Chapter 41 FPS
Salina, Kansas
Sonofabitch was impossible, Dean thought as he drove back to town. How was he supposed to protect anyone when they did crazy shit that made it fucking impossible? He glanced down at the lit dash, noticing the fuel gauge and turned off the road he was on, heading for a gas station.
Was it that he was worried about Sam dying, or that Sam wouldn't be strong enough to complete the final trial and close the gates of Hell, he wondered bleakly?
Both, he decided after a moment's reflection. There wasn't much he could do about his brother's life. He couldn't stop him from choking on a chicken bone, or …or … whatever else fate might randomly throw at him, but he needed to finish what they'd started. He needed to shut every last rat hole and lock them all down there, Crowley and his horde.
Sam needs it too, a small voice at the back of his mind whispered to him. Maybe even more than you do. His need for atonement is as great as yours.
He frowned. This wasn't about making up for what he'd done, he thought impatiently. It was … preventative. Doing the job right so no one else had to go through what they had.
He pulled up to the pump and turned off the engine, getting out and filling the tank, going to pay for it, all on autopilot as his thoughts churned around and around the same track.
The building was closed and dark and empty and he walked to the rear doors, checking the rooflines for security cameras, looking around casually for anyone else who might be walking past. He was alone. Slipping the picks out, he undid the outer door locks by feel, hearing them click and pushing the door.
Inside, the dim night lighting was enough to see where he was going. His shoes tapped softly on the linoleum floor as he retraced their path back to the morgue. The double glass-paned doors were locked and he crouched a little, sliding the picks in and feeling his way through.
He looked back to check the corridor as he pushed the door open, reaching into his pocket for the flashlight and thumbing it on. Turning, he raised the light and felt his heart slam into his ribs as it lit up a face against the darkness. Lurching back reflexively, he forced himself to breathe as he belatedly recognised Sam and Charlie standing in front of him, teeth snapping together in a mix of frustration and adrenalin surge.
"What took you so long?" Sam asked, hiding his amusement at Dean's reaction.
"I stopped for gas," he said defensively as Sam nodded. "Shut up, body's here."
He strode between the two of them, irritation rising at … everything. Stopping at the door, he tucked his flashlight against his chest as the crunch of tyres over gravel sounded outside and a pair of headlights swept over the exterior windows as the car pulled into a parking space at the front.
"What the hell –" he muttered, hearing the engine turn off.
Behind him, Charlie looked at end of the corridor, thinking fast. They didn't need that long in the morgue, just a peek at the files and at the handprint the kids had seen, she thought. She could buy them a little time. The coroner had been hard-pressed to keep her eyes off her, and at the time she'd just found that terrifying, but in retrospect she thought it might help. She forced herself to move out, trotting along the corridor on her toes.
"Charlie," Dean said softly as she passed him. She waved her hand at him and kept going.
"Charlie!" he shouted in a hoarse whisper.
Ignoring the implicit order, she slipped around the corner and ducked behind the filing cabinet, peering out through the windows that lined the wall. She came back around the corner and looked at them.
"It's the coroner," she said, pitching her voice low. "I got this."
Dean looked at her for a moment then pushed the door to the morgue open, going inside, hearing Sam behind him. Charlie would either keep the woman busy or she wouldn't he thought sourly, but it might buy them just enough time.
Charlie tucked herself behind the cupboard, listening as the coroner came down the stairs, opened the door to her office, walked inside.
Give her three minutes, she told herself tensely. Take off your coat … think about getting about getting a coffee … sit down at the desk … she knew the routine of after-hours working.
Don't think about it, she told herself as she got to her feet. Just do it.
She walked confidently around the corner and stopped at the open office door, smiling brightly as the woman behind the desk looked up.
"Hey, there," she said, stepping into the office. Why didn't I come up with a story before I came in, she thought as she felt the muscles of her face beginning to ache with the effort of the constant wide smile. Dean had told her the best way to lie was to come up with a simple, unverifiable story and stick to it. Her mind was blank.
"Front door was open," she said, gesturing vaguely toward it.
"Uh … oh, what are you doing here?" Jennifer closed the file in front of her and got to her feet.
Good question. "I … uh … came back," she started slowly. "To get a blank copy of that form you asked for."
Jennifer gave her a doubtful smile. "The FBI doesn't have Chain of Custody forms?"
Crap. "The field office had a power outage," she said, feeling a thin thread of perspiration running down the back of her neck. "… after catching fire. Figured I just could borrow a copy or two?"
Easily verifiable and so not simple, Charlie thought, wondering if she would develop a tic from holding the smile for so long.
Jennifer drew in a deep breath. "Of course, just give me a sec."
"No problem," Charlie said, looking around the office. "Take your time, I'm off the clock."
Dean pulled open the metal door and stared at the clean and irrefutably empty tray inside.
"What the hell?" he muttered, glancing sideways at Sam as his brother found the file.
Sam looked up questioningly.
"It's empty."
Frowning, Sam flipped through the file in his hand. "Uh … they burned the bodies."
"Already?"
"Yeah," Sam said, looking at the next page. "They think it's something like a … outbreak scenario – even got the CDC to sign off on it," he added, reading the last form.
"These folks run a tight ship," Dean commented, closing the door.
