Chapter Twenty-Five
Staring down at the crushed remains of his phone tinkling away from his massive clawed paw, Sam let out small noise of horrified despair.
Dean was walking straight into a vampire – or vampires – and he didn't know it. A sliver knife would be useless.
Telling himself sternly to calm down, because he wasn't any use to anybody panicking, Sam carefully folded his long legs underneath him, settling into kneeling, and made himself relax. His breathing slowed, his heart rate came down, and he let his mind stop whirling. Control. That was what was needed. Enough control to flick the switch, and be human again. Calm, intelligent control.
He closed his eyes, and stretched out his arms, visualising them resuming their human shape.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. Calm, be calm, just breathe, and find the switch...
His arms, in fact all of him, remained stubbornly werewolf-shaped.
He let out a huff of irritation as Jimi whined, picking up on his worry.
Alpha is in danger, he told the dog, He is being stalked by the... wrong-things.
Threat! Jimi growled, his eyes whirling ember-red, Threat to our pack!
Glaring at his paws, Sam could've put one through a wall in frustration. I can hardly drive like this, he snapped to himself, I sure as hell can't use the laptop, and even if I hadn't killed my cell, I can't call directory assistance – thank you for waiting, please howl the address you are looking for, these frigging claws...
He remembered how, when he couldn't get the shapeshift under his control, Ronnie had snarled, and scared him back to human.
So he thought about clowns.
He thought about their pallid white faces, and their painted-on smiles, and their garish wigs, and their clumsy baggy costumes, and their blood-red noses and their evil too-loud laughter and their dead, dead eyes...
He thought about Pennywise from It. He thought about the clown doll from Poltergeist. He thought about Captain Spalding from House of 1000 Corpses. He thought about the Violator from Spawn. He thought about Michael Jackson. He thought about every hideous, scary clown he'd ever seen.
It didn't work.
Alpha is in danger! Jimi yapped, and the implication was clear: so what are we going to do about it?
His brother was walking into trouble. And he needed Sam to have his back. End of story. A little thing like a case of lycanthropic hypertrichosis wasn't going to stop one Winchester brother from watching out for the other.
Jimi stood by the door, looking at him expectantly. Sam looked down at his huge paws again, massive appendages, they would be useless for trying to wield a weapon, that took years of practice, and time was the one thing he didn't have.
So, weaponry, no.
Thoughtfully, he waggled his uncooperative thumbs.
Intelligent control.
With a growl of determination, Sam put one paw on the door handle.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Dean was no stranger to waking up with a pair of magnificent assets before his eyes, but it was usually a lot more pleasant when there was an actual bed involved, and his head wasn't aching as though it had been split open.
"I think he's waking up," quavered a female voice.
"Nrrrrrrng," quoth Dean, putting a hand to his head to make sure it was still attached to his neck. "Wathafuck?" He blinked hard to clear his vision, and looked up into a worried, but still very attractive, female face.
Okay, not dead then, he thought. Because he'd been to Hell, and there were no attractive women per se there, and he'd been to Heaven, and he was pretty sure that headaches weren't part of the gig there, and in Purgatory the pretty ones had all ended up having too many tentacles for his personal preference. Which just left still being alive...
With some protesting from his outraged neurons, recollection came flooding back.
Oh, shit.
Levering himself up on one elbow, Dean gazed at the worried face peering at him. Faces plural, he realised. A gaggle of people were standing around looking at him. As his vision cleared, he realised he recognised them.
They were the young would-be models who'd disappeared after registering with Real People.
"Are you all right?" asked she of the attractive assets who'd been leaning over him. "When they brought you down here, we thought you were dead..." One of the other girls started to cry.
"No, I aint dead," Dean smiled ruefully, rubbing at his head, and checking for his phone. It was gone, but the silvered knife down his boot was still there. "I just feel like it. Who's 'they'?"
"Butch and Lois," the young woman – Sharmaine, her name popped into her head, she was Sharmaine – replied. "They've been keeping us upstairs, but they brought us down here earlier this evening."
"Okay, so they're plannin' something for tonight," he mused, wincing. He did a double-take, then realised that the 'girl' who was crying was actually a young man. "C'mon, dude, not in front of the ladies," he muttered. He looked around. They were in a basement room of some sort, bare floor and walls, with nothing but a small window set high above the floor. "What can you tell me about Butch and Lois?"
"They're going to kill us," quavered another young woman, Andrea, he recalled, "Lois said they needed somewhere where the screaming wouldn't be heard. 'There's always screaming', was what she said."
