A CHILL IN THE AIR
Chapter 8
Dean learns more about his ordeal, but has he learned the lesson he needs to learn? Sam and Bobby aren't optimistic.
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"Well, basically dude, you got your ass royally kicked by a faerie."
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Dean sat on the bed and stared up at Sam for an age. He stared for so long that Sam felt the overwhelming desire to blink on his behalf.
"Faerie?"
Sam nodded, taking a sip from his coffee; "yeah that's right."
Dean turned abruptly and stared across at Bobby for the same eyeball-shrivelling length of time.
"As in … like, faerie?"
Bobby shrugged, "'less you know of any other kind?"
Dean turned back to Sam, his face wearing an expression that hovered somewhere between wide-eyed bewilderment and embarrassed indignation.
"I got pasted by a friggin' smurf?"
Sam tried hard to check the snort of laughter that was threatening to escape by remembering that only hours ago his brother was lying in a hospital bed dying, and that they had no guarantee that Dean was completely safe from faerie retribution yet, but for the moment he couldn't deny he was enjoying this just a tiny little bit.
"Well it was blue," he replied casually.
Dean's eyes narrowed dangerously.
"But no dude, it wasn't a smurf, it was a faerie," he corrected Dean; "but if it's any consolation, it was a goddamned powerful one."
Dean turned to Bobby who nodded in enthusiastic agreement; "yup, real powerful, and damned dangerous."
Hesitating briefly, Dean shook his head.
"No, you're wrong," he stated belligerently, folding his arms across his chest; " I've been chewed on by zombies, cursed by witches and battered to hell and back by evil spirits. I've seen off the worst the supernatural world has to offer; and I've ganked 'em all." He set his face in the classic Dean Winchester 'you're-talkin'-crap' scowl, daring Sam and Bobby to disagree with him. "I ganked 'em all and I would not let myself get totalled by some pint-sized sparkly asshole with butterfly wings and a tiara."
"There weren't any butterfly wings or tiaras bro'," Sam explained, hoping that he might be able to salve Dean's bruised ego; "It was Jack Frost."
Dean's mouth moved but no sound came out.
Sam nodded and expanded the story; "you pissed off Jack Frost, dude, a real bad thing to do," he hesitated as if the memory was distressing to recall; "he got his faerie magic hooks into you, and was slowly freezing you to death. It was horrible, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it."
Dean's frown deepened as he looked up at Bobby; "Jack Frost?"
Bobby let out an exasperated huff as he nodded, "yeah Jack Frost. Jeez boy, you're a bit slow on the uptake today, ain't ya?"
"Well excuse me," snorted Dean indignantly, "my mind is apparently only just defrosted an' it's just trying to process the fact that I lost a title fight with a friggin' faerie who turned out to be Jack Frost." He glared at the older man; "what next, Frosty the goddamn Snowman?"
His head swivelled back in Sam's direction. "You told me Jack Frost was a friggin' nursery rhyme or fairytale or whatever the crap it was."
Sam shrugged sheepishly, "sorry, dude, what can I say? I was wrong."
Dean sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair, wearily; "okay, so let's assume for a moment that you two aren't talking complete gonads and that all this all really did happen."
"Assume away;"Sam gestured for Dean to continue.
"What the hell did I do to deserve getting my ass kicked by Jack friggin' Frost?"
"Well, you did call him a faerie douchebag," Sam began; "then you said he should go and screw himself."
Dean shrugged; "and?"
"And you said you'd like to gank him, and that he could shove his friggin' 'pretty' snow and his crappy ice and his sparkly douchewad snowflakes up his ass."
Dean still looked unmoved.
"Spiky blue ass, I believe you called it," Sam corrected himself; "oh, and you said he was a gold-plated dick."
Dean stewed moodily; "some people are just way too friggin' sensitive," he snorted.
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Bobby sighed; "the thing you need to understand about faeries," he explained, anxious to make Dean understand what he was up against; "is that they aren't pink and sparkly, nor do they have butterfly wings, they don't wear tiaras, they don't live at the bottom of your garden, and worst of all, the little bastards don't freakin' die if you say you don't believe in them."
Dean considered Bobby's words. "Not smurfs then?"
Bobby flicked an exasperated look between the Winchesters, "no, not friggin' smurfs," he snapped; "pin ya goddamn ears back an' listen y'idjit - I'm tryin' to keep your sorry ass alive."
Dean grinned as Bobby rolled his eyes irritably; baiting Bobby was such good sport.
"Faeries are mercurial, unpredictable little sonsofbitches. Like nature, they're volatile, they can be calm and placid one day, and kickin' up a storm to cause nothin' but death and destruction the next day."
Sam couldn't help but silently reflect that Bobby had just described Dean.
He was jolted out of his thoughts when Dean spoke up again; "okay so they're bad news, I get that."
"Not jus' bad news," Bobby replied "they're elusive and secretive and you know as well as I do, that makes 'em dangerous. There's hardly any lore about them, and what lore there is has been bastardised over years by the popular culture idiots who have turned them into these nauseating little pink jokers that you were thinkin' of."
