Part III

Dean's been in the game long enough that being slowed down just a step still leaves him pretty damn fast and nimble. But two steps…two steps down and something new and nasty gets its paws around his throat just as easily as the next shmuck.

They found the thing so easily it should have shot up warning flares, come with a big neon sign jutting from the brush, declaring simply, "DUH."

It's big and black and picking bits of Bambi from its teeth at the edge of a creek cutting through the woods, mere paces off of the trail they'd taken from the road. Not deep into the woods at all. But Sam wasn't up to feeling suspicious, just giddy at the thought of ganking the thing and getting Dean's pale, stubborn, thirsty ass back to Bobby's house in record time.

Sam can only think of it as "the thing," can't take Dean up on his offer to name "the thing" when "the thing" is blurry and faraway but doing a damn fine job of ripping his brother's arm from the rest of him.

"The thing" is rippling with muscles, covered in thick fur like a bear and moving around on all fours. Like a bear. But this is no bear, and it's a hell of a lot bigger than they'd packed for, with claws like curled talons and a fucking mouthful of gnashing teeth. Both are more or less to be expected, given the brief, breathless report of shredded kids and wildlife they'd heard over the good-as-new scanner.

Sam will later find a way to blame this entire incident on Bobby. But that's later, because currently, "the thing" also has a mouthful of Dean, strong jaws clamped HARD on his arm and swinging him about like a rag doll. His legs scramble for purchase as his boots skip along the ground, fighting not to lose any balance he might have the strength to have left. If Sam really thinks about it, this entire tableau was probably also more to less to be expected. Because that's exactly the kind of luck they have.

How fucking MORONIC are you? Sam berates himself from his splayed position in the dirt, because when all is said and done, this was his lead to take, a lead Dean all but handed to him back at the house, and they have no business being out here. DEAN has no business being out here. Not when he's on the bad end of some sort of supernatural affliction that's on the road to killing him, even if it's taking the scenic route. But Dean could be missing an arm and he'd just bump Sam with his remaining elbow, call it a flesh wound in an abysmal British accent, and suggest they go out for beers and strippers. And Sam would just nod and say, yeah, Dean, that sounds great.

IDIOT.

Sam levels up on his elbows, finding himself to be a little fuzzy on how the pieces came to be in this exact formation on the board; he might be missing a small bit of time here, because Dean, eyes bright and shiny, ignoring the egg timer on his shoulder and ready for a fight, was just standing next to him with a machete in one hand and a blow torch in the other. A scan of the ground around Sam's sluggishly flailing feet reveals that neither is anywhere to be seen now.

Sam also hazily knows that, somewhere along the line, he also had a weapon of some kind…

Shotgun. Pump action. Very effective on all manner of nasties. Current whereabouts unknown, lost in the kerfuffle along with the machete and blow torch.

Covering the bases, Sammy, Dean had said once they'd pretexted their way easily past the pitiful police barricade consisting of a single green, eager deputy more interested in his turkey sandwich than their FBI badges, as they'd loaded up virtually one of everything into their bags from the lifted false bottom of the Impala's trunk. Covering the bases. Like he's some sort of goddamn tactical savant. SOMETHING will kill it. And Sam had just nodded and thought, yeah, Dean, that sounds great.

Sam's not naked; he's still got a switchblade in his back pocket, jabbing him in the ass as he kicks against the dirt and fights the overwhelming urge to vomit. The tiny blade seems pale by comparison, coupled with the pathetic fact that he's just now ready to give standing a try.

Across the way Dean's face is chalk-white as his fingers form his own set of makeshift claws, pawing frantically at the snout of the thing slobbering a foul-smelling spit all over him and trying to tear his arm clean off. He abandons finger-fighting pretty quickly, twists and throws his left hand behind to the Bowie lashed to his belt. He wrenches the knife free from its sheath and roars wordlessly as he drives it into the creature's neck. Despite the violence of the motion, it seems to be more get the fuck off me than die bitch die, and it works.

