Chapter Twenty-Three
Amie sat in the backseat, Dean's head in her lap. She was trying to keep pressure on his back with one hand, but it wasn't easy. She was taking deep breaths, trying to stay calm. She knew she was close to having a panic attack. Her hands were shaking, her heart was racing and tears were running down her face. She was murmuring "It's going to be okay" over and over, but she didn't know if she was talking to herself or Dean.
She tried to assess Dean's injuries, forcing herself to focus. He had four deep cuts from the top of his back to just above his hips. He also had deep gouges in his leg. He had various minor cuts and bruises over most of his body. Amie suspected that his arm was broken. His face was beat to shit. He would not stop bleeding, despite the pressure she was keeping on the cuts. And he had blacked out right after they put him in the car and no matter what she said or did he wouldn't respond. His breathing was uneven and labored. They needed to hurry.
Sam was driving as fast as he could, but not so fast that it would bring them any unwanted attention. When he made eye contact with Amie in the rearview mirror, she shook her head, her lips pressed together in worry. Sam nodded, trying to go faster.
Amie closed her eyes, but all she could see was the image of her son, bloody and torn apart. Dean's injuries were so reminiscent of her son's and husband's that she was near her breaking point. She tried pushing the memories away, but to no avail. She was having trouble catching her breath, she could feel her air passages closing up. She had to breathe, concentrate and focus on what needed to be done. She could lose it later.
Sam finally pulled into the motel. He got out of the car and opened the back door. Amie slipped out, laying Dean's head gently on the seat as she did. While Sam pulled Dean from the car, she unlocked the motel room door and went directly to the bathroom. She grabbed towels and soaked several washcloths with water. On her way back to Dean, she snagged her med kit off of the floor by her bags. "Focus, focus, focus" she chanted repeatedly to herself. Otherwise she wouldn't make it through this.
Dean was on the bed, facedown. Amie took the scissors from her bag and cut off his shirt and jacket. She nearly passed out when she got a good look at his back. It was shredded, the skin flayed to the point that Amie could see muscle. She literally felt sick to her stomach. There was no way she could sew that up. Shit, she wasn't even sure Dean could live with this kind of injury. She felt her airways constricting as the reality of the situation started to set in.
"Sam?" she managed to choke out.
He came out of the bathroom, wiping his hands on a towel. He was wearing a clean shirt. He came up behind her. "Oh my god," he whispered, worry evident in his voice.
Amie starting pulling gauze rolls from the med bag. She unrolled them, laying them across Dean's back, hoping to at least soak up some of the blood. She didn't even realize that tears were rolling down her face until she licked her lips and they were salty.
"Okay," Sam said, restlessly pacing the room. "We'll need to take him to the hospital. Even if it means Abbadon finds us. Neither one of us can fix this."
Realization slowly dawned on Amie. "No, but I know someone that can," Amie shot to her feet. "I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. I need a minute." She ran into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
She paced around the small bathroom, not sure how to start. She'd given up praying when her husband and son had been killed. But this was the only way she could save Dean. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Umm, hey, Katarina, it's Amie" she blurted out. "Hopefully you can hear me. I need your help. Dean is hurt, really hurt. I, umm, don't think he'll make it without your help. Please come."
Amie expected Katarina to be standing in front of her when she opened her eyes. But she wasn't. She should have known it wouldn't work. It was ridiculous to think it would. She turned and flung open the door, ready to take Dean to the hospital.
Katarina stood in front of her, face passive. "Hello," she said calmly. "You need my help?"
Relief flooded through her. "Yes," Amie said, trying to hold back the tears. "It's Dean."
The angel turned to Dean, lying on the bed. She walked slowly across the room. When she reached Dean, she placed a hand on his shoulder. She stayed there for nearly a minute, before Amie noticed him shift slightly. Katarina stepped back. "He'll be fine. Let him rest. I have to return to Bartholomew. He does not know I am speaking to you and I do not want him to become suspicious. I will try to return soon." Katarina disappeared.
Sam and Amie reached the bed at the same time. Amie ran her fingers lightly over Dean's back, the skin now unmarked. His face was perfect, the cuts and bruises gone. He was breathing evenly and he appeared to be sleeping peacefully. Sam was sitting on his haunches, staring at his brother's face.
"He looks okay," he said, sounding appeased. He hung his head briefly, a small smile on his face. "Thank god." He stood up and looked at Amie. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," Amie lied. She took a shaky breath, hoping Sam didn't notice. She glanced down at her hands and clothes, still covered in Dean's blood. "I'm, uh, gonna get cleaned up. Maybe you could go get some food. He'll probably be hungry when he wakes up."
Sam nodded. "Good idea. I'll go to that burger place up the road he likes. I'll only be gone a few minutes. Keep your gun with you the whole time."
All Amie could do was nod. She was afraid if she talked, Sam would hear how close she was to breaking down. She knelt on the floor and started digging through her suitcase, pulling out clean clothes, hoping to occupy herself until Sam was gone. A few seconds later, she heard the motel room door close and lock.
She kept herself together until she heard the Impala start up and pull away. Once she knew Sam was gone, she scrambled to her feet, lurching across the room and through the bathroom door. She slammed it behind her, dropping her things and throwing herself to the floor in front of the toilet. She vomited, vacating her stomach of everything she had eaten that day. When there was nothing left to throw up, she pulled herself up in front of the sink and splashed cold water on her face. She stared at her face in the mirror, but all she saw was a slightly younger version of herself.
