"Wake up!"
The voice was screamed in his ear and accompanied by a deafening bang that had Dean jerking wildly and reaching for the nearest weapon. The empty wrapper in his lap was the only thing in his hand and his sleep befuddled brain threw it at the window with great enthusiasm and good aim even if it was about as effective as a feather.
Sam's face grinned in from the other side of the driver's side window. He had changed clothes and combed his hair at some point and looked disgustingly fresh and human. Dean felt like something scrapped of the back of someone's boot.
He scowled back, brushing the empty egg mcmuffin wrapper off as nonchalantly as ever. Typically, he would never litter inside his baby, but he didn't want to give Sam the satisfaction of drawing more attention to his first line of defense.
Sam was already moving around the car to get in. It was daylight out, though Dean wouldn't exactly call it bright. The weather forecast wasn't calling for precipitation, but it was overcast and grey. His watch said 10:12. He checked on the street out the window.
Malone was a town but still a small one. There were a few banks in the center area and Sharron worked as a teller in one of them. She'd come in for work early this morning and a police cruiser had been there the entire time. It had parked across the street, the officer splitting his time between sitting in the car idly and wandering in and out of the neighboring business to socialize. Dean had parked himself and his car at the far end of the street and kept himself busy snacking and pretending to read one of the free local papers.
Apparently he also 'pretended' to be asleep at some point. Naturally that was when Sammy arrived to relieve him.
Sam got into the car with a blast of cold air but held out a fresh cup of coffee still nice and warm. There was a paper bag in his hands as well and as long as it contained more than just green stuff, Dean was willing to be gracious and ignore his rude greeting.
"Anything interesting?"
Dean rolled his eyes and didn't bother to answer. The cup didn't feel too hot in his hands so he risked a gulp. Then he needed a moment for just him and his perfectly warm coffee, heavy on the sugar, no cream, just the way the family drank it on long waits. Caffeine and sugar, everything a growing body needed to manage the mindnumbing boredom.
"You?" he finally asked.
"I think I've got another cluster of symbols identified. Looks like phonecian, and if I'm interpreting it right, I think it's for good health."
Dean stared at his brother. "Good health? Someone carved a charm for good health into our vic? Seems kind of passive aggressive if you ask me."
Sam just nodded, not rising to the bait. "That's why I'm not sure, but it does fit the pattern."
"There's a pattern?" And here he thought it was all just violence for its own sake.
Sam nodded seriously. "So far, everything that I can read, it has a trend. Concealment, containment, stability and now good health. It's not all clearly positive, but so far there's been nothing negative. It's all things that are at worst neutral and possibly even beneficial."
"Carved into the sorry hide of our guy."
"Yeah. I never claimed demons made sense. About that," Sam added. "Think you can stay awake long enough to hold down the fort for a little longer? I want to have a look around Sharron's work place."
It wasn't a bad idea. And since Sharron already knew Dean as Agent Venkman it wasn't a good idea to have him wandering about. But Sam was an unknown.
Dean gave him a look, not agreeing yet. "What did you bring me?"
"Other than hot coffee?" Sam taunted. But he caved quickly. "I got a phili-cheesesteak and fries for you, don't say I don't enable your commitment to die of clog arteries."
"Damn straight!" Dean agreed happily, smiling broadly as he snatched the bag up. He waved his brother off absently, already inhaling the lovely aroma of cheese and salty grease.
Sam shook his head as he slammed the car door shut behind him. He's brother was an idiot through and through, but he certainly enjoyed the simple pleasures in life. It was the kind of thing Sam had once found frustrating and annoying, back before he had gone to college. His brother wasn't actually stupid – no matter how he acted. And as the only person who had known what Sam's life had really been like, Sam had never been able to understand why Dean hadn't been the one champing at the bit to get away, to have more to life, to take control.
A lot had changed since then. He'd lost Jess and they had both lost their father – maybe in more ways than one. Dean had almost died more than once. Sam had been dead briefly. And Dean had been truly gone and dead for six long months. Sam knew intellectually that those months had been significantly longer for Dean than they had for Sam, but at the same time it was hard to imagine.
