still hadn't let go of the gun.
"Dean. Haven't seen you since Taos. Still doing the gawky teenage thing, I see."
Dean hadn't caught his breath yet, and the pain in his back was excruciating, but he had to hurt the demon if he wanted to beat him. So Dean raised the gun and shot him in the kneecap.
The demon screamed and dropped to the ground, grabbing his injured leg, which pumped blood all over the beige carpet. "Oh, you motherfucking son of a bitch! What the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking psycho?"
"Where's Sam?" he demanded, using the broken wall to stand up. He had his gun aimed on the demon the whole time. Kneecapping him mainly hurt the host, not the demon, but it would limit the demon's mobility and make him lose focus, which was all in the plus column for Dean. Gun still on the demon, he reached inside his pocket for his flask.
The demon groaned in pain, holding his bloody knee. Well, what was left of it. It was a perfect center shot, and the lower half of his leg was hanging on by a few strands of sinew. "Fuck you and your one track mind, Winchester."
The door was slammed open, and a female demon was standing in the doorway, an attractive Latina with hair as black as her eyes. Dean reacted without thinking, throwing holy water from the flask, which splashed her on the face. She screamed, her flesh smoking where it made contact. He saw a big shadow behind her, a larger male demon, and started shooting as he retreated to the bathroom for more holy water.
"There's nowhere to go, Dean," another male voice called out. "You can't win this fight. Don't make us rip your arms off."
He got the bottle of holy water, and grabbed the .45 taped to the back of the toilet tank. He heard movement outside the door and shot through it, and by the agonized noise knew he'd hit someone.
The bathroom door exploded open, and the gigantic male demon wedged himself inside. He must have been in the body of a weightlifter, as he was super jacked, and six foot seven if he was a fucking inch. He had blood leaking from gunshot wounds in his shoulder and chest, but he was ignoring them easily.
Dean had shifted his aim to his legs, as that was a tried and true way to knock a demon off his game, but it was too late. The demon had closed the distance and grabbed the gun, yanking it out of his hand before backhanding Dean across the face. Dean went flying before colliding with the wall and collapsing in the bathtub.
His head was swimming, consciousness threatening to desert him, but he bit the inside of his cheek, using the sharp pain as an anchor. "What is your damage, boy?" The muscle bound demon asked. "It's over. Why are you fighting? You're just hurting yourself."
He reached down and grabbed Dean by the jacket, and that's when Dean threw the holy water in his eyes.
He screeched like a banshee and reeled backwards, smashing into the opposite wall as he clawed at his own smoking face. Dean popped the clip of his gun and slammed in another one before opening fire blindly at the door, and then shooting musclehead in the knee for good measure. Despite the fact that it too was a good shot, he was still too busy screaming and agonizing over his burning eyes to notice.
Dean was strategizing, trying to figure out if he could fit through the small bathroom window or not, when a female voice shouted over the din of his covering fire, "We have your brother! Do we lob his head in there, or do you stop?"
Goddamn it. He stopped shooting, and shouted, "If you lay a fucking hand on him I will kill each and every one of you."
A male voice replied, "Big words from a little boy."
"Come in and see, dickhead."
"Throw down the weapons and come with us," the female demon continued. "Or we leave with your brother and you never see him alive again." She sounded level headed and reasonable, which was a million times worse than bluster. She sounded like she meant it.
Dean cursed, and tried to figure out if he had any options here. Nothing good. "Let him go and I'll go with you."
"This isn't a negotiation. Either you come out now, unarmed, or we leave with him. Your choice."
Goddamn it. Dean tossed his gun on the floor, and climbed up to his feet, his brain still reeling around his skull like a hyperactive kid in a mosh pit. Musclehead could punch, he had to give him that. "Tell me he's alive."
"We haven't hurt him. Yet. But that depends on you, doesn't it?"
The woman was the leader. He also gathered she was the smartest one. She was the one he had to watch out for. The others were simply your average demons, cannon fodder. Dean made a mental note of that as he held up his open hands, and walked out of the bathroom.
The Latina was in the main room, bracketed by a redheaded woman, and an Asian man, demons all. The Latina had bright red splotches were the holy water had hit her. The demoness smirked at him. "Believe it or not, Dean, I like you. I appreciate a hard target. You'd make an awesome demon."
"Eat me, bitch."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the musclehead had recovered somewhat, even though he was limping, and one of his eyes clearly hadn't healed yet. Dean was braced for the hit, but nothing could really prepare him for the freight train of a punch he took on the back of his head. At least the pain was brief, before darkness swept him away.