Chapter Sixteen
All around him, there was a lingering smell of the wrong-thing that had separated him from his Alpha and brought him, snarling and biting, back to the temporary Den, taking a form that had known how to deal with a difficult dog. Lifting his nose to the encroaching night, Lemmy felt his Blood rise...
Time, matter and distance mean very little to a Hellhound; they recognise these things only as the cumbersome, linear constraints that cripple the prey they pursue. If it was sentient, a Hellhound would be unable to explain just how effortless it is to locate prey – it would not understand the question, because 'locate' would imply that there was first a time when it did not know where its prey was, and then some sort of searching required. A Damned soul calls to a Hellhound's deepest instincts, glares like a pulsing, purulent focus of corruption against the background of fragile, linear, wonderful humanity in all its swirling, sparkling, glorious hues.
Imagine, then, what the soul of the Righteous Man would look like to a Hellhound.
And to the dog that loved him.
And not only loved to chew on his socks, but had, as he understood it, been commanded to go find his Alpha's socks and chew them...
With a determined yip, Lemmy set off down the road, his brother and his Alpha's brother following closely behind, with Kelly in her truck trailing them.
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Having spent an hour systematically covering the neighbourhood, calling Max and dropping hastily produced flyers, Miss Polly had been trying to distract herself from her worry over Max by tidying up some of the paperwork that inevitably accumulates in any office, and just as inevitably seems to undergo some sort of synergistic proliferation so that the actual amount of paper that needs to be dealt with is greater than the sum of all the individual pieces of paper, and the actual amount of time needed to deal with the lot increases exponentially with the time it's left unattended.
The assault on Mount Administrivia was the only reason that she noticed a glint of metal sticking out from behind one of the filing cabinets.
When she bent to examine it, she found that it was Max's collar. Unbuckled, and tucked away almost out of sight.
That was the first surprise she got that night.
While she was standing there, trying to work out how Max could've undone his collar, then getting terrible mental pictures of some belly dance Mafia heavy wrestling her poor dog into a sack and dragging him away and leaving only his collar behind as a warning, Max suddenly trotted into the office.
That was the second surprise she got that night. In fact, from the expression on his face, Max was as surprised as she was.
"Oh, Max!" she cried, falling to her knees to hug him, "Oh, where have you been? I was so very worried! Oh, you naughty boy!"
Max, for his part, dialled up the Big Brown Eyes, dropped his ears, and wagged his tail.
"And you got your collar off!" she chided him lovingly, replacing it as he attempted to kiss her nose. "You silly boy! What on Earth have you been up to?"
Max sat, and offered a paw and a small whine of affection.
"Well, you're back now," she shook her head, "Were you actually lost, or did you just find a nice warm spot to nap in the sun, and not hear me calling you? The puppy classes always do tire you out, don't they? Where do they get all that energy?"
Max yawned hugely and convincingly.
"I feel silly now," she confided, talking to her dog the way loving pet owners do, knowing that they don't understand the words, but will understand the happy tone of voice, "I've been sitting here, convincing myself that you were abducted by a gang of rampaging belly dancers! Just fancy!"
Max tilted his head adorably in a way that made her suspect he might have a bit of German Shepherd swirling around in his Heinz Special mix of 57 varieties.
"Well, my lost boy had come home," she smiled, reaching down to ruffle his ears. "I just hope that Mr Page has similar luck, looking for his brother. I wonder if I should approach Mr Kinsman who instructs in tracking, and ask him to put Macushla on the job for Mr Page, she's very good over urban terrain... Max!"
With a sudden yelp, Max turned, and sprinted from the office.
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Lemmy's progess was in fits and starts: he sniffed, he paused, he sat down to scratch, he turned around in circles, he doubled back, he had false starts in some directions. But he kept moving, a look of determination on his little face, as his brother followed with Sam, giving the odd whuff of encouragement.
""Where's he going?" called Kelly out the window, as Lemmy suddenly doubled back, and veered off the street into a park, where the blacktop ran out in a parking lot.
"I'm hoping he's pointing due Dean," Sam called back, "Just follow when you can!"
With an anxious woof from Morgan and some choice cusswords from Kelly, the truck reversed back out onto the road, and Kelly started looking for a street that would take her in the last known general direction of Sam and the Winchester pups.
Cutting across the park – pausing to bark at some ducks who were just sitting on a pond and minding their own business – Lemmy continued with his somewhat meandering route, but Sam was pretty sure he was honing in on a more specific vector.
It was well and truly dusk when the pup took his last detour on the edge of town and headed for a warehousing estate.
"Why is it always a cruddy, industrial site?" Sam muttered to himself as Lemmy sniffed carefully along one rust-flecked wall after another. Eventually, he found one where he stopped, sniffed, and growled as a broken panel. He turned his face up to Sam, and his eyes were flickering with crackles of dark red fire.
"In here, huh?" Sam found the door to the place, and eased it open as quietly as he could, stepping into the dingy echoing space. "We're gonna have to do this quietly," he told the pups, "We don't know whether Dean's here, and we don't know where the shapeshifter is, or who it looks like."
He was a few minutes into a search grid when he heard the door open behind them, and footsteps on the darkness. Frantically, he looked around for a hiding place, but it was an open plan area, with no cover.
Crouching down and pulling both the pups in close to him, he hissed desperately to Lars.
"Stealth, Lars! Stealth! Stealth! Oh, I hope I'm not too big for you to pull this off..."
With a small uncertain whine, Lars did... whatever it was he did...
