Chapter 3

Every muscle ached and throbbed.

Dean blinked. A film covered his eyes, leaving smudges of light over everything. He watched in silence as the lights streaked across his line of vision. If he concentrated on the lightshow, then the pain that rippled out of his back through the rest of his body didn't seem so bad. The lights were soothing.

He was slipping again. Dean screwed his eyes shut and opened them, trying to force the haze out. A shadow hovered over him.

Dean flinched. A current of unease pushed him back. The damn place smelled like hay and rotten eggs.

"Dean?"

Sam's voice sounded far away, small and hollowed out, like he was calling from the end of a long tunnel. A low buzzing drowned out the background noises Dean would have expected to hear. No TV. No radio. No sounds of traffic. No damn birds.

When Dean lifted his head to find him, the room tipped, earning him a horrible wave of nausea. Dean let his head collapse back onto the pillow.

Sam was shaking him.

"Dean, come on. Get up."

Another wave of rotten egg smell smacked his nose. Dean groaned and slapped his hand to his face. He spit the straw out of his mouth. Straw? What the hell?

The wings flapped with discomfort.

Oh crap. Right.

Dean tried to sit up straight, but his quick motions made the room tilt. Sam grabbed him by the forearms and tried to steady him as the weight of the wings pulled him back down.

The buzzing grew.

"Dude," Dean muttered, wrinkling his nose. "You stink."

"What?"

Dean shook his head and pushed Sam away. He could sit up himself. He wasn't a freakin' invalid.

Fighting the massive throbbing in his back, Dean sat down on the dry hay. The wings squirmed behind him, mashed into the pile of hay, straw sticking and mixed into the feathers. The skin lining of the wings itched where the straw scratched against it, and it took everything within Dean not to reach back and start preening the damn things.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Not only had the wings come back with a vengeance, but they also seemed to have robbed him of his vision as an added gift.

"The damn streaks won't go away." He swatted at them. The colors sure weren't soothing anymore.

"There's nothing there."

"What?" He cut through the light with his hands. Sometimes he thought he could hold them, squeeze the colors in his fist, but they would escape and zip away. His attention was on one that was zipping around like a drunk faery at a bachelor party.

He cringed and grabbed at his ear as a sharp whistle stabbed at his eardrum.

"Dean, hey." He thought he saw Sam snap his fingers, but no sound came. "Stay with me."

The whistle and the buzzing came together, joined by a few dozen whispers. At the same time, Dean turned toward Sam and cupped his hands over his ears.

"What do you hear?" Sam asked, barely audible over the clicks and whistles, buzzes and hums. A streak of blue and yellow zipped past his face. As the glow faded, Sam was left with darkness around him, like some perverted reverse halo.

Dean stared.

Sam didn't flinch under the weight of his stare, but Dean saw the discomfort in his eyes. He swore his brother tried to talk again. No sound came out. Just moving lips.

Dean shook his head and pressed harder against his ears. All the foreign noises came at once, urgent and desperate.

Somewhere in the noise he thought he shouted for it to stop. He thought he yelled at the top of his lungs. All he heard was the buzzing, the static, and nothing else.

The wings had broken him.

Sam was running. Away. He slid around the car to the barn doors and slammed them shut, disappearing into the dark.

Dean sat alone. The wings fanned out and curled in, creating a walled cocoon. The noises and light streaks kept pummeling his senses.

What the hell was wrong with him?

Xoxoxoxo

Sam slammed the barn doors behind him and entered the bitter winter night. Just as he feared, a car, headlights off, rolled toward the barn. He should be thankful it wasn't a cop car.

Connor's old Jeep bounced over the frozen bumps in the ground before stopping several feet away from the barn.

"Connor?" Sam called.

His friend cut the engine and jumped out of the Jeep. He was a little worse for wear since the last time Sam had seen him. His goatee grew wild, and the military fatigues he liked to wear were caked with dirt. A lone toothpick hung on his bottom lip. Connor strolled over to Sam nonplused.

"You jumped the case."

"We took out the werewolf," Sam said.

"Yeah, and then you split. What was up with that?"

Sam didn't have time for this. "Dean and I had to get out of there before the cops nailed us."

"I told you I had a contact in the force. I coulda taken care of that." He frowned. "What in God's name happened to your arms?"

Sam heard the unspoken fear in Connor's question. "I wasn't bitten, if that's what you're implying."

Connor grunted. "Yeah." He spit out the toothpick. "It's a pack, you know."

