Chapter 5

Under the counter of the kitchen facilities, the small, old fridge grumbled and burped and rattled, its motor slowly overheating as it struggled to keep its interior cool against the heat accumulating in the room.

Dean woke slowly, hot and with the press of the unmoving air close against his skin, a tantalisingly muffled scent of food and the stronger smell of fresh, real coffee filling his nostrils. He rolled onto his side and opened an eye, squinting at his watch and wiping at the slimy perspiration that was coating the back of his neck.

"Who turned up the goddamned heat?" he mumbled peevishly as the sheet clung to him and he peeled it away.

He heard a soft snort from the other side of the dim room, blinking as Ellie turned on the lamp.

"Dinner," she said, putting a couple of foil-wrapped objects down in front of him, along with a tall cup of steaming coffee.

"Where'd you get this?"

"Burger place a couple of blocks up," she said. "The coffee's from the Italians down the street."

"Heaven," he said under his breath, prising off the lid and inhaling the smell.

"Nightmares still about Hell?"

His gaze jerked up involuntarily, the cup arrested halfway between the table and his mouth. "What nightmares?"

Ellie smiled slightly, one brow arched as she sat down at the small table and looked over her cardboard container at him.

He looked back at his coffee, lifting it and scalding his tongue as he swallowed a big mouthful. It was why he didn't like to sleep in front of anyone else, sometimes not even his brother. Most of his armour seemed to just fall away when he slept, and Sammy had made it clear that the nightmares were obvious. On the increasingly rare occasions he'd actually managed to hook up, he left long before the night was over, emptied out and watching the woman fall asleep and slipping away unnoticed. Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies, he'd told himself.

The last couple of nights, they hadn't come and he'd kidded himself that maybe that was done, his subconscious having explored every conceivable variation on the theme and over it. It could've been the heat that brought them back, he thought, unwrapping the burger and starting to eat.

The dreams weren't just about Hell, of course. Not any more. Now they were a mash-up of everything that had followed his reprieve from the pit as well. Everything that had torn holes and cut gouges out of him in the last few months. He glanced at Ellie from under his brows, wondering uncomfortably if he'd said anything out loud the previous night.

"You can't bury it all, you know," Ellie said diffidently, sipping her coffee, her gaze on the TV set, watching the flickering images crossing the screen, the sound off.

"Can give it the good ol' college try," he replied around a mouthful of burger.

"You didn't go to college," she reminded him gently, turning to look at him. "It won't stay buried, Dean. It can't. There isn't enough booze in the world to stop it and you can't drink enough to cut the pain or you'll get too sloppy anyway."

He knew that. He could feel his memories, his doubts and his fears, pressing harder at him every single day. He knew the line he could blur it all down to, without fucking up his reactions and instincts, but it wasn't enough, wasn't anywhere close to what it would actually take to shut down the noise.

"How do you do it?" he asked, looking down at the burger in his hands.

"Mostly? Just talk to someone," she said. "Someone I trust."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he didn't have anyone he could trust, he didn't need to talk about it, he could deal with his crap on his own. You don't need anyone. And he realised he was lying to himself and about to lie to her.

"This, uh, maybe isn't such a good time to get into this," he said instead, putting the burger down and picking up his coffee.

"No," Ellie agreed readily. "Probably not."

Putting down her cup, she picked up the map of the park and spread it over the table. At some point through the night, she'd marked it up and he looked at the red dots, centred over two main locations.

"What do you got?" he asked, relieved that the conversation had been shelved, unsure of why he hadn't vetoed it completely. He'd stonewalled his brother enough times on the subject.

"These are the locations of the bodies in the park, over the last two months," Ellie said, turning the map around as he got off the bed and walked across to the table. "Two distinct areas."

"Two distinct monsters," he said, dropping into the other chair and leaning over it. "Which one do you want to take first?"

"I was thinking we could take one each," she said.

Dean looked at her, repressing a fast shiver that snaked down his spine. The reaction was accompanied by an itch at the back of his neck. She was probably right, he thought. Going after them separately, they could probably bag 'em both by dawn. The itch persisted, but he didn't know why. "We could take one tonight, together. Get the other one tomorrow."

She shook her head. "And let someone else die tonight?"

