CHAPTER 8 - "Blood, Salt and Cinnamon"
The sun was down. The stars were out above the black tips of the tree branches, and I had that creeping dread prickling down my neck again. I was now sure that it must have been the ghouls I sensed in the woods last night ... was it only last night? It seemed a lot longer ago than that.
My body was frozen, I could no longer feel my feet, my legs burned and the partially healed injury to my shoulder throbbed, but I didn't think it was the darkness, cold or pain that was raising the hairs on my neck. I was pretty sure there were ghouls nearby. I think Sam felt the same way because he was pushing us faster and faster through the darkened woods.
In the distance I could see the hulking outline of some larger black shape blotting out the stars and I hoped that it was the mill we were heading for. The way Sam's body language perked up when he saw it made me think it was.
Almost there ...
Something dark flew from the trees and slammed into Sam from the side, tackling him to the ground. I could see the outline of the ghoul's body in the darkness as Sam elbowed it in the face, struggling to get it off him. His shotgun was partially trapped under his body by the way they had fallen.
With stiff, frozen fingers I quickly yanked the Taurus from my coat pocket, flicked off the safety and shot the ghoul on top of Sam in the head. I was exhausted, frozen, injured and acting on little sleep and too much adrenaline. The action was instinctive, only the moment after I pulled the trigger did I realize I had just killed someone I didn't even know.
The Winchesters considered them creatures and they certainly sounded pretty damn nasty but I knew almost nothing about them first hand, and killing was never my go-to plan. I didn't exactly freeze, I knew I couldn't afford that, but the tension in my gut did make it a little hard to breathe. Crap, crap, crap!
Sam rolled the limp ghoul off of him and used the butt of his shotgun to quickly smash the ghoul's head in with a few quick strokes - making me think that maybe I hadn't actually killed it after all. Headshots may stop them, but apparently total cranial destruction was required to prevent reanimation - or maybe we'd all just seen too many zombie movies.
In my periphery vision, the trees around us seemed to be moving, only I knew it wasn't the trees. It was like staring with unfocused eyes at the grass on a summer day and suddenly becoming aware that it was actually alive with the activity of an ant hive. Crap on toast, they'd found us all right. Possibly, they'd found the car already and had been waiting here for us. I didn't think there were nearly as many as we'd encountered before, but it was impossible to tell in the darkness.
"Rachel," Trent's breath frosted on the night air. He was ghost-pale in the moonlight. He'd obviously seen the movement too. "Run!"
It was a superfluous command because all three of us were already doing that. The problem was that we didn't get far. The dark shapes in the trees converged on us. Sam's shotgun roared, lighting up the night in violent flashes of light and sound that deepened the chaos. The ghouls weren't silent any longer. They growled and shouted and screamed with rage, hunger, pain ... I couldn't tell.
I guess they could smell the blood on Trent all right, because they seemed drawn to him like catnip. Trent was dodging them remarkably well given his condition, but one of them grabbed the elf, fingers digging into his wounded shoulder through the coat he wore and Trent fell, dropping to his knees with a cry of pain.
I shot the ghoul in the head before it could force him the rest of the way down. Adrenaline pumping and mindful of what had happened earlier, I squeezed the trigger several more times in quick succession, hoping that would keep it down. I still felt sick inside, but it was self-defense and without my magic I didn't have the luxury of options. This sucked, big time.
I flipped and rolled the next ghoul that charged and threw him into a tree. Reaching down, I grabbed Trent's hand and half yanked, half helped him back to his feet. "Stay close!" I instructed quickly. Trent was usually terrible at following orders, but one thing I did have to give him - it didn't seem to faze him or hurt his pride to let me protect him when the situation called for it. I'd dealt with plenty of alpha males who were all about protecting the little lady but would get seriously bent out of shape at the thought that I could possibly do the same for them. Trent did many things that annoyed the crap out of me, but this wasn't one of them. He didn't seem to take my competence as a challenge to his masculinity and honestly, I kind of liked that. It could be because I'd played body guard for him in the past (even if usually unwillingly). I got the odd feeling though, that it was more because he respected me and my skills and saw me as an equal, like Quen.
Keeping Trent close and trying to remain cognizant of how many shots I had left, I attempted to force a way through the tangle, pummeling anything that came close. My night vision was better than a normal human's and despite the chaos and the disruptive flashes of light, I quickly realized that there weren't as many of the ghouls as it initially seemed. There had only been six, and three were already down. Apparently our ruse had worked and most of the pack must have followed Dean.
Sam blasted the head off another one, but it was followed by the chilling sound of his shotgun clicking on empty chambers. He swung the weapon around, using the butt like a club and I realized he was out of ammo. I probably only had a handful of shots left myself. We had to get to the car and get out of here!
Someone grabbed my hair and I spun, drop-kicking them in the knee and shooting them in the gut. Not fatal, but it sent them reeling backwards and I was able to scramble away. I'd lost Trent in the skirmish and I looked around for him urgently. I turned just in time to see Sam get thrown forcefully into a tree. I knew instantly from the way his head bounced against the hard surface that we were in trouble. Sure enough, he slumped to the ground beneath the tree, knocked unconscious by the vicious blow.
I leaped, bodily tackling the ghoul that had knocked him out before it could pounce on him. We went down in a tangle and the smell of death and decay washed over me at the close contact. The ghouls smelled like rotting flesh and human decomposition. I wasn't sure if that was because of what they fed on or if it was the scent of their race, but it was strong enough to make me gag. I jammed my knee into the man's in the groin. I wasn't sure how the whole 'wearing the skin' thing went, but it seemed like the ghouls mimicked their previous victims' physiology closely enough that the move hurt enough to allow me to roll away.
Trent was crouching over Sam, trying to rouse him. I knew neither of us would be able to carry the tall man right now. This was so not good. Still on hands and knees, I scrambled to put myself protectively in front of the two injured men.
Before I had a chance to rise, the two remaining ghouls attacked at the same time. Pivoting on my knee, gun braced in both hands, I pumped two shots into the head of the nearest one and he fell. I didn't have time to adjust my aim before the second one slammed into me and threw me back onto the ground, hard.
I had been knocked around far too much today and pain flared through me. At the same moment, I saw a familiar but unexpected ball of gold slam into the ghoul above me, sending him reeling backwards with a shriek. I jerked my gun back up and shot him three times in the head before the gun clicked empty.
For a few heartbeats a sudden, heavy silence fell and all I could hear was my own ragged breathing. Then I quickly scrambled upright, wincing at the pain of feeling like every freaking muscle in my body was bruised. I turned to Trent and for a moment I saw the haze of magic dripping from his hand, tinted with his golden aura, before he let it dissipate upon seeing that the ghouls were all down. I tasted the familiar, fleeting tang of wild magic on the air before it was gone.
"What the hell, Trent?" I demanded in shocked surprise. "I thought you said you couldn't do wild magic here!" I immediately tried for a line, but met with the same failure as all my previous attempts. Turn take it, that wasn't fair.
Trent wrapped one arm around his middle, the other gripping his shoulder. "No," he corrected, his breathing unsteady. "I said I couldn't get it to acknowledge me. After you went missing, I tried a little harder and found a way to ... get its attention. It's how we were able to find you," he admitted. "You left your coat at the restaurant and it was in the car beside me when I woke up. You still had those bloody napkins from earlier in your pocket. I took yours for a focusing object. When we were in the woods searching, I slipped away long enough to work a locator charm. They don't know," he nodded towards Sam and I guessed this was probably the root of Dean's "don't wander off again" comment earlier. "I told them I'd seen smoke coming from the right direction."
"Then you were trying to work a spell back there," I blurted in realization, understanding now what Trent had been trying to do when Raymond was laying into him and he couldn't physically fight him off.
Trent grimaced as he tilted Sam's head from side to side and checked his eyelids and vitals. "The magic is different here. It's harder for me to use it and my control is a little ... spotty," had admitted.
"This is good news," I said as I dropped back to my knees beside them, slapping Sam's cheek, trying to get him to wake up. All the ghouls may be down for now, but we needed to get out of here before that changed or more showed up. I thought maybe I could drag Sam if I needed to, as long as I wasn't having to run and fight while I did so. "Once we're out of here, you can show me how to tap in too."