Sam's brow wrinkled up. "This isn't a 'tight ship', Dean. You know how long it takes to get the CDC to even come and look at this stuff? And do their tests?"
"No, but I have a feeling you're gonna tell me."
"Weeks," Sam said, setting the file onto the table and pulling out his phone. He selected the camera and started shooting.
"So this mean we need to take Silkwood showers now? Or is this still a case?"
Sam smiled, flipping to the page. "Blue handprint? Not radiation. And from memory the exterior liquefies as well as the interior."
Dean looked at him. "Reassuring."
"You get the feeling we've seen something like this before?" Sam flipped over another page, the flash light the paper as he took the photo. "Or read something?"
"I haven't seen anything like this," Dean said shaking his head. "I don't remember reading about handprints, of any colour."
"We need the library."
"Yeah, just hurry up," Dean said, looking around the room. Charlie'd been gone too long.
"I'm done."
Charlie trailed Jennifer down the corridor as the coroner headed for the lab. "Uh … there's just one other thing …"
Jennifer stopped at the door, turning around to look at her impatiently. "Yes?"
Through the half-wall of windows in her peripheral vision, Charlie could see the morgue was empty. "You're busy … some other time," she said quickly, pasting on another smile.
"What?"
"Thanks for the forms!" She gave the coroner a little wave as she turned and headed back down the hall, letting the smile drop with relief for her aching cheeks.
What'd happened to the awesome comms equipment they'd had, she wondered tiredly. Not that she wanted Dean's voice in her ear the whole time, but she would've known that they were safely out and not kept babbling at the woman like an idiot in search of a nuthouse.
She opened the front door and left it unlocked, looking around. The blink of a flashlight across the road caught her eyes and she hurried toward it.
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam sat at the table, books stacked to either side of him as his face scrunched up in thought, trying to remember the exact nature of all the monsters they'd dealt with. "Wraith?"
"Only sucks the brain juice," Charlie said, looking at her program.
"Crocotta," he tried again, frowning.
"Life-force, not flesh," she replied, shaking her head.
"Klost worm?"
She looked down at the tablet and back to him. "I haven't got that," she said. "But a worm … not likely to leave a handprint, is it?"
Dean tapped the page of his father's journal and looked across at Sam. "Djinn."
"Djinn drink blood, over a long period of time," Sam countered. Dean shook his head.
"The ones we've found did. Arabian djinn," he said, looking down at his father's journal. "Dad didn't run into djinn while he was hunting, but Jim did."
"Jim Murphy," Sam said, his voice a little flat with the rush of sorrow.
Dean nodded. "Jim told him there're at least thirty different kinds of djinn, mostly in the Middle and Far East. And they're all slightly different variations on the theme –"
"The wish-come-true theme?" Charlie asked diffidently.
He nodded, looking around the library. "We got lore on djinn?"
Sam snorted. "Oh yeah, we got lore on them."
He got up, walking down the first aisle and turning along the back of the room. Stopping at the section that held most of the mythological creatures of the Middle East, he looked along the titles and began to pull out books.
Dean looked at the pile as his brother dumped it in front of him. He glanced at Charlie.
"Off that thing, time to do some real research," he ordered, passing her the book from the top of the pile.
"Persian djinn," Sam said, half an hour later. "I think."
He looked at the page and started reading. "The djinn of Persia and of the borderlands of Afghanistan are a different species from the western djinn of the Arabian peninsula, although they share many of the same characteristics and are sometimes mistaken for them. The tattoos that are permanent on the Arabian djinn, thus forcing them to live in ruins and graveyards and places where they will not be seen, are not visible on the djinn of Persia until they attack. These djinn will leave a mark on the victims where they have touched them, a skin discolouration of a blue tint in the shape of fingers or the entire hand."
He looked at Dean. "Yahtzee."
Dean nodded. "What else?"
Sam skimmed over the text. "Same method for killing – silver knife soaked in lamb's blood – uh … the victim usually lasts for less than twenty four hours after being touched. They're placed in a deep fugue state, unaware of their surroundings as their blood is heated by a chemical reaction with the poison and gradually breaks down the soft tissue of the internal structures of the body."
"We got the ingredients for the cure here?" Dean asked, getting to his feet.
"Yeah, the apothecary has everything and the recipe is in the Poison section, under djinn," Sam said, his gaze still on the information in front of him. Dean nodded and went out, his footsteps sounding down the length of the hall as he sped up.
Charlie stared at Sam. "This is totally awesome," she said. "You have a cure for djinn poisoning!"
Sam looked up and smiled a little. "And for vampires," he said, the smile widening as he saw her expression.
"You have to get this into a digital form, Sam," she said, looking around at the shelves, the hundreds of thousands of books, scrolls, texts and leather-bound manuscripts they contained. "I mean, searching with this amount of information …" she trailed and looked down at her tablet. "You could take something like this in the car with you and have the whole library at your fingertips."
He nodded. "Don't think I haven't thought of it, Charlie. It's just that we don't have that much time."
"Maybe I could help?" she suggested, wondering if that was a good idea.
"You want to spend your life sitting in this place scanning books into a computer and putting them all together in a database?" he asked her, his tone derisive.
"Maybe not," she agreed, a little disappointed. "But I'll think about it. Start off small, maybe?"