He turned away without answering.

She looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. "We've both hunted these things solo. What are you worried about?"

"I don't know," he said. "Just a feeling."

"We can't risk another death."

"Yeah. I know."

It was just a feeling, he thought, finishing his coffee and pitching the container into the trash can. A strong, clamouring feeling, not enough to ping his internal alarms, but enough to make him squirm in discomfort.

"That one's pie," Ellie said, and he turned back to the table, glancing at the second foil-wrapped shape. "Apple and blueberry."

"You got me pie?"

She grinned at the look on his face as he picked it up and unwrapped the foil covering. "Doesn't mean we're engaged or anything."

His response was unintelligible through the mouthful of pastry and fruit filling, and he rolled his eyes at her instead.

The broad asphalt path was fitfully lit by short, gas-styled lamps along its length. Even at the beginning, Ellie could see that quite a few of the lights were missing from the twisting string, and she slowed down a little, half-closing her eyes to adjust to the lower levels of light.

Around the park, the city hummed, out of sight but reminding her of its immense presence. Muffled and distorted by the vegetation that grew rampantly in the warm months, the constant noise was distant, the urgency of the beeps, sirens and roar of traffic muted.

She strolled along the path, the flashlight hidden by the lightweight jacket over her arm, senses stretched out through the warm darkness, the sound of her bootheels clocking softly along the pavement.

It might not've been the best time to raise the nightmares, she considered, ducking her head as she remembered his reaction. On the other hand, he hadn't closed up like a clam. There'd been a willingness in his eyes, she'd felt, to at least entertain the idea of letting some of the poisons that filled him out.

You didn't try hard enough, he'd said and she'd known that was true. Trapped between wanting to force him into seeing what was going on and being afraid that he'd shut her out completely, she'd given up and let it go, only to lose his trust anyway. What she'd thrown back at him had come from guilt and an anger at herself, for being gutless and thinking there'd be a better time, a better place to tell him. He'd always been a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of guy, and she'd known even at the time that his anger had been masking the fear of what he'd done, what he'd become, fear for what it'd all meant. She shouldn't have reacted. Should've let it go.

Could've, would've, should've – it was done now, she told herself sharply, glancing around as she came to the Lake and began to skirt its edge. She had another chance, maybe. She wouldn't chicken out again.

A faint noise, further up the path, caught at her attention and she stopped, relaxing as she saw three young men come into sight. All three were in their late teens, she noted absently as they passed under a path light, slouching along with their jeans hanging off their hips and hands in their pockets, a steady stream of good-natured insults passing between them.

The ribbing stopped as they drew closer and Ellie kept her pace, ignoring the considering looks.

"Hol' up, lady, no need to be in a rush," the closest said and she turned to look at him.

"Move along, boys, nothing for you here tonight," she said quietly, unobtrusively positioning herself as they came to a halt in a loose half-circle to one side of the path.

"Sez you," the boy in the middle told her, wide mouth curving into a sneering smile. "Could be plenty for us."

"Not a game you want to play."

"You let us be judge of the games we play or don't play." The boy at the front was the tallest, broad-shouldered under his hoodie.

The badge had taken Freddie four weeks to replicate but it was worth every penny, Ellie thought as she pulled it from under the neckline of her top, the gold flashing in the lamplight. New York's finest, even the badge number was authentic.

"How 'bout we make this easy and you just keep moving?"

"You here on your ownsome, honey," the middle boy said, taking a step closer, his expression dismissing the tin. "Don't see no backup."

Letting the badge drop, Ellie's hand darted beneath her jacket, reappearing an eyeblink later with her automatic in it. It was a SIG Sauer 226, not quite the 239 that were issued to the cops in NYC but close enough to make the boys all take a step back.

"Don't make the mistake of your lives," she told him, her tone flat.

The boy at the back grabbed his friend and pulled him away, both of them moving down the path a little. The leader stared at her, his eyes hard.

"We can get guns too, y'know," he said, lifting his chin a little. "We can get lots of guns if we want."

"I'm sure you can," she said, the cock of the hammer loud in the quiet woods. "But for right now? You gonna let me do my job, or you gonna fuck up my night with paperwork?"

God, go Dirty Harriet, she thought derisively, but it made the boy laugh, in spite of himself.

