Cassie hissed and bit into her lower lip to keep from crying out as Sam used the tweezers to pluck the last piece of glass from her back. The shard clinked along the metal sides of the bowl. He apologized for the pain as he began to apply iodine to her lacerated skin. She gripped the towel over her chest more firmly and squeezed her eyes shut, but did not cry out, even though it hurt like hell.
"Cassie, I don't know if you're ready to hear this, but that wasn't my brother."
Sam's words rolled around and bounced off the already stressed walls of Cassie's mind for a few minutes before she asked, "Who was it?"
"I don't know." Sam answered honestly. He was still piecing together what he had seen in his dream with what had happened in real life.
The dream had been an unbearably vivid vision of Dean hacking away at Cassie with an ax, while the golden haired, green eyed child watched. But what had been most chilling was that it didn't feel like it was a premonition of the future. It had felt like it was happening now. That was what had caused him to skulk outside of their bedroom door until he heard the commotion inside.
"Shapeshifter?" Cassie ventured, using the same word Dean had said.
Sam had flipped through the book he'd given her. It covered satanic ritual, exorcisms and witchcraft. There hadn't been anything about shifters. Cassie knew more than she had let on.
Sensing Sam's reticence, Cassie explained, "Dean told me you guys dealt with one here, not long ago. Could it be that?"
She seemed shaken up, but stable. Rational. Fearless. It made Sam strangely proud. "Well, it couldn't be that one, but maybe a relative."
"And it…" She covered her mouth, "How do I know when I was with Dean and when it was that thing?"
"You can't worry about that." He tried to reassure her, but the question made him wonder whether the attacker in his dream was his brother or the shifter. It also raised the question of whether the kid was really Dean's. This was getting more complicated by the second. "We're going to find it. You stay here. Don't leave. Don't do anything until I get back. Okay?"
Cassie was on the verge of defying his orders for the sake of asserting her independence and nodded instead. As he stood up to leave, she called out, "Sam."
He stopped, "Yeah."
"How will I know it's you?"
It was a good question. Her mind was incredibly clear. Even he and Dean hadn't thought of that the first time they'd dealt with the shifter. But it wasn't an easy thing to tell either. The last one had assumed Dean's persona. It even had access to his memories. It was downright terrifying how much like his brother it had been. Finally, something occurred to him. "Your phone."
"Call you?" Cassie frowned, unimpressed by the suggestion.
"No. Make me look through your phone. If my eyes are weird in any way, it's not me. If I refuse, it's not me. Same thing applies to Dean."
Once again, she steeled her nerves, took a deep breath and nodded.
Sam gave a weak smile and caressed her hair for just a second. "It's going to be okay."
He stepped from the apartment armed with a gun and a knife. The first order of business was to find his brother. Then, find whatever was impersonating him and kill it.
"Hey, Sammy." Dean answered on the second ring. He sounded winded, but not terribly upset.
"Where the hell are you?" Sam growled.
"Calling on a neighbor."
He could almost hear the smile in his brother's voice.
CHAPTER 14
Entering the dark apartment, Sam held his gun in one hand, flashlight in the other and followed the sounds of grunts and blows. He bowed to take a closer look at a large stick in a terrarium. All of a sudden, it became a snake and struck at the glass. Sam jumped back with a shout. From the other room, Dean called, "Sam?"
Catching his breath, but heart still pounding, Sam replied, "Yeah."
He stepped cautiously into a dim bedroom where Dean was standing over someone. All Sam could see were a man's bare legs. His brother groaned with the effort of throwing another punch and then, grinned up at his younger brother. Dean stepped back, revealing a bound, naked and bleeding version of himself sitting on the floor. Sam fumbled to keep from dropping his flashlight.
"Hey. Welcome, Sammy. Me and Bryce are having the most interesting talk." A crowbar hung loosely from the standing Dean's left hand.
