Chapter 6 Running on Ice
The bedroom was still dark but around the curtains covering the windows, cracks and streaks of light seeped through. Dean looked around, reassuring himself that he was in the sheriff's house, in the little bedroom he'd gone to sleep in the night before, and that the dream he'd woken from was just that…a dream, and gone.
He looked at his watch. Less than three hours this time. The last good sleep had been the night they'd gotten back here, after twenty hours driving and the cumulative debt he'd racked up from the previous two days. He'd slept for six hours with no dreams, probably due to the fact that he'd been ready to collapse. It hadn't been repeated.
"Morning," Jody said to him as he walked into the kitchen, his nostrils flaring appreciatively at the smell of coffee, bacon and eggs and biscuits that filled the room.
"Siddown before ya fall down," Bobby said tersely. Since the sling had come off, he was moving around a lot easier, but had become more grumpy, Dean thought. Something was going on between the old man and the sheriff, although he'd never caught them doing anything in particular.
"Look at this," Bobby growled at him as he dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. He waved a remote at the tv sitting on the kitchen counter, and Dean saw a police chase showing, a sleek black car dodging traffic with six cops in pursuit. Even from the top, the black car was instantly identifiable. The helicopter footage stopped and the anchor came back on.
"So far, the duo have killed forty-six people across three states," the sleekly-coifed man was saying. "Dean and Samuel Winchester have now become the FBI's Most Wanted for their crime spree over the last three days."
"WHAT!?"
"Since you've been getting your beauty sleep around here for the last three days, I'm guessing that ain't you two," Bobby said sourly. "Which means –"
"Those sons-of-bitches Xeroxed us!" Dean sputtered, looking around as Sam and Lauren came into the room. "That fucking well does it! We're finding these ass monkeys and killing them ourselves!"
"Good plan," Bobby commented mildly. "Since everyone from Dave the butcher to the head of the CIA has seen your ugly mugs on the idiot box this morning. I'm sure you'll get, oh, maybe twenty miles out of the county before you're picked up."
"He's right, Dean," Jody said, setting a heaped plate of heart-killing food in front of him. "We got a special bulletin about you two before dawn this morning. Every law enforcement agency has got them and you're priority number one."
"Awesome!" Dean picked up his cutlery and stabbed at the bacon. "We supposed to sit around here like rats in a trap?"
"No," Bobby said thoughtfully. "No, you go see a friend of mine. Get things cleaned up and see if he can't help you to figure out what these bastards are doing."
"They're squeezing us," Sam said, sitting down next to his brother and nodding his thanks as Jody put a plate of poached eggs and toast down in front of him. "Making sure we can't move at all."
"Well, then, Frank's the only who's gonna be able to help," Bobby said reasonably.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
One day later.
"Good luck," Frank said, slapping Sam on the shoulder as he passed him.
"Thanks, Frank," Sam said, looking at his new identification.
The super-paranoid conspiracy theorist turned around and looked at him. "For what? Sending you to your death? Your doubles want to be on candid camera, put you in the line of fire," he said, waving a hand around vaguely. "Now, I'd lay low, 'cause I love life and its infinite mysteries. But you two want to be dumb, that's fine. At least have the common sense to ditch your car."
"Wh – uh, excuse me – what?" Dean stared at him.
"Your doublemints – they're using a car just like the one outside," Frank told him cheerfully.
"Sonofabitch!"
"And plural," Frank agreed noncommittally. "I gotta place you can stash that. You need something…inconspicuous to get around in."
"Ideas?"
"You're the car thief," Frank retorted, pulling a map from a drawer in his desk. He passed it to Dean. "Take that one as well. Maybe something'll occur to you on the way."
"Uncle Fred's boathouse?" Dean lifted the map, peering at the handwritten note. "You kidding me?"
"Do I look like I'm kidding you?" Frank asked tonelessly.
Dean glanced at his brother. "Fine."
"Fine."
"Let's go," Sam said.
It was a four hour drive to the boathouse and Dean bitched the entire way, mostly under his breath unintelligibly, but the steady droning of his complaints were aggravating his brother, he could see that.