He laughed softly. "There's nothing "small" about this, Charlie. It takes longer, I'll grant you that, but I can't see any way we can do anything but search manually, at least until we've –" He hesitated and she looked at him.
"Closed the gates of Hell."
"Dean told you?"
"He mentioned it," Charlie hedged. "If you can find Kevin."
He looked at her. "Now that, that we could really use your help with."
She nodded. "As soon as we're done with stabbing the djinn, I'll get on it."
They looked up as Dean came back into the library.
"Store room already had some in injectable form," Dean said, holding up a bottle of a clear, brilliant blue liquid. "Did I mention that I love this place?"
"Well, breakthrough means snack time to me," Charlie said, putting her tablet back in her bag and getting up from the table. "And … I just want to … stretch my legs," she added, picking up her jacket. "I'll pick us up some grub, and unlike you, Sam, I will not forget the pie."
Sam smiled slightly, watching her as she went down the stairs and up to the gallery.
"Hey Charlie," Sam called out as she reached the door.
She turned to look back at him, her eyes wide. "Uh, yeah?"
"Call on your way back, so we can let you through the illusions," he told her.
"Oh, yeah, of course," she said quickly, turning back to the door. "Sure."
The door clunked as she shut it behind her.
"She seem a little off to you?" Dean looked at his brother.
"Since the second she got here," Sam agreed, looking from the closed door to his brother.
"You think it's something to do with us?"
"I don't know," Sam said, leaning on his elbows and looking down at the book in front of him. "She's always been a bit too caffeinated, but I can't tell if this is new or something we're seeing 'cause we're spending more time with her."
Dean nodded. "Might be personal crap."
"Exactly."
US-24 E, Kansas
Might've been faster to go through Salina and take the interstate, she thought as the headlights lit up the smaller highway in front of her, but this way would be quieter, and if she kept to the speed limit around the outskirts of the towns, she could speed on the stretches in between. Didn't make much difference. It was three hours, give or take, to Topeka and she wouldn't be back until morning, her cover and lies well and truly blown.
They wouldn't trust her again, she knew, feeling a pang of regret for that loss. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell anyone, and there wasn't another choice in the matter. She should've organised the payments before she'd come but she hadn't really expected to be drawn into the case the way she had been, or to want to spend the time with them, the combination of chasing down the clues through research and getting in on the action a more intoxicating addiction than she could've imagined.
And they had their answers now, she realised, her fingers tightening a little around the steering wheel. Knew what it was they were hunting. They didn't need her any more. They might be mystified when she didn't return. But they'd keep going.
She'd loved the books because there had been parts that had resonated with her life, with the loneliness and the constant moving around, the fluctuating sense of purpose that had driven her, as it drove them. She'd taken a measure of comfort from knowing that she couldn't complain about the way things had turned out for her, not when she knew what it was like for them. And Edlund had captured a lot of Dean's ambivalence about his life, loving the hunt and the open roads that filled the wide country with a sense of freedom almost unparalleled in any other life, yet torn apart by what had happened to his family, by the horror and despair of losing his friends, by the aching need to have something of his own, someplace of his own. She could understand that, too.
She straightened in the seat, glancing down at the speedometer as she cleared the last town's limits and putting her foot down a bit harder. Things were the way they were, she told herself firmly. All we have to decide is how to use the time that's given us.
The old wizard's voice played in her mind and she focussed on the road ahead, feeling braver and resolute in her decision.
Lebanon, Kansas
Dean looked at his watch and sighed. It didn't take two hours to go pick up some food and take a walk. She'd gone. Flown the coop. He was surprised that he wasn't surprised.
Sam looked up as he walked into the library. "I tried calling her. Nothing, she's not picking up."
He looked at the laptop's screen in front of him. "And I checked – there was no Comic convention in Topeka." He looked back at his brother. "Why would she lie to us?"
Dean shrugged. "One way to find out."
"What are you doing?" Sam asked as Dean pulled out his cell and tapped the keys.
"When I called you from Charlie's phone, I turned on her GPS," he answered distractedly, looking at the map on the screen. "She's in Topeka."
Topeka, Kansas
Charlie looked at the missed calls on her phone as she turned off the engine. Three so far, all from Sam. She sighed and opened the door, leaning back in to retrieve her bag and coat.
The small apartment was two blocks from the hospital and she'd gotten a three year lease. It held everything she had in the world in the confines of the three rooms – two rooms and kitchenette, she amended to herself, opening the front door and looking around dispiritedly.
It was cheap and convenient. She'd certainly lived in worse places than this, she thought, dropping her bag and coat on the chair. Walking to the small dividing wall next to the kitchenette and dropping to her knees, she pulled off a section of the skirting board at the base of the wall and reached behind it for the small cash tin.
Putting the box on the table, she sat down and unlocked it, opening the lid and lifting out the documentation inside. All her worldly possessions and all her carefully acquired identification. She had three passports, two US and one British, in three different names. A dozen credit cards. Fourteen bank accounts, spread around the country. Three birth certificates. One marriage certificate, faked of course. It wasn't much, she thought.
Opening her laptop, she typed in the command linking her to Web Account, an online funds transfer service.
The scrape outside the door was faint but she swung around to look at the door. The utter silence in the place made every noise seem sinister and startling and with the events of the last few days, it wasn't going to take much to set her off like a defective alarm clock, she thought tiredly.