"I ... don't think that's a good idea," Trent said quietly.
I had just gotten Sam's shoulders off the ground but I stopped, looking up sharply at Trent again. With magic back in our corner, our chances of both survival and getting home, improved exponentially. I was as happy as I could be, given the circumstances and I didn't understand why Trent wasn't sharing my enthusiasm.
"Oh yeah, why not?" I demanded, more than a little irritated at the thought that Trent had a way to access magic and was acting like he wasn't going to share.
Trent's gaze skirted away from mine, his face blank like it always got when he was hiding something from me. "I told you, it's ... different. I'm an elf, you're not. I don't think it will work the same as it does in our world." It was a crap explanation and I knew that wasn't the problem, or at least not all of it. Trent was definitely hiding something, but I didn't have time to call him on it just now. Sam was starting to stir beneath my hands and right now getting out of Dodge was the priority. I could grill Trent later.
I shook Sam again, patting his cheek and calling his name. For a moment his brown eyes were unfocused as they blinked up at me, then he came aware with a jerk, sitting up and groping for his fallen weapon, bouncing back with the wary rapidity of a veteran fighter. His gaze darted around us as he scrambled unsteadily back to his feet.
"Whoa, hey, it's okay," I said quickly. "They're all down, but we should probably get going." I handed him back his gun. "Thanks for the loan. It's out of bullets."
I could tell his mind was still lagging a few steps behind, but he seemed to grasp what I was saying just fine. He looked at the downed ghouls and shot Trent and me a look. Raising his eyebrows in either surprise, approval, or some combination thereof, he shoved the empty Taurus back into his waistband. "Got more in the car," he said with a small smile.
A few minutes later we were once more packed into the large black vehicle and roaring away down a dirt road. In the back seat with Trent, I reloaded the hand gun and two shotguns. The second shotgun had come out of the car's trunk along with the ammunition. There was a positive arsenal back there ... although it was the jumble of items carved with charm sigils and what looked a lot like spelling ingredients mixed in with the guns and blades that had piqued my curiosity the most. I was fairly ready to bet the Winchesters weren't witches, but they seemed to know somethingabout magic.
Trent sat across from me, his body slumped but tense, head resting against the seat and window at an angle as we jolted along. He looked sick and was holding his shoulder, but he hadn't yet bled through the borrowed coat he was wearing and I hoped that was a good sign.
Sam drove, pushing the car faster than was probably safe on the lousy road, or for a man who had recently had a head injury. It had been a while since we'd separated from Dean. I could tell he was worried. We rounded a corner too fast, skidding on the snow-slick surface of the road and I winced, grabbing the back of the front seat for purchase as we slid, the front fender harshly clipping the side of a tree before we bounced and jounced back onto the road again.
Sam cursed eloquently, but didn't slow down.
When the vehicle finally did slow, I saw from the guardrails that had replaced the road's gravel shoulder that we were coming up on a small bridge of some kind. It wasn't much of a bridge, mostly just a long concrete expanse that spanned a gully holding the small stream we'd been following earlier. This must be the place the brothers had agreed to meet, because once we reached the other side of the short bridge, Sam stopped and let the car idle. His gaze scanned the still, dark woods around us and the thin roadway ahead and behind us. His fingers drummed on the steering wheel in an unconscious, anxious rhythm.
"Come on, Dean ..." I heard him mutter under his breath and there was no mistaking the worry in his tone.
Glancing at Trent's slumped form, I wondered how long we'd wait here if Dean didn't show. Looking at Sam's tense, set shoulders, I answered my own question. He didn't look like he was going to be taking off without his big brother any time in this century.
I realized I wasn't sure how I knew Sam was the younger of the brothers. I couldn't remember if they'd said anything to that effect, or if I had just picked it up from watching them interact. Dean had that big brother vibe going on, like Robby used to be with me when we were younger, before ... before he could no longer accept or deal with what I was and the circus that had become my life. I quickly willed those unpleasant thoughts away, now was not the time.
Reaching into the back seat, Sam grabbed one of the shotguns I'd loaded and got out of the car. Going around to the trunk, he opened and closed it again, returning with a flare gun. He fired a shot into the air, then tossed the flare gun back into the car through the open window. He paced beside the idling car, shotgun in hand, watching the woods.
Rolling down my window, I picked up the other shotgun and made sure the safety was off. That flare would hopefully guide Dean to us, but it was sure to draw whatever else was out there as well. I started to offer the hand gun to Trent, only to find him unconscious. Worried, I quickly checked his pulse, which was thready, but definitely present. I pressed my hand against his shoulder, and it came away wet. He had apparently finally bled all the way through the thick coat. Shit.
Setting aside the weapons and hurriedly unzipping his borrowed coat, I winced at the way the lining on his left side and gone from tan to a dark red-brown. The bleeding finally seemed to have slowed now that we weren't running around, but I feared the damage was already done. The wound itself wasn't that terrible, but Trent had lost way, way too much blood over the course of the evening. I blessed Trent's elven resilience then, because I think a human might have already gone into hypovolemic shock.
I started when Sam passed me several thick gauze pads and a roll of medical tape through the window. Apparently they had medical supplies in their arsenal too.
"Is he okay?" Sam asked worriedly, his attention divided between me and our surroundings.
I shook my head as I quickly stripped the gauze pads out of their sterile packaging and used the medical tape to bind them in place across the worst of Trent's wounds, creating a pressure dressing. It felt like too little, too late, but every little bit could be critical to him now. "I don't know," I said honestly, struggling not to let my voice shake. "He's lost a lot of blood."
Sam's brows furrowed and he looked torn. "Damn it," I heard him mutter as he agitatedly paced the length of the car once more. "Damn it ..." the second whisper was supposed to be soft enough that I couldn't hear it, and it carried a lot more worry and frustration.
Then a flock of birds exploded from the trees in the distance, almost invisible against the dark sky save for the flutter of their wings and the annoyed sound of their squawking. There was a rustle of movement in the trees. Sam swung quickly back towards the woods and I snatched up the shotgun again, poking the muzzle of the gun out the open window.
For a long minute or two nothing happened. Then a lot of things happened at once. A dark shape came barreling out of the woods at a stumbling, limping run. Sam's weapon snapped up, but he hesitated carefully and a moment later that cautiousness was rewarded when the light of the moon revealed that it was Dean who had just crashed out of the trees and was heading towards us.
The older Winchester looked like hell and he'd lost his weapon somewhere, probably after he had run out of ammunition. He was limping pretty severely, although it didn't appear to be slowing him down all that much.
Sam didn't immediately lower his weapon, sighting in on his brother's head as he approached. "Dean?" his voice was soft with hope and harsh with dread. With a sick jolt, I remembered - if Dean had been killed, this could just be a ghoul wearing his skin. Obviously, Sam was painfully aware of that.
Dean slowed, hands going placating out to the side in understanding when he saw his brother drawing down on him. He looked about to say something, when his gaze flicked past Sam to the car and indignation wiped all other emotion from his face.
"What the hell did you do the car?!" he shouted, forgetting about the gun and hobbling quickly past Sam towards the front of the car to get a better look at the damage we'd probably taken when we grazed that tree. "Dude! There had damn well better be ghoul guts on here, tell me you did not run my baby into a fucking tree!"
Sam's shoulders loosened and he lowered his weapon - apparently satisfied that this was unmistakably his brother. "Shut up and get in the damn car, Dean! You're late!"
Another dark shape broke from the woods and Sam's gun snapped up again. This time he shot without hesitation. Ejecting the shell he quickly fired a second and third time, backing up towards the car quickly as a near tidal-wave of figures came flooding out of the tree line.
"Sorry, had a little trouble with my admirers," Dean retorted sarcastically as he dove in through the open driver's door of the car. "It's the freaking night of the living dead out there."
Leaning out the window to avoid the nasty situation of firing a weapon inside an enclosed vehicle, I fired into the wave. I wasn't able to really aim at anything, but I pumped out several shots to help slow them down, firing until the gun was empty again.