"Drop me off in the town," Sam said as they took the off ramp, following Frank's instructions. "I'll get a car and come and get you."
Dean nodded, pulling over at the end of the main street. He watched Sam get out and start walking slowly down the street and eased the car out onto the road, the suspension getting a work-out as the asphalt petered out to a rough gravel road that ran around the lake.
Bigmouths running a squeeze on them. His baby on lockdown in some nothin' town in the middle of nowhere. Bobby's home more-or-less off-limits to them because every goddamned thing knew about it.
Under it all, the same unending and non-diminishing feelings he'd had for the last ten weeks. He muttered a string of invective that would've blistered paint and turned down a rutted driveway as he saw the name of the house through a thick screen of trees.
The boathouse was there, as promised. Driving the Impala inside it, Dean stopped the engine and sat there for a few minutes, listening to the metal of the hot engine tick as it cooled, his forehead resting against the wheel.
He shouldn't have let himself hope that his life could be more than what it was, he thought. Should never have let himself think, for even a second, that he might have what he'd wanted. Should've told Cas to take Terry back to her world straight away, never talked to her, never listened to her, never touched her. She shouldn't have been this hard to forget about. He didn't know why she was.
Huffing out a breath filled with impatience for himself, he got out of the car and opened the trunk, pulling out the big tarpaulin and shutting the lid. Next to Uncle Fred's small motorboat, the Impala looked nice and anonymous sitting there, all her sleek beauty hidden by the dull tan tarp.
"Cas," Dean murmured, looking across the lake. "You there?"
There was the sound of fluttering wings and the angel appeared, looking at him carefully.
"What is it, Dean?"
"How soon could you take me there?" Dean asked, licking his lips nervously at the thought of it.
"Take you there?"
"To Terry's world," he elaborated, irritation rising. Bad enough he was even contemplating this, he didn't need the angel making him spell out every detail. "If we needed information from her show or whatever."
"Another two or three weeks and this plane and that one will lie close enough to step across," Cas said. "I thought you wanted her to remain safe?"
"I do," Dean said, turning away. "But we're running out of options here. And she can stay there, I just need to talk to her."
"It's a risk, drawing attention to her in that world."
He knew that already. He'd wanted to leave her alone, to respect her obvious desire to be as far away from them – from him – as possible. He looked at the small half-circle that lay under the base of his index finger and frowned.
"Yeah," he said. "Last resort."
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
"They're following our case locations," Sam grunted as they headed east. "Jericho, Black Water Ridge, Manitoc…they're following the first cases we worked after Jess' death."
"So we can get ahead of them?" Dean asked, half his attention on the car's engine and the little rattle he could hear from under the hood.
"Maybe, St Louis was the next job," Sam said. "The shifter."
Nodding, Dean thought about the fastest route and put his foot down, the headlights lighting up the road in front of them.
"I can't believe you stole this piece of crap," Dean said a minute later, glaring at the squeaky pony hanging from the rear-view mirror. Sam looked up in time to see the string holding the toy to the mirror cut and hear the last protesting squeak as it was flung into the backseat.
"Not much choice," Sam told him defensively, slightly relieved that the pony itself hadn't been stabbed, mutilated and thrown out onto the highway. "You, uh, want some tunes?"
At Dean's shrug, he reached for the radio and turned it on.
...
I wish I could carry your smile in my heart
For times when my life seems so low
...
Sam looked at the radio in horror. "Sorry, man, I-I..."
For a moment, Dean didn't respond, just stared at the highway. Then he shrugged. "Just leave it. Probably gonna be the only thing on."
...
It would make me believe what tomorrow could bring
When today doesn't really know, doesn't really know
...
Looking back at the map, Sam closed his eyes, trying to remember what had come after St Louis. The preacher's daughter and the ghost that had attached itself to her, he thought. Then…there'd been…
The music, sugary sweet and laden with heartache, filled the car and Dean listened to the lyrics unwillingly, feeling his throat tighten.
...
I'm all out of love
I'm so lost without you
I know you were right
Believing for so long
...
…the bugs, in Oklahoma. Oasis Plains, Oklahoma, Sam thought. Was there anything for the leviathans to even find there now? He caught a movement in the corner of his eye and turned his head to see his brother singing softly along with the song, eyes half-closed and driving by feel.