"So, something they've done before," grunted Dean, looking around. The room was bare, a deep basement room – he didn't say it out loud, but it would be readily hosed down after all manner of butchery. "Did they actually say they're goin' to kill you?" They looked at each other. "What?"
"They didn't exactly say," another girl told him, "But once or twice, I heard Butch mention 'turning'. He said I'd turn beautifully."
"He said the same thing to me," said yet another of the Real People disappearees, "I didn't know what he meant. Do you know what he meant?"
"Nope," Dean replied, although he was beginning to form a suspicion, "But I'm thinking that we shouldn't hang around to find out." He stood by the wall, squinting up at the window.
"We can't get up there," one of the girls said, "It's too far up, and there's no way to climb. The wall's too smooth."
Dean gave her a cocky smile. "Well, your ladder has arrived," he told her, eyeing the willowy figures of the models. "None of you look like you weigh much – now, did any of you ever do any cheerleading at school?"
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
On the third try, Sam's paw grasped the doorknob firmly enough to turn it. The door swung open.
Peering into the darkness, he checked for any witnesses, then chastised himself. Use your nose, you moron, stop thinking like a human, and let the wolf do its thang...
As if running on auto-pilot, the wolf body took over: his enormous bulk somehow slid silently and invisibly out of the room, and oozed into the night, to blend with the shadows. His nose told him that there were people about, but none of them had noticed him.
So, he was out. Now, all he had to do was find his brother. With no idea where that address actually was...
He turned to Jimi, and gruffed softly.
Find your Alpha. Find Dean. Use stealth.
Alpha, echoed Jimi, raising his snout to the night, casting for a familiar scent, I track, Alpha.
Set onto a trail, a Hellhound will follow a scent, however faint, however faded, across time and space, across dimensions – once set to track, it will always find its quarry.
For Jimi, finding Dean would be like setting a greedy child looking for Easter eggs in a chocolate shop in March.
His eyes glowing like banked embers, Jimi let out another whuff. Sticking to the shadows, he slunk into the night, with Sam following.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Officer Brian Peddle was on his last shift. It was a source of some amusement to his colleagues that the man who had vigorously fought to avoid being kicked upstairs or put behind a desk would finally be forced by a knee injury, sustained during running down and arresting a would-be burlgar less than half his age, to spend his last shift before retirement on dispatch. To make it up to him, they said, they had bought him an enormous quantity of doughnuts as an extra retirement present. The boxes were everywhere, on every available flat surface, and he had no doubt that before the shift finished, pictures of a grinning cop surrounded by boxes of doughnuts would be circulating on the internet.
He stashed away some of the chocolate iced ones that his wife liked so much to take home for her, then thought, what the hell, and opened a box. He'd always been a guy who looked after his own health, but damn it, if a cop couldn't eat doughnuts on his last shift, then he didn't want to live on this planet any more. He pulled out his cell and took a picture of himself with two doughnuts jammed into his mouth at once, then sent it to one of his younger colleagues who was on patrol; it would amuse the youngsters enormously, and no doubt it would also end up on the damned internet, but Brian was a man who could take a joke, because a guy who couldn't laugh at himself would never have survived forty years on the beat.
He finished those, and was contemplating a third – fuck, they must mix crack in with the powdered sugar, he decided, the damned things were addictive – when the switchboard flashed. He immediately answered the call, took the details, suggested that the lady stay indoors, and assured her that somebody would look into it.
He relayed the message to the same colleague he'd sent the selfie to: a woman had spotted a Rottweiler and a giant wolf trotting along her street.
"A giant wolf?" he could hear the incredulity in the young guy's voice, "What the hell was she smoking?"
"I dunno," chortled Brian, "Maybe she's eatin' crack-powdered doughnuts, just like me, mmmmmmm..."
"We'll check it out," his colleague sighed. "Save some for us."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"It's stuck," complained Tania, the slim brunette standing on his upstretched hands as she wiggled at the catch on the tiny window, "It's, like, rusty, and gunked up."
"Keep trying," Dean instructed, trying to stop his head from spinning and his knees from shaking.
"I need something to hit it with," she said.
Dean toed off a boot. "Toss that up to her," he instructed the young man. "Seriously, right now, dude."
Still sniffling, the young guy did as was told.
Tania juggled the boot, but caught it on the second try, banging at the window catch. "It's moving!" she said, hitting it again, "I think it's moving!"
After several more whacks, the corroded metal gave way.
"Great," Dean encouraged, "Now, can you see hinges on this side?"
"Uh," she peered at the flaking frame, "No, I don't think so."
