I loped through the woods for who knows how long. Things kept trying to distract me, rabbits, deer, birds singing. The smells and sounds were almost overwhelming. There were times I could barely focus on the pulling sensation that guided my steps. I ended up swimming through two small rivers before cresting the top of a hill and seeing a coyote sitting next to a bonfire and unbelievably huge snow white wolf. It made Mairyn seem tiny. The pulling sensation stopped and the coyote's head turned.
"Dean!" I heard her voice in my head just as she started pelting full speed up the hill towards me. I barely processed that before she was rubbing along my side and yipping.
"Uh, this is...well...weird." Part of me wanted to return her affections in some sort of canine way but the rest of me was more than a little confused by that whole idea. "I love you and am thrilled to see you but, yeah. Can we not do the doggy greeting thing?"
She laughed, in my head, while running her tongue along my muzzle. "Sorry. Guess I'm more used to this whole alternate form thing than you are."
"Uh, guess so." I really hoped I wouldn't remember this whole episode when we got back to our bodies. "Any sign of anyone else? And are we stuck like this while we're here?"
She sat down, "Brother Wolf says Sam is on his way, Oliver and Roy are struggling. And yes, while we're here we stay furry."
Great. That didn't sound good. "Any way we can help them?"
She shook her head, "No. This is something they have to do. They are inside themselves, we can't intrude. Brother Wolf is doing what he can."
I heard something, an almost silent step coming from behind me and caught a new scent. A scent I recognized, which I decided to not think about why I knew it. I turned my head, "Glad you made it." I told him. Sam's wolf was about half the size of Brother Wolf, but still a bit bigger than I was. He wasn't as snowy white as Brother Wolf and had a few more scars but still a lot whiter than I was but it was the eyes that gave it away. In case the fact that I somehow recognized his scent as a wolf wasn't enough his eyes were the same as they would be if he was human, just in a wolf's head.
"Yeah, me too."
He wasn't nearly as confident as he was trying to sound. Something about the tilt of his ears, how he was walking and carrying his tail told me that it'd been pretty touch and go for him. Once again, I didn't dwell on how I would know to read wolf body language. My brain was hurting enough as it was.
"Glad to see you, all things considered," he continued, "You seem even less black. Is that a good sign?"
"We'll go with yes."
"Hey Coyote," he said as he brushed his shoulder along hers. Apparently he was more okay with canine displays of affection than I was.
"Sam, glad you're here."
"Which is where?" He asked before he sat down and looked towards Brother Wolf.
"We call it the Dreaming Lands," she answered. "Sort of like the veil that you talk about, but not really. We aren't dead or alive, we're in between."
"I seriously need a check list of all the afterlives we've been to. I'm starting to lose track," I said.
Sam gave me a pretty good doggy equivalent of his exasperated look, "We'll draw up a map when we get home."
"Wouldn't it need to be multi-dimensional? Like that Star Wars multi level chess game? Not sure we have the tech for that."
"Felicity could probably come up with something. Where's Oliver and Roy?"
A hissing, growling, mewling sound filled the air and a black jaguar with icy blue eyes which lacked nearly all human thought and reason dropped down from some trees and landed behind Sam. Oliver, once again my nose informed me of who he was, and he wasn't looking too stable. His tail was twitching like crazy, his ears were flat, teeth bared and his fur was straight up as he crouched down and eyed us.
"Oliver? Calm down man!" I said.
His back legs shifted like cat's do right before they pounce.
"Dude, it's us. Sam, Dean and Coyote!"
He came right for us. I was about to meet him in the air when Brother Wolf magically appeared in between us. Oliver slammed into him, bounced off and growled.
"Peace Oliver Queen. Peace."
Brother Wolf's voice was overpowering. It resonated inside my head and shook me to my bones. There was no denying any command from that voice. He was the first of us, the first of the wolves and I had no idea why I knew that or what the hell it meant. All I knew was that shit, as usual, had just gotten a lot more complicated.
Oliver's tail stopped lashing all over the place, his eyes cleared a bit and he stopped growling. "Who? Where? I..."
Talk about utterly out of his depth, I know that feeling all too well.
"You are in between life and death, in a safe place. Rest. The journey ahead, if you choose to undertake it, will be orders of magnitude worse than what it took for you to get here."
Of course it would.
Brother Wolf's head slowly turned to face me. His eyes were blue, like Cas'. There was a depth to them that I've learned to associate with supernatural shit that's way more powerful than I am. "I heard that Dean Winchester."
"Just calling it like it is sir." Sir? I never say that, except to Dad.
"Do not think because you have been resurrected before that you will be prepared for this. No one doubts your desire to live, but your other resurrections were carried out by some other power. Yes, I know about them, they are seared into your Spirit. This one you must do completely on your own. All of you must."