Sam followed Dean in through the open driver's door, shoving his brother over as he got in. Dean didn't fight him, scooting over rapidly so they could both fit and grabbing Sam's gun from him so Sam could work the gears and throw the car back into drive.
Dean reached across Sam, grabbing the driver's door and yanking it shut even as Sam floored the pedal and we roared forward. Dean grunted as the momentum threw him first against the steering wheel and then against Sam before a sharp turn more or less tossed him over onto the passenger's seat.
The same turn threw me across the car as well and I was glad I had already emptied the shotgun, because otherwise it probably would have gone off when I slide across the seat and my back collided with Trent's unconscious form. I struggled up right, dropping the empty gun into the wheel well and rolling up the window as if that would somehow keep the monsters out. I wasn't exactly running at my best right now.
Looking out the rear window, I saw the dark outlines of dozens of ghouls standing on the road in the moonlight, the scene growing rapidly smaller and smaller as we sped away. However quick these beings may be, they apparently were not quick enough to catch a speeding car and I felt a little bit of me relax.
Turning around in the seat, I leaned my head back and tried to catch my breath. A few more sharp turns and the grind of dirt and gravel under our tires turned into the more welcoming hum of asphalt as Sam swung us out onto a larger, better paved road.
The car reeked of blood and not all of it was Trent's, I realized. Dean had slumped down in the passenger's seat and in the quiet that descended in the wake of our escape, I could hear that the ragged cadence of his breathing sounded pained.
Sam seemed to have realized something was off as well. "Dean? You okay?" he asked.
Dean nodded and dragged himself a little more upright. "Got knocked around pretty good, but nothing that won't mend." He struggled out of his jacket and shifted around on the seat with some difficulty, bending forward at an odd angle. I couldn't see what he was doing, but guessed he was either checking his injuries, or trying to treat them. He hissed and swore softly and I saw him curl forward a little harder.
"Dean?" Keeping half his attention on the road he was still navigating at a fairly terrifying speed, Sam reached across the seat, fingers fumbling until they apparently found the wound on his brother's thigh that was causing the problem.
Dean gasped and swore again, slapping his brother's hand away from him. "Geez Sammy, quit feeling me up, we have company."
I could see that Sam's hand had come away red. It was his turn to swear and the car swerved over the center line of the road before he quickly righted it again.
"Watch it!" Dean snapped. "You trying to hit another tree?! Maybe I should drive."
Sam ignored him. "Dean, where are you hurt? How bad? Tell me!" He demanded sharply. I knew why he was worried, a badly bleeding thigh wound could mean damage to the femoral artery, and if that was the case Dean probably wouldn't survive long enough for us to get him to a hospital.
Apparently, Dean understood his fear as well because his voice was softer when he responded and held a more calming and reassuring quality. "It hurts, I'm bleeding, I'm gonna need stitches, but it's not fatal, okay? Relax."
Sam didn't relax, but he did seem at least a little reassured. Until he glanced down and saw the gas gauge. Then he swore again. From where I sat I could see we were riding on empty. Phenomenal. We were in the middle of nowhere, running from zombie-ghouls with a car full of people who needed to get to a hospital and we were almost out of gas. I was beginning to wonder if someone had actually put a bad luck curse on us when a different, even more troubling thought hit me.
The hospital ... oh crap. This world wasn't equipped to deal with the sometimes unique needs of inderlanders, were they? They'd treat Trent like a human, which might be fine ... or it might not. I wasn't sure. Trent had lost so much blood, they'd want to give him a transfusion probably, but was that safe? I knew very little about elven physiology beyond the basics. The elves hadn't officially existed when I was in school and therefore weren't covered in biology class like other races were. Would a large influx of human blood help or harm Trent in his current condition? Would his body even be able to accept it, or might it be as fatal as giving someone the wrong blood type? Would they even be able to type his blood to begin with?
Elves had passed as humans for centuries and the two races could intermarry and produce children so they must not be all that different, but there was a difference between creating babies and dumping large quantities of another species' blood into your veins when you were already weakened. Trent was as close to a pure elf as still existed in our world, with very little human in his heritage, would that make any difference?
Doubtless, the Kalamacks had always had their own private doctors and so even when everyone thought the elves extinct, it wouldn't have been an issue ... hell, Trent's dad had been a genetic scientist with a vast understand of biology and so was Trent, they probably could have doctored themselves if they'd needed to. I wished Trent were awake. He'd know the answers to all these questions.
It could be that he'd be perfectly fine and I was worrying needlessly, but while I was borrowing trouble - if the hospital did run any kind of tests on his blood, they'd certainly realize there was something very wrong and different about him, wouldn't they? Would they think he had some kind of disease? Or, combined with his ears and the fact that he was still alive when he probably shouldn't be, would they realize he wasn't human? What would happen then?
My head spinning with exhaustion and thick with lack of sleep, making the mountain of uncertainties seemed crushingly unwieldy. I could deal with them discovering what Trent was if it meant keeping him alive, but I couldn't deal with him dying because of a medical accident that I didn't know enough to prevent. I wasn't sure what to do.
I was pulled from my thoughts when we turned abruptly into a little gas station, proving our luck wasn't all bad. I hadn't realized we'd gained the main roads again and I blinked hard, trying to fight my fatigue and the painful stiffness of my hurting body. Out the window, I could see that we were indeed back in civilization again because the gas station was adjacent to a small strip mall. The lighted windows and glowing signs of the shops reminded me that it wasn't actually as late as it felt. It all looked so bizarrely normal, which at the moment lent the mundane scenery an almost surreal edge.
Sam jumped out quickly to get gas and my gaze caught on the nearest store. "Ryan's Whole Foods," the lighted green letters proclaimed and a little ping of an idea rattled around in my throbbing head.
If wild magic worked here, then there was a good chance that earth magic worked too. If I could mix up a healing charm for Trent, that would help a lot. The stronger he was, the less likely it would be that any possible complications would be fatal.
I slid out of the car before I'd even finished the thought. Sam looked up at me questioningly and I jerked my head vaguely towards the gas station and mumbled something about needing to use the lady's room. I wasn't about to try to explain right now.
I headed for the gas station, then ducked into the whole foods store instead. I ran into a second stumbling block as I realized I was going to have to work from memory, since of course, I didn't exactly have access to any of my spell books. That wasn't as easy as it sounded - imagine trying to cook a soufflé from memory and you get the idea. Fortunately, there were a couple of basic field-medicine style healing charms that I'd been required to memorize as part of my internship training with the IS some years back. I was pretty sure I still remembered those, and the extra benefit was that they were considered field medicine because they didn't require cooking and could be made in non-optimal spelling conditions from readily available ingredients. Meaning that the ingredients were all herbal and you didn't need anything harder to obtain like holy dust or graveyard dirt.
Considering I'd probably be cooking this up in a hospital bathroom somewhere, the easy prep was a necessary trade off for the fact that the resulting spell would be pretty weak compared to what I could have done with either a more complex earth spell, or my ley line magic.
Snatching up the ingredients as I remembered them, I quickly filled one of the small shopping baskets with marjoram, kelp, goldenseal, spring water and a few other items. I was afraid I was going to have issues finding comfrey, valerian and tutsan oil, but fortunately the health food store had a whole wall of herbal supplements in both bulk and capsule form. It was just about as good as a spell shop really; I even found a small mortar and pestle, a copper mixing bowl and a glass stir stick. I grabbed some Gatorade too. It wasn't part of the spell, but it would help on a physical level. It wouldn't do much for Trent if he remained unconscious, but it would at least be good for Dean. Not to mention I was pretty thirsty myself by now.
It took my weary mind an embarrassingly long moment to remember that tutsan oil was also called St. John's Wort, which was how this shop had it labeled, but overall it took me only a matter of minutes to gather up my purchases. Thankfully I still had the money Trent had given me earlier in the pocket of my jeans, and even more thankfully the dark coat I was wearing hid my blood splattered body beneath. My jeans and boots were still wet and caked with dirt, my face and hands stained and I didn't even what to know what kind of mess my hair was, but the teenager at the checkout only gave me a curious glance as he rung me up, apparently not considering it any of his business.