The thing whips its head as it releases him, and Dean stumbles back a few steps before crashing down hard on his ass. Once he's on the ground he stays there, falls back in a cloud of dust with his right arm folded over his middle.

Danger, Will Robinson, Sam thinks over the alarm bells screaming in his head, because there's still something big and deadly and unfamiliar right here in the woods with them, and Dean isn't one to lie down on the job before the job is finished.

Sam swallows his nausea and flings himself onto his hands and knees in the dirt. His vision is blurry and that's concerning but has to take a back seat while he scours the tall grass and leaves for any of their misplaced weaponry. He spots a nonspecific glint to his left and scurries through the brush in that direction, fingers wrapping around the familiar hilt of the machete. It feels about fifty pounds in weight but he hefts the blade as confidently and quickly as he can manage, and shoves himself all the way to his feet.

Sam notes with worry that Dean has yet to make a reappearance in the vertical world, but he forces his eyes away from his injured brother and spots "the thing" about ten yards away, keening and writhing and snapping its bloody jaws at the knife buried in its throat.

Can't bite us without its fucking head, Sam reasons. He can't really see clearly enough to know for sure but he swings with everything he's got at where his instincts tell him the son of a bitch's neck is.

The long blade skips around the hilt of Dean's knife before burying in meat and muscle. A clean strike but an odd angle, and a thick neck, and Sam staggers a bit with the force of it, body torqueing against the right leg he'd planted for the offensive attack. A sharp pain flares in his knee and spreads like a flame throughout his limb.

Sam groans and hauls the machete back, brings it around again, and again, and proceeds to hack like a crazed lunatic until the furry, horned head is rolling away into the brush with his brother's blood staining its teeth.

Huh. He hadn't even noticed the horns until now. He drops the blade and goes to work immediately scouring the area for his fallen brother, but his body seems to have other things on the agenda, right knee buckling as he attempts to step forward. He hisses and settles for hop-dragging the leg along, picking up the pace when he locates the fuzzy shape of Dean struggling – and failing – to rise from where he'd gone down.

It's just getting dark enough, and Sam's vision is just blurry enough, that he can't properly catalogue the full array of damage done. He knows there's blood, a lot of it, and that's his priority. The sight of the blood sets his heart into a frantic skip and he trips in his haste to cover the space between them, hits the deck in such a manner, he wouldn't be getting back to his feet on his own under other circumstances. He knows he has to get up and moving and lend some aid here, but boy, if it isn't tough.

"Sammy?" Dean's voice is small and strained and ties Sam's already churning gut into a knot that's become familiar in a way he truly detests.

"Yeah, I know" comes out "Yeammmfguuuu" around a mouthful of dirt.

Dean laughs a short, scared, humorless bark. "Okay, 'cause I don't know if you remember, but I got a bit of a situation here."

And Sam knows, that admission of Dean's should mean something.

"Yeah," he forces out, and in English this time, so that's a plus. Sam shoves up to his hands and knees with a groan. The trees around him spin and blur, and based on the suspicious flashing in the periphery of his field of vision, there might be something akin to a strobe light somewhere behind them. Or maybe it's just him. He closes his eyes – just for a moment – and his heavy head starts to droop.

"So you can't pass out," Dean orders, voice cracking.

Sam's going to figure out much, much later that the son of bitch was terrified he'd go back straight back to Hell if he died again. And it will kill some little part of Sam he often neglects.

"Wasn't gonna," Sam lies, and pushes up off of the dirt. He finds his feet, and then misplaces them just as quickly, balance in the wind as he trots sideways with his arms out like a stumbling toddler. He crashes back to his knees, and promptly throws up all over the missing pump action shotgun.

"We are so screwed."

"Nope." Sam shakes his head, surprised but thankful to see things are coming a bit more into focus as he does so. "I'm good now."

"Yeah," Dean mutters around another shaky, unamused laugh, and not at all in a way that speaks to his belief in Sam.

Sam gives up on walking and does his best to crawl the rest of the way to Dean's side, where his brother's pressing his left hand over the ravaged section of his right arm. There's still blood visible just about…well, everywhere, and Dean kind of has a wide-eyed look of shock on his face. Sam honestly thinks his brother is worried about or screwing with him before it dawns on him that – HELLO – Dean might actually just be IN SHOCK.