"No, officer, you gotta do what you gotta do," he said, turning away but watching her over his shoulder. "Hate to fuck up your night!"

Ellie kept the gun levelled and cocked until they were out of sight, around the curve of the lake's edge, then she uncocked it and thumbed on the safety, sliding it back into the cutaway holster under the overhang of her top.

One to tell Dean, she decided, turning back to the path. He'd laugh his ass off.

Close to the lights of W59th, even hidden in the growth of the sanctuary, Dean found he could see clearly. The night air was as warm and sticky and as filled with insect life as it'd been the last time he'd been out here, and he tugged at his shirt collar in irritation, slapping futilely at the mosquitoes that had homed in on him as soon he'd made his way to the head of the Pond.

He was thirty yards from the small body of water, about five from the closest path and not more than ten from where the last body had been found, hidden from the lights in a small copse of trees, and he could hear the murmur of the people who were strolling through the warm, summer night clearly despite the proximity to the street traffic.

Too many people, he thought, sliding down the soft bank a bit further. A couple walked past him, arguing amiably over a film just seen. Normal life. That didn't include monsters, or hiding in the shrubbery waiting for them … or nightmares about a place that wasn't supposed to exist …

She'd taken him by surprise with the question. As usual, he thought disparagingly. It probably shouldn't've, considering that Sam had been on his case about them since he'd gotten out. More surprising had been the small personal revelation that he might want to talk about it – maybe – with someone. Someone who didn't think he was weak for fearing what he'd become. Someone he could trust.

"No, Eric, that's not what happened!"

A woman's strident voice came up the path and Dean hunched a little deeper into the shadows.

"You never even wanted this life." A man's deeper voice argued and he saw them come into view beneath the screen of bushes. "You've bitched about it since we started. Why didn't you just tell me the truth?!"

"You wouldn't understand, you never listen to me!"

The couple stopped a few yards from him, and he fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I never lied to you," the man said. "I never betrayed you."

"No," she agreed instantly. "You were just perpetually disappointed in me!"

"That's not true."

"That's what it looked like to me," she snapped, turning and walking away.

Normal life. Other peoples' lives. Not so godamned different. Trust was something he'd relied on. Trust in his family, in the friends they'd had. And it was possible that it didn't really matter what had broken it, only that it was broken and he didn't know how to put the pieces back together. Didn't even know where to start.

Twisting onto his side, he closed his eyes, listening to the guy hurrying after the woman, his voice fading away. He had been disappointed in Sam, he knew. He'd done his utmost to understand what his little brother had gone through, had told himself that Sam had been alone when his deal had come due, but the truth was that he didn't understand. Not really. It wasn't something he could've ever done, or even imagine doing, putting someone else ahead of his family. Semper Fi. His father had set it into his bones.

When he'd followed Sam that night, and seen him pulling the demons out, using the powers of his mind, Ruby hovering in the background, he'd felt Hell close around him again, the razor blade slicing and dicing through his organs. He'd made the deal so that Sam could be free, could go live a normal life. Ruby had told him otherwise. Even Ellie had told him that it wouldn't end there. But he'd hoped that Sam could fight on with Bobby, with the other hunters. Not with the demon.

It'd been a stupid hope and a stupid decision but he knew he'd make the same deal again. He couldn't've let Sam die. Not if there was a way around it.

A lot of things had broken in him, in Hell, and in the last few months. A lot of things had changed the way he'd looked at the world, at himself, at his brother. He didn't know if leaving Sam was the best choice he could've made. Maybe, if Sam hadn't thought he needed the time as well, he couldn't've done it. He didn't know if he could face his little brother, see all those things between them. It couldn't ever be what it had been, but the more he'd thought about that, the more he'd realised that the memories, of family and friends, of having something solid to get his back against, had been distorted by what he'd felt, by what he'd needed. The reality had been different.

Footsteps and a chattering group of people coming up the path broke through his uneasy thoughts and he rubbed a hand over his face, opening his eyes and forcing the mess in his head back down behind the walls that felt like they were bulging outwards more and more every day. He would deal with it later, he half-heartedly promised himself. After the job. This job. The next job. Sometime.