Exiting the store I headed quickly back to the car and saw Sam returning from the gas station, probably having just paid for the gas. Having no way to hide the paper shopping bag I was carrying tucked under my arm, I simply shrugged when Sam cast me an inquiring look. "I got some stuff for Trent," I said truthfully. "Dean too," I added, waggling the grape Gatorade nine-pack I was carrying in my other hand.
Sam, who also had a paper bag under his arm, simply acknowledged this with a nod and a small, distracted smile as we both got back in the car. I wrangled one of the Gatorade bottles out of its plastic meshing and handed it up to Dean before freeing another for myself.
"Thanks," Dean said as he knocked it back. "Didn't happen to grab anything stronger did you?"
"Got it covered," Sam responded as he quickly pulled the car back out onto the highway.
I thirstily finished half the bottle of sports drink before having to stop because my stomach was protesting the rapid consumption.
In the front seat, I heard Dean on the phone with someone he called Bobby. Apparently this Bobby was looped in on the whole inderland thing, because Dean was filling him in on the situation with the ghouls. "How far away are you? We're talking over thirty of them still left, probably. We need more hands to clean this one up, Bobby. Anyone else in the area?" I heard him saying.
Turning to check on Trent, I was surprised to find his eyes open and watching me. They were cloudy, like he wasn't quite all the way there, but he was awake and the leap in my heart told me that was a good thing.
"Hey, try to drink some of this, okay?" I said, gently pushing the bottle to his lips and tipping it carefully. I wanted to get some liquid into him. Trent obeyed silently, his lips parting with an eagerness that said he was parched even if he could only manage very small sips at a time. I saw his throat working slowly, as if with difficulty. He moved his arm in what might have been an attempt to reach up and take the bottle. His face blanched with pain at the motion and he let his hand fall back to his lap, content to let me hold it for him.
"Bobby was halfway home, but he's turning around," I heard Dean inform Sam upon hanging up the phone. "He's gonna see if he can rustle up a couple of other hunters en-route and bring them along."
"We going to go frontal assault on this?" Sam's voice indicated he wasn't sure that was a good idea.
"Sucks, but may have to," Dean responded, settling back in his seat again with a small groan. "There's too many of them and they're too hungry, they're gonna do something big, soon. We gotta get more bodies down here and deal with them before that happens. Maybe we can come up with some kind of trap."
I was only partially listening to them. Between my fatigued hands and the moving car, it wasn't easy to hold the bottle steady. I spilled some of the drink down Trent's chin during the process, but little by little I helped him get down the remaining half of the bottle. His eyes seemed clearer and more alert by the time he finished and I could see he was struggling to clear his head and pull himself together.
"Sorry," I mumbled in apology, feeling awkward and clumsy as I tried to pat his chin and neck dry with the sleeve of my coat.
Trent turned his face away from me, grimacing softly. He was too drained to blush, but I could tell he was just lucid enough to be embarrassed for needing to be cared for like this. Trent was funny like that. He was okay with me saving his butt, but he had a strong dislike of being seen as weak. Best as I could figure it, he didn't have to be stronger than anyone else, he just had to be as strong as he thought he should be. On one hand I could respect and even understand that, on the other, I wished he'd get through his head that I wasn't one of those people for whom he needed to keep up appearances. This was what friends were for.
Whoa, and when exactly did I start thinking of Trent as a friend? I bit my lower lip and didn't realize I was unconsciously stroking Trent's damp, tangled hair until he turned his head back to me and those intensely green eyes met mine, instigating a funny little drop in the pit of my stomach. For a lot longer than I'd been willing to admit, I supposed. Then I wondered why I had fought admitting it to myself at all. Sure, we'd been enemies for a long time and I'd not really trusted him until the whole thing with the Ever After, but we'd been through a hell of a lot together and today Trent had just about died for me. Why was it so hard to admit that I cared about him, like I cared about Jenks and Ivy ... ?
Maybe because it isn't quite the same feeling, is it? A little voice whispered unhelpfully in the back of my mind. I squashed it and resolutely drew my hand away from Trent's hair. No, it wasn't. I couldn't deny I felt something other than friendship towards this man, but it was such a complicated situation and we were such different people, it would never work, right? Or maybe I was just afraid. Afraid to let my body do the thinking when it was my heart that would pay the price. Afraid because at my core, I knew Trent and I could never just be casual lovers ... I couldn't, anyway. I would want more, but the truth was I no longer believed that was possible. Romance just didn't work out for me and I had lost too much, too many times.
I couldn't risk my heart that way again. Trent was a beautiful, confusing, soul-consuming mistake I wasn't ready to make. But he was a good man, he most certainly was my friend and I desperately wanted him to be all right. I busied my hands detaching another Gatorade bottle, forcing down the urge to let my fingers find his hair again. I wasn't even sure who I wanted to comfort by the gesture - him, or me?
Instead I unrolled the top of the paper bag on the seat between us and tilted it so Trent could see the contents. I knew he'd recognize them for what they were. "Got some stuff to help," I told him and Trent's faint, relieved smile, indicated he understood.
Uncapping the new bottle, I raised it to his lips and helped him drink a little more. "How are you feeling?"
Trent gave a rueful grunt. "I've felt better," he mumbled.
"Amen to that," Dean muttered from the front seat. He turned a little in his seat to get a better look back at us. I could tell he was assessing Trent's condition. "Guess this wasn't exactly the vacation you two were expecting, huh?"
Trent grinned weakly and I gave a snort. "Well, the brochure did leave out the vampires and zombie-ghouls," I said wearily.
"Yeah ... about that," Dean said slowly. "Probably best if you keep most of that to yourselves." He gestured to Trent's shoulder. "Just a suggestion, but if I were you I'd tell the folks at the ER that it was a dog or a wolf or a bear or something."
I felt Trent stiffen next to me. He started struggling to sit up and I frowned at him, trying to understand what was the matter.
"And it would be appreciated if you didn't mention us," Sam added as we turned into a parking lot. "I know this is asking a lot after what you've been through, but it's honestly for your own good."
"I get it," I returned dryly, somehow not at all surprised that the brothers wished to fly under the radar. "No one would believe a story like this. Don't worry, I don't feel like being treated like a raving lunatic." I would have been more worried about not spreading the word about the danger in the woods, but from the conversations I'd overheard they were already working on that angle. I squinted in confusion when Sam pulled into a parking spot in front of a seedy little run down motel. He slipped the car into park, but kept the engine idling.
Dean struggled more than he probably should have to get the door open and slid out. In the glare of the flickering parking lot lights, I could see that the right leg of his pants was dark with blood and his shirt was torn, another large stain spreading across his abdomen despite the multiple layers of cotton and flannel he was wearing. He grabbed his leather jacket off the seat and closed the car door. He leaned one hand on the edge of the open window for support for a moment, obviously unsteady on his feet and now limping even worse than before.
Sam watched him with concern. "You gonna be okay? I'll drop them at the hospital and be right back," he promised, not sounding very happy at having to leave Dean in this state.
"Whoa, wait, isn't he going to the ER too?" I protested.
"I don't need to go to the hospital," Trent protested at more or less the same time. I looked at him, my frown deepening.
"Me? I'm fine. These are just scratches," Dean said cheerfully, pretending that he wasn't still holding onto the car because he might not be able to balance when he let go.
"I don't need to go to the hospital," Trent said again, more forcefully. He'd pulled himself upright, perhaps trying to look less injured and I realized he'd started getting tense the minute Dean had mentioned the ER.
"Rachel," Trent caught my eyes urgently. "I'll be all right. You can fix me up." His gaze darted meaningfully to the bag on the seat and then back to me. "I just need a few bandages and some rest."
Trent's eyes were telling me to trust him, that it would be bad if we went to the ER. I swallowed, feeling torn. I really did not like the idea of relying on rudimentary healing charms and my questionable recollection of long ago first aide classes, but my own earlier fears were still fresh in my mind, and if Trent thought there was danger then maybe I should listen.