It had been a bad six months.
So Sam might be a bit more inclined to pander to some of Dean's ridiculousness. At least when it came to simple things like stake-out food. Or which stupid themed rest stop they used. They had plenty of other things they could fight about ranging from Ruby to Lilith to when not to be suicidally heroic.
Sam shook his head as he walked away. It had been a shitty cold night, neither one of them happy with the idea of the other being caught out there alone if a demon or possibly more than one of them decided to show up.
They had learned the hard way not to underestimate what they were up against. Gone were the days when ghost was the most likely explanation. They were in the big leagues these days and the big league was kicking their ass more often than not. They couldn't afford to take chances.
Sam kept his face turned towards the window displays while he walked calmly passed the parked police car. Dean had insisted that Mulder wasn't likely to sound the alarm, but the whole situation left Sam feeling exposed and vulnerable. He couldn't argue with the evidence, however. No one looked twice at him. There'd been no news reports and no whispered gossip among the locals. At least not about them. Everyone was talking about Haymond, but in that kind of abstract sense that suggested they still had the hope that this would all pass them by. That it was an aberration. That something like this couldn't really happen in a town like theirs and that there must be some other, more logical explaination as to why a man was violently murdered.
In the bank everything continued normally. It was a bit old and faded around the edges, but there were little hints of attempts to spruce it up. There were fresh flowers near the door, and what looked like complimentary coffee in the back. Sam loitered near the door, pretending to check out a display about home mortgages while he really checked out the room. It was quiet, but not empty. A few retirees but mostly business folk of one kind or another completing routine tasks. Workmen in plaid and boots were waiting in line to cash their paychecks while business types in their suits and carefully shined shoes waited to transfer funds or make deposits.
He spotted Sharron Howard working at the front counter. She was managing a cool politeness that was at least professional. But she looked tired. Dean had described her as testy and frazzled, but hot. It was a decent enough description. Sam watched her carefully as he flipped over a flyer on interest rates and pretended to study the fine print carefully.
There was something heavy about the way she looked. Like an invisible weight. She didn't look ill, exactly, but there was something stretched about her. Something dreary and almost shadowed.
Sam was probably staring rather blandly at this point but he didn't care. There was something here that he almost recognized. Almost understood.
And then it clicked.
"Dean! Dean! Dean!"
"Oh, my god, what? Are you twelve? And what the hell, keep your voice down!" Dean snapped back. He'd already finished his sandwich but he shoved the last of the fries back in the bag and out of the way as he turned to face his frantic brother. "What the hell?" he asked, figuring that covered just about everything from 'why are you such an idiot' to 'do I need my gun?'.
"I think I figured it out," Sam gushed, folding himself into the car and shifting about to face him. His face was pale but his hands were clenching and unclenching. It wasn't a good look on his brother and Dean did not have good associations with it. "It's Sharron Howard," Sam continued.
"Huh? Really? She did it? I mean, I wasn't exactly getting the sadistic murderous vibe from her, but I guess you really never know…"
"No, I mean, she's part of it," Sam said, as if that clarified things. He only got more confusing after that. "She's got this…thing. This smudge. Or, like, a stain. On her. You know?"
Dean struggled to keep up. "Like on her shirt?" he asked, 'cause yeah, that could be distracting and get a guy into trouble, but it didn't seem like the kind of thing for Sam to panic about.
"No. What? What are you talking about? Nevermind. It's the same thing I noticed about Haymond but I didn't realize it at the time. It wasn't something I ever imagined happening, but I'm sure that's what this is, Dean. I'm sure of it."
"And?" Dean replied, drawing out the word. "What exactly are you sure of?"
"Demon blood, Dean. Somehow, she's got demon blood in her but she's not a demon."
Dean stared at him. "She what?" he finally asked. 'Cause goddamn it this job just got weirder and weirder every day. And more fucked up.
"I know!" Sam replied excitedly. "I didn't realize it when we talked to Haymond. I thought there was something off about him but I didn't think much of it and then I was watching Sharron and it's the same thing. I mean, I can't be sure that's what it is, but that's what it reminds me of."
