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The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.
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A Wandering Boy
Chapter 14
A Different Kind of Hunt
From Chapter 13
First of all," Sam answered. "I'm not going anywhere. Dean is more important than my desire for solitude. I can go whenever but all I will be thinking about is Dean in danger. We need to settle this before I even think of leaving. What do you think we should do, Bobby?"
"The first thing should be to tell Sheriff Mills that she has a possible predator stalking kids at the elementary school." Bobby said. "Maybe she knows something. If she doesn't have anything then we'll need to draw this guy out for her and identify him. I'm thinking maybe we need to set a trap."
Bobby looked at Dean very seriously. "Immediately through I don't want Dean walking around unarmed. The kid should at least have a knife on him. Right now he's as harmless as a baby deer. We need to give the kid some bite."
Chapter 14
The family moved away from the kitchen table into Bobby's library. Castiel kept his hand on Dean's shoulder, worried that the little boy might possibly be more frightened than he appeared. Yes, Dean had been raised a Hunter's son but that didn't mean he was fearless. He had learned to bury his fears, to hold then down and be brave but even so that didn't mean he couldn't feel the pain of those emotions. It only meant that he had learned to hide the pain from others.
When they resettled into the other room Sam held his hand out to Dean hoping the child would come to him. It bothered Sam that Dean turned to Castiel first for protection. It was an understandable choice but Sam took it as his fault that the boy made the choice without even thinking about it. Sam was aware that he appeared to be a closed off emotionless dick.
His walls had been erected initially to protect him from his father's cruelty. They were now so thick that no one could breach them, even when Sam wanted to let another person in. The desire for the warmth of love and friendship had been extinguished for so long Sam didn't know how to relight the fires. Bobby was the only person who had been allowed a few small glimpses of the lost child inside Sam. Now Sam was hoping to allow Dean and possibly Castiel to scale the ramparts. Sam took another glance at Dean resting with such confidence in the Angel's arms and the Hunter felt a pang of an almost unrecognizable emotion, jealousy.
Castiel noticed Sam's aborted gesture and bent forward to whisper in Dean's ear. "Dean, go over to Sam. I think he needs you."
It was the perfect thing to say to Dean. The boy was not easily ordered to do something but an appeal to his protective side was always successful. Dean had ignored Sam's hand only because he felt safe and comfortable in Castiel's arms.
The boy studied Sam's face and recognized a fellow sufferer. The man's face was still and expressionless and his eyes were cold and empty as an artic field. Dean thought he just might be able to crack Sam's icy mask of indifference and these were heavy thoughts for a ten year old. Most ten year old boys were too much concerned with themselves to want to ease another's pain but Dean was not an average boy. His copy of John Winchester had not had time to beat all the empathy out of his son.
Dean untangled himself from Castiel's arms and moved over the stand beside Sam. He rested his forearm on the arm of Sam's chair and waited for Sam to make the first move. Dean treated the man as he would have treated a frightened animal. He made no sudden moves and asked for nothing. Sam finally reached out, laid his arm across Dean's back and hung his hand on the boy's shoulder. It was enough for both of them. It wasn't a particularly comfortable stance but it was a start.
During all the by-play Bobby had been digging through the drawers of his desk. The older Hunter finally found what he was looking for and laid a knife on the desk. It was a pretty thing, all silvery and smooth. It was a thin and light knife, almost feminine in its deadly way; a knife for a lady or possibly a child.
"Dean," Bobby said. "I have to find an ankle sheath to fit you but this is now your knife. Have you ever worked with a knife?"
"Yea, I think I must have." Dean said. Sam had leaned forward and picked the knife off Bobby's desk and handed it to the boy. "It feels familiar."
The boy balanced the knife in his hand then flipped it and caught it by the point, definitely preparing for a throw.
"Hey, hey," Bobby huffed. "No knife throwing in the house. You and Sam can go outside and practice on something better than my couch cushions or my walls. I have to hunt up and modify that ankle sheath for you."
Bobby looked at his wall clock. "Why don't you guys go out a practice a bit before it gets dark? I'm going to trying and reach the Sheriff. We can talk later about what to do tomorrow to keep Dean and his friends safe from this guy."
Dean, Sam and Castiel all picked up and went outside to catch the last of the sunlight and to watch Dean complete twenty foot throws into the defenseless bark of one of Bobby's trees. If was very obvious that the little boy had been trained and trained well.
