Chapter 4- Of More Recent Endeavors
Didn't I say this wasn't going to take as long to write? Wow, I suck. Sorry~~~~~ Please forgive me.
"You sure you up to this? Demons are a big step from your normal ghosts and crap." Dean looked at her almost protectively, hand curled around the top of the steering wheel of his baby.
She nodded. "Don't worry, I've got this. It'll be a piece of cake." She had finally recovered from the fall, and had gotten used to being a bit powerless. She wondered if the other angels had coped as well to losing their grace. Dean had been taking her on easier hunts, but there had been a demon in the next town that he felt he should deal with.
"Geez, I wish I had your optimism," He muttered. "Anyway, come on, 'Agent Mendel.' We got some bodies to gape at so we can find this thing and gank it." The door made it's usual creaking noises, which weren't a sign of neglect, merely an indicator of it's bygone era.
"Alright, Agents. I'm not sure what exactly you could get off of what's left of the corpse," The young woman said in her irksome nasal tone, "But if you two think it's so important, by all means."
"We wouldn't be here if we didn't think looking at the corpse was important, but thanks for checking that we were a hundred percent sure we thought it was anyway." Dean said facetiously with a bright smile. The platinum-haired woman rolled her makeup-caked eyes and practically threw the autopsy report at Dean before she stalked away with the clacking that can only be associated with unbelievably high heels, checking her two-inch nails in depth. You could hear her bubblegum popping in the distance just before the large, sterile metal doors slammed shut.
"That was a little rude, no?" Elizabeth turned to him as he cracked open the folder. It smelled strongly of fruity perfume.
Dean shrugged. "Whatever. Did you see her? I don't think she could be wearing a lower-cut shirt." He rifled through the sheets inside, looking for the drawer number while he muttered something about how hookers should stick to being hookers.
The stench of sulfur permeated the inside of the drawer, making even the experienced hunter stifle a gag. "I'm not sure that they are ever getting that reek out of here." He commented, breathing through his mouth. The corpse itself wasn't an improvement. The demonic odor wafted up, tangled with the indescribably horrid stench of three-week-old rotting flesh. Flesh was most of what remained in the small plastic box keeping the remains from rolling off the metal slide-out table. Whatever bones that may have been there had been fished or torn out from layers of muscle and skin, and sat apart from the lump of epidermis.
"What the hell is wrong with demons, man?" Dean complained. "According to the autopsy, because apparently there was actually enough left for an autopsy, all the bones were torn from the body while the vic was still alive. There aren't any cut marks, and it actually goes into detail about how it looks like the bones were ripped out with sheer force." He turned a little green.
"I don't think it's worth it to play "Guess Whose Daddy Didn't Hug Them Enough When They Were Little" with demons. They're all equally bizarre." Lizzie shrugged. "Hey, are you okay?"
Dean nodded. "Oh, yeah, fine. I just love looking at decimated uni students in the morning." He flipped to another page in the report, attempting in vain to keep his mind off of the unfortunate girl. "Anyway, let's see, corpse was at one point a chick. Cute one, too. She was twenty-four, studying to be a doctor, name was Caroline."
"I used to have a friend called Caroline. I hope she didn't turn out something like this. Actually, I haven't had a chance to see her for a long time." Lizzie pondered aloud.
"Dude, you must have an iron stomach, to be inspecting a pile of body parts like that." Dean scrunched up his nose. "You're worse than Sam."
Lizzie shrugged. "Unfortunately, I've seen worse. I can't say I enjoy seeing people torn up like this, but I imagine that you'd understand if I say I've built up a tolerance to it over the years." She looked over at Dean, who nodded quietly before he looked back at the autopsy report.
"Hey," He grabbed at her pinstripe coat sleeve. "Tell me if this looks like different handwriting to you." He showed her the front page of the file, and then flipped to a later page, holding up a written-in form near the end.
"Yeah, it does look like it was written by two different people." She leaned in, her face close to the crisp paper as her eyes pored over the minor variations of the writing. She grabbed the folder out of Dean's hands, much to his protest. "There's usually a sticky in here or something if somebody gets fired during one of these, I believe. Of course, it doesn't happen often, so I'm not entirely sure." She made a small noise of satisfaction as she peeled a bright green sticky note off one of the pages. "'Fired newbie Sarah McCarthy. Boy, must she have some mental problems to sort out.' That's a little informal to stick in an official document, isn't it?" Lizzie rolled her eyes. "I don't understand some people."