On the screen, money transferred from one account to another, little ones and zeroes flying through the perceptive aether of a world that would lose everything if the power ever went out.
Not your problem, she told herself, watching the amounts change. She was going to need more money and soon. Another worm? It was the simplest way. The most secure way. All those fractions of cents. Computers really operated more securely with whole numbers.
The noise came again and she got up, walking to the door and looking at the locks. They were too easy. Too easy to pick. Too easy to break through. She'd have to set up something better soon. Opening them, she pulled the door toward her a little, jamming the toe of her boot beneath the edge – just in case someone flew out from around the corner and tried to push their way in – and peered nervously out into the hall.
It was empty.
Nerves. Just nerves. She pushed the door shut and turned the locks, dragging in a deep breath as she turned back to the room.
Not nerves.
Jennifer O'Brien, Salina coroner, stood in front of her, and her eyes … her eyes were glowing the deep blue of a reactor's pool, she thought in astonishment.
Two hours later.
Dean and Sam stood in the hall. There was no signs of trouble there, the apartment door was intact, the locks not tampered with, Dean thought, knocking on the door frame.
"Charlie?" he called out. "Hey, Charlie, you in there?"
Well, he thought as Sam's picks opened the lock, they hadn't been tampered with. Sam pushed the door open.
"Dean." Sam said softly, pulling the Taurus from his waistband. Behind him Dean drew the Colt and followed him in.
In the main room, a small table and several objects had been knocked over. Whatever happened, happened right here, Dean thought. The table closer to the kitchen, with a laptop still open and running on it, was undisturbed. He looked around carefully and saw the black holes in the exterior walls. She'd had time to get her gun out and shoot, he realised. But that hadn't stopped whatever had been in here. Not human, then. At this range, Charlie couldn't have missed, and she wouldn't have. The trajectories were about right for a headshot. Someone taller than she was, but not by much.
Sam looked at the laptop on the table as Dean checked the tiny bathroom.
"Hello."
Dean turned and looked at the table. The open cash tin was surrounded by identification documents. His eyes narrowed as he saw the different names on the cards and passports.
"What is this place?"
"Whatever it is," Sam said slowly as he looked at two different passports, one US, the other British. "It belongs to Charlie … or some …variation of her."
Dean picked up another passport and a stack of cards, flipping through them. "Who the hell is she? Jason Bourne?"
He dropped them on the table and turned away, letting his gaze roam over the room, looking for anything that might shed a bit more light on the woman they'd let into their already-too-complicated lives.
He'd known she was lying to them. He hadn't realised that there'd be this sort of background to her. His instincts were – had been – good with people, good with feeling their capacity for evil, for lies, for secrets. How'd she slipped past those instincts so easily, he wondered.
"Alright, there's no forced entry – aside from us – so it had to have been someone that she knew … or …"
"Djinn," Sam said, staring at her passport. "Did it know about her before she came to us?"
"I don't know," Dean said shortly, picking up her phone. "Here's all our missed calls. You got anything on her laptop?"
He walked back to the table, dropping the phone onto the passports.
"Yeah," Sam said, frowning at the screen. "She's been making payments through her aliases to Shawnee County General, here in Topeka."
"What, like a charity?" Dean asked, looking at the statement screen of the web transfer company.
"No, a patient," Sam said, pointing at the entry. "Gertrude Middleton."
"We need answers," Dean said, staring at the name. "Ah … I'll take Gertrude, you keep djinn-digging. Meet back in Lebanon?"
"Yeah, I'll borrow Charlie's car again," Sam said absently.
Dean turned and walked to the door, leaving Sam sitting at the table and staring thoughtfully at the screen.
Shawnee County General, Topeka
Dean smiled at the long-term care nurse. "I'm looking for a patient, a Gertrude Middleton?"
"Yes, she's here." The nurse looked up at him. "Are you family?"
"Uh, no, friend of the family," he said. "I was wondering how she's doing?"
"You can see her, if you like, I'm on rounds right now."
"Thanks, that'd be great," he said, following her down the long, quiet hall.
She stopped at a doorway and opened the door, walking around to the side of the bed.
Dean followed her in, looking at the woman who lay there, her skin pale and doughy, a respirator taped to her mouth.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked, moving to the end of the bed.
The nurse picked up the woman's arm, lifting it and gently massaging the skin and muscle. "Gertrude's been in a persistent, vegetative state for sixteen years. About a year ago, her condition worsened. The ventilator is now the only thing keeping her alive."
Dean looked at the machine. He was familiar with them. "What happened to her?"
"She and husband were hit by a drunk driver," she said quietly. "He didn't make it. They were on their way to pick up their daughter from a sleepover, the police said."
"Their daughter?" Dean asked, a trickle of unease threading through him.
"She was twelve," the nurse said.
"What happened to her?"
"There were rumours," the nurse said, frowning a little. "She went to a relative for a short time, but got into trouble, I think. No one here saw her after that. I'm not even sure she's still alive, although she's listed as next of kin for Gertrude."
Pretty sure she's still alive, Dean thought. And yeah, she got into trouble alright.
"Who's paying for this?" he asked, thinking of the donations on the laptop screen.
"Folks have been donating to Gertrude's care over the years. It's a sweet gesture but the truth is that she's gone."
"She ever get any visitors?"
