A Denizen has suggested that Nathaniel is bullying Randolph. She's quite possibly right, but I am trying to encourage him to speak up. By which I mean, when the little sod sinks his teeth into my leg, I grit my teeth and refrain from threatening to turn him into an ode to delicious rabbit stew…
Chapter Thirteen
"Dean has our weapons in the car," muttered Sam, running a hand through his hair. "We need silver for this." Lars whined as he picked up on his Alpha's agitation. "Hey, it's okay buddy," he smiled, reassuring the pup, "You got the charms on your collar, and so does your brother. Dean won't let anything happen to him."
"I've got this," Kelly indicated the silver bracelet she was wearing, "I'm out of silver ammo at the moment, though – it's damned difficult to get good stuff. Bobby said that his usual supplier is out of action for the time being..."
"Who the hell is it?" Sam asked the universe in general. "It's gotta be one of the instructors here, they've all been here for a number of years, they'd have access to the office sometime, and they were all here today for treat ball training..."
Simultaneously, they reached for their phones.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"Up, Lem! Up! Up! Up!" Dean waggled the corn chip just above Lemmy's nose. The pup bounced enthusiastically on the seat beside him, trying to get the extra height to grab the treat. "Up, Lemmy! Let's see you use those ears, fella! Up! Up!"
With a happy yip, Lemmy acted to get the extra height he needed.
Only not by flapping his ears and doing his hovering trick, but by standing on Dean.
"Aaaaaargh!" went Dean, as a paw slipped and slid into his groin. He winced, and cringed. This had the effect of bringing the corn chip within tongue's reach, and Lemmy snaffled it with delight, chomping contentedly.
"You're a problem solver in your own way, aint ya?" Dean managed a weak smile as he ruffled the pup's ears, then turned his attention back to Barbara's house.
'Always make sure you know what you're letting yourself in for, before you let yourself in for it.' It was one of Dad's Rules Of Hunting, and also one of Dean's Rules Of Women. He had ascertained that Barbara was in fact at home, and moving from room to room. There was no sign of anybody, or anything, else.
"Time to go charm her with our awesome, uh, charmingness," he told the pup, snapping Lemmy's lead into place. "Keep your eyes – well, in your case, your nose really, I guess – open for anything fugly."
Lemmy appeared to be doing his best, perking up his ears and putting on an adorable doggy smile as Dean knocked on the door. When Barbara answered, she looked flustered, and surprised.
"Hey there, Barbara," Dean let the Killer Smile slide into place, "How you doing?"
"Oh, er, Dean, isn't it?" Barbara recomposed herself remarkably quickly – Dean had noticed that women often did that in the presence of the Living Sex God – and smiled back. "I'm, er, a little busy at the moment, but would you like to come in?"
As Dean stepped through the door, he could see that the living room was in a state of mayhem indicative of packing in a hurry.
"Oh, are you going on vacation?" he asked solicitously.
"Oh, it's much more exciting than that!" trilled Barbara, "I'm off to start a new life, Dean! I'm going to Norway! To train camels!"
"Camels?" he echoed, not really having to try very hard to inject a note of surprise into his voice.
"Oh, yes!" she gushed, "Ever since I saw my first camel at a safari park, as a small girl, I have harboured a secret admiration for these ships of the desert, and now I have decided to stop wishing, and make my dream come true!"
"Oh, uh, well that's, that's great," he nodded, "If your job is something you love, you can't fail."
"That's just what I think!" she agreed, "But I'm sure I can take a short break for a visitor," she smiled at him, "Would you like coffee?"
"That'd be great," he said anwered, the Killer Smile reasserting itself.
"And I'm sure we can find a treat for little Lemmy here," she smiled down at the pup, and reached to pat him, "I'm sure I have some pigs' ears, all dogs just love those..."
As she went to pat him, the pup let out a snarl that would've done his father proud, and sank his teeth into her hand.
Lemmy might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but sometimes, a blunt instrument can achieve everything you need.
Dean didn't hesitate; Jimi Junior had had what he called 'a nose for evil shit', and he had every faith that Lemmy had inherited his father's instincts. He reached for his gun.
Unfortunately, even with Lemmy dangling from one hand, Barbara was quicker with an ornate brass candlestick on a side table, and he was out before he hit the floor.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"Come on, come on," muttered Sam, scrolling through the footage he'd taken of treat ball training as Kelly did the same. "All I'm getting is doggy 'laser eyes'. It must be because of the indoor lighting."