And that's when it is horribly, painfully obvious to Sam that he isn't going to be dealing with a full deck while he gets Dean foremost stabilized, secondly back to the Impala, and finally returned to Bobby. Who will hopefully be waiting on the porch to greet Sam with a strong drink and an ice pack, and Dean with a row of neat stitches, another bag of the good stuff, and a cure for whatever is fucking with him.

"Okay," Sam says, swallowing back nausea and gathering himself, setting his inner dial to triage mode. "Okay, lemme see it."

Dean lips are pressed into a thin white line as he lifts his hand from the bloody, shredded mess around his elbow. With the sheer volume of blood coating the area, it's difficult to tell where jacket becomes shirtsleeve and shirtsleeve gives way to the mauled skin underneath. None of it is good.

Sam takes in the sight, registers what damage he can see with clarity, and realizes that he doesn't quite trust himself enough with the switchblade to cut Dean's sleeves away without also slicing his brother's brachial artery. Blood is pumping sluggishly from the wounds, but it isn't in the way of a bright spurt that would be evidence of an arterial injury, so Sam figures wrapping the entire package up as is and getting them both somewhere less middle of nowhere-y is going to be the best way to approach this. "Can you move 'em?"

Dean grits his teeth and successfully wiggles all of his fingers.

Sam nods, and pain flares behind his temple. He realizes that it's very likely he's about to puke again, directly into his brother's lap, and crabs backward, wayward hand happening upon the familiar feel of the canvas weapons bag. Thankful for the distraction, he hauls the duffel around into his lap, yanks open the zipper and begins rifling through the contents. His fingers close around the warmed plastic of a bottled water and he twists off the cap, pulls in enough to rinse his mouth and spits the residue to the side. It kind of feels like heaven.

"Here," Sam says, shoving the bottle into Dean's hands, because if the mouthful of water helped him feel better it's bound to do wonders for his shock-y, bleeding brother. "Drink."

Dean's gone into the quiet, mute corner of his mind where he goes to escape profound physical pain, and when he's in this particular corner he listens to Sam quite well. Trusts him. So he grabs the offered bottle, thin plastic crinkling between his spasming fingers, and pulls in his own greedy mouthful of water.

He's going for a second drink when he chokes, coughs, and rolls quickly to the side. He vomits a small, fast rush of pink water into a pile on the leaves, his right arm quaking under the strain.

Fuck me, Sam thinks with far more clarity than anything he's attempted to say. He drags himself on his knees until he's next his brother, grasping handfuls of cargo jacket at both shoulders in an attempt to alleviate some of the weight from Dean's mangled right arm.

"That one's on me," he says stupidly, voice shaking and knowing Dean's beyond hearing him anyway. Sam's hands move back to the bag, finding a half-shot roll of clean enough gauze he hurries to send around Dean's arm, over and over until the roll is spent, telling himself that he didn't catch a glimpse of bone in the process.

Dean hums a high-pitched acknowledgement of his pain as Sam ties off the strip of gauze. "S'it dead?" he asks with his eyes closed.

"Yeah."

"What killed it?"

"Not having a head," Sam answers, frowning at Dean, who is not quite so naturally inquisitive. Dead is dead and dead is typically a good enough answer. "You good?"

"Mmm hmm." Dean's head bobs but it's not at all convincing. "What was it?"

Sam sighs, finally, however fuzzily, realizing Dean's talking is a form of pain management. "No clue."

"Need to…you need to do somethin' 'bout the body."

"Birds'll get it, man. We've got other things to worry about." Sam loops his arm through the straps of the duffel bag and slides it over his shoulder. He then uses the trunk of a tree to maneuver himself into a somewhat standing position and flexes his right leg, testing his mobility. Which is not great, but he can make do. He spares a glance down at his mostly prone and stupidly pale big brother and then sets about to hobbling around the area in an attempt to locate all of their missing weaponry.