...
I'm all out of love…
...
Dean ducked his head, coughing slightly as he kept his eyes straight ahead, fixed on the road. Sam's questioning stare was like a laser on him.
...
…what am I without you?
...
Sam looked back at the map. After Oklahoma…he frowned. "They missed two towns," he said, turning back to see his brother's mouth close with a sharp snap.
...
I can't be too late to say that I was so wrong.
...
"Huh?"
"After Manitoc," Sam said, looking at him carefully. "They missed Nazareth and Toledo."
...
I want you to come back and carry me home…
...
"What?"
"The demon on the plane, and uh, Bloody Mary?"
...
Away from these long, lonely nights…
...
"Oh, uh, maybe they didn't know about them?"
"They know everything about us, apparently," Sam argued. "Okay, Nazareth I can understand, it's tiny, but Toledo?"
...
I'm reaching for you, are you feeling it too?
Does the feeling seem oh, so right?
...
"No clue," Dean said shortly, turning his head slightly away from his brother and syncing to the song just on the side that Sam couldn't see.
...
And what would you say if I called on you now
And said that I can't hold on?
...
Sam stared at him. He was still singing, so low it was barely audible over the rattles and tinny sound of the hatchback's engine, but he could hear it.
...
There's no easy way, it gets harder each day
Please love me or I'll be gone, I'll be gone
Ohhhhhhh…what are you thinking of?
What are you…
...
"You know what?" Sam said suddenly, reaching for the radio. "This song really blows."
He turned it off and silence filled the car. Not quite silence, Sam thought. He could almost hear the song continuing in his brother's head, looking at the tiny twitches and tics of Dean's profile as he kept it locked down in his throat. It was bad, he thought. It couldn't get much worse if his brother was being affected by sappy love songs.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
The motel room was dark and quiet, but the song wouldn't stop playing and Dean rolled over for the hundredth time, exhaling loudly as the syrupy lyrics insisted on an encore, or maybe the fucker was on repeat, he couldn't tell anymore.
I'm lying alone with my head on the phone
Thinking of you till it hurts
I know you hurt too but what else can we do
Tormented and torn apart
He thought about going to the bathroom and just sitting in the shower, letting the noise of the water drown it out of his mind. It'd been a big judgement error on his part to let the song play in the car, and he'd known that, but he'd been tired and pissed at the car and that wistful stupid acoustic guitar had somehow caught at him and betrayed him.
I wish I could carry your smile in my heart
For times when my life seems so low
It would make me believe what tomorrow could bring
When today doesn't really know, doesn't really know
No, today didn't have the first freakin' idea, he thought bitterly. He tried to force himself to think about something else, anything else…then the chorus came in.
I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you
I know you were right, believing for so long
I'm all out of love, what am I without you
I can't be too late to say I was so wrong
It wasn't leaving, wasn't stopping and there was only one thing left to do. Getting up, Dean dragged on his jeans and coat, leaving the rest of his clothes on the floor. He looked at the bed his brother was shaking with his snores and headed for the door, slipping out and walking to the car.
"You're listening to Radio KCQQ 106.5 on your FM dial, and this is Steve running the Midnight Special just for you folks who can't sleep without some solid rock…"
Sighing in relief, Dean crunched himself into the minute back seat of the hatchback, pulling his coat tighter around him as the comfortingly familiar opening guitar chords crashed through the cheap speaker system and drove out everything else.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Sunshine sparkled on the rippled water, sending darts of light into their eyes as they pulled the sacks from the back of the hatchback and carried one each out along the weathered dock.
"They know about Terry, man," Dean said tightly as he heaved the sack as far out into the lake as he could. Sam nodded, throwing his sack out as well.
"I know, I heard them," he said. He watched as Dean closed his hands into fists, crossing his arms and tucking them beneath to hide the shaking in them. "There's nothing they can do –"
"That we know of," Dean cut him off, looking at the reservoir.
"No one can open a door to her world, except the angels," Sam said steadily. "Not even Crowley could."
"They're older –"
"But not in that stuff, Dean, you know that," Sam said with enough certainty to be reassuring, he hoped.