Sam had turned in his seat, looking at us curiously, and Dean, still leaning on the car window, cocked his head at us. "You've lost a lot of blood, man. You should let them check you out," he said with concern, and I kind of thought that was weird considering he was about to hobble into a hotel room with injuries that clearly needed stitches.
Trent shook his head stubbornly. "It's not necessary," he protested hoarsely. "And more likely to do harm than good." He swallowed and I could tell he was struggling with his foggy head enough to come up with a convincing lie, something that would make his refusal understandable. Trent was obviously spent and I jumped in to save him the effort.
"He's right," I agreed softly and with more than a little reluctance. I reached over and squeezed his hand. "Look ... you two obviously have your own reasons for not wanting to garner a lot of attention, let's just say we do too. We haven't done anything wrong," I assured when both men's gazes sharpened a little. "But there are ... people who would like to hurt us if they can find us." That was true, they just weren't in this world. "We're not really here for a vacation and you were right the other night, our accident in the woods wasn't really all that accidental, although it certainly wasn't the ghouls either." I ran a weary, stained hand down my face, risking enough of the truth to be believable and keeping the details vague.
"It has to do with his ex," I nodded at Trent, "and her family, who are kind of like the mob, only more high-brow. There's a custody battle and a ton of crappy politics involved, it's complicated and messy, and I know none of that concerns you two, but today's kind of been hell and if there's any way we can crash in your hotel room long enough for me to make sure he's not dying and for us to get a little rest, we'd be really, really grateful." The words tumbled out in a weary jumble. I was so tired and worried. I really wanted Trent in the care of someone qualified, but it looked like he was going to be stuck with me. The responsibility was a lot more than I wanted to handle in my current state.
I think it was probably my obvious weariness and desperation that swayed them more than my half-coherent story. If there was one thing I was coming to learn about Sam and Dean Winchester it was that they didn't tend to turn their backs on people who needed help.
The brother's exchanged looks and Dean shrugged. Sighing, Sam turned off the car and opened his door. "Okay. You can stay here tonight if you really want to. We have some medical stuff. If it's really not too bad, maybe we can patch him up, at least enough for tonight."
"But if he looks like he's gonna croak, then you call 911, we split and you don't tell anyone this wasn't your hotel room, we clear?" Dean said as I eased stiffly out of the car and came around to his side to try to wrangle Trent out.
"Crystal," I agreed with a nod. "Thanks." I meant it.
I managed to get Trent out of the car and wrapped his arm good around my shoulders, supporting him as we stumbled after our hosts. Dean was really having trouble with his leg and after hop-stepping painfully a few feet he gave in and grabbed onto his brother's shoulder as a make-shift crutch for the rest of the short way to the motel room door. It looked a little awkward given the height disparity between them and I heard Dean muttering something about Sasquatch under his breath that Sam was pretending not to hear.
Inside the hotel room, Sam eased Dean down on to the bed but I walked Trent straight through into the small bathroom. Flipping the toilet cover down, I guided him to sit on the lid and pressed the Gatorade bottle I was still carrying back into his hands. "Keep working on that," I instructed. "I'll be right back."
Dean was alone in the bedroom now, peeling out of his layers of shirts with a tense, pained look of concentration. I slid out of the room, making sure the deadbolt was turned to keep it from locking behind me. I found Sam outside by the car again, rooting around inside the open trunk. He had his backpack and a couple duffel bags by his feet. One of the bags was open and he was tossing supplies into it. I saw more gauze pads and tape and guessed he was raiding their medical supplies.
The car wasn't locked up yet, so I opened the door and leaned inside, grabbing my bag and the remainder of the Gatorade out of the back seat. I spotted my coat in the wheel well and tucked it under an arm. Sam's paper bag was sitting on the front seat so I picked it up, too. It was heavy and clinked like there were glass bottles inside.
"You want this inside?" I asked him, indicating the bag I was holding. Sam peeked out around the edge of the trunk and nodded. "Yeah, you can just give that to Dean."
Back inside the hotel room, I found that Dean had already finished shedding his bloodied clothes onto the floor. He sat on the edge of the bed in only a pair of black boxers, head bent as he examined the bleeding puncture wound on the outside of his thigh. It looked like at least some the ghouls he fought must have had some sort of weapons because the wound to his leg and the angled gashes that slashed across his abdomen looked like they had been done with a blade of some kind.
Of course, his injuries weren't the only thing I noticed upon finding myself unexpectedly confronted with a nearly naked man. My mind was working slowly to begin with and Dean was very nicely built, to put it mildly. He was all muscle, but not in a bulky way. His was a lean, athletic frame that obviously came from constant activity rather than any kind of regimented exercise. I guessed that chasing vampires and ghouls around would probably keep one in fairly good shape. Although good was perhaps relative, since I glimpsed more than a few old scars marring the lightly freckled skin.
Dean looked up when I entered. From the momentary openness in his face, I knew he'd expected to see his brother. When he saw me instead the openness flickered away, although his expression did not change and his gaze was not unfriendly. He wiped the pain from his face enough to smirk broadly at the way I was unintentionally staring at him.
"Granted we're already in a no-name motel room, but aren't you at least going to buy me a drink first?" he joked.
I felt my cheeks warm despite myself and I scowled at him, mostly just because I was embarrassed at having been accidentally caught ogling. A girl should not be held responsible when she was running on as much spun-out adrenaline and lack of rest as I was. "Sam told me to give you this," I said, thrusting the gas station bag at him and dumping my coat in the corner.
Dean took the paper sack and shifted it to the bed, sliding out a bottle of Jack Daniels. He grinned wryly, one hand still clamped over the wound on his thigh, the other giving the bottle a little wave. "Apparently, you had the drink thing covered too. Guess I'm all yours, sweetheart," he teased.
I just grinned and whacked him lightly on the shoulder as I walked away. "In your dreams, buddy."
Dean's casual flirting was more joke than actual invitation, which was just as well for him since he would otherwise be in for significant disappointment. He was all kinds of trouble I didn't need. He and Sam seemed to have thirty-one flavors of crazy going on in their lives and I literally knew almost nothing about them. A small part of me had to admit though, that in another time, in different circumstances and very literally in a different world, I could possibly have been attracted to this handsome and slightly crazy man who seemed to get a kick out of poking danger in the eye and got himself cut up protecting strangers. Of course, I think by now it was a pretty well established fact that I had generally dangerous and terrible taste in men. Just ask Jenks, he could go on about the subject at length. Or at least until I started throwing things at him.
Thinking of Jenks made me smile a little, and then made me feel incredibly homesick. I pushed those thoughts and feelings away as I re-entered the bathroom and cast a worried gaze across Trent's slumped form. He was still sitting where I'd left him, sipping slowly at the sports drink with a dogged, determined set to his features. It was funny, actually, now that I thought about it ... Jenks kind of knew how I felt about Trent and yet for some reason he raised none of the objections I'd expected him to raise and didn't rag me about it like he had almost every other man I'd ever looked at. Curious.
Setting my bag down on the floor, I set to work getting Trent out of his ruined clothes. I helped him shrug out of Sam's bloodied coat first and hung it on the door knob. It could probably be washed out if Sam wanted to keep it. The rest of Trent's clothes were probably going to be a completely lost cause.
I tried not to feel like it was a remotely intimate act as knelt in front of Trent, limited space and necessity putting me right between his knees as I unbuttoned the front of what remained of his ruined dress shirt. I carefully slid it off his good shoulder and down his arms, stripping him out of it.
Wetting a washcloth in the sink, I carefully washed the blood from Trent's arm and chest before removing the temporary dressing from his shoulder. His skin was caked with partially dried blood and I wanted to make sure there weren't any other injuries hiding beneath before I tackled the worst one.
I made sure to keep the wash cloth warm, running it gently across his body, tracing the contours of his frame as I searched for injuries I thankfully didn't find. Trent's usually tanned skin was pale beneath the blood and grime, but his toned, well developed physique was just as gorgeous as the only other time I'd glimpsed him shirtless. Ironically, he had been changing out of a blood stained shirt that time too. I wondered what that said about our lives.