It wasn't the words that chilled me, it was the tone and how he looked. This wasn't an angel saving my ass, this wasn't God just randomly deciding that I'd wake up somewhere. "Care to explain that?"
"In a moment." He went back to looking at Oliver, "Focus. Not on the instincts, but on reason."
"Reason? What's reason?" Oliver stammered, he was barely able to form words. "I don't understand..."
"What is the last thing you remember?"
His eyes shifted wildly left to right,but his ears seemed less flat. He looked less deadly and more scared. "Before the..." A deep shudder rippled through his fur. "I...I..."
"Us hiking through the woods, the attack." I offered.
His eyes grew more focused, some of the tension left his muscles. "Yes, the cave. Claws ripping into me. Roy..Roy! Where is he?"
That was a good sign, for Oliver at least. He wasn't completely lost.
"He's started the journey here. He is very weak though."
That pushed the last of Oliver's confusion away, "Where is he? We have to help him."
"You cannot. All of you were brought here on individual paths, none of them overlap. Not until you get to this point. There is no way to get to him."
"Yeah, not buying that." I said. "I get how Coyote and I are connected and Sam and I are blood, but Oliver and Roy? C'mon. We're not that close that you'd be able to track them through us."
He turned those piercing, almost glowing, blue eyes back on me. I took a step back without even thinking about it. "Perhaps you are unaware just how much blood you have lost back in the physical world. Blood links. There are pools of it around your bodies. I can use the blood to call to you. I cannot, however, send you along someone else's Spirit path."
"Can't Coyote go?" Sam asked, "That's sort of what Shamans do, right?"
Brother Wolf sat down. I guess he felt that Oliver was under control, for now at least.
"Shamans who are alive, healthy and prepared for the journey. Yes. Running Coyote is none of those. She could be lost forever if she began the journey and you will need her much more than you will need Roy Harper."
That got a low growl out of Oliver, "I will not leave him behind!"
And that's when the ground shook, for a second I thought it was an earthquake, until I realized the deep growling sound was coming from Brother Wolf, "You foolish human. What is the point of saving Roy Harper if you cannot stop the one who sent you here? I did not go through all of this to have you fail now." He stood back up and towered over Oliver. Oliver backed down, dropped his eyes and stepped back, just like I had. I never thought I'd see Oliver give ground when it came to one of his crew, ever. "You will sit, you will wait." His eyes swept over all of us, and none of us could hold his gaze for more than a second. We all sat down. It felt completely wrong to challenge him. I'd never felt like this before. First Mariyn, now him? What the fuck was going on?
He sure as hell didn't sound like any of the rest of Coyote's guides I'd met. That's for damn sure. There was no give in him, no understanding. Coyote had said she'd never dealt much with him but I was getting the feeling there was a lot more to him than she knew. We sat there, without speaking a word, until a bobcat stumbled into view, eyes wide, scared to death and panting. Cats only pant when they're really stressed or seriously hurt. Roy wasn't bleeding but that didn't mean much here.
"Oliver, speak to him. He is nearly lost to us."
"Roy? Roy? Look at me. I know I don't look like me but it's me, Oliver."
"Oliver?"
He was shaking so much he could barely stand and his voice was so weak.
"Hey, I'm here too. It's Sam. You've seen Dean and I with fur before. C'mon Roy. You can do this. Think about Thea."
"Thea..." He stretched out her name, like it was a foreign concept to him.
"Yes, Thea." Oliver said."My sister, your girlfriend. Think about her. Remember her, you have to."
His breathing started to slow down, "Thea...I love Thea..."
"That's it." I said, "Think about how she looks, her laugh, her voice. How you met. It's all there Roy, you just have to find it." Sam and I had done this so often in the past that we knew all the tricks. "Think about Oliver, fighting crime, being in the Impala with Sam. Remember man. You've got to."
"Speedy..Thea...Arsenal..." The shaking settled down, his voice got stronger. "I remember...Arrow..Oliver. Saved my life."
"Yes, good, keep going." Oliver encouraged as he stood up and took a few steps closer. "You're stronger than you think. I believe in you."
Roy's eyes focused immediately, he stared in shock at Oliver, "You do? I am?"
If Oliver still hadn't told him that to his face after our talk over a year ago the first thing I was going to do when I had hands again was punch him.
"Yes, I do and you are. You have to fight Roy, you have to live. We both do. We have people who love us to get back to. Understand?"
Well, maybe slap him. At least he'd finally got that through his thick head.
Roy nodded, "I do. Thea and Felicity, they need us."
He sounded almost normal. Well normal for being in the form of a bobcat and talking without actually speaking. I'd take what I could get at this point.
Brother Wolf took a step closer and seemed to be examining Roy, he was giving him a pretty intense stare anyway. "Welcome Roy. I am glad you survived the journey."
"We're all here now. What's next?" I asked.
"Now I tell you what your enemy is and how you can destroy her."
About damn time.