Sam frowned. This was the first he'd heard of a pack going wild in a city. "Are you sure?"

"Am I sure…" He grunted again. "Beasties are my specialty. Of course, I'm sure. It's a mini-pack. Not old or mature, and clumsy as all hell. Should be able to pick 'em off one by one easy."

Werewolves weren't complicated. Once you found what was driving them, it was simple to hunt them down and kill them. More predictable than vampires. That should make them easier to kill. It didn't make it easier for Sam one bit.

Connor could have wiped them out on his own.

"Why are you here?" Sam asked him, suddenly suspicious.

"I checked up where it all went down. Bloody mess," he said, and spit. "Though maybe the worst had happened, but your car was MIA. I checked all the usual nearby haunts for us hunters and saw the barn." Connor smiled, the first hint of happiness since he'd driven out, and was obviously pleased with himself. "Don't worry. I threw the cops off your trail."

That was a relief. Though, Sam was beginning to think handling the cops would be easier than dealing with a hunter. The thin barn wall separated an experienced monster killer from Dean, who, for all intents and purposes, looked the part of a monster.

"Where is this brother I never see?"

Sam kept his face blank. He knew there were some rumors circulating through the hunting community about Dean's miraculous rise from the dead, though he had done his best to keep any word on Dean's death under wraps. Even as he worked with Ruby all those months, he had fully intended on finding a way to bring Dean back. No need to announce Dean was dead in the first place. His conspicuous absence made it obvious enough.

"He's resting."

Connor nodded. Sam had seen this look about him before and didn't like it. He might respect Connor as a fellow hunter, and the occasional ally, but when his attention focused on new quarry, he could be beyond dangerous.

"He got torn up pretty bad, didn't he?"

Sam studied Connor's face, but found it unreadable. What had Connor found in the alleys? Dean had lost some blood, and skin and muscle fragments had clumped on the icy pavement. How Connor could tell that was linked to Dean, he wasn't sure. Did his contact at the force know something as well? No way could any DNA results have come through yet. There had been several witnesses to Dean's condition. Could he have cornered them? The old man in the alley? Sam hadn't had time to check the radio for any reports. God knew what was on the local news stations.

"If only," Sam finally said, adding a laugh. "His ego could use to be knocked down a peg." When Connor didn't laugh, Sam dropped the act. "Dean wasn't bitten, either."

"Hmm. Cause you know, there's no cure. Innocent or no, werewolves can't roam free."

"Yeah. I know. More than I'd like."

"Heard about that. Shame."

"Then let's leave it."

Another nod. Connor's eyes roamed to the barn doors. "I got some salves that might help with post-wolf hunts."

"Dean and I will manage."

"It's no trouble."

Sam laughed again. This time, he kept any mirth fully out of it. "You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say this was an interrogation."

"Nah. You know me. Innocents and hunters. I leave them to their business. No need to be afraid unless you're hiding something." He paused and cocked his head. "You aren't hiding something, are ya?"

Sam stared stone-faced.

"Sometimes I wonder if there weren't some truth to those rumors Gordon spread round about you. But in the end, I seen in you. You're good people." His eyes bore into Sam. "Would hate for that to change."

"Now that would be a shame."

"I know, right? So you won't mind me just popping in to check on your brother, see how he's doing. Fellow hunter and all. Would love to help."

Sam side-stepped to the front of the barn door to match Connor. "I'm going to ask you to leave."

There was no room to argue in Sam's demand. His fingers slid along his belt, hovering above the gun hugging the small of his back. Connor knew what Sam meant. His face never changed, but the light in his eyes dimmed until the warmth vanished. This was the face of an enemy.

"Right shame, Sam. That Texas job in July?" Connor whistled. "I knew then you were better than they say you are. Coming out of your brother's shadow. Don't throw that away now."

"I'm not in anyone's shadow," Sam said.

"You keep believing that and—"

The ground shook. When Sam turned, a bright white light streamed from between the cracks of the barn. His stomach bottomed out. Dean.

Sam rushed inside the barn with Connor on his heels. The light faded; small tremors rattled the frame, but within seconds eased into a near non-existent rumble. Sam's attention immediately went to the pile of hay near the back wall.

Dean was gone.

Connor appeared beside him, and Sam knew the other hunter was reading his face. The wall immediately went back up, though he feared Connor might have gotten a peak.

Sam didn't have long to dwell on it. Connor was already moving across the barn, stopping to pick up a lone feather the length of his arm. He turned to Sam and held it up.

"Just what are you into, Winchester?"