"Okay, so the hinges are outside. Which means, it swings outward," he told her, "Probably from the top. So, give the base of the window frame a whack, and see if you can get it open."
"What if the glass breaks?" one of the other girls worried.
"That don't matter," Dean grimaced, "What's important is that we get that frame open. You're all pretty slim, I think with a boost, I can get you up there, and out."
Sharmaine looked up, and crossed the room to the depressingly solid door. "I think I heard something," she said tentatively.
"All the more reason to get you out and away," Dean said firmly, "Come on Tania, show that window no mercy! Pretend it stole your favourite mascara!"
She gave the window a vicious whack. With a creak, it cracked open.
"It's opening!" she said.
"Good work!" Dean said, feeling sweat start to run down his back, "Now, push it open as far as it can go!"
"Got it!" Tania declared, dropping his boot, then jumping off his hands and landing lightly on the floor. "Huh," she sniffed, "And Coach said that I wasn't flyer material."
"Okay," announced Dean, fighting off a wave of dizziness, "Now, what we're gonna do, I'm gonna boost one of you up there, and you're gonna get up, and wriggle through that window. Then, you help the next one out. Then, the two of you grab the next one, until you all get out, and then you get the hell away from here as fast as you can, as quietly as you can. Go to a house with lights on, or go where you see people, ask to call the police, and tell them who you are."
"What about you?" asked Sharmaine, one ear still pressed to the door.
"You let me worry about me," Dean said firmly, turning to the young guy, "Now, uh, what was your name?"
"Leonidas," he replied tremulously. "But people call me Lenny."
"Okay, so... Leonidas?" Dean gawped at the man before him. "Really?" The least leonine man he'd ever seen nodded. "Huh. And I thought I had a problem bein' named after my grandmother. So, Lenny, you'll go first, then you help grab the ladies, okay?" The other man nodded reluctantly.
Dean set himself against the wall again, glad to have something to lean on as his vision went momentarily fuzzy. "Okay, dude, foot here, now, on three, you reach, and grab, and get as much of you as you can through that window, okay? One, two, three..."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
They must think he came down with the last shower, Brian chortled to himself after the first couple of 'sightings' were reported. He'd been in the job forty years, and could smell a prank at a hundred yards. But he played along, the consummate straight man, his voice serious, relaying the reports to the cruiser crews with a perfectly straight face.
Report of a Rottweiler and a giant wolf climbing over a back fence.
"And are they still there, sir? No? Okay...how tall is the fence? So, the Rottweiler didn't go over the fence, it just went right through the fence, then the wolf got one of your garden chairs to stand on, and followed over itself, do I have that correct, sir?... yes, sir, if it's left claw marks on your outdoor furniture and didn't leave a name and address, that most definitely constitutes trespass and damage to property..."
Report of a Rottweiler and a giant wolf loping through a park.
"And, uh, which street signs were they looking at, exactly, sir? Oh, so, it was only the wolf that was looking at the street signs. Uh, are you sure it was... oh, I see, so it stood up on its hind legs to look at the street signs... yes sir, I agree entirely, no dog of any sort should be out wandering around and looking at street signs without a collar on..."
Report of a Rottweiler and a giant wolf at a bus stop.
"And, uh, what were they doing at the bus stop, ma'am? Uh-huh... looking at the map. They were at the bus stop, looking at the map. What was that, ma'am? Oh, I see, it was just the giant wolf looking at the map. The Rottweiler wasn't looking at the map. Uh-huh... so it was looking up towards the map, but it wasn't actually looking at the map... that's correct, ma'am, dogs are not allowed on public transport unless they are service dogs, so unless that Rottweiler is the wolf's seeing-eye guide dog, it's not allowed on a bus, and since the wolf was looking at the map, that suggests that its eyesight is perfectly all right, so if the Rottweiler gets onto a bus, you are completely within your rights to complain to the driver... no ma'am, I'm not joking, and a wolf that big is clearly an adult and must pay a full fare, unless it can produce a student ID or a disability card – did this giant wolf appear to have a disability at all, ma'am? Well, for example, did it walk with a cane? I have to ask, ma'am, fraudulently claiming a disability allowance of any sort is against the law, no matter what your species..."
Biting on his tongue to keep from laughing, he promptly relayed the latest 'sighting' to the cruiser nearest the bus stop. One more, he decided, and he'd have the last laugh - he'd tell them he was going to notify Animal Control. That would up the ante – Animal Control was under local Council jurisdiction, and they'd get very cranky if they were called out to a job that turned out to be a prank, and the LT would be MOST unhappy.