There were too many people here, he thought again, rolling back to look under the bracken and shrubs at the group passing by. It would be too hard for the monster to call out, to lure one of them deeper into the shadows if there was no one here on their own. He wondered if the crocottas would try anyway. Maybe they would, but probably not here. Somewhere more secluded.

Like the Ramble.

The thought made him sit up straighter. The section of the park was usually avoided for more prosaic reasons than monsters, its tangle of paths and wooded areas favoured for shooting up, for clandestine trysts in the woods around the lake, condoms and needles and syringes littering the area through the warmer months. For the random crime, assault and muggings and rapes, for which the city had a waning reputation, but was still a real and occasional danger.

As if the thought had brought it on, the back of his neck began to prickle and twitch. Rolling to his feet, he felt an icy flush chill the perspiration that soaked him and he pushed his way through the bushes to the path, accelerating into a jog as he headed north.

"Ellie … help."

The voice was instantly recognisable, and Ellie swung around on the path, knowing it had to be a trick, knowing it wasn't real. Dean was on the other side of the park, watching the Pond and the sanctuary.

The movement, in the corner of her eye, was as subtle as a cobweb and Ellie turned fast, her jacket falling back, the flashlight rising as the man stepped out from behind the tree and lunged forward.

She ducked the closed fist that grazed one cheek, her knees sagging to take her under his grasping fingers, thumb finding the flashlight's switch and flicking it on as she reached for the long, slender blade sheathed along her forearm with her other hand. The beam swung wildly around, invisible over the monster's clothing, crumbling the flesh of a briefly exposed wrist as the crocotta regained its balance and took a long stride closer.

Its face contorted in rage and pain and she backed fast, her knife in one hand, the jacket thrown clear, raising the flashlight's barrel to catch it higher, where the creature's head and neck were not protected by fabric. A sudden tearing pain in her scalp was the only warning she had that there was more than one.

Her hair was yanked down hard, the creature's fingers digging through it and pulling her over backwards, a hand curling around her throat and pressing hard into the artery at the side, cutting off the blood flow to her brain. The crocotta in front of her gave a breathy chuckle as it pulled the flashlight from her hand and threw it aside, reaching for her wrist, one finger driving into the joint of her thumb, her knife falling as her hand was forced open and her vision began to dim.

"What gives you the right to hunt us down?" a man's voice breathed against her ear and she was pulled back against his chest, her face lifting as he tugged on her hair. "Arrogant, self-appointed judge, jury and executioners, all of you, not even knowing what it is you hunt!"

She couldn't refute that, Ellie acknowledged remotely, struggling to keep consciousness as the hand tightened around her neck. There was nothing in the lore about crocottas working together, although adaptability was the key to any species survival and perhaps she and Dean had pushed the change in behaviour onto these two by killing off all the rest.

She felt the hands of the monster in front of her touch her face, and she twisted away, lifting a knee hard into its groin, stamping down with her body weight on its instep as it grunted and doubled-over. The hand around her throat squeezed and Ellie felt it crushing her windpipe, the crocotta behind her, releasing her hair, its arm swinging around her ribs and lifting her up a little, the heel of its hand compressing her diaphragm.

Don't black out, she told herself furiously, going limp against the creature's grip and sucking in a thin breath.

In front of her, the crocotta wheezed as it straightened up and reached for her face again, fingers clamping like talons around her jaw. Through half-open eyes, she saw its jaw unhinge, revealing a mouthful of pointed teeth that seemed to grow as the mouth opened wider and wider. Living or dead, it would suck her soul if she couldn't think of a way to stop it. The thought bounced agitatedly around in her head but she couldn't move, couldn't lift her hand to stop it. Its fingers forced her mouth open and she stared helplessly at the red-tinted eyes of the monster, feeling her energy drained, fatigue weighting her muscles and flashes of images, from memory, from the past, clouding her mind.

Dean, his eyes widening and mouth dropping open in surprise at her question. The iron-like feel of his rigid muscles under her hand. Green eyes, darkened with pain, cutting away. Michael, his face contorted by the demon possessing him, looming over her and the demon's taunts in her ears.

Distantly, she realised that the crocottas didn't only target grief, but memory. Grief was probably just the easiest to drive people into their waiting arms. She was drowning, she thought, drowning in memories that she didn't even consciously remember.