"They know everything we know," Dean said, walking to the railing of the dock and gripping the splintery wood tightly. "Everything. So they'll know about how Cas took her back –"
"So what, man?" Sam followed him and dropped a hand on his brother's shoulder, squeezing through the coat. "They can't find Cas."
"No."
"So they can't get there," Sam said again. He felt the muscles relax a bit under his grip. "So, let's get to the payphone Frank specified and see what's he got? Okay?"
"Yeah," Dean said slowly. "Okay."
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
They'd split up, Sam in a late-model Jeep and Dean in a two-door '73 Cougar whose gold paint job had seen better days. Sam had agreed it would keep them further off the bigmouth radar than travelling together. The cars they'd chosen said a lot about them, really. His brother insisted that the Jeep was for the headroom.
The information centre was empty and Dean hunched against the cold, looking accusingly at the payphone near the side of the parking lot. Frank and his protocols. He almost jumped when the damned thing rang, then hurried to it, manoeuvring himself with distaste through the plexiglass doors and picking up the handset with two fingers.
"Hello?" he said, closing his eyes briefly as Frank demanded the identification phrase. "'I am the Eggman.'"
Beside the Jeep, Sam looked over at him, dimples showing as he smiled. In the booth, Dean ground his teeth and rolled his eyes.
"Seriously, Frank, pay phones? I mean, come on. I – I'm getting the clap off this thing just touching it," he complained. "Fred Savage? Really? Yeah…no, I know, big mouths are everywhere."
He sighed. He had no doubts about Frank's skills. It was the messed-up wiring in the guy's head that bothered him.
"Uh, well, since you asked, some actual intel on the Dick Roman guy would be nice," he said when Frank stopped talking. "Fine. All right."
"C'mon - yeah, 'Biggles' out," he said reluctantly, hanging up the phone with a scowl at his hand. Without touching the bi-fold door, he eased himself back out of the booth.
"I hope he finds something quick. This whole protocol du jour thing's really creeping my cheese," he grumbled to his brother, wiping both hands on his coat.
"So, we got dick on Dick?"
Dean cocked a sour look at him. "That's a vivid way of putting it. You find anything on Wonder Woman?"
"No," Sam said, shaking his head. "And there probably won't be. They are definitely gone. But..."
He lifted the paper he'd been reading. "...I might have found something over in Kansas."
"Do I want to know how you found a copy of the Wichita Sun here? No," Dean muttered. "All right, well, let's do it."
He walked to the Cougar, the one bright spot in his day. "I'll see you at Rosita's in a couple of days."
Nodding, Sam turned to the Jeep behind him and got in. At the very least, the very, very least, he could listen to his own music for two sweet days. And he considered, his forehead wrinkling up as he started the engine, if Dean needed to wallow, he could do on his own, without adding further brain-addling images to his little brother's memories.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Rosita's was a café down near the off-ramp and Dean's mouth twitched into a slight smile as he pulled into the parking lot, seeing his brother's Jeep already parked by the doors. The two days alone had helped, he thought, the long, empty miles letting him de-tangle a lot of the crap in his head without the need to hide what he feeling or pretend to be feeling something he wasn't. He wasn't sure what the end result had been, exactly, but he felt like he could concentrate on the job, at least.
Inside, Sam was sitting in a booth, surrounded by clean plates that advertised he'd just consumed a large but healthy breakfast. The waitress smiled at him as she picked up the bowl with muesli and yoghurt still adhering to the sides and a second bowl with unidentifiable seeds and juice at the bottom.
"Uh, I know what I want," he said as she moved by him. "Breakfast special."
"Sure, hon, be just a minute," she said over her shoulder as she kept going. "Coffee?"
"Black."
Sam looked up. "What took you so long?"
"Slept in," Dean said glibly as he sat down. "Whaddya got?"
"Police reports and an ME's report that's…well, see for yourself."
Taking the slim file his brother slid across the table, Dean flipped it open to the pictures.
"Guessing those are not the fun kind of hickeys?"
"You'd be right," Sam agreed. "They're sucker marks from octopus tentacles."
"Big octopus."