Amie hoped if she stared in the mirror long enough, maybe she'd fall through it into an alternate reality where none of this had ever happened. The water continued running in the sink, but she had forgotten it was even on.
There was a knock at the door. "Mrs. Williams? Are you alright in there?" the young female police officer asked.
Amie shook her head. She was never going to be right again. She turned off the water, grabbed some more tissues from the box on the counter and opened the door.
Amie saw the officer jump when she flung the door open. "Oh, Mrs. Williams, you startled me! Detective Abernathy wanted me to check on you. He has a few more questions for you." The young lady was very pale. But most of the people who had come in her house tonight had looked like that after getting a look at her son and husband. Amie choked back a sob, desperately trying to keep herself together.
She pushed past the officer and moved down the hall toward her kitchen. She could see people working in her husband's office, taking blood samples, looking for fingerprints or DNA or whatever it was they looked for. They weren't going to find anything. The thing that did this didn't leave fingerprints.
The young officer followed closely on Amie's heels. She was saying something, but Amie wasn't listening. Detective Abernathy sat at her kitchen table, a notebook in front of him, tapping his pen on the table top. Amie wanted to smack it out of his hands. She crossed to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. She really wanted a beer, but Abernathy looked like the stuffy type who might look down on that.
"What other questions could you possibly have, Detective?" Amie asked, the exasperation she was feeling coming through in her voice. She had been answering questions for nearly two hours. She'd told her story to at least four different people and she was getting tired. All she wanted to do was crawl into her bed, pull the covers over her head and sleep. Make all this go away, if just for a few hours.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Williams, I know this is frustrating. But we want to find out who did this to your husband and son, don't we? So any answers you can give us will only help us to do that. Why don't you sit down and tell me just one more time exactly what happened. After all, you want to help, don't you?" Abernathy pointed to the chair across from him, the pen tap, tap, tapping as he spoke.
But Amie had had enough. She was at the table in two strides, slamming her hands down on its surface. Water flew from the bottle she held in her left hand. "Don't fucking patronize me, Detective Abernathy. I told you what happened. I found my husband and son torn to shreds when I got home from work. Torn to shreds. Not stabbed, not shot, not beat up. Torn apart. My son's heart is missing. Ripped out of his chest. My husband's head apparently burst open like a rotten melon. That's what I know, that's what happened. Now, if you have nothing else of importance to add or any relevant information to give me, then you need to get the hell out of my house. I am done talking to you."
The detective stood up quickly, putting his notebook and pen in his pocket. He backed away from the table—and Amie—so fast he knocked over the chair he had been using. "Yes, ma'am," he finally stammered. "I think I have everything I need. We'll finish up and leave. I'm sorry."
Detective Abernathy left the room, followed by the other officers. Amie heard him telling the other people in the house to pack it up. She walked around the table and straightened the chair. She sat down, watching as one by one the police and forensics team left. When she was finally alone, she walked down the hallway to lock the front door. She avoided looking towards Frank's office, the door closed and covered with crime scene tape. She practically ran up the stairs to her bedroom, locking the door behind her, even though she knew a locked door wouldn't stop what had killed her family if it decided to come back.
Amie took the loaded shotgun from the gun safe in the closet, crawled into the bed she'd shared with Frank, and pulled his pillow over so she could lie on it. She curled herself around it, inhaling the scent of her now-dead husband. She kept one hand curled around the shotgun. Even though she wouldn't have thought she had a tear left in her body to shed, she starting crying.
For the first time in almost twenty years, she wanted her father. He would know what to do. He would know how to hunt down what had done this to her family. He always knew what to do. Her daddy had been an amazing hunter, maybe even better than Bobby Singer or John Winchester. And while he'd taught his daughter everything he knew, it had been so long since she had even thought about hunting, she couldn't even imagine where to start. When she walked away from it, and therefore her parents, she had hoped that she was leaving the life behind. But it looked like it had finally caught up with her.
Unfortunately, she couldn't just call her father for help. He'd been killed on a hunt a few years ago. Amie hadn't even gone to the funeral. Her mother was still so angry with her daughter and her refusal to stay in the family business, that she wouldn't even call her to tell her that her father had died. It was Bobby Singer that had called her to let her know. He'd been very nice and he'd seemed to understand why she wouldn't be at the funeral, though he had sounded slightly disappointed. When her mother died last year, the alcoholism finally taking its toll, Amie had told the funeral home to cremate her and spread the ashes anywhere they wanted.
Now, she had no one. As Amie lie in the bed, sleep evading her, she realized what she was going to have to do. It wouldn't be easy and it would take a lot of planning but it was possible. Since she had no one else to turn to, she was going to have to take care of this alone.
Her family was gone, and as far as Amie was concerned, so was her previous life. Nothing would ever be the same. She would never be the same. The only way to survive this was to shut her emotions away and keep everyone and everything out. She would go back to hunting, find what had killed her husband and son and destroy it. Then maybe she could find some peace.
Amie was pulled from her memories by the distant slamming of a door. The water still ran in the sink. Her tear-streaked face stared back at her in the mirror.
"Amie? You alright," Sam called from the other room. "I got the food."
"Umm, yeah, just give me couple minutes," she yelled.
She took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself. She quickly stripped out of her bloody clothes and used the bar of soap on the sink to clean the blood off of her arms and hands. She dried herself off with the nearest towel and shut off the water. Amie threw on the shorts and tank top she'd grabbed. She opened the door and stepped out of the bathroom.