The fierce bright pain of the vampire's bite, and the rush of heated air as the man had run into the building, a blazing torch setting the old timber factory alight. Exhausted and aching, Carter showing her how much stronger a man was in a fight, how much faster she needed to be if she was going to survive. Pain. Unbearable agony and a face above hers, green eyes bright with unshed tears, strong hands holding her in place. You'll have to hold onto her, Dean, hold her tight. This is going to hurt. A wind that had swept into the cabin and torn them to pieces, right in front of her. An empty house, the fires almost out in the big hearths, the tree sparkling with a mountain of presents under it and an envelope on the mantle. You'll be going to a very good school, a boarding school. We're busy. Later. Go away.

"Dean … help me, please."

Dean slowed as he reached the first patch of deeper shadows, under the trees. The voice hit him like a sledgehammer and he ground his teeth together as he moved more cautiously along the narrow, twisting trail. It could be her, but it wasn't likely. Even if she were injured, he had the feeling she'd drag herself clear rather than ask for help like that.

"Dean … don't let them kill me …"

Not far, a few yards to his north and west, he thought, his hand tightening around the haft of the switchblade he held.

"Dean …"

He accelerated as his ears picked up the muffled snap of a soft twig, going wide of the small clump of saplings in front of him and diving and rolling as he caught the shadow in his periphery. The shadow gasped as it tripped over his legs and he was jacknifing upright, one hand catching the shoulder and wrenching the man over, the other lifting the switchblade, raising it higher and plunging it into the base of the neck. The creature arched back, jerking and convulsing against his grip, its feet digging into the soft decayed leaves and bark that covered the ground.

When it stopped moving, he rolled the body off his legs and got to his feet, absently wiping the blade on the hem of his coat as he debated the pros and cons of trying to find Ellie in the dark or calling out to her and risking attracting attention he didn't want.

"Dean …"

He flinched at her voice, unexpected and confirming what he'd known, on a subconscious level, even before they'd left the hotel. Both monsters were here. One of them had her.

"Ellie, where are you?" he called out, the split-second decision to confront the thing head on driving him forward.

"Dean, help me … it's here … I'm dying …"

Or dead, the small voice in his head piped up cruelly. He ignored it, eyes half-closed as he let his ears triangulate the best guess position of the creature imitating her. Ten yards ahead, maybe one or two to the left, he thought. He skirted the outcropping boulders, going wide to the left, hoping to approach the crocotta on a more oblique angle and unseen.

A crackle in the undergrowth ahead and to his right suggested that it wasn't going to wait for him to find it first. He froze, shoulder pressed against the narrow trunk of an ash, and saw the flicker of movement behind the scattered piles of small rocks and rounded stones that marked the watercourse leading down to the lake. A second later, there was a faint splash.

Dean inched around the tree's bole, his gaze unfocussed as he looked for movement. The thud of a footfall twitched his attention further right and he saw it, creeping through the hip-high ferns that mantled the larger rock outcroppings, heading away from him.

He followed silently, too far to risk running and alerting it, every sense stretched out and razor-keen as he tracked it along the almost-invisible thin trail that led back to the clearing where the other one was lying dead. He might have a shot when it hit that clearing, he thought, extending his stride a little more to keep it in sight. One moment of shock when it saw the body. Otherwise, it was going to be a straight fight in the dark. And probably, he realised with a sour grin, its night-time vision was going to be a helluva better than his.

The shadow vanished into the dark beneath the trees ringing the clearing and Dean sped up, the soft humus of the forest floor silencing his steps, the exact position of the trail fixed in his mind. He looked up as the trees thinned and saw it, crouched over the body of the other one, and he dragged in a deep breath and leapt forward, covering the distance in a long, single stride.

The crocotta swung around a second before he reached it, its face twisted up and the jaw already dropping, the city's ambient light glistening a little on the saliva coating the sharp teeth. Then he was dropping, one knee hitting the monster's shoulder and knocking him backwards onto the ground, his free hand slamming, heel-first, into the bridge of its nose as he plunged the stiletto blade through the open mouth, aimed down its gullet.

