Previously: Sparrow kills the two hunters that had broken into Rat's home.
The Birds
installment 8
"Kid needs to hire a gardener," Dean stated conversationally, ducking under a branch to get to the front stoop. He put his foot on the first step and it went through, snapping the rotted wood clear in two. He looked over his shoulder at Sam, "Carpenter, too."
They tiptoed up the creaking staircase. Dean tried the porch first with his toe before putting his full weight on it. The wood warped under him, and when Sam tried to follow, he held up a hand to stop him. "You join me up here, Sasquatch, we're both gonna fall through. Just hold on there, lemme go first."
Dean rapped once on the door before they heard the gunshots. "Rat!" he shouted, pounding now. "Rat!" He swore, took a step back, and glanced at Sam before kicking the door down. Sam waited just until his brother had crossed the threshold before hopping across the rickety boards.
The place was a wreck, not just in the empty beer cans littered everywhere sense, or the molding pizza on the coffee table sense, or even the 'oh God, did that used to be Chinese?' sense. The stained sofa was tipped over, and covered in slash marks. There were jagged pieces of kitchen chairs in the living room.
"Hello?" Sam called, stepping over the fallen television stand. His feet crunched in the shards of broken screen. "Is anyone here?"
The front door creaked shut. Dean whipped around, grabbing for his gun.
"Just put it down now, Dean." Sparrow shoved Sam to his knees, forced his hands behind his head, and pressed the muzzle of her gun to the back of his skull. Her eyes narrowed when Dean didn't immediately drop his weapon. "Don't doubt that I will." She prodded Sam's head again, making him tip forward and wince.
"Okay, okay!" Without taking his eyes off Sparrow and Sam, he lowered his gun to the coffee table, then raised his hands up above his head.
"On your knees!" she snapped. "And keep your hands where I can see them!"
"What?" Dean tilted his head to one side and scrunched up his face.
"Get on your knees or I swear I'll shoot him!" She shook the gun for emphasis.
"Fine!" Dean dropped to one knee, then the other. "Just… just don't hurt him."
Sam felt the gun against his head tremble. He heard Sparrow swallow. "Sparrow…" he started to try and peer over his shoulder.
"Shut up and hold still," she bit out. "Rat, where the hell are you?"
"Right here." He materialized beside the overturned couch, hands shaking so bad the rope he held appeared to take on a life of its own. "Sparrow… Sparrow, I… I can't…"
"I'm not asking you to kill him, dammit," she snarled, "I'm telling you to tie him up."
Rat nodded. "Yeah, yeah, right, okay." He made his way over broken furniture to Dean and took hold of his wrists.
Dean jerked his hands away. "The hell are you – "
"Hold still! Both of you!" She smacked Sam's temple with the barrel of her gun. Sam groaned.
"Jesus Christ, alright." Dean offered his hands to Rat, who fumbled to bind them.
"Now get lost." She made a shooing gesture with her hand.
Rat gulped, nodded, and turned to go upstairs.
"What're you gonna do?" Dean asked.
"I'm going to kill you both." She focused her stare on the top of Sam's head and pressed her gun into his hair. Sam squinted his eyes shut. "I'm sorry." There was a trace of sincerity in the sarcasm.
"No!" Dean howled and flung himself forward.
"Sparrow!"
Dean did nothing more than face plant onto the carpet, but Sparrow was distracted long enough that Sam could grab her and force the gun from her hands. She thrust her knee into his gut and brought her elbow down on the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Sam flopped onto his stomach, and Sparrow landed on top of him. She yanked his head up by his hair and held her knife against his throat, tight enough to draw a thin line of blood. She offered an apologetic look to Dean, trying to squirm toward them despite being bound, then checked her blade's placement a final time.
"Sparrow, you're not really going to kill him, are you?"
She didn't release Sam, but her head fell back, and she closed her eyes. "Haaron," she sighed. She'd hoped she'd been imagining his voice. "What are you doing here?"
He was standing at the top of the basement stairs, must have come in the sliding door that was down there. "You left in a hurry… with your gun… I was worried."
"Haaron." Sparrow wouldn't even open her eyes, let alone turn to face her brother. "Go home."
"I… I can't. Sparrow, you're not really going to kill these men. They haven't done anything…"
"Haaron… please, please just leave," Sparrow begged. Sam could feel the knife against his throat quaking, but when he tried to shift under her, she clenched her thighs and tightened her hold on his hair.
"And let you," he choked trying to say it, "Let you kill them. No! I won't!"
"Haaron…"
"They've done nothing to us, Sparrow."
"But they will!"
"None of the others did! You could convince them to leave… you always did," Haaron plead despairingly.
Sparrow gulped. "Haaron, go, please, you don't understand…"
"Doesn't understand what, Sparrow?" Dean gritted his teeth and tried to scoot closer to Sam, "That you've been slaughtering two or three people a year?"