"You have to stop moving, Sam," Dean sighs from where he's leaned back against the same tree that has already lent Sam an assist. His eyes are closed in his stark white face, and he's looking like he might be on the verge on the same gastrointestinal gymnastics Sam has been practicing all over the clearing.

Speaking of…Sam wrinkles his nose as he trips over the sick-covered shotgun. Might be giving that one up for lost this time. "I can't."

Dean exhales and his head bobs again. "I know." He's given up holding his arm and it's laying a bit more limply across his lap, still racked with spasms of pain.

Sam frowns, sliding the blow torch into the weapons bag like the final piece in this shitstorm puzzle. "You ready to try getting up?"

"Sure." Dean's expression speaks volumes to the contrary. "Why the hell not."

"Okay," Sam breathes as they move through the woods. There's no way they strayed this far from the car. No fucking way they wandered so far that neither cell phone is getting a signal. His vision swims again and his knee is tight with swelling, making it more and more difficult to press on, but he can't stop. He gives Dean's rubbery arm a tug, adjusts his grip on the frigid wrist perched over his shoulder. "Okay."

What he means is, we might be in some trouble here. But he can't say that out loud. There's a canyon spanning the space between the camps of pain and injury, and the distinction between the two is currently echoed in their individual predicaments. It hurts, sure, but Sam's on the better end of this shit stick. "Okay."

"Stop sayin' that, Sammy," Dean complains in a tight voice, the words forced through clenched teeth. Every dozen or so steps he throws a half-assed attempt at shucking Sam's support and shoving him away, only to drunkenly skitter sideways into a tree or bush or once all the way to the ground on his knees.

"Okay," Sam says, then winces. "Sorry."

"Whatever. We positive there was only…only one of these mothers?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Pretty sure I'm leavin' a trail."

Sam stops, blinks stupidly at Dean's blood glistening on the bright fall foliage they're brushing past. Christmas colors, a bit too early in the season. "Okay. Yeah," he says again, wetting his bottom lip. "Pretty sure it's just the one."

"Good, because, talk about a shit creek without a paddle," Dean jokes half-heartedly, forcing a laugh on the heel of his words.

Sam's knee is being stubborn but Dean's legs have all but given up on him entirely, and Sam isn't sure how much longer he'll be able to compensate. It's been too long since he's met up with Ruby. He's not strong enough to do this, to get Dean out of here. He NEEDS the blood. Maybe if he had it, if he'd been stronger…maybe he would have been able to stop some this. What he says is, "Shut up, already."

"Sam…" Dean stops walking, or more accurately, stops allowing himself to be dragged along, and scratches a sandpaper tongue uselessly over cracked lips. "Worst case scenario…"

Sam's fingers tighten around the heavy material of Dean's jacket, clinging to the fabric like a lifeline. "We are nowhere NEAR worst case scenario territory." Even so, his eyes flick to the soaked-through bandages wrapping Dean's arm.

"Yet."

If they don't stumble upon the Impala in the next ten minutes or so, Dean might not be so wrong here. He's lost a lot of blood and Sam has no cell signal and no way to get so much as a glass of water down his throat to help him out, and it's a hell of a lot more than water that he needs at the moment. "Well, we'll deal with that when – IF – we get there. Not before."

"Yeah," Dean says, barely above an exhale of cool breath. The pallor of his face is giving the white face of the rising moon overhead a run for its money. "What the hell is going on, man?"

Where do I start? "What do you mean?"

"This…" Dean swallows roughly. "Spell, curse, complete fuck-tastrophy goin' on, and then we just happen to get that police scanner workin' at the exact moment to hear a report come in about some bassackwards creature we've never seen before?" He scoffs, coughs, and stumbles into Sam. "And it was way too easy, gettin' past that LEO at the roadblock."

"Yeah," Sam agrees. Then he stops suddenly in his tracks, brother staggering to a pause at his side.

Dean throws his left arm out against a tree to catch his slumping weight. He looks tired, sick, and frustrated. "What?"