Bobby warmed to his theme; "they are malicious, devious, spiteful little dicks and they don't give a spit for human life," he snorted; "and they are seriously up their own ass. They expect to be treated with respect, an' so what you don't do if you value your life and your sanity," he glared at Dean; "is call them douchebag, dick, douchewad and tell them to stick their snowflakes up their ass you friggin' idjit."
Dean looked down into his lap, admonished, and scowled sheepishly. Sam and Bobby both hoped he'd finally got the message; faeries are code red dangerous.
"Well, what about this Jack Frost jerk, then," Dean grumbled sourly; "did we gank the little skank?"
Sam and Bobby both sighed in exasperation. Seemingly not.
"Nope," Bobby replied, "there's no proven way to kill a faerie; they're immortal so far as we know. What we've done is shielded you from him."
Dean's furrowed brow asked the question.
"Jack frost is a type of Faerie called a Winter Sprite," Bobby began; "they're real powerful; basically they control winter - him and winter are one and the same element."
"He must be friggin' busy," Dean mused; "It's winter all over the world; hasn't he got anything better to be doing than hauntin' my goddamn ass?"
"There's not just one Winter Sprite, they're a race of faeries; there's loads of them," Bobby replied; "our culture has just given them the name Jack Frost 'cause … well, I don't friggin' know why, we just have!"
"An' it seems that you've made a serious enemy of the one that's active round these parts," Bobby added curtly.
"Stupid blue freak," Dean grumbled under his breath.
"An' you ain't winnin' any brownie points to rectify the situation," Bobby snapped.
"So, how have you 'shielded' me?" Dean changed the subject.
"We're all shielded," Sam spoke up; "Bobby's got a contact who knows about this sort of stuff, and he said the only thing powerful enough to see off these Winter Sprites is springtime. So he made up a mixture of all different elements of spring; rising sap, crocus pollen, newborn lambs blood, and we've all drunk it."
"Oh …" Dean looked up at him, a broad grin stretching across his face; "man, that is inspired! Hi-octane bug repellent."
Bobby rolled his eyes; "can it princess, you're not out of the woods yet. We don't know how long this 'shield' lasts, and we're fairly sure old Jack ain't gonna just back off and leave you alone. What little lore does exist all points to the fact that these things bear grudges; they're immortal – they can wait. So you two have got to get the hell out of dodge just in case it wears off soon, and you find yourself Jack Frost's bitch again."
Dean frowned as he drained his coffee; "no wonder I always hated friggin' winter."
"An' you ain't exactly gone out of your way to make amends since we got you out of the hospital," Bobby warned darkly; "in fact you've probably given him enough goddamned material to take out another friggin' vendetta on ya!"
"Tomorrow morning," Bobby continued; "soon as sun up, I'd suggest you an' me whe get our asses out there and get the Impala up an' running then head south until we can figure out what to do next."
Dean nodded enthusiastically; "an' then I can get my birthday or at least a couple of days after it, in Florida," he rubbed his hands in glee; "bring it on - Jack frost can't follow us down there."
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A hazy winter dawn filtered weakly through the room's thick net curtains, the grey light stung Sam's eyes as they opened after a long, but disturbed night's sleep.
Bobby's words had struck hard and Sam's initial relief that Dean was recovered from his ordeal had been washed away by his annoyance that Dean wouldn't take the faerie threat seriously, and concern that in his bull-headed stubbornness, he either couldn't or wouldn't see the potential danger that he had gotten himself into.
He glanced at his watch and the slim black hands told him it was almost 8.30 am.
Rolling over, he caught sight of Bobby sprawled out asleep on the couch, his right arm dangling over the edge of the cushions, fingertips coiled in the dusty, threadbare carpet.
He heaved himself up on one elbow and glanced across to the other bed, and saw immediately that it was empty.
"Dean?"
"Blinking, he heaved himself up on one elbow to look across at the bathroom. The door was wide open, the room unlit; Dean obviously wasn't in there.
"Dean? Where the hell are you?"
A brief bolt of alarm drilled through his chest. It couldn't be ... not the Winter Sprite? Was it back? It hadn't done something even worse to Dean?
He reached for his phone, and promptly dropped it in shock as the sudden throaty roar of an engine broke the silence, waking Bobby who let out a violent snort as he tumbled off the couch.
The door was flung open and Dean stepped through, arms loaded with a toolbox and a lantern, huffing as he stamped a crust of trampled snow off of his boots. A fresh rosy glow burned across his cheeks and a glistening dewdrop swung merrily to and fro off the end of his pink nose.
"Listen to that," he sighed, wiping his nose on the back of his hand and glancing back outside toward the growl of the engine; "sweet, sweet music. I got my baby fixed and warming up; she's ready to hit the road and find me some decent weather for my birthday."
"C'mon let's go and melt Jack Frost's skanky blue ass!"
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tbc