"What?" It was uncertain whether Haaron was addressing Sparrow or Dean.
"Shut up!" Sparrow took her knife away from Sam's throat, only to plunge it through the back of his shoulder.
"Sammy!" Dean howled and doubled his efforts to get to his brother.
Sam's whole body clenched when Sparrow yanked the blade out and replaced it on his neck. "Shut up! You good for nothing lying sonuvabitch, shut up, or I will kill him." She shook Sam's head by his hair.
"In front of your little brother?" Dean's voice was raw with exertion. "Who thinks you've been politely asking people to leave for the last seven years?" he laughed dryly and let his head drop onto the carpet, "I don't think so."
"You don't know what you're talking about!" Sparrow considered very hard stabbing Sam again.
"Then why don't you enlighten me."
"I don't have to tell you shit. The last two hunters didn't listen, and neither will you."
"We're not like other hunters," Sam got out through his teeth. "Let me up, we'll listen, I swear."
Sparrow shook tousled hair out of her eyes before glaring down at Sam. "What about 'not telling you shit' do you not understand?" She seethed and pulled harder on his head, straining his neck and wounded shoulder.
Haaron winced. "Sparrow, he's right. We should try to talk first."
"Haaron, none of the others – "
"I don't care about the others! He says they're different." He gestured Sam.
"Haaron…"
His eyes narrowed. "I deserve to know what's going on, Sparrow."
Sparrow placed her full weight on her knee, between Sam's shoulder blades before putting her knife in its sheath on her leg. "Fine," she exhaled, then repeated, "fine, we can try and talk to them." Sam tried to get up, but Sparrow pushed harder on his back. "You're crazy," she hissed, "if you think we're having this conversation over tea at the kitchen table. Rat!" she hollered, and Sam flinched because she was still so close to his head. "Rat, geddown here!"
A familiar one-eyed, spectacled face hopped down the stairs. The ferret froze on the second to last step when it saw the crowd in the living room.
"Yeah, I know. No more secrets, and when they prove to be just like Landrick and Rollands," she put her face inappropriately close to Sam's, "I'll kill them, and it won't matter."
"Sparrow!" Haaron snapped.
She ignored him. "Get me another rope," she ordered.
The ferret stood up on its hide legs, entire body trembling. First its arm extended too far from its body, then its legs stretched. Its head shook spasmodically, then its mouth opened, and its nose pushed back into its face. Its black and white fur receded and revealed a maroon t-shirt and denim. After a few more moments of bizarre reshaping of limbs, a very human Rat sat on the stairs where the ferret had been.
"Jesus, that's weird," Dean commented from the floor.
"Shut up."
"It's not our place to judge," Sam grunted, "Sorry about him."
Sparrow smirked. "Cute, but not earning you any brownie points." When Rat handed Sparrow the rope, she bound first his wrists, then used the excess to tie his elbows, further straining his shoulder. Sam groaned.
"Hey, hey, easy!" Dean snarled.
Sparrow spared Dean one glance, before hauling Sam upright and dropping him gracelessly against the nearest wall. "You can prop his brother up next to him," she indicated Rat do it.
Rat hesitated, so Haaron squatted beside Dean to help him up and guide him over to sit beside Sam.
"What do you wanna know?" Sparrow stood over Sam and Dean with one hip cocked and her arms crossed over her chest.
"Let's start with why you've been killing people for seven years." Dean tilted his head up and to one side.
Sparrow looked over her shoulder at Haaron. "You should go home," she tried one last time, "If you really want to know, I'll tell you everything tonight."
"No," Haaron sat on the edge of the miraculously still intact coffee table. "I want to know now."
Sparrow sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "It's been longer than that, actually, but you wouldn't have known to check for missing persons in Nebraska."
"That's not why, Sparrow," Dean pressed.
Sparrow picked up her discarded gun and waved it in Dean's face. "You're brother said you'd listen. Now, maybe he was lying, but now that I've decided to talk, you damn well better shut up."
Dean was hardly intimidated by the gun all but touching his nose, and he made it clear by locking his eyes with Sparrow's.
"It started in Nebraska," Sparrow backed away from Dean and continued, "my father killed the pelt collectors as they came," she spoke with a peculiar tone of nostalgia, "and after he and my mother were killed, he passed the responsibility of keeping the family safe onto me." She got in Dean's face again, "I'm sure you can relate."
"You don't really expect me to believe you've been murdering people out of some misguided sense of self-defense," Dean sneered.