"ME's still got the body so we can take a look in person, but extrapolating from the size, there's only one kind of octopus in the world that could leave marks like that."
"And you know what kind that is." Dean gave his brother a measured look.
"Enteroctopus dofleini," Sam confirmed, ignoring the look. "Giant Pacific Octopus, largest recorded octopus, with an official live weight record of seventy-one kilograms."
"It's like watching the Discovery channel," Dean said, moving along the seat as his coffee arrived, along with a big plate of pancakes, bacon, hash browns and toast. "They, uh, hang out in Kansas much?"
"Surprisingly, no," Sam said. "Usual habitat is between sixty-five metres and the surface in the North Pacific ocean."
"Do they even survive out of water?"
"Not for extended periods of time."
"So, since the town doesn't stink like last week's seafood basket, was it just zapped back once it killed the dude?" Dean asked around a mouthful of hash.
"Good question." Sam agreed.
"And that chopped-up mess in the guy's neck?"
"Another good question," Sam said, pulling the file back to look at the autopsy photograph. "I'm pretty sure that'll be from the beak of the octopus. They do prey on small sharks."
Dean blinked at him as he chewed his bacon and Sam exhaled, changing the subject hurriedly. He couldn't help it that he retained facts about stuff like this.
"So, we got a couple of contenders."
"Witchcraft."
Sam nodded. "Curses, specific or general."
"Wishes gone wrong?" Dean asked, reading the file upside down.
"The forty-seven year old businessman wished for an octopus?" Sam asked him, forehead creasing up.
"No, his eight-year-old kid might've," Dean said, waving his fork at the file. Sam fastidiously wiped off the drop of ketchup that had landed on it as he read the victim's details.
"Talk to the family."
"Yeah," Dean sighed, pushing his plate aside and draining his coffee. "I hate that fucking suit, man."
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Two days later.
The basement wasn't a standard franchise store room, Dean thought, looking at the ceramic charcoal brazier and the candles burning here and there around the room. When all the other employees of Plucky's had been questioned, Howard was the only piece left on the board. There was doubt in Dean's mind that he'd found himself a winner.
"Yeah, that's perfectly normal?" he remarked aloud to himself as he passed the open fire and directed his flashlight beam along the wall. It lit up a section covered in kids' drawings. The placemat pop psychology format was easy to recognise. The beam stopped on one drawing, a child falling, mouth open, eyes screwed shut. Looking more closely at it, Dean realised that the kid wasn't falling, he was surrounded by fish and seawood. Drowning, he thought. Beside it, pinned to the wall, a photograph showed two boys, grinning over a birthday cake with 'Happy Birthday, Howard' on the top.
He turned away from the wall and walked past the brazier to a table further in. On the top, a book lay open, diagrams of spell circles neatly drawn on the pages. It took him a few seconds to register that the letters for the spells were Hebrew, a moment longer to see the Enochian sigils for the archangels used for every circle. Drawing on their power, he wondered? Or hiding behind their protection? He really had to ask Cas who the hell was running things up there now that Michael was trapped in the cage, and Gabriel and Raphael were both dead.
Behind the book, several wax figurines had been cast and sculpted – a clown, a lion…and some…thing he had no clue about, playing a horn. Old books were piled on the table, another one open to a chapter on sympathetic magic. Mix and match hoodoo, he thought, reaching out to close the spell book. Under it, there was another placemat, with a drawing of a robot, shooting red laser beams from its eyes. Something for Tyler's mom to look forward to meeting, he thought.
"Drop it!"
Howard was behind him, and Dean turned slowly, sighting him by the boiler.
"I said drop it!" Howard snapped, taking a half-step closer. Crouching, Dean set the gun on the floor.
"Mm-hmm. Now kick it over," Howard told him, waving the barrel of the revolver.
Pushing the gun with his foot, it slid closer to Howard. "Some pretty heavy hoodoo you got here," he remarked. "I gotta say, as far as I know, none of these things, uh, can poop out a unicorn."
Howard walked toward him, the burning brazier between them. "There's power in fear. And when a child draws what he's afraid of, a little of that power ends up on the page," he said, looking involuntarily toward the wall of drawings.