"There are few nurses who've said that they've seen someone in here, reading to her, but no one has ever officially signed in to visit her, so I couldn't give you a name," she said, looking up at him.
He nodded, looking down at Gertrude.
"I have to finish my rounds, if you'll excuse me," the nurse said.
"Thank you," he said, walking around the bed as she left the room. The woman's hair had been cut short, for ease of care, presumably. It was the same fiery red shade as Charlie's, vivid against the white pillow. The pale skin was the same too, he thought.
It explained a lot. Explained those brittle places in her. Explained the jack-rabbit nerves and the bravado and the shadows at the back of her eyes when she thought no one was looking. Twelve and on her own and teaching herself everything she knew. A lot of people would've caved, he thought. A lot of people would've gone into the system and been either broken or flattened by it. But not Charlie.
"You've got one hell of a daughter, Mrs Middleton," he said quietly to her. "I promise you, I will find her."
Beloit, Kansas
Charlie looked around groggily, taking in deep breaths to counteract the roiling nausea in her stomach and clear her head.
Around her, the large empty room had red-painted metal shelving lining the walls and stretching into two-thirds of the space, unidentifiable drums and cans, pallets and crates of metal and timber and mildewed boxes filling them. The concrete floor was cracked and filthy. Too big for basement, she thought, staring around. Factory? Warehouse? None of it looked like it'd been used in a long time.
The rope that bound her to the back of the wide carver was thick and heavy, pinning her arms to her sides from under the shoulder to her hips. She twisted against it, trying to feel for any kind of stretch but it wasn't giving.
"You're not going anywhere."
The cool, sharp voice made her head snap up, the coroner – the djinn, she told herself – standing in front of her, the single overhead bulb gleaming on hair only a few shades darker than her own.
Breathe. Just breathe and think. Dean and Sam had been in this position a thousand times and they'd usually figured out a way to get free – or the other one had come looking for them, she realised a second later. Would they come looking for her? Why would they, a small voice said in her head. You left them, you lied to them. Why would they waste their time looking for you now?
The djinn came close to her, breathing in deeply. "You know what I smell on you, dear?"
"Deodorant?" Charlie hazarded a guess. "A little pee… maybe?"
"Fear."
The word was drawn out, savoured, and Charlie felt herself shrinking under the avarice that filled the monster's voice. She was certainly reeking of it, she thought unhappily. The thought raised a question.
"Djinn smell fear?"
The djinn moved around behind her. "Aah … if it's djinn, then you and your companion are not agents, and not normals." She crouched beside Charlie. "You're hunters."
"No, not really," Charlie stammered, leaning away as far as the ropes would let her go. "I'm more of a hunter-in-training, totally not worth killing."
The djinn laughed. "Oh, but you are worth killing, sweetheart."
She stood and walked around the chair, looking down at Charlie with a gentle smile. "You see, I look for those with that fear flooding through them, the bitter bite of adrenalin and the hormones released when the heart is thumping and your life is flashing before your eyes … we prefer the richer taste of blood and flesh."
"And the … uh … others don't?" Charlie couldn't help but ask.
The woman sniffed. "The djinn of the west are simpletons. Blood is all they ask for and all they receive. And they cannot pick and choose as we can. Cannot disguise themselves in the world of mortals. As we can."
Charlie laughed uncomfortably. "You … uh … keep saying 'we'?"
The djinn smiled. "You were easy to track, even tonight. So afraid, Charlene, tell me … what are you so afraid of?"
She stepped close to Charlie, reaching out to take her arm, pushing the sleeve back up to the elbow.
"No," Charlie twisted against the ropes, pulling at the hand that held her wrist tightly. "No!"
The djinn's eyes glowed and the tattoos, barbed and curving and lit at the edges with the same electric blue light, curled down along her skin as she laid her hand over Charlie's forearm.
The touch was paralysing, Charlie stiffening helplessly against the chair, her eyes wide open as the poison seeped into her, through her pores and into her cells, trickling deeper and deeper, short-circuiting the mesh of her nervous system, cutting off the sensory information to her brain, replacing it with its own messages.
She struggled to keep her eyes open as a thick lassitude filled her. No one would come looking, she thought hopelessly. She would die here, and there would be no one to take care of her mother, to even make the decision that might have freed her. There was no one left …
Lebanon, Kansas
Sam listened to his brother as they walked into the library. "So, no chance of a recovery, huh?"
"No." Dean shook his head tiredly. "Did you find anything?"
He sat down at the table as Sam moved around the other side, pushing the laptop around. "Yeah, think so. John Doe from nine years ago, the original coroner wanted the body to be sent to the CDC but the new coroner's assistant 'accidentally' ordered the body to be burned."
Dean looked at the report. "New assistant?"
"Jennifer O'Brien."
Dean looked at him. "Course. It's a helluva cover for hiding kills."
"Now get this," Sam said. "CDC? Never heard from Jennifer this time either. She faked the reports, burned the bodies to cover her tracks –"
"Why'd she get sloppy again after nine years, and start leaving the bodies were they could be found?" Dean wondered aloud. It didn't add up. Not for any kind of djinn, they were usually extremely cautious about leaving no traces.