Dean had accompanied his throws with a stream of consciousness ramble about what he was killing. "Take that!" he yelled as he released the knife. When it struck and sunk into the wood he danced and celebrated his 'kill' of a black dog or a werewolf or a flying night predator. Sam and even Castiel joined in the game, calling out the names of monsters that the little boy killed and they all dissolved in laughter as the boy's kills became bigger and bigger and even more impossible.
By the time the sun set they were all laughing and windblown. The night was settling in and Dean's fingers were getting cold. None of them were really dressed for a nippy South Dakota night. When Sam called a halt to the game and they headed for the house there were no arguments.
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The windblown group clattered through the front door, still talking and laughing. Even the Angel seemed to be enjoying himself.
Sam called out "Hey Bobby, where are you?' The older Hunter's voice came from the kitchen. They found him brewing a new pot of coffee. On the stove a pot of hot chocolate steamed away.
"Did you get the Sheriff on the phone?" Sam asked as he carefully filled a mug with hot chocolate for Dean. Handing it off to the boy Sam moved over to wait for the coffee, leaning on the counter next to Bobby.
"Yes, I talked to her." Bobby answered. "She checked out that license number and came up with a sixty eight year old woman named Ruth Bader. Sheriff Mills has gone to talk to the lady to find out who she's been loaning her truck to."
"The Sheriff is going to call us back and let us know if she's found the guy. Even if she does, nothing's happened yet so all she can do is warn him off. Now that the guy is on the Sheriff's radar she's going to check around and see if she can find any unsolved child abductions that she can link to him."
"Right now it's just a warning so we'll have to take care of guarding the kids ourselves until Sheriff Mills finds some reason to arrest him. She's going to tread lightly so not to scare him off. When she talks to Mrs. Bader she's going to say that her truck was seen at an accident and they want to know if the driver witnessed the crash."
"I have a suggestion," Castiel spoke. "I could take on the task of driving the boys back and forth to school until this man is caught."
"I don't know, Castiel," Sam said. "That might work for a week or so but what if the Sheriff can't connect this guy to anything?"
"What if we guard our four boys and he switches to another kid? How would we feel if our kids are safe and some other family loses theirs?" Sam went on.
"We need to get this guy off the streets." Bobby added. "Let's give the Sheriff a day or two and see what she can turn up. If nothing happens then I say that we turn this into a hunt. There's the three of us and, if necessary, I can call a couple of other guys in for a day or two. I can probably even find some guys with kids who would be happy to help. The only bad part would be that we're going to have to use the kids as bait."
"Alright," Sam said and stretched his arms over his head and yawned. "For now we're going to take care of our four boys by driving them for a day or two. That shouldn't scare the guy off. It's happened before. We'll give the Sheriff the next two days, Thursday and Friday and If she can't help then we get a hunt set up starting Monday morning. "
Dean turned to Sam. "Do you think that maybe I could bring Kerman and Jerry home with me on Friday night to stay the weekend? Could you teach them how to handle a knife? We'd all get kicked out of school if we got caught but I sort of don't want to be the only one out that who's armed. I would feel safer if I knew they could help too."
Bobby snorted into his coffee. "This guy's not going to know what hit him at this rate. Let's hope that Jody come up with something before we end up arming the entire fifth grade."
"I don't think it's a very good idea, anyway." Sam said. "If Dean ends up stabbing the guy he has his redneck family to back him up. If the other kids start showing up with knives we are going to end up with a huge can of worms."
Castiel couldn't hold it in any more. "We are rednecks? What are rednecks? And where are we going to get a can of worms? Why would someone give us a can of worms? I do not understand this conversation."
"Calm down, Castiel." Bobby laughed. "I'll try to explain to you later what a redneck family might be but for right now just remember that no one would be surprised if they found a knife on Dean and then found out his family lives in a salvage yard. They would call us rednecks. The idiom "a can of worms" simply means a lot of trouble."
Sam turned back to his interrupted conversation with Dean, "Why don't you go on and invite your friends over for the weekend? We can at least teach them some defensive moves." Sam laughed. "I can even teach them how to take down a full grown man if there's a groin cup around here somewhere,"
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The next day Sam took the Impala and picked up Dean's friends for school. He had not really considered what it might mean to have four pre-teens in the car. They were four very intelligent and curious little boys. They asked question after question about the Impala and were very impressed when they found out the car was forty seven years old.
