AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you everyone for your wonderful reviews. I'm glad you guys still think this story is fun. Get ready for action.
This chapter is set after Ghost Story.
The restaurant parking lot was almost full and an upbeat classic rock mix played over the outdoor speakers. The morning was humid and a little overcast but the heat on the back of Sam's neck promised sunshine later in the day.
They parked next to a silver Toyota pickup. A man was sitting on the tailgate; his medical-green scrubs and worn pink bunny slippers had been replaced by cargo pants, a corduroy jacket and a pair of black hiking boots. The lines of a Kevlar vest showed faintly beneath a black tee with a picture of a zombie in liederhosen and big green oozy letters that read OKTOBERFEST: Night of the Living Brews.
He waved them over with a knowing smile. "Agents."
"Dr. Butters." Sam shook his hand. Dean did the same and sat down next to him on the tailgate. The guy was only a smidge taller than the ex-sergeant, with a little bit of salt-and-pepper speckled his wiry black hair. Sam liked him. He had a lot of positive energy, for an itty bitty medical examiner. Especially for an itty bitty medical examiner in the know.
"Just Butters right now. Karrin asked me along to play medic and wheelman." He looked at his watch. "She should be here any minute."
"You sold us out, man." Dean crossed his arms, frowning. "Photo-recognition?"
"I would never send strangers to a friend's home without checking them out first." The ME took a high-tech cellphone from his pocket and looked at the screen. "Murph is practically family. You know how it is. And who shows up using pseudonyms from Star Wars, anyway? The suits and badges were pretty sharp, but Wedge and Lando? Seriously?"
"Ouch."
"And if we hadn't checked out?" asked Sam. Given the situation, he probably would have done the same thing. The amount of dirt he had dug up on people could fill multiple mountain ranges. It was part of the gig. The ME wasn't a fighter, not like he and his brother. But the guy had means. And it probably wasn't a good idea to mess around with somebody who spent all day deciding whether deaths were accidental or intentional.
"...I would have sent you there anyway."
"Cold."
"Cold as the ice planet Hoth," Butters agreed, cleaning his wire-rimmed glasses on the hem of his shirt. "I feel a disturbance in the Force. The rebel princess approaches." He looked up and nodded toward the black and chrome motorcycle that rumbled into the parking lot.
"That's not—"
"Oh, but it is."
The rider parked on the sidewalk next to the truck, popped the kickstand and slid off the bike. She took off her helmet and set it on the back of the seat. She was dressed in gray and black motocross leathers; pants and a jacket outfitted with crash plates that were, if Sam was going to gamble on it, probably ballistics-grade, a gray shirt and boots. A small black gym bag hung from one handlebar, she shouldered it and brushed blonde hair out of her eyes.
"Bo. Luke," Murphy said, raising an eyebrow at their car as she pulled off her gloves and tucked them in a jacket pocket. "Nice wheels. Uncle Jesse know you borrowed that?"
Sam just smiled. Dean was still staring at the motorcycle. He took a few steps toward it.
She leaned down and peered into the window of the Impala. "Does the horn actually play 'Dixie' or was that just for the show?"
"The General Lee was a Charger." Dean reached out to poke the Harley's leather seat. "And it was orange."
"Did anybody say you could touch that, mister grabby hands?" She smacked his hand away and herded them all into the restaurant. "Christ. You don't see me getting sticky fingerprints all over your ride."
"I didn't even touch it!"
"You were thinking about it."
"That's where I know her from," Sam said as they crowded into the restaurant and waited for a table. Butters' head tilted curiously. He thumbed over his shoulder at the pair standing behind them. Karrin was checking her phone. Dean was checking...her out, the motorcycle gear wasn't a bad look at all and she was really fit. In extremely good shape. Probably all the martial arts. She slowly raised a hand and flipped him off without taking her eyes from her phone.
"They're just a chromosome away from being the same person," Sam explained in a low voice. "My god. Nature is beautiful."