"Well, let's go ask her," Sam said, reaching across the table to hit another key on the laptop. "According to the county's property records, she owns two pieces of property in this county. One's a two-bedroom house in town, about ten minutes from here. The other is an abandoned freight store, bought for the back taxes nine years ago, in Beloit."
"Just an under an hour away, and a nice, central location for Salina and even Topeka," Dean finished. "Well, that's certainly convenient."
Sam's expression hardened slightly. "You think Charlie's there?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah, she wouldn't take her to a house, not in a little town like this. These things kill faster than the other kind, but it's still a slower process than bite and feed. She'll want somewhere very private, and …" He tapped the screen lightly. " … she's been using it for nine years now."
"We got everything?"
"But the kitchen sink," Dean agreed, getting up.
Beloit, Kansas
The building wasn't large, and Dean figured the layout as they came through the office door, a wide hall with a half dozen empty offices down the left, the rest of the space open warehouse to the right. He nodded up the corridor and turned right, a frown drawing his brows together as he saw the shelving, forming a maze of partly blocked views through the huge open area.
He moved through the aisles of bracketed metal shelves, looking obliquely between their contents, most of his attention on his peripheral vision, waiting for movement. On the pitted concrete floor, the soft soles of his boots were silent, and he drifted through, moving a little faster when he saw the open space ahead, and the bright gleam of a light on a bowed red head.
He checked the ends of the aisles as he strode across the floor to the chair she was bound in.
"Charlie." Reaching out, he shook her shoulder lightly, her body limp and her head flopping. "Charlie. Hey, Charlie."
She didn't respond, and he looked down, seeing the blue handprint, curled around the inside of her left forearm.
Sam continued down the corridor, checking each of the open and empty rooms as he passed, glancing into the main storage area through the openings as he headed to the back wall. He couldn't hear anything, not even Dean's footfalls, and the silence created a small but persistent ringing in his ears.
It wasn't a noise or movement that warned him, he thought later. Just a sense that something living stood behind him. He swung around and saw her, arm lifting and the knife he held arcing out toward her. She leaned back, letting the blade whistle past her throat, her hand flashing out and gripping his wrist, and the knife dropping as she hit the nerve centre, fingers flying open involuntarily. He felt her strength as she gripped his clothing, lifting and throwing him across the room into the chain-link gate. His fingers gripped the links as the impact took his breath, and he felt his strength rushing out of him, dropping to the floor and turning to watch her approach.
Do something, his mind shrieked at him. But there wasn't anything he could do. He couldn't fight her, he barely had the strength to get up.
She walked closer, pushing her sleeve up as the tattoos descended down the length of her arm, lit in neon blue with the same pulsing beat that filled her eyes, and a smile curving up her mouth.
She was two yards from him when she stiffened suddenly, the light flaring and dying from her eyes, the tattoos vanishing from her arm. He stared at her, then heard the wet squelch of the knife being pulled from between the ribs, and she dropped to the floor, Dean standing behind her, looking at him.
"You okay?"
Sam nodded. "Where's Charlie?"
"Back there," Dean said, gesturing to the warehouse as he stepped forward with his hand extended. "Out cold."
They ran down the hall and turned into the loading bay, Sam pulling out the syringe they'd loaded with the order's supply of djinn antidote. He knelt beside her, pulling the cap off with his teeth and stabbing the needle into the arm, above the handprint. He depressed the plunger and the antidote flowed down the needle into the muscle.
Nothing happened. Dean remembered being stabbed by his brother with the damned stuff, it'd worked instantly, the second it was in his bloodstream.
"What the hell's going on?" he asked Sam.
"I don't know," Sam said, staring at her. "Different djinn, maybe she needs a different antidote?"
"That was the only one in the book!" Dean snapped, leaning toward her and putting his hand on her face. "Charlie? She's burning up, man, we're not letting her turn to Jell-O!"
"Okay, okay," Sam said, face screwing up as he thought about the lore. "Okay, djinn poison puts your brain into some kind of feedback loop while your blood boils, right?"
"Right."
"Uh …if the antidote didn't break the loop, then maybe we have to find a way to break it from the inside?" he looked at Dean. "I mean, djinn take your –"
"Wishes," Dean said tersely.
"Right, and turn them into a dream –" he said. They looked at each other.
"I need to get inside her dream," Dean finished.
"African dream root." The thought hit both at the same time.
"We didn't use all of it, but I don't know if it's still in the car," Sam said. Dean ran a hand over his face as he tried to remember if he'd ever taken it out.
"I don't either," he said, turning to look at Charlie. "I'll check, what else did we need?"
"Nothing, just a liquid to steep it in," Sam said, gesturing to the kitchen on the other side of the warehouse. "Water will do."
Dean turned and ran for the door, dodging the shelves as he twisted and turned around them. How long did they have? How long before the poison finished its job of dissolving her?
Don't think about that, he snapped at himself. Think about what you can do, what you will do.
He threw open the door as he hit it, sending it crashing back into the metal wall and skidded on the gravel, slamming into the side of the car, digging through his pocket for the keys. He didn't remember taking the damned stuff out. Bela'd brought a few hundred grams, couple of dozen pieces of the roots, and they'd used less than half, even for the two times they'd gone in, first to Bobby's dreams then to his. There had to be enough left. Just … where the hell was it?