No one ever said that the blade had to sever the neck-spine joint from the outside, he thought, rocking his weight over the haft and feeling the tip grind through bone another inch into the thing's neck. It was trembling in a fast, staccato rhythm under him, eyes opened wide as it stared past him into the night, the unnatural width of the jaw action allowing him to push the blade further until he felt something give way at the tip and the shaking ceased abruptly.

Dean leaned back, pulling the knife out and wiping the blade on the monster's shirt. In the morning, the sunlight would disintegrate the bodies, leaving the clothing in a pile filled with dust. It might present a conundrum for the cops, but at least there would be no more murders in the park.

Getting to his feet, he turned away and walked back along the trail, crossing the small stream and pulling out his flashlight. In the soft ground, the tracks of the monster were clear, a man's size ten running shoe, the zigzag tread pattern distinctive.

They led up the small hillside and across a stretch of open ground, dropping again into the woods on the other side, and the flashlight beam caught the bright red of her hair first, vivid against the dark ground and the trunks of the trees. Her face was turned away from him, and the loose sprawl of her body made his stomach tighten as he broke into a run.

Dropping to his knees beside her, he looked down, hesitating as he lifted his hand to turn her head toward him. Too many people had died. He'd lost too many people he cared about to want to see for sure if she was one more of them.

"You were right," she said, making him jump as she rolled her head slowly toward him.

"Damned fucking straight I was right," he snapped, swallowing hard at the sudden banging of his pulse at the base of his throat. "You should'a listened to me."

"Don't yell at me, Dean," she said, eyes opening.

He frowned a little. The pupils were blown, her gaze unfocussed. "You okay?"

"Not just emotion," she said. "Memories."

"What?"

"So tired."

He watched her eyes drop closed again, and leaned closer to her, one hand slipping under her hair to feel for the carotid artery in her neck. Her pulse was strong but slow.

"Ellie, don't pass out on me," he said, dropping the flashlight on the ground as he slid an arm under her shoulders and lifted her. She was breathing, but like her pulse, her chest rose and fell slowly. "Come on, we'll get back to the hotel, you can tell me all about it, then you can crash. Okay?"

"S'like the djinn," she mumbled and he stared at her.

"What's like the djinn?"

"What happened?"

"Hoping you could tell me that," he said, forcing her into a sitting position. "C'mon, snap out of it."

"Out of what?"

It was like talking to his little brother when Sam'd had a snoutful, he thought caustically. He kept his grip on her and levered himself up, dragging her up with him.

"We're gonna walk for a bit," he told her, shifting his flashlight to his left hand as he got her arm over his shoulders. As the beam played around the ground wildly, he saw the UV flashlight lying under a bush, and a second later, the gleam of her slender knife from under another. Half-carrying, half-dragging her over to them, he managed to get low enough to retrieve the flashlight, then the knife, shoving them through his belt as he shifted his grip on her again.

"Ellie, can you walk?" he asked, feeling her weight sagging from the fulcrum of her shoulder as he turned around.

"Don' think so," she sighed.

"Sonofa – Alright," he said, more to himself, he realised, than for her benefit. He crouched and caught both wrists in one hand, letting her fold over his shoulder. She didn't weight that much and he'd move a helluva lot quicker this way, the state she was in.

Like a djinn, she'd said, the words coming back as he picked his way down the hill toward the lake. Like the poison of a djinn, he wondered? Was that what happened to the victims, they got lost in their heads and just let the monsters suck out their souls?

The car was down near the Pond. He hoped he wouldn't see too many people on the way there.

"It was like the djinn's poison, sort of," Ellie said, her head bent over her notes, spread over half the table, her hair still tangled and snarled, mostly pulled out of its braid, damp in the sultry heat of the room as she wrote.

Dean looked at her, chewing his burger. It'd taken three cups of espresso, more or less force-fed and a burger to get her out of the half-comatose state she'd been in when he'd managed to get them both to the car and then back to the hotel. He didn't remember how long the djinn's effects had lasted on him, but he remembered the hangover the following day, those false memories as vivid and real as any of his others.

"They could be related," he offered as he swallowed, picking up his beer and washing the food down. "What did you see?"

"It wasn't like seeing," Ellie told him distractedly, lifting her head, her gaze losing focus as she thought about it. "Or, at least, it was feeling as much as seeing," she clarified. "It was like it was rummaging through my mind, through my memories, looking for the ones that meant the most … the most painful, the ones that hit me the hardest."