"You have no idea," the ME mused.
While his brother and Murphy argued over who would sit in the strategically-optimal seat in the back corner, Sam dropped into the chair and picked up a menu. Both of them glared at him. He smiled behind the menu – he didn't really need to look at it, he already knew that the least lethal breakfast options were chocolate chip cookie-dough oatmeal or something called a "froot salad."
The safest bet at Biggerson's was the coffee, the only thing Murphy ordered: she hadn't even had a cup before their food arrived, so fast it had to have been stored in pill form and rehydrated, then microwaved. It was a theory Sam wasn't sure he wanted to investigate further.
"Bacon," said Dean, digging into a plate awash in meat and preservatives, "is the best way to start a day of vampire slaughter."
Murphy turned to Butters, whose platter of waffles had just arrived. "Second opinion?"
"Pregame it." He reached for the syrup. "World of WarCraft."
She glanced up at Sam. "And you?"
"I like to go for a run," he said, poking a fork at the "froot salad." Everything in it had been marinated in a can of high-fructose corn syrup for at least six months, but you gotta do what you gotta do. "You?"
Murphy shrugged as she stirred her second cup of coffee, though she hadn't added anything to it.
For some people, the fighting doesn't ever end or begin. They prepare for battles, but they're always prepared, they live in it; a continuum of warfare. His brother was one of these people. And whereas his brother was fueled by cheap whiskey and ill-timed pop-culture references, this woman seemed to run on pure caffeine and fury.
...Tempered with infinite self-control, given that they survived what Butters asked next.
"So did you bring the...uh. Technical readouts? Of the battle station?" His lips were pressed in a tight line. Dean snorted. Sam grinned, though he had tried not to.
Blue eyes narrowed dangerously. Sam shielded himself behind the specials menu. "Are they on your astro droid?"
Dean grinned around a mouthful of egg and toast. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi—"
Murphy reached into the bag at her feet and dropped a manila folder on the table. "It is so much fun trying to decide which one of you I'm going to shoot first. And I do. Shoot first."
Sam opened the folder and stared at the drawings inside for a moment. There were several sketches done on sheets of printer paper, in different shades of colored pencil, but precise enough to look like computer-rendered blueprints. Windows were marked, all doors, floor heights, rooms where the vampires had holed up and locations of traps.
"How..."
Butters shrugged. "A spirit of knowledge...that we kind of pay in porn and high-speed internet access."
Dean grinned. "Hell of a deal."
"The building is eight stories. It has an atrium that spans the entire height, the roof of which is made of glass, but it's been painted. Our main means of ingress are through these steel doors, chained shut on the inside. They offer immediate access to the atrium and adjacent rooms, which is where the bastards have dug in."
Both brothers stared at the blueprints for a moment.
"Brilliant move," Sam said, tapping a finger in the middle of the glass atrium. "A little reckless, but it would be effective as hell and give us a relatively safe area to work from. The weaker vamps won't be able to stand sunlight..."
"So we bring the sunshine with us – breach the door, ride in and shoot out the roof," said Dean.
She smiled, genuinely pleased that they had come to the same conclusion she had, and continued in a British accent, "Taking the vamps by surprise - not only by surprise, but totally unarmed."
"You dorks are going to have to pick a movie and stick with it," Butters said, digging into his waffles with a grin.
"Now about this Mavra..."
"Shady as hell. She can move from body to body, maybe even remotely. If we can trap her in her current meat, I think we can take her down, but we'll probably only get one shot. She's powerful. Several centuries old, if not older. And she has flunkies. The last time we took her on, there were thrall dogs and Renfields with flamethrowers."
"Renfiel—oh." Sam nodded. "Got it."
"And a claymore set with infrared tripwires. That time, there were hostages." The lines around her eyes deepened and she stared down at her drink. "Kids. This time there's nothing human left, this is where they've been working out of, not their pantry. Most of the traps have been disabled. They aren't expecting us."