The trunk popped open obediently and he shoved the shotgun under the lid, turning on the big flashlight that sat to one side and tipping it over to show absolutely everything that was in the deep well. He unzipped the bags, pulling them open and shoving the contents to one side then the other, lifting stuff out and putting it back. He really had to go through this shit again, he thought, his fingers moving in a frenzy. The jar was in the fourth bag, tucked down at the bottom and wrapped thickly in a cloth. He grabbed it, and turned off the flashlight, knocked the gun out from under the lid and slammed the trunk shut.
Racing back inside, he breathed a deep sigh of relief as he saw Sam waiting with a small jar filled with water.
"Got it," he said, handing the jar to his brother as he turned to look at Charlie. How the hell could they tell what was going on inside her?
"Alright," Sam pulled out a few small pieces of the root and put it in the water.
"Wait," Dean pulled out a pill bottle, filled with a mixture of fine powders. He tipped a couple of teaspoonfuls worth into the jar and the powder frothed as it reacted with the root-spiced water.
"What was that?" Sam looked at the jar. The water had gone from the clear tea-coloured liquid to a cloudy mix.
"Cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and sugar," Dean said. "Stops it from tasting like pure crap."
Sam reached out with his knife and cut a hair from Charlie's head, dropping it into the glass as Dean pulled another chair from the pile of furniture to one side of the room. He put it beside Charlie's and turned back to his brother.
Sam handed him the jar, and he took a step backward, lining himself up with the chair. "Last time it was like a knockout, right?"
Sam nodded. The last time, they'd been sitting on the beds and the transition from waking to dreaming had been instantaneous. They hadn't even realised they were in the dream for several minutes.
"You better sit down," he told his brother. Dean sat down and chugged the glass, closing his teeth slightly as the roots attempted to enter his mouth as well.
He slumped back against the chair, head dropping to his shoulder, and Sam caught the glass as it slipped from his fingers.
Music. He could hear music.
Glenn Miller? One of the old big band swing tunes. He looked up, finding himself in what looked like … a military office. He was at a desk. He was wearing a white coat, over a uniform. Khaki. Army. A lot of medals pinned to the side of it.
"What the hell?"
The music played cheerily on as he stood up, looking around the office. Definitely military base. Behind the desk, the black and white portrait on the wall was Truman, he thought. Military circa … sometime in the mid-late forties. He pulled off the white coat and dropped over the back of the chair, walking around the desk to the gramophone that was playing the record. Pulling the needle off, the music suddenly got louder, filling the whole base.
Charlie was a secret swing fan? He looked around the office and saw the table, on its side, barricading the door. Walking to it, he pushed it aside, then looked at the leg closest to him. It was hefty enough to turn anyone's head into a smear, he thought. And it was a folding leg, he'd only have to break the hinge. He slammed his foot down on it and picked up the fallen metal tube, shifting his grip as he opened the door and looked out.
It opened into a narrow corridor, dead-ending to his right. Fort Brennan Military Hospital, the decal painted neatly on the end wall told him. Not a huge amount of help. To his left, the view was less appealing. Filing cabinets and cupboards were placed at intervals along the walls, but they didn't block his view of the bodies. Or the blood.
He looked down as he stepped over the first one in the corridor, automatically noting the throat wounds and the spray patterns and the peculiar colour the body goes when it's drained of blood.
Vampires.
Now, why the hell was Charlie dreaming about a military hospital full of vampires?
He continued cautiously up the corridor, stepping over the bodies that littered the narrow space, aware that the chair leg in his hand was about as much use as – he stopped next to the body of a nurse, looking down. She'd fallen close by the wall, but half-hidden under her body was a newspaper. He checked the run of the corridor both ways before crouching, pulling it out from under her and straightening up. The front page had been smeared with her blood, but not enough to obscure the headline. Or the date.
Truman Denies Military Experiments, the headline screamed. Thursday, April 12, 1951.
"1951?" he said, brows drawing together. Military. In the past. With vampires. And he thought he'd had bad dreams. He dropped the paper back on the body and kept walking, stopping when he reached the elevator. The buttons were dark but he pressed them anyway, then moved to the doors, trying to force them open.
The growling came from behind him, from a room or a ward or an office he'd just passed. He turned to look, jaw tensing as he saw them emerge into the hall, two of them. Not your regular vamps, he thought, staring at the blackened eyes and dripping mouths. Military experiments anyone?
Beside him the elevator 'tinged' and the doors opened.
Dean froze. Charlie stood there, a bizarre cross between T2's Sarah Connor and Jolie's Commander Frankie Cook, complete with black eye patch, her long, red hair pulled back sensibly into a ponytail; black singlet half-hidden under a bandolier of bright-red shotgun shells; snug, stretch pants tucked into flat-soled black boots and holding a simplified version of the KSG fifteen round bullpup pump action shotgun, aimed at him.
She jerked her head to one side and he shifted back and to side of the doors as she stepped through them, firing the gun at the vamps and taking them down.
She turned to look at him, putting a hand on his arm. "Come with me, if you want to live."
He looked at her, brows rising.
"I've always wanted to say that," she said, shrugging as she passed him the shotgun. "What are you doing in my dream?"
He bit back his exasperation. "You were attacked by a djinn. The coroner, Jennifer, remember?"
Charlie looked at him doubtfully as she pulled off the eyepatch. Damn thing was screwing with her depth perception anyway, and she didn't think she'd been able to pull it off, overall look-wise.