"That's older than my Dad," Jerry exclaimed.
"That's most likely older than any of your parents." Sam said, trying to stun the kids into silence. It didn't work and he ended up listening to a squabble about whose parents were the oldest followed by another argument about whose parents were the youngest which Dean won hands down with Sam's twenty four."
One of the boys sat still for a while and did some quick calculations.
"Mr. Winchester," finally Kerman asked "were you really just fourteen when Dean was born?"
The immensity of this statement struck home when they boys all realized they would be fourteen in just a very few years. Sam felt the back of his neck heating up but there was nothing he could say except "Yes."
His answer was greeted with a universal "Wow" and the back seat of the Impala got pretty quiet. Dean sat in the shotgun seat and just grinned at his very embarrassed Dad.
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On Friday afternoon Ruth Bader's son Jerry sat in his mother's white truck, out in the street watching for the little boys to walk to the bus. He was tense and frustrated. The prize and his group of pals had not paraded by Jerry yesterday afternoon. The man missed his green eyed boy. Long after the scheduled departure time for the bus the boys had not appeared and the man took a chance. He went to the Elementary School and drove past the entrance.
He was thinking that he might get lucky and find the boys standing outside waiting for rides after missing the bus. He built up an entire scene in his mind where the prize consented to get into the truck when offered a ride home.
The boys were nowhere in sight and he drove home disappointed and furious. He never even noticed the Police car following him. Once in the house he had ignored his mother's questions about dinner and had locked himself in his room. He laid on his bed with his pants down, fisting himself and running his fantasy over and over on the movie screen behind his eyelids.
He imagined green eyes pulling himself up into the truck, grateful for the offer of a ride and chattering out the directions to the Salvage yard. Jerry smiled at turning off the road and ignoring the boy's objections. By the time they pulled up in from of the closed motel the little prize knew something was seriously wrong and tried to escape. Jerry swept the child up in his arms and carried him to the room in back where he had everything all set up.
At this point in the fantasy Jerry became more and more excited. He almost could taste the child's sweet flesh. He visualized tearing off the boy's clothing and running his hands over the delicate limbs. Every inch of the child was his and he sucked bruises into the fragile skin while his hands explored all the secret, hidden places.
At the height of his fantasy, visualizing the rape of the virgin body Jerry exploded in organism all over himself, his bed and his clothes. For the first time in hours he was at peace. His tension drained away but he knew it would be back. Lying there in his mess he decided that tomorrow was the day. It would be Friday and with any luck he would have days to play with his prize before he had to kill the little darling, hide the body and come back home. As he thought about the child's death he felt his arousal starting up. He closed his eyes again and watched he scene play out in his mind as he reached for his dick once more.
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It was Friday afternoon. Jerry was so excited he was almost vibrating. Parked in his usual place at the corner near the bus stop he waited breathlessly for the prize to appear. Just like Thursday he waited and waited but the boys didn't come by. He put out a hand to quiet the puppy he had picked up at the pound earlier to use as a lure.
He intended to let the dog out of the truck to run in the street when the kids came by. He was sure it would be the prize that would bring the puppy back to the truck. The prize was the leader of his little gang. He was sure to take charge of the dog. Jerry would entice the kid into the truck to continuing petting the animal. Then he would take off and all his dreams would become real.
He became impatient when the boys didn't appear and he started the truck and drove towards the school. As he turned to cruise in front he saw the boys getting onto a big, dark mean-looking muscle car. The boys all climbed in to the back as there were two men in front.
If Jerry had a gun he would have shot the driver and tried to take the kids. As he drove slowly by the car glaring at the men he noticed that the guy in the passenger seat was staring at him. Even from the distance of six or more feet he could see the incredible color of the man's eyes. There were a intense clear blue and seemed to pierce him to his soul. He turned his head away concerned that the guy would read his intensions on his face.
Jerry hit the gas and drove back to the bus stop. He knew he had lost the prize. It was more pain than he could stand and right then he decided that he simply could not wait any longer. He might not have been able to win his prize but there were other sweet pieces of unguarded flesh walking the streets. Passing a clump of young boys he pulled to the end of the block and pushed the dog out the door. This was it. Whoever picked up that dog would take the place of his lost prize. He couldn't bear the tension one more minute.