Sam wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting to see: a dulled, sepia-toned wash over the view around him, or a swirling, smudged aspect as depicted in 'Lord of the Rings' when Frodo put on the ring (and was terrified to be spotted by what Dean kept referring to as 'The Giant Flaming Vagina Of Sauron', much to Sam's annoyance). There didn't seem to be anything different, which meant he had no idea as to whether Lars was actually able to pull him into the bubble of apparent invisibility the pup could create.
Until he watched himself stride past without noticing him. That was a bit of a hint.
Lemmy let out a small, low growl; Sam winced, and grabbed the puppy's muzzle. Shapeshifter-Sam paused, and looked around suspiciously, before resuming his trek into the gloom.
When the shifter was a safe distance ahead, Sam let out the breath he'd been holding. Pulling the pups' leads in short, he stood, and carefully followed. The door he'd seen himself heading for was slightly ajar.
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Dean knew immediately that it wasn't Sam. He hadn't seen his baby brother smirk that unpleasantly since he'd been soulless.
"Oh, God," he sighed, "This is just totally weird, and totally freaky, and totally weird. I'm going to be B&D-ed to death by something that looks like my own brother."
Shapeshifter-Sam produced a remarkably authentic Bitchface. "Will you stop going on about B&D?" he demanded. "You're the one who's fixated on it! I saw it when I was pretending to be you, to write a note, and then to see Polly. Your imagination is even more flexible than some of the women you've bedded. Seriously, I wanted to take a bath after I'd been you. And for a guy who spends most of his life as a dog, that's saying something!"
"Why do you spend your life as a dog?" asked Dean. "When you could look like practically anybody?"
"Because it's a great life!" Shifter-Sam replied. "After the skinwalker bit me and I found I could do dog-shaped, I was chased by a couple of Hunters one time. I ran into a dog shelter, let myself into a pen, and hid. I was only going to stay until the following night, but later that day, Polly came along, and adopted me. And I had bed, board, food, toys, a fun job, an all the unconditional love I could soak up! It's all so, so... simple! And I've never, ever been chased by a Hunter again! Why wouldn't I stay a dog?"
"Dean thought about that. "I spent some time as a Rottweiler, once," he confided, "And I get it. I really do. Simple, that's the word. Eat the food, sniff the butt, chase the squirrel, hump the leg, roll in the dead skunk – it's no wonder dogs are happy all the time." He looked the shifter up and down. "So, any chance of you doing Mistress Amanda?" he asked hopefully.
"No," snapped Shifter-Sam, "Because I've never met her."
"Speaking of Mistress Amanda," Dean went on.
"We were NOT speaking of Mistress Amanda!" interrupted the shapeshifter. "YOU are speaking of Mistress Amanda!"
"It's a shame I'll never get to speak to Sam again," Dean grinned, "Would you do me a favour and tell him I said he rocks a leather collar?"
"And you have the gall to call me weird," muttered the shapeshifter, raising a hand to the dog collar it still wore. "Usually I take this off and leave it behind if I have to leave my four-legged form."
"On you, it looks good," smirked Dean. "I bet Kelly would like it, next time they're doing the horizonal hula, she's a dog person – what fun they could have with a bit of role playing, Sit! Lie down! Roll over! Beg! Good boy..."
Shut! Up!" yapped the shapeshifter. His face became momentarily confused. "Your brother hasn't had sex with Kelly," he relayed.
"What?" Dean's face became a mask of disappointment. "Are you sure?" he asked.
"Yes I'm sure!" snapped the shapeshifter in exasperation.
"He could've," Dean suggested, "And be repressing the memory, because he's like that..."
"He's not repressing anything!" insisted the shapeshifter. "You're the one who's got so much repression going inside, you could be your own small working model of North Korea! For instance, since it's such a recent memory, I happen to know that you actually spent some time on YouTube, looking at clips of..."
"Not even a little bit?" Dean wasn't listening; he sounded sad. "They must've smooched. Has he made it to second base, at least?"
"SHUT UP!" the shapeshifter let out an aggravated little shriek. "I didn't take this form just to satisfy your utterly inappropriate curiosity about your brother's private life! I prefer a reasonably large male self for this. You'd be amazed at how much force it can actually take to butcher a human carcass. It's the connective tissue. Tendons and ligaments, they're intended to hold bones together, and they do it quite well."
"Oh, no," groaned Dean, "The whole beaten-to-death-by-your-evil-brother thing? Been there, done that. My brother was possessed by the Devil himself, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt..."
"Will – you – shut – UP!?" screeched the shapeshifter, "The first thing I do, before I go start up the mincer, is debark you!"
It reached for a knife.
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Sam watched the exchange between his brother and his shapeshifter-self, mind racing to formulate a plan. There was no way he could cover the distance to Dean before the shifter saw him.
With apiece of rope, he secured his smallest knife to Lars in a makeshift harness. "I need you to get this to Dean, but be sneaky about it," he whispered to his pup. "I know you can do this, Lars. Stealth! Stealth, fella! Stealth! Stealth!"
Lars, and the knife, obligingly disappeared.
"Good boy!" praised Sam, stroking the furry invisible head that butted at his hand for pats, "Now, go to Dean! Go to Dean! Dean! Dean! Do Stealth! Go to Dean!"
He felt the small presence move away from him.
At that moment, the shifter pulled a knife and threatened to debark Dean.
It was too much for Lemmy.
With a blood-curdling snarl, he pulled out of Sam's grasp, and bolted straight for the shapeshifter, barking savagely, eyes glowing furnace red.
Dean spent a few days as a Rottie show dog in 'Best Of Breed', and thoroughly enjoyed the delights of a simple dog's life, and also spent a few days thinking he was a dog in 'Sonofabitch', where he also enjoyed the simple things (but not being forced into the bath).
Please feed Randolph the Plot Bunny some reviews - he just found the courage to kick his big brother Nathaniel in the shin!
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