Back at the motel, Dean called Bobby to see if he knew anything that could be helpful, while Sam booted up the computer. After a brief conversation, Dean snapped his phone shut, and merely shook his head when Sam raised an inquiring eyebrow. "Bobby's never heard of it. But he did point out that if it just hatched from its egg, it's still a baby. Which means it'll be weaker, easier to kill. Hopefully."
"An egg," Sam said to himself, typing feverishly away at the laptop. "Maybe the original monster laid an egg, and it only just hatched now. We have no idea what a Piasa Bird's incubation period is like. Maybe it always takes a couple of hundred years to hatch. Or maybe––" An idea had just struck him, and he turned to Dean. "What if all that mining activity disturbed the egg? Maybe it was sort of hibernating, and if people hadn't started drilling into its cave, it would never have hatched at all."
Dean shrugged. "Could be. I'm running blind here, I got nothing. We ought to start thinking about how to kill it, though."
Sam stared blankly at the computer screen. "Yeah. I don't know. I haven't really got anything either."
"Well, let's review what we do know," Dean prompted, pulling out a chair and sitting on it backwards. "How did Big Chief and his guys kill the original one? Poisoned arrows, right?"
"Yeah."
"Modern equivalent would be poisoned bullets, I guess," Dean continued. "If that even works. We don't know what kind of poison they used, so we should probably prepare a couple of different kinds. Different poison in each weapon, and just go at it with guns blazing."
"Right, but the other problem is figuring out how to get under its wings. If what Harvey told us was right, and Chief Ouatoga let it grab him and try to fly off with him while he held onto the ground..." Sam trailed off. "That wouldn't be fun."
"No shit, Sherlock." Dean shook his head in agreement.
"At the same time, though, I don't really see any other options. I mean, the Great Spirit told Chief Ouatoga that was the only way to do it."
Dean scoffed and eyed Sam. "You seriously believe that Great Spirit stuff? Sounds to me like the guy was probably high on peyote or something."
"You didn't believe in angels, either," Sam couldn't help reminding him.
"Angels, that's an idea. If Gabriel wants to hang around us all the time, he might as well make himself useful," Dean said. "Even if one of us has to play dead for the bird, Gabriel could protect us from getting too badly hurt, or heal us afterward or something. Let's ask him. He seems pretty interested in this case so far."
"I guess so..." Sam wasn't enthusiastic.
"You pray to him, I think he's got a crush on you," Dean suggested.
Sam gave his brother his best bitchface and then closed his eyes, trying to ignore the feelings that Dean's words had stirred up. "Um, Gabriel..." A crush? Did Dean really think that? Or was he just joking? Sam shook his head slightly and said in a louder tone of voice: "Gabriel, if you're around, we could use your help. We need to kill the bird and we're not sure how to do it. So any advice you have would be really appreciated." He swallowed and added "Please."
After a moment or two of utter silence, Sam opened his eyes to see nothing but his brother giving him an unreadable look. "No dice, huh?"
Dean shrugged. "He's probably busy holding up a candy store or something."
Neither of them wanted to admit it, but they had reached a bit of an impasse, and it looked like they couldn't move forward without Gabriel's help. As he was wont to do, Sam immersed himself in research as a distraction, but Dean started getting antsy after a while and couldn't hang around the motel room anymore. Claiming that he was going to get food, he headed out, and Sam kept reading up on the Piasa Bird. There were quite a few websites about it, including several different versions of the legend, but Sam suspected he'd read them all by now.
With a sigh, he closed the laptop and rubbed his eyes, tired of staring at the screen for hours without getting any useful information. It was really looking like their only option was to reenact Chief Ouatoga's story, as horrible as the prospect seemed. Then an idea struck Sam: what if the bird didn't only eat human flesh? What if it might be tempted by another type of meat as well?
By the time Dean got back a few hours later, Sam had regained his enthusiasm for the case. He explained his idea to Dean, stumbling over his own words in his excitement, and was flooded with pride when he saw Dean's raised brows and pursed lips, his rare expression of approval. "It's worth a shot. Let's head up there first thing tomorrow, huh?"
***
Hannah had been taken in broad daylight, which was a relief for the Winchesters – it was a pleasant change to find a job where they didn't have to work at night. They drove straight back to the scene of the attack, parking at the camping site that the young pair had hiked out from. On his last visit, Sam had noticed a large picnic table at the site, benches chained to it to dissuade vandals, and that was an important facet of his plan. From the back of the Impala, they lifted out a huge packet of meat: raw and bloody steak, about ten pounds of it. It had been expensive, and Sam hoped that the amount would be enough to attract the bird.
After wrapping the meat securely in thin but practically unbreakable nylon rope, Dean tied it to the picnic table using one of his famously foolproof knots. Now, when the bird flew down to take the meat, it would only be able to rise about three feet into the air again before the rope would pull taut and it would (hopefully) be unable to lift the heavy table and benches off the ground. Even if it was strong enough to do so, the added weight would be a surprise for it, and Dean and Sam could use the few moments of confusion to take aim at the vulnerable underwing area.