Sam fidgets, shifting his weight from his shaky leg. "No, it's just, you…you're right."

Dean grins, or grimaces, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. "Usually am."

"No. Dean, you're right. This whole thing, everything going on is just…way too fucking weird. It's so weird that it would all almost have to be connected."

Dean sighs and leans more heavily against the trunk of the tree. "Sammy. Shit happens. And when you're us? Shit happens a lot. You're gonna give yourself an aneurism if you play Connect the Dots when there's nothin' to connect."

"Yeah. Yeah, you're probably right. There's nothing to…" Sam limps forward to pull Dean away from the tree and haul the final stretch back to the car, then pauses, stops talking but his lips continue to move soundlessly as he recalls images from the last two unbelievably and undeniably horrific days. "No. No, there is."

"There's what?"

"Something to connect here."

"Sam, can we just – "

"Shut up a sec." Sam thinks back, lets the seemingly insignificant background components come front and center, just as, yeah okay, Bobby had suggested hours ago. The chuckling, gum-chomping busboy in the diner, the street performer plucking "Brown Sugar," the snack-y cop at the roadblock who hadn't done much to block their access to the woods. "Son of a bitch."

"Son of what bitch, Sam? Can you let me in on what you're thinkin' here?"

Sam clenches his jaw. "I'm thinking this entire thing, what's going on with you, the monster back there…it's all the same thing."

"How does that make sense?"

Sam's not entirely sure he can fight through his headache to say the number of words necessary for Dean to understand what he's thinking. But Dean's at least as tough as he looks, and he gets there without Sam having to say it.

"Son of a BITCH."

"You remember how to summon 'im?"

A telltale sign that Dean is far beyond things like polite conversation and general tact, because this is one of those things they aren't supposed to talk about. Anything having to do with the Broward County Mystery Spot or Sam's lost months is so far off the table, it isn't even in the same zip code as the table.

"Yeah, I do," Sam says tightly, adjusting his grip on Dean's jacket to compensate for persistent pull of gravity on his brother's dragging, dead-weight limbs. "But I don't think we're gonna need to go that far." His eyes catch the faint wash amber wash of the main road's lone streetlight over the crest of the hill. "Almost there."

"Good," Dean rasps. "Not sure I've got enough juice left, anyway."

Sam's head is aching and pounding and adrenaline is all that's keeping his feet moving forward at this point, but if Dean says one more thing like that, he has no doubt he will club his brother into unconsciousness and full-on DRAG his mercifully silent ass the rest of the way to the car.

They break out of the woods onto blessed pavement, and Sam rotates stiffly, pointing them in the direction of where they left the Impala at the roadblock. Except the roadblock isn't there. Son on a bitch, Sam thinks again, picking up the pace, suspicions all but cemented by the temporary gate's disappearance.

"Hey, agents."

Sam spins at the call, jaw clenching as he sees the eager young officer striding down the otherwise dark, empty road. There isn't even a cop car parked nearby anymore, to grant the scene some authenticity.

"You guys just about done down there? You really shouldn't be out much…whoa, what happened to him?"

Dean's knees disappear and Sam lets him fall as gently as possible against a wide tree framing the berm next to the Impala's front fender, drops the weapons bag next to his splayed legs, and doesn't break stride as he meets the officer in middle of the street. The pain in his head and leg are distant memories as he grabs the guy's shirtfront with both hands and spins him forcefully, walks him backwards before hauling him up against the hood of the car. To his credit, Dean doesn't protest his baby coming into play.

The officer, however, raises his hands, eyes widening. "Hey, whoa, buddy. Take it easy – "

Sam is not to be trifled with at the moment. He focuses on a spasm of pain racking his swollen knee, channels it into another vigorous slam of the man's back against cool metal, this time drawing a soft whimper from where Dean waits just beyond the car. "FIX my brother, you SON of a bitch."

The sadistic asshole drops the façade even quicker than Sam had anticipated, young, frightened, pockmarked face shimmering into the familiar, maddening, boyishly lopsided grin of the Trickster. "Say 'please.'"

To be concluded...