Dean kept quiet. He watched his brother ramble on about auras and demon influences and what that might mean for the two people connected to this damned case. He had to clench his own fists just to keep it together. He didn't know if he wanted to fly off the handle at Sam, kill something or just shut down entirely. Sammy was sitting there talking about how he could see demon influences like it was just a normal thing. Like it didn't mean anything was wrong in the world. Like there wasn't anything wrong with him. Dean managed to breathe in deeply through his nose and push it down enough that he didn't feel like throwing up. It still caught him off guard. Even after losing Sammy and making his deal to get him back and the forty years in hell he paid for it and it still wasn't enough to protect him – it still caught him off guard when he realized just how close to the abyss his brother was but he was getting better at learning to deal with it. To push it down. Focus on the job.
"Dean, are you listening?"
Sam was giving him that bitch face look that meant he already knew the answer to his question but wanted to rub it in Dean's face.
"Sure, I am," he replied sharply. "Demon blood. Great fun."
Sam scowled back. "Look, it's a connection at least. Can we please focus on that?" And wasn't it amazing how Sam always wanted to talk about feelings and Dean's problems but never his own fucked up shit.
Deep breaths. "All right. Where they gettin' it from?"
"If we knew that, this'd be easy. Well sort of. Other than the needing to kill a demon part."
"A demon strong enough to block out angels and get their celestial panties all in a bunch. That's some powerful mojo to stay hidden from the angel radar. How'd they do that and why go through so much effort to contaminate a couple of humans?"
"It also doesn't explain the memory loss," Sam added ever so helpfully.
"You think they're still tellin' the truth on that?"
Sam shrugged. "Why lie? It draws more attention than anything else."
Dean groaned. "Wait, does that mean the demons aren't trying to hide it or that they are? I'm confused." He complained. He hated this kind of feint-double feint bullshit. Sure, he'd used it himself a few times with decent results but it was damn annoying being on the other side.
Sam stopped talking so fast his mouth snapped shut. It was perhaps the first time since he got into the car that he was completely still. It couldn't last.
"Oh my god."
And now his baby brother sounded a bit hysterical. Which was maybe funny under other circumstance but right now probably meant he was going to say something Dean really wasn't going to like.
"They don't know they've ingested it. Dean, some demon did this to them and they don't even know it. It's the only explaination for the memory lost. If they had gone willing, if they had known it had happened, surely we would have picked up on something from them. But the lost time, the confusion, the out of character behavior – that all points to possession. The demons did this to them without their knowledge."
Dean grimaced. "Okay, that's disgusting. Agreed. But not the worst thing we've ever had to deal with, though, right?" Because he certainly didn't expect Sam of all people to act like this was the end of the world. Nasty as all get out and wrong on so many levels, but it wasn't going to kill them. Hopefully.
"Dean! They don't know it happened!" Sam repeated. "What if that means it's happened to other people and they don't know about it either?"
And okay, not good. "Wouldn't they also have disappeared or something?"
"Maybe they did and no one noticed."
Dean grimaced. "That's a big maybe," he groused. But the possibility was there and Sam had good instincts for this kind of thing. Whatever was happening in this town, it wasn't finished with yet, that much was clear. If they had been successful at whatever it was they were trying to do then either the brothers or the angels would know. Which meant the demons were still in town and likely still fucking around with people.
Sharron Howard and Bill Haymond had nothing in common as far as they could tell. It was a small town, so they couldn't say definitively that there was no connection, but nothing in their research had given them even a hint. Which mean they had likely been chosen at random. And if demons had picked two people at random, there was a good chance there'd be more.
"Alright, alright" Dean finally agreed. "Let's start with the most obvious. Homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Whatever they've got here that passes as that. See if they've got some kind of outreach center or some shit. And bars. Lots of pathetic people in bars. We need to find out who could have disappeared for 24 hours and no one notice."
Sam rolled his eyes. "I can guess which of those you'd prefer."
Dean grinned. "You're the people person, Sammy. People trust you and want to talking about feelings and saving the world and sunshine or whatever. Me? I'm more the surly drunk type."