"I'm not done with my story," Sparrow narrowed her eyes before continuing, "so, I killed the man who killed my parents and moved my siblings here. Now, it took the pelt collectors a few years to find us again, but when they did, this place sorta started to become a bit of a hotspot. Not a really a surprise, what with me, Haaron, Parakeet, Rat, Randy, and Judy, a lot of pelt collectors came through here, and yes, I killed them all, and as soon as seemingly innocent people start disappearing, hunters start appearing. If you'd've asked Rat how he lost his eye, he'd've told you a childhood accident, but since we're not keeping secrets here, I'll tell you your buddy Rollands did that. You want misguided? Jacob Rollands thinking he was doing the world a favor by trying to kill all the shapeshifters who live here, that was misguided. And Gregory Landrick, that sonuvabitch killed my sister, and the nail in that bastard's coffin? He was a pelt collector, too."
"What's a pelt collector?" Sam asked, needing to keep Sparrow talking so he could finish sawing through his binds.
"An especially useless breed of hunter that kills shapeshifters, usually entirely separate from you all's variety. Think of them more like rednecks that shoot deer," Sparrow pursed her lips and shrugged one shoulder. "Landrick, though, he that fit in both categories."
"Seriously? You expect me to believe a sub-category of hunter exists that only kills shapeshifters? That all the men you killed were trying to kill you?" Dean asked incredulously.
"What other reason would I have to kill them?"
"I don't know, but in my experience, most the shit we hunt doesn't really need a reason to off people."
"Well, that's too bad, because now I have a reason to off you." She cocked her gun and put the muzzle to Dean's forehead.
"Sparrow, don't."
She didn't move her gun, but she did sigh, tilt her head back, and close her eyes. "Haaron, I told you they wouldn't listen. Now, go home."
"And pretend you're not going to shoot these men? Sparrow, I… I can't. Parakeet and I, if we'd've known you were killing people," Haaron struggled for words, "we'd've helped find some other way – "
"Leave Keet the hell out of this!" Sparrow's voice broke at her sister's name.
"Sparrow, please."
"There is no other way, Haaron, just like Landrick – "
"They're not like Landrick!" Haaron argued, tears starting to well in his eyes. "They haven't hurt anyone! And… and they're people, Sparrow, you've been killing people…"
"To protect you!" she plead.
"I don't want you to protect me like that! Parakeet, she wouldn't have wanted you to either!"
"It's true," Rat added softly from where he stood leaning against the kitchen doorframe. "You scare the shit out of me when you're like this, Sparrow."
The gun on Dean's forehead trembled.
"Please, don't kill them," Haaron begged.
Sparrow replaced her gun in the holster inside her jacket. "You're one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?" She stepped over to Sam and dragged him to his feet by the lapels of his coat. Haaron took a step toward them. "Relax, I'm not going to hurt him. I'm just going to show him what the pelt collectors do to us, why I had every right to kill the men I did."
"You're not taking him anywhere!" Dean launched himself not at Sparrow, but at Haaron. He grabbed the taller man around the neck, and held the short knife he'd used to cut himself free to Haaron's throat.
Sparrow bent Sam back awkwardly to get him in a choke hold and put her gun to his temple.
"Shit, Sammy, why the hell aren't you untied?"
"Knots…" It was a struggle to talk with his neck arched so extremely. "Elbows… couldn't…" he coughed, "Reach."
"Dammit!" Dean shook his knife in Rat's direction, "You, you just… stay the hell there!"
Rat put his hands up and took a step back.
Dean turned back to Sparrow. "Sparrow, I'm gonna make you a deal."
"Who the hell says I wanna make a deal with you?"
Dean made an irritated sound. "Because if you don't I'm gonna slit your brother's throat."
"No you won't." Sparrow's eyes narrowed. "Haaron's not the monster here, I am."
Dean huffed and poked Haaron just hard enough to draw blood. Haaron squirmed and whined. "Now, let's make a deal."
"Fine, start talking."
"Let Sam go. Where ever you were planning on taking him, you can take me."
"Hand over the box cutter and let Rat tie your hands back up, and we have a deal."
Dean tossed the blade onto the coffee table, released Haaron, and offered his hands to Rat.
"Lose the jacket," Sparrow ordered, "Dunno what else you're keeping in those sleeves."
"That wasn't – "
Sparrow nudged the gun touching Sam's head and smirked. Dean stripped off his coat and laid it with more care beside the knife, then replaced his hands behind his back. Rat used an old sweater he found draped over the stair rail to bind him, having run out of ropes.
Sparrow shoved Sam toward Haaron, who caught him by his shoulders before he could topple over. "Keep an eye on that one."
"You said you'd let Sam go," Dean growled.
"And let him follow us?" Sparrow quirked up an eyebrow. "Not a chance." She took Dean by the elbow and on her way past the coffee table, fished through the pockets of his coat for the Impala's keys.
"Oh, hell no!"
"Well, we can't exactly take the motorcycle."
"Heh," Dean shrugged. "We could," he suggested lewdly, wiggling his eyebrows and grinning.
Sparrow back handed him before dragging him out the front door.