"The tapetum lucidum," pronounced Kelly, "The structure in the eye that reflects visible light back through the retina. Primates don't have it. Dogs do. I guess shapeshifters must, too. I wonder if anyone has ever dissected one to see?"
"Mostly, we're usually just in a hurry to get rid of the carcass," grunted Sam, scanning his cell, "Wait, I got something." Kelly craned her neck to see his phone's screen. "It happens really fast, but I'll try to pause it... hang on... there!"
On the second try, he got it.
Standing in the middle of the treat ball exercise, smiling dotingly at the puppies all around as they chased after their balls, with a definite retinal flare, was Miss Polly.
"Oh, shit," groaned Sam, "It all makes sense. A shapeshifter impersonates somebody, hangs around for a few days to tell everyone that they've made a life-changing decision to become a slug-sexer in Outer Mongolia, then they can kill and dispose of their victim and nobody will go looking."
"They didn't come up to her standard as dog owners," Kelly added worriedly, "They didn't deserve to have dogs. She said that, some people don't deserve to have dogs."
"She said it about Barbara, the aspiring camel trainer," Sam recalled grimly, "And she implied it about Dean. I'll bet her 'appointment' involves a plan to deal with at least one more undeserving dog owner. We can't just wait for her to turn up in a Dean suit, put Lemmy up for adoption, and announce a decision to travel to Tibet to start up a program to revive the ancient art of making yak dung pottery, we gotta find him. He could be in real trouble, and he doesn't even know it. Damn, he's got the car!"
"We'll take mine," Kelly stated, putting away files, "I've got silvered blades. You got Barbara's address?"
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
His head thumping and his bad ankle aching, Dean slowly clawed his way back to consciousness.
He was no stranger to waking up in strange places, strange as in 'places he didn't know', or 'places a person might not ordinarily expect to find himself waking up'. The imbibation of enormous quantities of alcohol, or informed mutually consenting beautiful natural acts with like-minded women, or sometimes both, could have 'waking up in a strange place' as a side effect.
In a barn. In a haystack. In a wardrobe. Under a desk. Under a tree. Under a secretary. In a police cruiser. Under a police cruiser. On top of a police cruiser. On top of a police cruiser, under a secretary. In a truck tray. In a tent. On a sofa in a removals van. In a garden bed. In a ballet studio (she had been very flexible, and the mirrors were awesome). On a row of clothes dryers. Inside a clothes dryer. In somebody else's bed. In somebody else's car. In somebody else's clothes. On one memorable occasion, in a shop front window.
He was also no stranger to finding himself tied to something. This also was something that could sometimes result from frisky fun times with equally broad-minded women, as he'd tried to explain to Sam (for his little brother's edification, of course) on a number of occasions before his baby bro had ruthlessly and relentlessly Bitchface™d him into silence.
However, experience had taught him that when the two things happened together – waking up in a strange place, and finding himself tied to something – there was unlikely to be alcohol, beautiful natural acts or frisky fun times of any sort in the immediate future. It was far more likely that some fugly or occult asshole, which by rights it was really his job as a Hunter to gank, was up to no good, and was planning to kill him horribly and possibly eat him, or maybe use his blood to perform an eldrich spell that man ought not wot of, or perhaps offer his bleeding corpse unto some abomination of an elder god, or otherwise inconvenience him dreadfully.
"Sonofabitch," he muttered to himself, shaking his head carefully to clear it, "What now?"
Blearily, he looked around the room. It appeared to be some sort of warehouse, a large, gloomy, dusty, echoing space with a feeling of industrial scale neglect to it. He was pretty sure that wherever he was, it would be far enough away from anything that he could yell his head off and not attract any attention.
Off to one side, he saw the faint bluish glow of a small computer screen, sitting on a forgotten crate.
Sitting in front of it was Miss Polly of the Perfect Pooches Canine Academy.
"Hey!" he called, wincing as the volume of his own voice made his head ache, "If this is some sort of payback for the whole treat ball training thing, lady, you are seriously over-reacting."
"Be quiet!" she snapped in a Voice that had been honed over many years to quell noisy charges. Dean felt his jaw snap shut. "I am busy!"