She shook her head. "I don't know if I can describe that part, maybe it would be different for someone else, but I couldn't get out of it, couldn't push them aside and see what was happening at that moment."

An expression twisted her features a little, and he wondered what memories had been stirred up. Too many bad ones, he thought. A slight shiver trickled down his spine at the thought of the monsters grabbing him and forcing him to look at the memories he had locked away. The nightmares were more than enough.

She turned her head to look at him, and he saw her eyes refocus. "I told you to trust your instincts."

He snorted. "You're the one who should be trusting my damned instincts," he countered irritably. "I was the one who said we should've stuck together."

"You're right," Ellie agreed immediately.

"Got that right, I'm right," he told her, the irritation dissipating when no argument was forthcoming. "Next time, I expect you to listen when I tell you something."

"Next time," she repeated, her mouth curving up in a one-sided grin. "Yep, sure thing. Next time."

He watched her look back at her notes. "You think the two of them were working together just because we were here?"

"My gut says, yeah, they teamed up to take us out," she replied, opening her laptop and starting to transcribe the notes into a file. "They didn't seem to be that comfortable with each other."

"And they weren't clear on the plan?"

Shaking her head, Ellie said, "No. One of them wanted to kill me straight away, the other one insisted that it wait for you to show up. I don't remember much more than that, because I started to fade out around then, but it wasn't like they'd decided anything beforehand."

"Are you sending this stuff to Bobby?"

"And Rufus," she confirmed, fingers flying across the keys. "Bobby'll pass it on to the hunters he knows, at least."

Finishing his food and the beer on the table, Dean got to his feet and dropped the bottle and wrappings in the trash can, turning to the fridge and pulling out another beer from its semi-cool interior. There wasn't much in the way of lore on the creatures and maybe what they'd seen here would help other hunters. Or maybe not, he thought, knocking the top off the bottle and swallowing a mouthful as he walked back to the table.

"Whose voice did you hear, when it called out?" he asked. He picked up the chair and turned it around, sitting down and leaning forward, his hand loosely curled around the beer as he looked at her.

She didn't answer for a moment, and he wondered if that was a deliberate hesitation, or if she was just distracted by what she was typing.

"Uh, I heard my mom's voice," she said, glancing at him then back to the keyboard. "What about you?"

He looked down at the bottle. "Sam," he told her, his voice a little higher than usual. It was harder to lie to her than it was to lie to his brother, he thought in annoyance.

"Oh."

The lore on the crocottas was that they could see pretty much everything, could reach into your mind and pick and choose the most potent memories and images, the ones you couldn't easily defend against. It could be wrong, he decided, lifting the bottle and letting another mouthful of the cool liquid trickle down his throat.

"There another beer in there?" Ellie asked, glancing sideways at the fridge.

"Uh, yeah, sure," he said, getting to his feet and finishing his as he crossed to the counter. He dropped the empty into the trash can and pulled out two cold ones, knocking the tops off and handing her one as he walked over to the bed.

"Doesn't the heat ever let up here?" he grumbled, setting the bottle on the nightstand and sitting on the bed to pull off his boots. "It feels like its getting hotter."

From the table, Ellie huffed out a small laugh. "Not without a storm."

"Bring on the storms then," he muttered, pulling his tee shirt off and flopping backwards onto the bed, sighing a little as a trickle of cooler air slid over him from the open gap of the window.

"There's a very, very small breeze here," he informed her, reaching out for his beer and turning his head to look at her.

"Really?" Ellie looked up from the laptop and pushed back a strand of hair that was sticking to her forehead. She looked back at the screen with a slight scowl and he heard the soft clicking of the keys speed up. "Don't talk about it, it might get shy and disappear."

He smiled, leaning back against the pillows and closing his eyes. "You think we got all of 'em?"

"I don't know," she said. "A city like this? It's almost perfect for them. Most of the deaths might be thought of as misadventure, or even accidental death, random crime, some might be flagged missing persons … nothing like that is going to be seen as a pattern, not even by the best cops."

"Yeah." He turned his head, opening his eyes and watching her as she finished typing and sent the files to the other hunters. "They were pretty blatant about it night before last, maybe we'll see something on the news."