"Does it say why the boss thought she had a few screws loose?"
"It makes no mention on the sticky note of why the woman's cheese had slipped her cracker. And some genius whited out all of Sarah's writing on the form. Great. I guess we'll have to ask her ourselves."
"I understand that you're here about that poor woman who got slaughtered, Agents Mendel and Grohl. What I don't understand," Sarah paused as she poured them the tea she insisted on giving them, "Is why you're asking me. Surely, they finished the autopsy report?"
"Yes, they did," Dean said smoothly. "But we'd like to hear your account too. Would you mind?"
Sarah sighed, placing the teapot on the oaken coffee table, looking as worn as the leather sofa she sat on and making a little 'oh' with her mouth. "Okay, you want the story from the girl with the bats in her belfry. I guess you heard it from that slut who works the desk whose been talking about me to everyone in town. I can't even get work at the bloody Gas-N-Sip, and they're begging for help.
"Anyway, the reason I got fired was not because I was insane. I know, insane people don't know they're insane, but I freaking swear that there weren't any bones in that box when I did the autopsy."
"There weren't any bones? Maybe somebody found them after and put them in the box when you weren't at work?" Lizzie offered helpfully.
"No, it's not possible. I locked the drawer and only the boss and I had the key. Actually, I still have the key. When I did the autopsy, there wasn't a femur in there. I swear. I went to college, I got my degree, I did my internship, I think I would know if there was or wasn't a femur in the cadaver I was inspecting. There was just a pile of flesh there. It took me an hour to rearrange it into a human shape. I wrote the report and turned it in, and I know, I swear I know that I locked that drawer. I come back in the morning to find the boss pissed at me that I missed a femur. An entire femur." She finished, out of breath with a wild look in her eyes. A strand of hair had fallen out of place and hung in front of her face.
"Wait, did you say that a femur was the only bone in that box the morning you got fired?" Dean looked at her, suddenly very serious.
"Yes, why?"
Dean shook his head. "Because, there's at least six bones in that box."
Sarah paled as she dropped the tea cup onto the rug underneath her feet, the lukewarm liquid seeping into the fibers. "Oh my god. What does that even mean? The boss is the murderer and putting extra bones in the box as a kill signature or something? Have I been working for a psycho?"
"I don't know, but I intend to find out." Dean replied, getting up. "We'll call if we need more information. Good luck on that job hunt."
"So, do you think she's a nut job or something's getting the band back together?" Dean asked as Lizzie closed the car door.
"It's hard to tell, and we have no idea if it's going to continue..." She made a vague gesture with her hands. "Doing whatever this is."
Dean sighed. "Well, I don't think it's going to start freaking out on us this minute. We may as well just check tomorrow. More importantly, I am freaking starving, so let's go find something to eat."
"Alright, I'm game with that."
"Alright, so what do we have, exactly?" Dean asked as he took his food from the skinny waitress with a flirty grin. "Because I think we need to sort some of this crap out."
Lizzie pulled a crumpled-up sheet of A4 paper she had stolen from the coroner's office out of the pocket of her jeans. She carefully flattened it out, revealing an intricate series of pen lines, featuring her flawless handwriting, perfectly drawn arrows, and square, straight boxes around tidbits of information. "Okay, so we have one dead body. I searched around, nobody has died from anything more severe than one case of the flu for months. The body was ripped apart with great force, apparently the missing bones are 'reappearing', we have no suspects as of yet, a definitely strong demon, and at least one psycho coroner."
Dean nodded as she finished. "Damn, you have neat handwriting. Actually, it looks kind of familiar..." He squinted at the page. "I swear I have seen writing like that somewhere before." He swore under his breath as his phone vibrated in his pocket. "Hello, Agent Grohl speaking." He stated flatly in his most agent-like voice as he rolled his eyes. They quickly filled with alarm though, presumably as the person on the other end of the line spoke. "Alright, we'll be right there. Don't do anything stupid, okay?" He practically jumped out of the seat, dragging Lizzie behind him.
"What happened?"
"That whore from the coroner's is getting attacked. Come on."