Then, I wondered what it said about me that I was noticing something like that at a moment like this. Apparently being hurt, exhausted and more than a little punch drunk was just doing awesome things for my libido. Either that, or there was simply something seriously wrong with me. Maybe both. Maybe if I could just stop being so damn hyper-aware of every bleeding, semi-naked man I came across tonight I'd be able to focus enough to do some good here. Trent was in seriously bad shape and that was what I should be concentrating on right now. Thank God he didn't have any leg injuries and I didn't have to undress him fully.
I started when Trent's cold fingers brushed my face. My gaze jerked to him and I found him looking at me with something intense in his eyes that I didn't want to recognize or acknowledge. I swallowed hard as his thumb brushed my grimy cheek gently. His fingers trembled slightly, but his gaze was remarkably steady. I realized my cheeks were suddenly flaming, noticeably warm beneath his chilled hand. I turned my head away quickly, sucking my breath in and ducking back to the sink to wash out the soiled cloth.
I was glad for the distraction when Sam's tall frame appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. I was even more glad when I saw what he was holding. Sam had an IV bag of clear liquid, along with a coil of tubing and needles sealed up in sterile pouches.
"It's only saline, we haven't hit a blood bank lately," he apologized, lips giving a rueful little quirk. "But it should help."
"That's great, really, thanks!" I said, thinking that something neutral like saline might just be the best option for the elf. I shot him a quick, questioning glance as Sam hung the bag on the shower rod and unwound the tubing. "That's okay, right Trent?"
Trent nodded wordlessly. Sam knelt beside him, taking Trent's good arm in his hands. Using his belt to make a tourniquet, he found a vein, inserted the cannula and taped it down with an efficient rapidity that made me wonder how many times he'd done something like this before.
Straightening back up, Sam laid a second saline bag on the sink counter, next to a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a small stack of bandages and another roll of clear medical tape. He emptied two pills from an un-labeled bottle into his hand and passed them to Trent. "Pain meds, industrial grade," he explained when Trent looked down at the small white pills in his palm. Trent gave a facial shrug and swallowed the pills, washing them down with the last of his Gatorade.
Sam looked back out into the bedroom, obviously wanting to get back to his brother, but he nodded towards Trent's still partially bandaged shoulder. "Need any help?" he offered.
I shook my head. "Thanks, I got this." I nodded back out towards the bedroom. "Go check on your brother and tell him that alcohol is not in fact a good replacement for blood."
"It's a great replacement for blood," Dean's voice came to me from the other room. "And a whole host of other things."
I rolled my eyes and nudged the Gatorade pack with my foot. "Get some more of this in him if you can."
Sam grinned at me like he'd found an ally and snagged one of the plastic drink bottles before heading back into the other room.
Once he was gone, I took a moment to get a couple of the ingredients I'd bought out of the paper bag on the floor. I needed to let a few of these seep together for a little while before mixing in the rest. I stirred them up into the appropriate paste inside the little bowl and then set it aside in the bath tub where it would be out of our way until it was ready for the rest of the ingredients.
Rising, I started carefully peeling the medical tape away from Trent's skin. I was being as careful as I could, but it obviously hurt. Trent gasped softly, hissing through his teeth. His hands fisted in his lap.
"Sorry, sorry," I murmured apologetically, cringing as I struggled to ease the gauze pads away. Dried blood made them cling to the wounds and Trent's head dipped, his eyes pressing shut. He groaned low in his throat, jaw clenched tightly.
Once the bandages were off, I gave Trent a moment to recover himself before I began to clean the wound, which I knew was going to hurt twice as bad. I rubbed his back as his breathing slowly evened out again. In the other room I could hear the low murmur of the Winchester brother's voices.
"I'm sorry I can't make you a pain amulet," I murmured softly. "The store didn't carry Lilac wine or any of the necessary barks." Not to mention there was no way for me to boil anything in a hotel room. I hoped the pills Trent had taken would help.
Trent gave a small nod. "It's all right, I'm fine, Rachel. I appreciate your assistance."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, you put the T in tough," I said with a weary smile.
Trent gave a small, amused snort.
I glanced at the tube running into his arm and gave him a thoughtful frown. "So... the hospital thing," I whispered. "It would have been bad if they'd tried to give you blood?" I was still curious about that.
Trent made a "maybe yes, maybe no" gesture with his head that told me pretty much nothing. "Maybe. It wouldn't have helped, no. However, I'm more concerned about other ... complications that could arise. We know little about this world, Rachel," he murmured very quietly. "I am not comfortable with anyone here possessing samples of my genetic material and the information it holds, or yours for that matter. Neither do I wish to end up secreted away to some government facility or laboratory. At the very least, it could draw attention we cannot afford."
Okay, Trent was definitely more paranoid than I was. I gave him a hard look, not entirely sure those reasons were worth the risk to his health, but he seemed to be doing better than I'd feared earlier, so maybe he'd been right. "Paranoid, much?" I mumbled as I uncapped the alcohol bottle and tried to figure out some non-terrible way to do this.
Trent gave me a weary, pained smile. "You have no idea. The problem is, I'm usually right. It happened all the time before the Turn, you know."
No, I hadn't known that. I frowned and set the alcohol bottle back down. Maybe I'd start with water first. At least the wound, ugly though it may be, wasn't bleeding much anymore.
"Besides," Trent murmured, tightening in preparation when he saw me bringing the wash cloth over towards his shoulder. "You do realize that we have no IDs, no insurance and no money? They'd ask a lot of questions for which we have no answers."
I squeezed the wash cloth out over his injury, letting the water wash the wound. Trent hissed through his teeth again. "Do you realize that you could get some horrible infection and die because you didn't get this properly cared for? I'm not a doctor, Trent."
"I won't," Trent said with a certainty that left me wondering if he had that much faith in his own immune system, or if it was more of a hope. "Have a little faith in yourself Rachel. I do." He smiled at me and I was momentarily lost for words, because he wasn't joking. Crap. It was nice when people believed in you, but it could be downright scary when they believed in you too much.
"Trent..." I moaned softly, wetting the wash cloth again and soaking his shoulder a second time. But I didn't really know what to say. He seemed to have no trouble putting himself in my hands and the responsibility scared the crap out of me.
I dabbed and rubbed as gently as I could at the raw, crusted flesh, attempting to remove the dirt and bits of shirt still embedded in the wounds. Trent gripped his bad arm tightly with his good hand, hanging on just below his elbow and digging his fingers in hard enough to hurt. I knew he was using that pain to try and distract him from the worse one. He bowed his head again, hisses of pain turning into muffled moans. I wanted to stop, but it was better not to drag this out.
I murmured apologies as I washed and rubbed away the debris as carefully and quickly as I could.
Trent began rocking back and forth, jerky, urgent little movements. His muffled sounds were still controlled, but getting more desperate.
"Stop moving," I had to tell him when the rocking made it too hard for me to keep working on him.
Trent stilled immediately, his body tense, fingers digging into his arm hard enough to bruise. "Sorry," he breathed, voice shaking.
I shook my head, hating having to hurt him like this. The freshly cleaned wound looked only marginally less ugly than it had before. Removing the unevenly scabbed blood and debris simply revealed the damage more clearly. There was going to be no way to stitch or tape this up, not for an amateur like me, maybe not even for a professional surgeon. All I was going to be able to do was put a bandage over the whole mess and let it sort itself out. Trent was missing bits of his flesh in places and I winced, realizing that even with the healing charm I was going to make him, this wound was going to leave scars. Silently, I resolved that I would find a way to fix it for him when we got home. He'd gotten these scars for me and I would make it right ... as soon as I found a curse that would let me heal him without undoing his circumcision again. Crap, that had been embarrassing.
Drawing in a deep breath, I reached for the alcohol bottle again. "Trent," I said quietly. "This is probably really going to hurt."
Trent glanced up, then ducked his head again. He nodded his understanding, body visibly bracing for what was to come. "Understood. Proceed."
I poured the clear liquid over injured skin, wincing as I watched it bubble and hiss on contact. Trent almost screamed, just managing to suck the sound down stoically and burying his face in the crook of his good elbow, despite the way it jostled the cannula in his arm.