Sam froze, wide-eyed and caught completely off guard. He gawked for a moment, erratically swinging his gun between the two Deans, entirely unsure of what to do. Keeping the gun trained on the most threatening Dean, he fumbled in his pocket for his cellphone as the standing Dean made an annoyed face.
The Dean on the floor looked up at him through bloody, half-lidded eyes and smirked. "Crowbar. I know. Kinky, right?"
"Dean?" Sam peered through the phone at both of them. The standing Dean's eyes were normal, but then, so were the eyes of the bloody Dean on the floor.
"What? What is your problem? It's me allright. Get that thing out of my face." Standing-Dean, Dressed-Dean, Pissed and Characteristically Insolent-Dean rolled his eyes and swatted at Sam's phone, "Come on, man. Get it together." He smacked the back of his little brother's head.
Still, the younger brother stammered, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing. "Uh. Sorry, he… you don't see that?"
"See what?" Dean looked down at his handiwork. With his face all swollen and busted, this fucker wasn't looking so pretty anymore and that was enough to put a little grin on Dean's face.
Sam, however, was still frowning between them. "He looks … It's you. You don't see that?"
Standing-Dean obviously wasn't seeing what Sam was seeing. That was not comforting.
"Say something." Sam spoke to the bloodied Dean on the floor.
Bryce smirked as his voice and face instantly morphed from Dean's into Jessica's. "What should I say, Baby?"
"Oh God." Sam stumbled back and stumbled over the foot of the bed. He couldn't get far enough fast enough.
To Dean, that was a pretty big overreaction for being called Baby, even by this creep. "What the hell is wrong with you?" He asked without turning to check on his clumsy oaf of a brother.
Sam groaned, unable to take his eyes off his beautiful, long dead girlfriend whose grinning face was bloodied and beaten.
Jess pressed her busted lips together. Her cheeks puffed up and she broke into gut busting laughter before turning back into Bryce. "You two are fucking hilarious. What a pair of stooges."
"What is it?" Sam barely breathed the question, still staring with unblinking eyes.
A shapeshifter, at least the kind they had encountered, was much slower and much messier than this.
Dean shook his head. "I don't know. Some kind of evil bastard. He made me… Made me hurt her. Made me think I was fucking insane."
"Wait. That was you?" Sam's mouth fell open.
"It was my hands. But I never, never would have done that to her in my right mind. You know that. I just … couldn't fucking control myself." Dean backhanded the creature on the floor and jabbed its ankle with the sharp tip of the crowbar. The thing howled, giving Dean a bit of satisfaction. He was determined to make it suffer. "It started back then. It was why I told her about what we do. I had a feeling I was possessed or something. It's why I didn't try harder to make things work."
"Why didn't you tell me any of this?" Sam could hardly believe his brother's stubbornness sometimes. It was like he refused to let anyone help him. "This is like with that ghost doctor in Illinois, driving people mad."
Dean remembered, but didn't like to think of how his brother had pulled the trigger in his face, not once but twice. Sam had been given some kind of temporary lobotomy by a mad, aggressive spirit and it wasn't his fault, even if the reasons he had given sounded like they were straight out of Sam's playbook. "Yeah. A lot like that."
"But this guy… " Sam gestured to the bloody mess of a man whimpering on the floor, "He's no ghost."
"No."
"And, it's obviously not a shifter. Not your run of the mill variety anyway. I'm thinking his game is hallucinatory. So, that means what? Mind control?" Sam ventured his best guess.
Bryce's whining became quiet chuckles as they talked. Dean gave him another fist to the jaw. "You like that, motherfucker?"
"Love it." Bryce smiled up at him with heat behind his swollen eyes.
"You've done the whole silver and holy water thing?"
Dean sucked his teeth, impatiently, "Come on, Sam. What kind of amateur do you think I am? Not everything responds to that shit and you know it. Look on his chest."
Sam crouched to investigate a tattoo over Bryce's pec that was partly obscured by blood. "It's a heart, Dean."
"The other one. Lower."