After the relatively simple trap had been set up, the brothers checked and rechecked all their weapons. Bobby had advised them that just dipping regular bullets in poison wouldn't work, because the heat and friction when the bullets were fired would burn away the chemicals. Instead, he told them to empty out some salt rounds and fill them with shrapnel and poison. When the two young hunters admitted that they weren't very well stocked with poison, Bobby had called them idjits and told them they were lucky to have him, because he had connections. Right in St. Louis, he happened to know, there was an old ex-hunter who really knew his way around poisons and always had plenty of illegal stuff lying around. Thanks to Bobby calling in a favor with his old friend, Sam and Dean were now frighteningly well-equipped with various types of poison. They had loaded the "poison rounds" into two handguns and two rifles. Can't be too careful with unfamiliar creatures.
Now, the waiting began. To be honest, Sam admitted to himself, there wasn't even a very large chance that the bird would show. It had just killed five days ago, and might not yet be hungry again. Or it could be hunting somewhere else. Their chances were slim, but they had nothing else to go on.
As it happened, they were in luck. Around one in the afternoon, after four hours of progressively fraying tempers (Dean hated nothing more than to stand around doing nothing), Sam was startled out of a daydream by a large shadow passing over him. He looked up so fast he felt a twinge in the back of his neck, but there was nothing there. "Dean," he hissed.
The two of them were sitting on the ground leaning against the car, which Dean had pulled right up to the side of the camping site's main clearing. "Hmph?" The combination of Dean's wider-than-normal eyes as he met Sam's gaze and the total silence that had been coming from his direction for the past few minutes left no doubt that he had been dozing, but Sam didn't call him on it. Instead, he pointed upward.
"It's here. Or it was, just a second ago. I'm pretty sure it flew over."
"Did you see it?"
"No, but there was a really big shadow that passed over the clearing."
Dean rubbed his eyes briefly and clambered to his feet. "Come on, let's get behind the car. We don't want it coming down here for steak and then changing its mind and going for human instead when it sees us." Sam followed his brother without a word, his hands sweaty on the rifle.
They were barely concealed between the Impala and the thicket at the edge of the clearing before the next flyover took place, and this time there was no mistaking it. "Holy shit," Dean breathed as they caught sight of the low-flying creature.
It was almost nothing like the picture, although from what Sam could see, it did appear to have the mixed-up body parts as described: a lithe dark body with an eagle's talons and huge wings, as well as small stubby protrusions on its head which Sam guessed were the antlers. He hadn't gotten a good look at its human face, and he was kind of glad for that. It flew awkwardly, wings seeming too large for its pony-sized body. "I thought it would be bigger," Sam whispered.
"It's just a baby, remember?" Dean replied.
"Yeah." Sam felt an unexpected pang of guilt. Sure, the monster was nasty-looking and bloodthirsty, but after all, it was just an animal trying to survive.
In the next few seconds, that feeling was completely erased, as several things happened at once.
In the distance, the creature made a wide and shaky turn above the treetops, clearly planning to come in for the kill on the meat this time. At the same time, a flash of blonde hair from the other side of the clearing caught Sam's eye, and a young woman wearing a backpack emerged from the mouth of the hiking trail. She looked exhausted and was heading for the picnic table, but stopped when she saw the huge lump of tied-up meat. Lifting her eyes, she caught sight of the Impala and the two men with rifles lurking behind it, and her mouth dropped open. Above her, the Piasa was swooping down for the kill, and this time Sam could see its face clearly. There was no beard like in the painting. This was a young face, eerily reminiscent of a chubby blank-eyed toddler, with a mouth too large for the face showing rows of sharp teeth. The monster's outsized wings flared out to brake its descent as its gigantic talons reached hungrily forward, now clearly aiming for the girl rather than the lump of meat.
Sam didn't think. Still holding his rifle, he leapt around the car and dashed across the clearing, throwing himself on top of the young woman, knocking her to the ground. The next instant, he felt blaring pain as sharp talons dug into the muscle of his shoulders. He knew it would be almost completely ineffectual from this position, but he still attempted to thrust the butt of his rifle back up at the monster to fend it off. He heard a shot from nearby and then felt the painful grip increase as his body lifted awkwardly into the air, one foot, two, three...
The rifle slipped out of his grasp and fell on top of the girl who was still lying on the ground, now a few feet below him. Sam felt himself swaying in the monster's grip, but the pain was so intense he couldn't even struggle. He saw the girl's horrified face, her mouth wide open in a silent scream, and her hands automatically lifting to take hold of the rifle. She struggled with it, trying to aim it upwards, and Sam almost laughed through the haze of pain and confusion when he realized she was going to try to shoot the monster. Or possibly him. Either way, from this angle it was more likely the bullet would end up in him rather than the Piasa. He shook his head weakly and heard the sound of another shot, a handgun shot this time. Must be Dean. Suddenly the ground was rushing up at him, and Sam winced in anticipation of the rough landing, but darkness slid across his vision and the impact never came.
***