Dean burst through the door, gun in one hand, demon knife in the other. The secretary squeaked as the two lumbering men gripped her tighter, threatening to snap bones. Dean pointed his pistol at them. "Let her go, asshats." He sounded more exasperated than angry, but just as dangerous. They smirked as they flashed their black eyes, their hold on the blonde tightening. A crack echoed across the room and she screamed. "Now now, let's not be hasty here." He quipped, before he flung the knife in their direction. The pair of demons stiffened, bracing for the impact, but it instead flew past their heads into the hands of Lizzie, who was directly behind them. She snatched the handle out of the air and lodged the blade into the back of one of the demons. The corpse crackled as she yanked it out and shanked the other one.
Dean was there to grab the secretary girl before she fell. "You okay?"
She smiled weakly. "You weren't this nice this morning. A little bipolar, are we?"
"Hey, is that the kind of thing you normally say to the handsome men who save your truthfully good-looking ass?" Dean joked.
"Can we flirt a little later?" Lizzie asked. "I'm sorry, but even I don't want to be stuck trying to explain two extra cadavers who aren't in metal boxes."
The secretary smirked as her own eyes flashed black, flinging Dean against a wall with a flick of her wrist. "Who said anything about two? By the time I'm done, there should be five bodies in this festering, germ-ridden body fridge." Lizzie attempted to gut the blonde with the knife, but a similar hand motion sent her too flying into a wall. She whimpered as her wings crunched underneath her back, unbeknownst to the human in the room. "Oh poor you. I bet you don't like feeling powerless, huh Wonder Woman?" The demon mocked. The demon-killing knife clattered as she kicked it down the hall from where Lizzie had dropped it. "Shall I kill your little boyfriend first? Maybe I'll eat him. I hear humans are low in carbohydrates, and nice and high in fatty acids."
"Go screw yourself, bitch. I bet you're good at it." Dean grunted from behind her. "Or do you charge extra for that?"
"You have the worst survival instincts on the planet, do you know that?" The demon narrowed her eyes as she swung around to grab Dean by the throat. "Well, I guess you won't have to worry about them for much longer." She picked him up by the neck and threw him through the blind-covered window like he was a rag doll. He landed in a heap on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.
Lizzie jumped up, fast as her bruised wings would allow, and fumbled to grab the demon knife, as the demon sauntered over to Dean's crumpled form.
Dean tried to get up. That was a mistake. The demon sneered at his attempt and flicked her wrist, sending him down to the concrete once more. "Pitiful," She muttered. "Humans are so weak, yet they play with such big toys, don't you think?" She swung her arm dramatically, and a large pickup truck opposite the street from Dean made a horrifying screeching noise as it's tires scraped against the pavement. She motioned her arm again to send the vehicle barreling into Dean.
"You are a slut, aren't you?" Lizzie grumbled as she wrapped an arm around the demon's pale throat and skewered her. "Shut up for once in your life." Her body crackled and fizzed, she obviously had more juice than the previous two demons. She sneered again as she used the last of her breath to send the pickup flying across the road, which would most certainly crush the body it was heading for.
Dean attempted to get up, but he knew the vehicle was moving far too fast for him to get out of it's path. Shit. I guess this is it, huh? Of all the times I've died, this is going to be the lamest sounding. He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the inevitable blow, and the grinding sound of bending and breaking metal came as it shot a wave of fierce pain up his leg. But the pain didn't move farther up, like it should have, to pierce his chest and head and send burning stings behind his eyes. He dared open his eyes.
Dean's leg was going to be a mess. Lizzie had tried to avoid that, but her already-injured wings were too strained. She looked down at the longer flight feathers of her right wing, which laid in tatters over Dean's mangled calf. Fortunately, though, she had softened the blow enough that his kneecap was untouched, and his upper calf was probably fine, other than the gashes. Dean looked at her in confusion, then alarm. "Lizzie! Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine." The oozing cuts on her back throbbed in response.
Dean nodded, then added. "Don't do stupid shit like that."
Lizzie smirked. "Sorry, is that your job? In any case, Mr. Stupid, we should probably get out of here. I have to drive, don't I?"
Dean glanced down at his leg, grimacing. "Yeah, I'd say so. I might pass out before we get back to the car."
I'M SORRRRRYYYYYY! I've been really busy studying for ten million tests and I just haven't been able to have time to write lately. Please forgive me~~ Next chapter will come sooner I promise!
End Chapter 4