Someone had some pretty big fears, Dean thought, seeing the look. "So, what, you toss it in the fire, and some bed-wetter's horror show comes to life?"
Howard frowned, his expression momentarily vague. "I got to get something off the parent, too. Something they own. That bit gets tricky."
"Well, it hasn't seemed to slow you down," Dean said bracingly.
The tone caught at the other man and his attention sharpened. "I'm just doing what I need to!"
"Okay. Okay," Dean said pacifically, holding his left hand up in clear sight. "I get it. Okay?"
The spell book was in his right and he threw it, underhand and with all the power he could muster, at Howard, grabbing Tyler's drawing from the table as Howard spun away and the book fell to the floor. He'd learned two things from the simple diversion. One, Howard didn't shoot first and ask questions later. And two, the man had a lot of fears rolling around inside his melon. He wondered which would be the easiest to trigger.
He ripped the placemat in half. "No drawing...no Iron Giant!"
"Oh, that b-word is still on the list!" Howard sneered as the crumpled halves of the drawing hit the floor. "But not tonight. Bigger fish."
"What? Are you gonna shoot me, Howard?" Dean asked, a bit disbelievingly. "You really want a body on your hands? Blood everywhere?"
"I'd shut up!" Howard shouted at him, his eyes widening. "'Cause I got lots of ways to take care of bullies, don't you worry," he continued, his chest rising and falling faster. "Like that FBI guy. He's your pal, right? I saw you chase Cliff down. Five minutes ago, his business card was torched. Along with something from my... personal collection."
Dean watched as he regained control of himself, picking up several drawings from the piles of pages on the stacked chairs next to him. "I – I – I picked it out real special for him, too."
The top drawing was of a clown. Kind of a hinky one, Dean thought, focussing on the image. Wouldn't matter to Sam, of course.
"Well, hey, these are, uh, really nice dolls. Did you paint them yourself?" Dean asked, picking up the wax figure of the clown. He had a bad feeling that Sam was already confronting his childhood fears and he needed a way to kibosh whatever spell Howard had already set into motion. "Oh. Uh, friggin' Plucky."
Howard's head jerked up. "Plucky helps kids. It's all I ever wanted to do. And when the management slot opened up, I... but they passed me over."
"Shocker," Dean remarked.
"No, I told them, 'No one cares more than me'," Howard insisted, taking another step closer to the fire. "But suits never listen."
Watching his gaze fall to the floor, Dean slid the clown into the back pocket of his jeans. Whatever had screwed the guy up so bad, he was willing to bet it was hanging on the wall with the other kids' drawings.
Howard looked up. "So, I'm doing it my way."
"So, let me get this straight. You didn't get the good parking space, so you start dropping bodies?" he asked mockingly.
"Those parents were horrible," Howard said, mouth curling down. "They deserved what they got."
"What about Saul?" Dean asked. "He deserve what he got?"
"Saul had a big mouth!"
"Some guy hits on the babysitter, all of a sudden he's the world's worst dad?"
"A good parent puts his kids first," Howard said, straightening up with self-righteous anger.
"And having a little girl watch her pop get ganked by the closet monster – that's putting her first?" Dean looked at him, one brow cocked. "You think that memory's gonna help her in life?"
"In the long run, they'll all be better off," Howard said, a bit less certainly.
Dean snorted. "You think so? Really?"
Looking away, Howard's voice dropped. "I would have been."
"So, your brother," Dean said, looking at the drawing and the photograph. "Older or younger?
"Older," Howard told him unwillingly. "Only eighteen months."
"What happened to him?"
His face twisted into a snarl, Howard suddenly shrieked, "It's not my fault! It's theirs!"
Ignoring the wildly waving gun, Dean kept his gaze on the drawing. "Looks to me like he drowned."
Howard's shoulders slumped, his frame seeming to shrink, as if someone had pulled a plug and all the air ran out of him. "I was screaming..." he said, almost whispering. "Screaming…but my folks...they didn't listen.
He looked up at Dean, his eyes filled with bitterness. "They never listened."
"They didn't listen?" Dean asked, taking a half-step toward the brazier. "Or you froze?"