"So we hit them now, hit them hard and take the sons of bitches out."
"You really think this is going to work."
"It will."
Butters frowned. "Last time, you had—"
"I know," she said sharply. "But we don't this time. Doesn't mean we can just let this slide. We can handle it."
Sam didn't miss the quickly-hidden wince behind her mug, he didn't miss the matching expression of empathy from her friend – his comment had hit a nerve left open to the elements. These were not the people she was used to working with, these were not the people she wanted to work with – losing your partner, it was like having a limb removed, like losing half your brain.
So many hunters worked alone, it was just easier.
They ate in silence for a moment. The waiter refilled their drinks.
After a moment, Karrin thumbed through the file and brought out a neighborhood map. "There's an abandoned scrapyard down this alley where we can stage. We can go over the plan in detail when we get there."
By the time they left the restaurant, the sun had started to burn through the cloud cover. The scrapyard they had parked in had crushed cars stacked thirty feet high and was half a city block worth of lockjaw waiting to happen.
...Kind of like Bobby's front yard.
Murphy was leaning over the tailgate of the truck, digging through the duffel bags the possible-white-supremacists had traded her for beer. Dean was right - the bags were overflowing with guns and ammunition. And explosives, detonators, wires, vests, knives, machetes, salt, stakes, a homemade flamethrower, and several Supersoakers full of holy water.
"You're on the bike with me, Merry." She held out a short, boxy gun outfitted with a suppressor. A sling dangled from the stock.
Sam hesitated. "Dean's a better shot than I am. With a rifle."
"Okay, but you seem a little less..." Murphy made a squeezy motion with the hand that wasn't holding the little Belgian gun. "Hands on."
They both looked over at his brother, who was grinning at the pair of Avengers water balloons he was holding up to his chest. Close-quarters holy water – there was a canvas bag of them in the bed of the truck, leftovers, Karrin had claimed, 'from her goddaughter's birthday party.'
Sam took the rifle and checked the safety. "This is not the civilian version."
"Civilian," she snorted as she dug through the black gym bag. It was old and the Nike swoosh had almost faded away. She hadn't let go of it since she had arrived. "Dean, put this on. It's gonna be loud in there."
Murphy had some high-tech gear for a hunter. A lot of it bore a strange logo that looked vaguely familiar, it looked like a rune or a pair of Greek letters; a silver circle bisected by a straight line. Iota and...omega? The last detail? She tossed him a sleek, matte-black helmet with the logo on the back, then a heavy vest with a lot of ammo strapped to it, drawn from a bag in the truck. She handed Dean another; plate-carriers – black nylon with steel sheets inside, thick enough to stop bullets and/or vampire teeth, arranged to protect vital organs.
"Glass hurts. Stay free until it's all down, you won't have a helmet. Is that a twelve gauge? " She handed Dean a belt of shotgun shells. "The red ones are incendiary, the white ones are garlic and silver flechettes. Gear up."
She checked her weapons and pulled her helmet on. The brothers and Butters did the same, keying up the audio connections on the helmet and earpieces.
"Hello, favorite vigilantes of mine," a voice said cheerfully in Sam's ears. "Hello, interns."
"Heya, Bob," said Karrin, tightening the chin strap of her helmet.
"Bob?" asked Sam.
"He's... the associate we told you guys about. Keeping an eye out for our friends in blue," the ME said from the cab of his truck. He had a medical kit out on one seat, ready for use.
Dean mouthed the words, "Porn ghost?"
"I prefer the term 'spirit of intellect'. And I am monitoring all frequencies," said the disembodied voice of Bob. "You can't stop the signal."
Sam looked around. "He can see us?"
"Camera." Murphy tapped the side of her helmet.
"Who is funding you?" Sam asked.
She just smiled behind her tinted visor and slid onto the bike.