Closing the laptop lid, Ellie nodded. She slid the computer into its bag and stood up, stretching. "Tell that breeze not to go anywhere," she said over her shoulder. "I'm going to try and cool down enough to enjoy it."

Walking to the sofa, she put the laptop's bag at the end, and pulled out a couple of things from her bag, then headed for the bathroom. A moment later, he heard the water go on, and he rolled off the bed, going to the television set and turning it on, the cool, flickering light enough to see by, the sound low enough to hear but not drown out the other sounds in the room. He turned off the lights, left the lamp on near the armchair on and resettled himself on the bed, shifting uncomfortably for a few minutes until he found the little zephyr of breeze, even the thin, old denim of his jeans close and too warm in the stifling room.

The cooler air moving over him drew a little of the heat from his skin and he closed his eyes, tuning out the tv broadcast, images forming behind his closed lids, centred around the faintly heard gush of water from the bathroom. His breath whistled softly through his teeth as they formed into a single image, one that throbbed through his body as well as his mind and he wondered, a little incoherently, what Ellie would do if he walked into the bathroom, stripped off and got in there with her.

C'mon, he thought, rolling onto one shoulder and shutting both thought and its accompanying imagery away. Things weren't complicated enough? He had to add that to the mix? She wasn't a pick up, some nameless chick he could walk away from and never see again. He swiped his hand over his face and reached out for the beer. The fact was, he told himself, pushing himself higher against the pillows, it didn't matter what he felt, he wasn't going to screw up one of the few relationships he had with someone he could trust. Get your head back in the game. He turned up the sound on the tv a bit more and forced himself to concentrate on the news reader.

The taps went off and Ellie came out of the bathroom, dressed in the thin white singlet and cotton boxers. He glanced at her as she walked to the side of the bed, watching her hold out her hand toward the gap in the window and sigh with relief when she felt the light air moving over it. He moved over as far he could, and waved a hand at the television.

"Nothing so far."

Lying down on the bed under the window, Ellie's gaze sharpened on the set.

"Might not mean anything," she said, leaning on one elbow to lift her damp hair from the back of her neck and spread it over the pillow behind her.

Dean's gaze involuntarily followed the movement, watching the muscles flex in her upper arm and shoulder, wandering down the shoulder to the swell of her breast beneath the thin material of her singlet, flattening out over her stomach. He was discomforted to find that her scent was carrying on the light air that moved over them, awakening the sense memory of her body pressed tightly against his in the subway. He shifted slightly and looked back at the television, forcing himself to concentrate on what the reporters at the scene were saying, ignoring the feel of his pulse beating in the hollow of his throat.

They watched in silence to the end of the update, both relaxing incrementally when there was no mention of any crime occurring in the city that could have been attributed to the crocottas. Ellie gave a sigh of relief, stretching out and closing her eyes.

Beside her, Dean lifted his beer, swallowing a mouthful. "Could be that they haven't had time to find any other bodies yet?"

"Could be," she agreed. "Could be that if there was one or two still out there, they're keeping a low profile since the others have been killed."

"Not likely," he decided, rolling onto one elbow and looking down at her. With her eyes closed, he let his gaze slip down her body, knowing it was a bad idea, unable to help himself. "Two of them hooked up to get us - more of them and they'd probably have succeeded."

"Good point," Ellie said, smiling slightly. "We'll check in the morning," she added, opening her eyes and turning her head to him.

"I guess we could hang around for a couple of days, make sure," he said, liking the idea of that. Not hunting, just hanging out. Maybe catching a movie, or checking out a club. Regular folks, on vacation.

"Shouldn't take that long," Ellie said, wriggling to the side of the bed and sitting up. "I don't suppose those windows open any more than that?"

He shook his head. "Not without demolition."

"What a shame." She got up and walked back to the sofa, tossing the thin sheet to one end. Watching her, Dean chewed at the corner of his lower lip. He shouldn't've let that damned thought in to begin with, he realised, 'cause it was giving him hell about leaving.

"Six of them in three days," he said suddenly. "It's not bad."

"Not bad at all," Ellie agreed absently, dropping to the sofa and dragging her bag over to her feet.