He understood that fear. It had been a shadow-tight companion throughout his life. Not being able to save Sammy. Not being able to protect him. He'd frozen just once and the repercussions from that moment still gave him nightmares, from time to time.
Howard stared at him, face pinched and white. "I couldn't – they were supposed to – I –"
"You blamed yourself," Dean said certainly. "It was an accident."
"NO!" Howard yelled. "They let him die!"
"You let him die," Dean corrected him softly, shaking his head. "But you were a kid, Howard…kids freeze up sometimes." He walked to the wall, looking at the drawing of the kid sinking through the water. "I'll bet you still have nightmares. In fact, I'll bet you haven't been in the water since."
"Shut up! Don't TOUCH that!"
Ignoring him, Dean pulled the drawing down, looking at it. "Because you're afraid. You're afraid it was your fault, not theirs."
"I couldn't swim as good as Davey," Howard admitted, almost to himself. "I –"
"You couldn't save him," Dean said flatly, pulling the clown figure out and wrapping the drawing around it. He tossed the drawing and doll onto the fire.
"NO!" Howard's voice rose to a high-pitched scream and he lurched toward the brazier, ducking away as the flames caught the paper and billowed out.
He turned the gun toward Dean and fired, the revolver cylinder turning three times as the bullets spat out. Dean threw himself across the room, his hand scrabbling for his gun as he hit the floor and rolled over.
Howard was standing still, staring at a little boy.
EMF meter would be off the scale, Dean thought irrelevantly, watching as the boy walked toward his brother. Howard made a bubbling noise and Dean's eyes widened slightly as water began to froth and spill from the man's mouth.
Had Davey called out to his brother, before he'd gone under, he wondered? Was that why Howard couldn't see it as an accident, something that wasn't his fault? Had he frozen up in shock and horror or had he waited too long, the remnants of some sibling fight holding him back?
"It wasn't my fault," Howard said, more water trickling from his nose. "I'm sorry."
Dean rolled onto his feet, a glance at the fire showing the paper almost ash and the clown a puddle of wax, spilling over the charcoal.
Howard's eyes rolled up and he jerked and flopped on the floor as water flowed out of his mouth and nose.
Sam was still alive, Dean thought, turning away. They both were. But if luck or fate or destiny took a hand and one of them died, it wouldn't sit on them. Sam was right. He was all grown-up, he didn't need a protector anymore. A partner, sure. But not a guardian.
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~
Sam watched his brother laughing, open and free and from the gut, with a mild astonishment. The last time he'd seen Dean laugh like that…had been a long time ago, he thought. He hammed it up a little for him, liking the sound of Dean's laughter, liking the sight of his brother's eyes without the darkness that seemed to permanently haunt them.
"Dude…one of them sprayed me with seltzer from his flower," he ad-libbed earnestly and Dean turned away, eyes screwing shut as he tried to get some air.
His phone rang and Sam shook his coat, watching the glitter fall in drifts and flurries to the road as he tried to get it out without coating it in the stuff.
"Bobby? Yeah, we're both here," Sam said, smiling as he watched Dean wheeze and huff, leaning on the hood of the Cougar. "Hang on, I'll put you on speaker."
He put the phone on the hood and Bobby's voice blasted out of the speaker. "Get back here, soon as you can."
"What's going on?" Dean asked, sobering fast.
"Frank got a number from Roman's network, thinks its coordinates," Bobby said.
"We got a sample of the additives from the Biggerson's food, Sam," Lauren added, her voice holding an edge of worry. "They're using modified enzymes to alter behaviour and genetic coding in the human body – "
"Dean, you need to call Cas," Bobby cut in, his voice harsh. "The quickest way we're gonna find out what they're doing is to talk to Therese."
Looking at his brother's set expression, Sam realised that Dean had already prepared himself for the request.
"I'm sorry –"
"It's fine," Dean cut him off abruptly. "Take us a few hours to get back, Bobby. I'll call Cas from Jody's place."
He cut the call and shrugged, turning for the driver's door. "Leave the Jeep," he said over his shoulder.
Nodding, Sam walked around to the passenger door. "You alright with this?"
"No." Dean got into the car and started the engine. "But we've run out of other options."
~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~