Chapter 8 to The Mark
"The Wrong Deja Vu"
Author: Wakingsparrow
Author's Note: A long time in coming and not at all what I want it to be, but if I don't get something out I won't get to the chapter I've already written and am in love with. Life has been way too crazy, mostly in a good way. I hope the same for all of you! Bare with me! I've got quite a few things up my sleeve. We'll be reading some major butting of heads between the current characters, a different sort of flash back, and a drawing fresh off the pencil I made to go along with it. ;)
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Three songs after his companion decided he was a one man band, Dean had had enough. He should be feeling elated that he was back on the road with some real work to do and the last thing he could put up with was that being soured. It was fairly obvious that the passenger was making a sport out of debasing each of his classics with terrible harmonization.
He clicked off the stereo with salty conviction and let a broad silence make his point. The man beside him became still taking up a notebook, probably knowing he was pushing his luck, and Dean finally enjoyed the tuned sound of the Impala over the asphalt. The engine sang to him for a few hours and the heat made the horizon quiver and wave as the sun reached its apex above. The car wove past cars and cargo trucks here and there; gaudy billboards advertized casinos or strip clubs that where at least an hour away.
While it all seemed so familiar to Dean, he realized it felt detached. It wasn't quite like it was in the past, the whole sensation, the smell and taste had changed about it. All the temperament he had cherished was still so close like ash that had just been thrown up in the wind, but he knew it never come back the same way. It was this that struck him swiftly. The temperature in the cabin was too hot, the lack of classic rock made his blood thud in his ears discomfortingly, the stranger next to him was not someone he could count on watching his back…this…this all of this was not right. A sick twist of the wrong kind of déjà vu bubbled up in his blood and made his hands feel slick on the steering wheel.
Dean shifted in his seat and searched frantically for a distraction.
"We'll have to stop in the next few hours for food. Tell me you aren't a freakin' vegetarian or something.
His unwanted copilot turned with a solemn expression.
"Organic vegan…Christ, do you even know what you're putting in your body? But hey," Sylas shrugged and admired the passing fields, "I doubt you even think about your environmental footprint."
The silence was so thick you could practically take a lard bath in it. Dean gritted his jaw and eyed the ditch. Was it steep? Was that a patch of thorn bushes the Impala had just flown by he'd just wasted? Maybe he should back up and claim he'd lost his exhaust pipe.
The guest shook his head emphatically and dug though the bag he's stashed at his feet. "It's people like you who really do all the damage." He pulled out a cellophane package. "You're the sheep that don't care about future life."
The parcel he held obnoxiously squeaked open with a pull. Sylas shoved half a twinkie in his mouth. "Yo'ree sush a pearibel 'berson"
He swallowed thickly and toothily beamed cream filling remains. "You don't have a fur coat I can splatter some red paint on do you?"
It took the amount of time Dean seethed with insult for him to catch on.
It was a joke.
Probably one he would taken pride in making if he were in the same circumstances.
Dean gritted his teeth.
"Whatever."
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Another hour flew by before he decided to speak again.
"So Bobby assures me you're good at what we do." 'And I trust his opinion of people' went unspoken, but didn't have to be vocalized. "If we're going to be stuck together on this, I need to know you can watch your own back. So what have you got? How long have you been at this?"
An abandoned off ramp whipped by and the overhead bridge darkened everything for a flicker. Sylas seemed to mull the inquiry a little to long for Dean's comfort, but he shifted upright in the leather seat and spoke.
"So, what, are we going to parade trophies and see who comes out the better hunter? If this a pissing contest, I actually did drink a lot of coffee when I got to Bobby Singer's…"
The Winchester steeled his jaw and was about to bit back, but the other man continued.
"Look, I've never killed a demon, that's for sure. As far as other hunters' know, you and your brother have been the only ones to do it." Sylas Mordel picked at dead skin around a finger nail compulsively. "A lot of ghosts, a few satyrs and minor pagan gods." He puffed out a lungful of air and laughed quietly, eyes still fixed on his hands, "That dzimozona was one of the ugliest damn things I've ever seen in my life."
Dean's head threw back with a deep chuckle he hadn't expected, and even if he'd tried to prevent it he couldn't have. He vaguely remembered reading about Dzimozonas which also know as Mamunas. They were disguised as disgusting old women who stole children away from mother to raise as their own. They were water dwellers and vengeful monsters with few weaknesses that could eat a man whole…
"No waaaay. What swamp were you dumb enough to be slugding around in to run into one of them?"
Sylas responded absentmindedly. "Downtown Tampa. I swear she had at least 6 stolen babies in her nest. You'll never guess who she was disguised as."
Dean's curiosity peaked "Who? Some crazy cat lady in a shack down the street?"
"Bobby assured me you're good at what we do too."
His grin grew before Dean could feel like he'd actually been insulted. "A rascal bound, red hat society, cookie welding grandma …get it? The fucking hat with the 'feather'? We had to hijack a grocery store egg supply just to put her under."
If the man next to him had been a friend, he would had enjoyed the story far too much for his own good, but he settled with a more childishly vulgar question "So…is the thing with her tits true?'
Sylas gagged sardonically. "Oh God…you think those red hat ladies are creepy, imagine one of those wearing its skin. Sags even more…when we caught up to her she was 'washing her laundry' …." They both surprised themselves as they shared a thick chuckle together.
The younger gasped for air tried to finish the plot, "We saw the thing right off the bat, but it made too much sense to put together." Sylas gestured the creature's stout drippy figure with his hands and then ardently dug around in his jacket pocket…
"It took me and Cale days to figure it out!"
The younger mans face fell abruptly and the sight choked out Dean's half-baked retort.
Sylas had fished out what he was looking for.
"…I've dealt with few other things from hell too, but they didn't die." He bit off a patch of skin off is fore finger. "Pull over a minute? Coffee is catching up to me."
Dean consented, thundering over the rumble strip just shy of the Nebraska border.
His companion didn't make any bones about it, after he trudged down the thorny steep hill Dean had been hoping for the whole time. After a moment he reemerged and planted himself on a weeded bed of marigold. It took a few flicks of what he had been excavating his pocket for, but the Zippo came to life, lighting the cigarette he gripped between thumb and forefinger.
"We gunna stop for food or what?" Sylas breathed out a cloud of smoke and took another drag. "We should go somewhere with steaks."