"Oh, sorry," he drawled in a way that indicated that he was anything but, "Am I interrupting an online conference of crazy kidnappers? Sorry!" he yelled, "Don't want to hold up your meeting! Let's move on to the next item on the agenda, 'abducting hot guys and tying them to," he wiggled experimentally, "Concrete pillars until they get annoyed – I gotta say, an upholstered bed head is more comfortable for this sort of thing..."
"I have something important to do," she snapped back, "Something more important than you."
"Uh-huh, well, now I know you're an alien," he scoffed with a smirk, "You got the Living Sex God tied up, and you have something more important than me to do? On the computer?" He considered that. "No wonder you get along with Sam so well, he could have Angelina Jolie tied to the bed, and he'd be all, 'Hang on, I just have to look up this website about seditious subtexts in sixteenth century English poetry'..."
She turned to glare at him, the light from the screen making her eyes flare brightly in the dimness.
"Well, that explains that," humphed Dean, working out what was going on, "Although it doesn't explain why you'd pick that particular outfit, if you could pretty much have your pick. You should have stuck with Barbara, at least she's more cougar MILFish than Angela Landsburyish."
"It's called hiding in plain sight, Mr Page," Miss Polly smirked right back at him.
"So, what the hell is this?" Dean demanded. "Covering your tracks?"
"Partly," Polly admitted, "But having seen the way you treat that dog of yours, it became obvious that you were just another human who is unfit to own a dog."
Dean's stomach dropped. "Where's Lemmy?" he growled dangerously. "Lemmy! Lem!"
"He is safe and well," she told him, her face softening, "Although he certainly put up a fight. Quite a set of teeth on him, for such a young puppy. I never would've expected it from him, he's such a good natured little thing."
"He's smarter than you give him credit for," Dean snarled, "And he knows what you are. What have you done with my pup?"
"Taken action to give him a better future!" Polly hissed, her face contorting in anger. "He'll have someone to look after him properly, and train him properly! Someone who will NOT feeding him fried chicken wings! Or corn chips! He had crumbs in his whiskers!" she declared in cold triumph.
"You're planning to eliminate me because I fed him some wings?" Dean said incredulously. "Geez, over-reaction much? Are you at all familiar with the concept of proportionate force?"
"He deserves better!" Polly insisted. "He deserves someone who will do what is best for him, guide him and nurture him to realise his full potential, so he can become the champion I just know he can be!"
"He chose me!" Dean snapped, "You can't just uproot him from his family, his pack! He chose me!"
"He is young, and he will adjust," Polly smiled unpleasantly. She picked up the laptop she had been working at, and showed him the screen.
It was a poster, with FOR ADOPTION across the top of it, and under that, a picture of Lemmy at his most adorable.
"If your brother does not take him, I will find him a new home, a good home, a better owner," Miss Polly informed him.
Dean smiled slowly. "Ohhh, first you messed with my dog, that pretty much shows you got a death wish, but you go near my brother, and you will find you have dropped yourself in a world of hurt, lady," he informed her, "You'd better stop worrying about my dog, and start worrying about what I'm gonna do when I get my hands on you."
"I'll be back to deal with you later," she sniffed disdainfully, "Right now, I must attend to the welfare of a pup who needs a new home. And possibly a new name," she frowned thoughtfully, "What sort of a name is 'Lemmy', anyway? He will need something more dignified, something reflecting his heritage, and dignity, something like... Alaric, or Baldwin, or Helmut, or Waldo..."
"Waldo?" Dean blinked in disbelief, "Waldo? Don't you DARE try to name my dog Waldo, you bitch! Ohhh, I was going to gank you quick, but now I'm going to make you bleed..."
"I very much doubt that," Miss Polly smirked again. "In fact, it will happen the other way around. Now, do behave yourself. I'd hate to have to debark you."
Dean subsided into glowering silence as the shapeshifter left.
"Damn it," he muttered to himself, testing the ropes that held him. He tried yelling his head off for a few minutes, but got nothing for his trouble except his own echoes, and a sore head. All his weapons and his phone were gone, and she knew how to tie a knot like she meant it. "Why can't we just skip to the bit where I get loose, and gank her?"
Reviews are the Winchester Of Your Choice Tied To...
Um, no.
Please send me reviews, I like them a lot.