Once again, Sam scrutinized Bryce's smoothly chiseled and blood splattered body until he found a brand on the man's hip. "Why is he naked?"
"He was like that when I got in here. What, you think I frigging stripped him?" Dean barked back. "That symbol. You recognize it?"
Sam squinted. "Looks like some kind of bird."
"Yeah, that's what I thought."
"Hey, Stretch." Bryce grinned with his head rested back against the wall.
Straightening up and facing his brother, Sam asked, "Dean, did you try talking to him?"
"No, Sam. I did not, because my methods are better."
"They're obviously not very effective."
Dean shrugged. "It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I, personally, feel a lot better. Now, check this out." Dean disappeared into the closet and pushed on a side wall. A wave of heat sweltered into the room as the wall moved.
Following close behind him, Sam had to duck to enter a large room with three rows of tables where dark green plants with burgundy shoots resembling peacock feathers grew under artificial light. A dehumidifier hummed loudly. "How the hell did you find this?'
"It's where he was when I came in."
As they slowly investigated the place, Sam was struck with one nagging question. " Okay, so is the guy human or not?"
Dean rolled his eyes, hardly in the mood to shoot the shit with Captain Obvious.
"But what is his MO? Why would he be trying to sabotage your relationship with Cassie?" Now that they knew Bryce wasn't interested in being with Cassie himself, it just didn't make any sense.
"I don't fucking know, Sam. How about crazy? How's that for a motive? I have no idea. I don't even care. This shit is over. We take him out tonight."
It just didn't add up. Sam shook his head. "What if you're wrong?"
"I'm not." Dean spat out.
"But what if you are? This guy is Cassie's best friend. You really think this is wise?"
"She has no idea what she's dealing with. Do you know what kind of plant this is or not?" Dean poked at it with the tip of his crowbar.
Sam rubbed one of the leaves between his fingers and sniffed it.
"Jesus, Sam. Don't touch it!"
Sam frowned trying to place the familiar odor. "I've smelled this before."
"It ain't wacky weed." Dean joked and poked in the dirt with the tip of his crowbar.
"Hey, Dean. Have a look at this." Sam had hit the jackpot. In the corner of the room, various symbols, similar to Bryce's tattoo were drawn on the floor and the wall around an altar. All sorts of specimens, including hair and bones and a shriveled eyeball were strewn about.
First, Sam picked up a lock of hair to examine it.
"Dude, stop touching stuff." Dean warned, anxiously.
"Cassie's."
Dean snatched the lock from him and nodded his confirmation. "That sick fuck."
"And this…" Sam picked up specimens of his own hair and Dean's before he swiped a finger around the lip of the mortar and pestle and frowned at the powdery residue on his fingertips. "This is her tea."
" I need you to find out what he is and what the fuck this shit is." Dean jabbed one of the leaves into Sam's chest. "And question Cassie."
"You think she knows?" The idea threw Sam for a loop, but they had to rule out everything.
"No way. But she might give us something useful."
"And you?" Sam followed Dean through the closet back into the bedroom.
"I'm going to stay here and keep playing piñata until this fuck opens up." Dean grinned cruelly at Bryce.
Sam nodded obediently and started towards the door. On second thought, he added, "Dean. Don't kill him. Not yet. What if it's magic? We might need him alive to break the spell."
Dean had already thought of that or else the fucker would already be ash. He nodded in agreement and kicked Bryce in the teeth.
Sam knew Dean was doing as they were taught: beating the information out of the enemy. Still, he winced at the violence and turned away as Bryce defiantly spit out a mouthful of blood and smiled. As he reached for the door knob, Sam remembered something else that needed to be discussed, "About what happened back there…"
"Not now, Sam. I need you to find out what we're dealing with here." While that was true, Dean also did not want to talk about Sam's Jedi moment or his own freak out or any of it. All he wanted was to break the frigging curse, dispatch with the evil asshole, get back to Cassie and somehow make it up to her.