My hands shaking, I made sure I'd bathed the entire wound before quickly setting the bottle down like it was acid. Trent's self control was very good given how badly this all had to hurt, but his body was trembling and his chest heaved as he sucked in deep, ragged breaths. I rubbed his back again gently.
"Okay, it's done," I promised. "Let's just let it sit for a few minutes before I finish up, huh?"
Trent nodded tensely, keeping his head down. He was either dizzy or didn't want to look at me.
Sam was in the doorway again and I looked up, only then noticing that my vision was blurry with tears I hadn't realized were pushing their way up to the surface. My own body was shaking and no matter how much that disgusted me, I couldn't seem to make it stop.
"Everything okay?" Sam asked gently. His hands were red with what was probably Dean's blood.
I nodded, quickly wiping my eyes and trying to swallow my weakness. "Yeah, got everything cleaned up. Gonna let it sit and air a few minutes before putting the bandages on," I told him.
"Trent, just relax a few minutes okay?" I said, stroking the hair on the back of his head tenderly despite myself. I checked that his IV line was doing okay before fleeing the bathroom. I just needed to get a little air, and it would give Trent time to compose himself, something I knew he wanted.
Sam seemed to understand that and let us be, returning to the bed where he was patching up his brother.
I saw that Dean's leg had already been tightly bandaged and he was now lying on the bed, drinking from the whisky bottle while Sam apparently stitched up the worst of the cuts across his abdomen.
It was a fairly professional job, although something about the stitches looked wrong to me. No, not the stitches - what they were made with.
I came a little closer as Sam bent back over the bed, picking up again where he'd left off. That's when I noticed the open pack of dental floss on the bed next to the pile of disinfectant and dressings.
"Oh my God!" I said incredulously, staring at the needle now passing through Dean's flesh with more than a little feeling of queasy. "You are not using that dental floss to stitch him up, are you?"
The two brothers looked at me like I was the insane one.
"Well, yeah," Dean drawled tensely, fingers tense around the bottle of Jack he was gripping. "I sure ain't brushing my teeth while I'm bleeding all over the bed."
"We're out of sutures and the gas station quick mart only had that cheap travel sewing-kit thread. That stuff is useless, it breaks too easy when you get moving and then we'd just have to do this again," Sam explained a little more logically, apparently understanding, if also dismissing, the root of my concern. "It's not the mint flavored kind," he added, as if that made it somehow all better.
"Oh, well, as long as it's not mint flavored." I shook my head, wondering how these guys were still alive. I had to look away as Sam expertly slid the needle through his brother's flesh again with quick, practiced motions. You couldn't call it gentle exactly, but it was as close to it as pushing a pointy object through someone's skin could ever get.
Dean groaned quietly in his throat, the fingers of one hand digging hard into the mattress while he brought the bottle of Jack to his lips with the other, knocking back several large mouthfuls. The man's pain tolerance was impressive and something about this scene told me it had happened many times before.
Sam paused to wipe the blood away enough that he could see what he was doing and to let Dean catch his breath and slug some more alcohol. I looked up and realized that he was looking at me. "Rachel, what we do ... we can't go to hospitals, not unless it's really bad. This isn't pretty but it works," he said simply. I could tell he didn't expect me to understand, yet I could also see in his eyes that he didn't want me to think that he was torturing his brother because he didn't care or couldn't be bothered to take him to the emergency room.
"Sam, I'm bleeding out here. Make with the goo-goo eyes later. Talk less and sew more or I'll do it my damn self," Dean protested tetchily and somehow, I didn't think it was an idle threat.
I swallowed as Sam bent his head and his attention back to his brother, again wiping away the blood from Dean's trembling abdomen. "Okay, okay, stop moving around so much." He pressed one hand flat against Dean's muscled chest to help hold him still and went back to sewing. "Maybe next time you should try ducking more."
"At least let me help," I said with a frown. "I can -"
"Rachel," Trent's hand landed on my shoulder and I started, turning quickly around.
"Trent! What are you doing? Why the hell did you unhook your IV? Go, sit! Now!" I snapped, pointing back at the bathroom that he must have dragged himself out of. I was surrounded by men bleeding all over the place and not a one of them had the sense to take proper care of themselves.
"Rachel," Trent's voice was insistent, the intensity in his eyes finally catching me and giving me pause. "I think something's wrong. Can you help me a minute?" he said quietly and I followed quickly, feeling uneasy about whatever could have put that look on Trent's face. I followed him into the bathroom, frowning when he nudged the door closed behind us. His formerly pale skin was now flushed unhealthily and he looked unsteady, although that might have just been because he'd gotten up and moved around before he was ready. I helped him ease back down to sit on the closed toilet, frowning when he reached over and turned on the sink faucet.
"Trent? What's wrong?" I quickly plugged the disconnected IV line back into the cannula that was still in his arm and made him lean back against the toilet tank. Trent was acting really weird and that was usually pretty bad news. I pressed the back of my hand against his warm forehead and my gut tightened with possibilities. "You're running a fever, when did that start? It's just a fever, right? I mean, it's not ... the vampire virus here didn't work on me, it shouldn't work on you, right? They don't even seem to pass it by biting ... crap! Trent, did he bleed on your wounds?" I was babbling and Trent gripped my upper arm, forcing me back a step and making me look at him.
"No. Well ... I don't know, but I am fairly sure I am not being turned," he looked honestly nonplussed by how I had even come up with that concern. "There's nothing wrong with me, I just needed your cooperation. You were going to offer to make them a healing charm, weren't you?" Trent's voice was low.
I blinked at Trent, not understanding what this had to do with anything and immediately beginning to feel irked as worry cooled into irritation. "Yeah, I'm making one for you, it wouldn't be terribly hard to make extra. They got their butts kicked at least partially because they were helping us, it's the least I can do. Geez, Trent, what is your problem? You had me scared to death!"
Trent didn't let go of my arm and I frowned as his grip tightened. His glare told me to keep my voice down. "You can't do that," he hissed softly, and I realized that the purpose of the running water was in fact to mask our voices. "We've both been careful - I thought you understood. Do you not understand what they are? Think Rachel! Think about the weapons and equipment in their car. Think about how they act and about this job of theirs. They are already suspicious about my ears; we do not want them knowing you can do magic. They hunt people like us, Rachel."
I felt a sudden, cold chill go right through me. I should have connected the dots sooner, but in all fairness, there hadn't been a whole hell of a lot of time for thinking about anything other than survival since we'd met the two brothers. We were on the same side, and that's what mattered ... but were we? Was Trent right? I thought again of what I'd seen in the trunk of their car. Most of their gear was obviously for killing things that weren't human. Some I recognized, some I didn't. Suzette had called them hunters. Dean said they "hunted things" ... things like blood-crazy vampires and ghouls ... and possibly anything else they considered not human? Just how wide did that net go? Did it cover all inderlanders, or just the ones that ate people?
I had once been kidnapped and caged by humans who hated all inderlanders. They had hurt me and others and used my blood to do terrible things. Trent knew that; he'd helped me take them down. A small shiver of dread traced up my spine as I remembered Eloy, one of my former captors. He'd had that same rugged, military readiness about him that the Winchesters carried. He'd been a man on mission too. He'd been a cruel, heartless, murdering bastard.
I swallowed hard, suddenly wanting to sit down myself. I sank down onto the edge of the tub, which was about the only space to do so in the tiny bathroom.
"What are you saying? You think they're like ... this world's HAPA?" I breathed, feeling a strange ache flare in my chest along with the uglier threads of fear and anger that accompanied the notion. I realized I didn't want that to be true. The Winchester brothers were certainly odd, but they seemed like genuinely good men, the kind who stuck their necks out for complete strangers and put other people's needs ahead of their own safety and comfort. That was something that Eloy and the other Humans Against Paranormals Association nut-jobs would never have done, would they? Damn it ... I liked them. I didn't want to have been wrong in my impressions. I didn't want them to turn out to be monsters.
Trent gave an uncertain expression. "I don't know. I'm not saying that. They don't strike me as the fanatical type, although granted, we haven't known them very long. I suppose they could just as easily be this world's answer to the IS or FIB," he said, referring to the two government bureaus that policed supernatural and human crimes back in our world.