"Alright, ladies." Dean heaved the bag of explosives onto his shoulder and started jogging down the gravel alley. "Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"
"I love this plan," Sam threw a leg over behind her and tried not to think about how fast the thing could go. Without seatbelts. Or airbags. Or anything between him and the road but his clothes. Wrecks hurt enough with a ton of steel around you. "I'm excited to be a part of it."
"Where the hell did you find these guys, Butters?" asked Bob. "The small one sounds like and the tall one looks like they might be related to —"
"Just keep an eye out for the goddamn cops, Bob," Murphy snapped as she started the Harley's engine. She drove down the alley a short way and stopped. The ME followed in his truck. "Winchester. Why are you wiggling?"
"This feels weird."
Murphy turned to look at him over her shoulder, nose wrinkled. "Like, ''I've gotta bad feeling about this' weird, or..."
"This tiny gun." He finally managed to get the rifle's sling around his neck and an arm. "It feels weird."
"Well, I'm sorry, there wasn't a fifty cal chaingun in the bag for you, Rambo. It's the only thing I had with enough oomph."
He grinned. "...And why does it have 'We'll always have Hawaii' engraved on it?"
Murphy ignored the question. "Got those charged placed, Pippin? Safety off, Merry?"
Sam flicked the safety off and chambered a round. "Yeah, I don't think the Riders of Rohan had Harleys and P90s and plastic explosives."
"Charges placed." Dean's voice crackled in his ears. "Those movies would have been over, like, twelve hours sooner. Can you imagine Gandalf the Grey with a .44, like, do you feel lucky, orcs? Do ya?"
"Karrin," Butters said from his truck, laughing. "This reminds me of the time you killed the Witch-King of Angmar."
"That was just some jackass in a robe and I only shot him twice." She stretched her shoulders, flexed her gloved fingers. "They're going to know we're here, if they don't already. Get ready."
There was an electric bleep.
"Oh, crap!" said Dean. "We are go in five, four, three..."
"Hold on."
Sam laughed. "I think it's funny how you think you need to tell me tha—"
The motor shrieked as the bike slammed forward, the back tire fishtailed in the gravel alleyway for a few terrifying seconds before it straightened out and flew toward the gate around the hotel lot. Sam clung to the bike, one arm around Murphy's waist, one hand clutching the tiny rifle to his chest. Dirt flew in an arc from the tire as they rounded the corner. He saw his brother, rolling away from the hotel entrance, a blur of chainlink and overgrown weeds, a flash of light and smoke as the steel doors fell inward, though he could barely hear anything over the sound of the Harley's engine, roaring through its gears.
They flew into the foyer and onto the steel doors, which had fallen inward and landed at enough of an angle to act as an unintentional ramp. They were both screaming as the Harley soared into the lower open lobby, and motorcycles, Sam decided, are for adrenaline junkies like his brother and other people who laugh in the face of death and high blood pressure.
The bike hit the marble floor jarringly, but the driver kept it upright and he heard Dean's cheer of victory between shots. It was dark through the helmet visor, but he could see shapes, corpse-like, scrambling down the pillars and over the rubble around the edge of the room.
At least a dozen of them, maybe more.
From somewhere in the frame of the bike Karrin had drawn a short, straight-bladed sword. It had been hidden well for Sam not to notice, and now it flashed at the edge of his vision. She gunned the engine and swung around the far edge of the lobby, laying the bike down at such an obscene angle that the elbow of the arm he wrapped around her waist touched the floor. Sam swore, trying his damndest not to fall off the godforsaken hell-machine. There wasn't much of his driver to hold on to without accidentally copping a feel.
She had noticed.
"Easy on the merchandise, Chewbacca! We just talked about this!"
Dean howled, the Bluetooth speakers crackling with every shotgun blast. "Use the Force, Sammy!"
"Nerds." Sam raised the little rifle to his shoulder, sighted at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
Stay tuned...