He sat back, smiling as he imagined the panicked calls from him colleagues, telling him it was a joke, and bit into another doughnut. He'd miss his job.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"Are you okay?" asked Sharmaine tentatively.
"I'm fine," Dean replied automatically, wishing his vision would stop greying in and out, as he boosted Tania up to the window. Two of the others grabbed at her arms, and her slender figure allowed her to just manage to squeeze through the tiny window. "Come on, you're next..."
"I can hear someone out there!" Sharmaine squeaked, scuttling away from the door.
Dean grabbed her, and pulled her towards the window. "Time for you to go, NOW," he growled, grabbing for her foot, "Come on!"
"What about you?" she asked, as he threw her upwards, where arms grabbed for her.
"Just go!" he snapped, "Get away from here! I'll sort these assholes out! Shut the window and go!"
He had one more glimpse of her worried face before she did as she was told.
Dean sagged against the wall, head spinning. The civilians were safe.
With the satisfaction of a job well done, he turned and threw up. Good, he thought, I hope that cleaning that up grosses them out.
There was a sound of voices outside the door, and the rattle of a key. He slid down the wall and seated himself, so that when the door pushed open, he was slouched comfortably, grinning cockily.
"So, ladies," began Butch's voice, "You're probably wondering..." the fat man's voice trailed to silence, as he gaped comically at the empty basement.
"What is it? " Lois's voice demanded, "Butch, what's..." she stared around. "What the fuck?"
"Sorry," Dean put as much smirk into his voice as he could, climbing casually to his feet. "Blood bank's closed, please go fuck yourselves."
The expression on Lois's face became ferally angry, and her fangs came down. "Hunter!" she spat. "Butch, he's a fucking Hunter!" She stared around the room again. "Where are they?"
"Hey," Dean grinned, "A magician never gives away his secrets."
Butch's face was a picture of disbelief. "This is... this is... this is very disappointing!" he shrieked. "They really had the look!"
"The what?" Dean couldn't help himself.
"The look!" Butch repeated, wringing his hands, "They had the look! You know, in the sixties, it was the hippy chicks, in the seventies it was the strong women, in the eighties, it was the Amazons, in the nineties, it was the athletic types, in the noughties, it was the gamin, but I needed to update!"
"Update?" Dean's mind boggled as his head spun. "Update what?"
"My coterie, you silly boy!" Butch rolled his eyes. "My bevy, my posse!"
"His little nest," Lois explains. "Beautiful people who bring in beautiful people for us to have fun with, then feed on. But they fly the coop eventually, want to strike out on their own, and we have to start again. The modelling agency is the perfect cover.""
"Every ten years or so," supplied Dean.
"Yeah, it would be about that," she agreed.
"This is the perfect way to do it! And now you've ruined everything!" Butch practically stamped a foot. "Now, we'll have to start again!"
"Oh, that aint gonna happen," Dean told him breezily. "You're heads are gonna roll, bloodsuckers."
"Not by your hand, pretty boy," sneered Lois, fangs bristling. "I'm gonna beat you to a pulp, and bleed you dry."
"Aha, I knew you were kinky," Dean leered back, "Even before you asked for the leopard skin print..." He reached down and drew the knife he'd been carrying.
Lois laughed out loud. "Are you serious?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah," he waggled his eyebrows at her, "Deadly."
"He must be concussed," humphed Butch, "It looked like you hit him pretty hard." His fangs showed. "Let's hope he hasn't leaked too much. He looks like he tastes just divine."
The female vampire cocked her head, and stared at Dean. "You do understand that you're going to die here?" she checked, confused by his nonchalance.
Dean laughed in her face. "I'm a Hunter, darlin'," he chuckled, "It's what we do." He gave her a predatory grin. "We go down swingin'."
"Yep, he's concussed," nodded Butch. "I hate it when we have to beat the crap out of them first. It's such a waste of good blood."
"In this case, I'm going to enjoy it. A lot," scowled Lois.
Dean watched as the vampires closed in, and found that he wasn't worried.
He was a Hunter. He was going to die doing the job. Since he was a child he'd known that for him, it was always going to end bloody.
And he was going to die before Sam. And he was fine with that.
Does that make me selfish?
He wouldn't be the one left behind, to grieve, to go on alone.
One more way I've screwed up?
Sam had his pack, now. They'd pick him up, and look after him. Sam would do just fine without him.
Sam's alive. That's all that matters.
With a laughing snarl, he hefted the knife, and attacked.
Gooooooooooo bunny! Feed Mavgang reviews, because they're the Amphetamine-Laced Doughnuts In The Plot Bunny Office Of Life!