I frowned, nodding slowly at the valid point. "From what we've seen thus far, the Inderlanders here are not doing much of anything to police themselves," I admitted, thinking back to my days working as a runner for Inderland Security. Lots of shady stuff went down and if you had enough power you could always get away with murder, but at least in our world even Master vampires had to pretend to act civilized in order to be accepted in society. "Maybe it's because they're all still in the closet, maybe this is what it was like before the Turn."
I wondered if that was really true though - the wholesale blood bath going down behind the scenes at this world's Piscary's and a forest overrun with flesh eating, corpse wearing ghouls feeding on hapless motorists suggested that there were some pretty big underlying issues with the inderland community in this version of earth.
Trent nodded. "Maybe so. Or maybe the whole situation is as different as our vampires and ghouls are from their vampires and ghouls. This world is too different from what we understand for us to form competently accurate conclusions just yet." I heard a hint of the scientist and business man in Trent with those words, the one who needed to weigh all the factors and calculate the percentages in order to quantify a situation.
"One thing we do know," he continued, "is that the Winchesters may be the only humans in a 100 miles who are tapped into the inderland community of this world, even if they are on the opposite side of it. We should try to learn as much as possible from them, but until we know more, I think it would be a mistake for us to reveal too much. It's better if they think we are just a couple of normal, stupid people with normal problems who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"Well, the stupid part I'll grant," I said dryly. "For you anyway, not for me."
"Rachel ..." Trent said with some exasperation.
"Yes, yes, okay. I think you're probably right," I conceded with a frown. "We should keep a low profile. I won't offer them any spells and I'll make sure they don't see me doing the one for you."
Trent smirked, the effect only a little lost because of his flushed face and slightly glassy eyes. "Say that again."
My face scrunched in confusion. "... I'll make sure they won't ...?" I started to repeat, but Trent shook his head, cutting me off.
"No, the part where you said I was right."
I whacked Trent's good arm soundly with the back of my hand.
"Ow!" Trent protested, glowering at me. "Could you maybe not hit me any more until I've had a little time to heal this wound I got saving your life?"
"You mean this wound you got being stupid and reckless," I huffed back, brushing my tangled hair back out of my eyes as I rose to my feet and moved to the sink to turn off the water. I could smell that the herbs I'd set to seeping in the bowl in the bath tub were done and ready to be drained. I'd need the sink to continue the prep.
There was a knock at the door and I jerked slightly. Sam's voice came from the other side. "Everything okay in there?"
So as not to seem suspicious, I opened the door and smiled out at him. "Yup! Trent's just being a huge baby," I said brightly, then angled around Sam's big frame in an attempt to see into the rest of the room. "How's Dean? You all done with the dental floss surgery?"
Sam grimaced and shook his head. I could see that his hands were stained red and he was holding one of the hotel towels. I wondered how we were going to explain the ruined towels and sheets to the management, then decided that the Winchesters seemed to consider this all in a day's work, so maybe I'd just let them worry about that. "I've got his stomach sewn up. I still need to get a look at his back. But he's being a bitch about it," Sam raised his voice a little at the last which was obviously directed in a passive-aggressive fashion at his brother.
"My damn back's fine Sammy," Dean's voice from the bed slurred slightly. I couldn't tell if it was from alcohol, pain or weariness. I saw the empty Jack Daniels bottle on the floor and suspected it was probably all three. "Jus' wanna sleep now. I'll be fine."
"Not if you get an infection because you didn't let me dress your back, you won't," Sam returned over his shoulder with mock-patience. He looked back at me. "See what I have to deal with?"
"Bitch," Dean shot at him from the bed, his voice sounding like it was muffled in a pillow.
"Jerk," Sam returned automatically without looking back at him. He gave me an apologetic shrug. "Okay, well if you're good I'm going to finish up then."
I nodded, then stopped him as he started to turn away. "Sam?"
"Yes?"
"Um ... there's this wholistic herbal poultice thing my Mom used to make that really helps prevent infection. It's pretty simple; I got the stuff for it at that health food store when I grabbed the Gatorade. I'm going to make some for Trent. If you want, I can make enough for Dean."
I could feel Trent glaring daggers at me, but I ignored him. Lots of people had old home remedies, right? I just wouldn't tell them that mine was infused with a little earth magic.
Sam raised his eyebrows and shrugged. I could see he didn't expect much from it, but that he didn't think it would hurt either. "Sure, if you want to. Thanks."
"'s that why it smells like a salad in here?" Dean asked, voice still sounding like he was talking into a pillow. He was definitely at least a little drunk. "And cinnamon, why the hell does everything keep smelling like cinnamon? The car, now the room ... you got a new cologne Sammy?" he jibed. "Makes you smell like pie."
"Dean, everything makes you think of pie," Sam rolled his eyes as he went back to his brother.
I watched them for a long moment, my brows furrowing slightly. Cinnamon? Dean could smell Trent? Human olfactory senses weren't usually tuned high enough to allow them to pick up inderland scents, although Trent was kind of bleeding all over, so maybe that was all it was.
Giving them one last look, I eased the door shut again so they wouldn't see my spell prep. These were lousy conditions to work in, but the spell wasn't very complex so hopefully I could pull it off all right. If earth magic worked here like it did at home. If not, I was going to end up with herbal soup that was about as useful as Sam seemed to think it would be. Well, I wouldn't know until I tried.
"Rachel, I do not understand you," Trent said quietly from where he was sitting, shooting me a dark look from under his mussed blond bangs. "I thought you were going to be smart."
"I am being smart," I retorted, pulling the bowl out of the tub and transferring it to the sink, running through my mental checklist to be sure I wasn't forgetting anything. It was a little nerve wracking doing this without a recipe, but I thought I remembered everything all right. "As far as they're concerned, this is my old folk recipe," I whispered, my voice canted low enough that only Trent could possibly hear me. "As long as they don't see me prep it, they won't know otherwise."
That was both the beauty of earth magic and its primary limitation. You had to prep everything first, then you used it. You couldn't wield it on the fly like ley line spells. Fortunately, this particular charm didn't require any kind of invocation when it was applied. I could just mix the whole thing up, invoke it and then apply it to the injuries like any medicine. It wasn't the most effective healing magic, but it was better than nothing.
"Unless they know anything about earth magic and can recognize it for what it is," Trent grumped in an unhappy whisper. "You take too many chances."
I shrugged. "Probably. But that's why you like me." I smirked at him, wondering where all this crazy confidence was coming from. Probably exhaustion and the pile-up of near-death experiences I'd had over the past 24 hours.
Trent blinked at me as if caught off guard by that retort and I enjoyed his slightly stupefied look.
I turned back to the sink and frowned, realizing I'd forgotten one important thing already because I was so used to having it always on-hand. I needed salt water to wash things with during the preparations and after the spell was mixed.
I poked my head out of the bathroom door. "Hey, Sam? You guys have any salt?"
Dean, face down on the bed, snorted. Sam looked up from where he was bending over him and gave me an amused smile that I didn't understand. "Yeah, there's some in the duffel by the door."
Quickly crossing the room, I unzipped the duffel and raised my eyebrows. Oh yeah. They had salt. They had canister after canister of salt. It was rock salt too, which would be perfect when I dissolved it. I pulled one of the canisters out and noticed that the bag also contained several liters of lighter fluid. It seemed an odd mix at first, until you looked past their more mundane uses. Salt and fire – both were purifying agents. I wasn't sure I wanted to know why they kept them both on hand in such large quantities.
Straightening up, I headed back for the bathroom, giving the salt canister a cheerful little wave in the Winchester's direction. "Thanks!"
Shutting Trent and I up in the small bathroom again, I got to work mixing up a spell with two hunters on the other side of the thin motel room door. Trent was probably right. I did take too many chances.
A/N: Wow, this chapter ended up monstrously long. Don't know if I'll get to explain it in the course of the story or not since it's not really important, but the reason Dean could smell Trent was because Dean's been to Avalon, which in the Supernatural world is where all the fairies, leprechauns and so forth come from. Since it left him able to see fairies when others can't, I figured it probably could have sensitized him to all things magical. :)