Late update!

Chapter 3

There it was again. There was that miniscule nudging, that pressure on the outskirts of his mind. It nudged him incessantly, growing in strength and severity as time went on. "Jesus," Sam groaned as he downed his fourth dose of Tylenol that day. "This hurts," he insisted yet again, throwing himself facedown onto his dusty motel bed.

"Get over it, princess." Dean was lacing up his boots on the next bed over. Sam forced himself to look over at his brother, who immediately looked away.

Seriously? Sam thought. This is still going on. And it had been going on for three days. Sam had tried to ask Dean why he was avoiding him, but all Dean would say was the same excuse: he needed his space for now. As if that shit is true.

Since when was Dean in need of his space?

Sam had two words for whatever the hell Dean said:

Bull. Shit.

The drive to the diner for breakfast was silent. Breakfast was silent. Then began the somber trek to Dick Roman's headquarters. All that could be heard was the faint hint of almost-muted country music that trickled through the speakers, diffusing the heavy absence of sound but also making the situation far more awkward. "So," Sam began, trying to ignore his throbbing head.

Dean looked over at him without really removing his eyes from the road. "So."

"We're going after Dick Roman today..." Sam tried again, trying vainly to get some kind of response out of his older brother. Maybe some kind of snarky joke? Hell, even a ranting rage of hate for Dick Roman and all that he represented would be fine with him. Anything to make him talk.

Again, Dean just gave that not-quite-there look. "Yeah, we are. I, uh, I talked to Frank. And he said that other than them eating themselves or each other, Leviathans can only stay dead if they're killed by this one weapon."

Sam looked up hopefully; he was talking! But the motion activated the pain in his mind, and he hissed under his breath as pressure was put against the mental puncture where that nudging was digging a hole in his coconut. "What..." he paused to massage his temple with a groan, "what's the weapon?"

"Dragons."

Sam blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"Well, that'll be hard to find."

Dean nodded as they pulled over on the side of the road, just a few yards out of sight of Dick's headquarters. The older hunter turned in his seat to face Sam, whose heart leapt at being noticed. "Frank said that there'd be two of them living right now, coexisting in the bodies of human hosts. They can change at will, as long as the human consents. So they're like dragon skinwalkers."

"What's the catch?"

"There aren't any real names given. Just 'Holder of the Eldest' and 'Blackened One.' That's all we got."

Sam nodded quietly as Dean started the car again. "So let's just go. There's no chance that we'll find them."

"Sure. Yeah." Dean opened his mouth to say something else, but then he closed it just as fast.

The car pulled onto the smooth black tarmac of the newest Richard Roman Enterprises building, cruising unchallenged down the straight expanse. Sam and Dean rode in stony silence, sobered by the fact that they were going in to the biggest and possibly most deadly location they had ever faced.

The surroundings were silent as the brothers exited the car and got their weapons from the trunk. No Leviathans tried to confront them.

"They're watching us," Dean muttered, loading his shotgun with silver bullets. He shouldered a sash full of spray cans of Borax, and handed the other one to his brother. "Let's just go and get this over with. If we get Roman, then we've got the whole enterprise under our thumbs. "Here-" he tossed a machete to Sam, "just swing it around. You'll get a head eventually."

"Dean!" Sam yelled as his brother fell to the ground, unconscious. Sam reached out a weaponless arm to Dick Roman as he ran at the monster, praying that something could let him kill this thing that might have killed his brother, his Dean. Dick's smug face was twisted into a cool smirk; the monster calmly smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle in his suit and waited for Sam to reach him. "I'll kill you!" Sam shouted, and a primal feeling surged through him; that nudging in his mind grew insistent as it broke through and took control, making his voice come out as an ear-shattering roar.

Suddenly he was transforming, changing, being something else entirely. Hands changed to talons, teeth turned to fangs, and size doubled, tripled, centupled. Sam felt the same rush that he'd felt in his dream, felt that pure power as he reared up on hind legs laced with thick, roping muscles and roared at Dick Roman, letting out a burst of fire.

The Leviathan's borrowed face paled. He took a hurried step back, pushing his two cronies into Sam's path. Sam took those two down with a swiped front paw that sliced them to bits, turning their borrowed skins into ash.

Roman began to run, but Sam reached out a midnight-black paw and scooped up the human-sized monster. He brought the closed paw up in front of his face, snarling into the comparitively miniscule face of Dick Roman. "Have fun in Purgatory," he growled.

"No," Dick muttered. "Never."

Sam laughed and let loose a jet of flame, lighting up the darkened warehouse with golden tongues of fire. He kept the stream of flame going for ten more seconds, aiming it right at the worst monster ever to walk the earth.

The thing that was Dick Roman turned to ash and filtered through his claws, drifting to the ground like smoke.

The feeling of adrenaline began to ebb. Sam felt the humanity taking the forefront; it took away the claws and replaced them with fingertips, and it shrunk the scales and wings into smooth skin and clothes.

He stood there in smoke-blackened clothes, looking down at the mirrored floor. He was human again. Sam saw movement behind him in the near-glass surface and turned to see his now-gold eyes reflected in Dean's furious green ones.

Then the butt of Dean's shotgun slammed into his head.