"Djinn usually send to your, uh, 'happy' place," he said, looking down the corridor. "No judgement, but you got a really strange sense of happy, kiddo."
"No, no … wait," Charlie said, looking down as a memory came back to her. The djinn, sniffing her, breathing in deeply the scent she'd said was … fear. "No, Jennifer said her kind feeds off fear." She looked up at him. "This isn't my happy place; this is a recurring nightmare of mine."
"What is this?" Dean asked.
"It's a video game," she admitted reluctantly.
"Wait a sec, you telling me this whole thing is a video game?"
Charlie shook her head in frustration. "It was called The Red Scare, a first person shooter against super-soldier vampires," she explained edgily. "I copied it off a game company's server before it was finished, reprogrammed it to reflect my flamingly liberal politics and then I released it – for free."
He looked at her, unsure of how that fit into the whole nightmare scenario.
Charlie saw his confusion. "And they tracked me and had me arrested," she added, shoulders dropping. "I was twelve."
"And you've been on the run ever since," Dean said, another piece in the puzzle of Charlene Middleton falling into place.
She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. It was ancient history. It wouldn't let her go, but it was still ancient history. "So how do we get out of here?"
"I don't know," Dean said. "We gave you the djinn antidote but it didn't take. And I killed the djinn."
"Both of them?" Charlie asked him.
Dean looked at her. "What?"
"There were two of them," Charlie said, her head snapping around as another low growl came from the other end of the corridor. "You didn't know that?"
"No," he bit out. "I didn't know that."
"Come on, we need to keep moving," she said, walking down the corridor toward the t-intersection ahead.
"We gotta back and help Sammy," Dean said, striding after her. "Tell me about this game, maybe if we can win then –"
They reached the T and stopped, checking the lengths of the hall. The growling filled Dean's side and he stepped out, blowing away the closest vampire, pumping the slide and hitting the one behind it. It took another round to take it down and he was turning when he heard Charlie's gun firing behind him.
The vampire fell and Charlie started walking up the hall to the right. "Look, I don't know how long I've been out, but I've been through this level a thousand times already."
"What?" He looked down at her.
"Every time I beat the level and save the patients, I get reset back to the beginning, only with less weapons and the vampires are faster," she explained tersely.
Dean turned around, firing at the vampire following them twenty yards away. He wasn't sure what the hell to make of what she'd said. He turned back and Charlie fired at another vamp walking toward them. It dropped to the floor and she looked back at him.
"It's an infinite loop," she said. "Like Pac-Man without level 256."
"Level what?"
"Nothing." She shook her head, walking away.
"Wait," Dean snapped. "What patients?"
Sam looked around at the faint noise. The brick and metal building had a lot of hard surfaces and even small noises were amplified and echoed. He'd seen one rat. It was probably just another one.
He walked back to where Dean had killed the djinn, listening, looking. When he reached the body, he stopped, looking down at it. Was there some way of breaking through the djinn's poison with its own blood, he wondered? He'd have the check the library again. It can't have been the first time a hunter or legacy had run into the Persian variation.
He saw the movement from the corner of his eye, spinning around as the boy emerged from behind the shelving.
"You killed her," he said, his voice thin and high. He looked at the knife in Sam's hand.
Sam looked at him. "She was a monster."
"She was my mother," the boy said furiously, charging at him.
Sam felt the weakness in his body as he swung aside, the knife blade scoring along the kid's shoulder but not driving in. Despite the ten inch height advantage and the eighty pound weight advantage, it was a djinn he was facing, not a scrawny high-school kid. He turned too late as the boy came for him again, and a fist slammed into his chest, the cartilage between his ribs creaking from the blow. The second one hit under the jaw, and he fell to the floor, landing on his arm, the knife dropping onto the floor for the second time that night.
"So," he said, putting his hand on the floor and levering himself to his knees. "It wasn't her that got sloppy. It was you."
"You shut up!" the boy screamed, stepping close, leg swinging and Sam tried to fall back from it, ride the blow to some extent as it connected with the side of his face. He rolled over onto his shoulder, spitting out a mouthful of blood and shaking his head as he tried to regain his focus on the djinn. The boy had turned away, was staring down at his mother's corpse.
"I came of age," he murmured. "I had to feed."
Sam closed his eyes, feeling for any shred of strength he had left. He opened them and looked down at the knife that lay close to his hand, bracing himself as he slid his hand across the floor and his fingers closed around the haft. Come on, stand up and stick it in, he told himself angrily. You can fucking well do that much.
Come on, Sam, you can do better than that. Dean's voice, half-derogatory, half-encouraging, behind him after a sparring match had gotten a little more enthusiastic than usual. Get up, Sam, not going to just lie there, are you?
He'd been angry, hell, he'd been furious with his brother, and Dean had seen it, had seen the anger and used it against it him, letting him wear himself out with wide, swinging blows and had closed in fast and hard, a double tap to the diaphragm that had taken his air and his strength at the same time.
He'd gotten up and seen the amusement in his brother's dark green eyes. Had seen too the tacit apology that had lurked behind it, never to be expressed, only felt, a permanent shadow that lay inside of Dean, that fighting was never entirely make-believe, never just sparring or practice. That in the back of both of their minds lay the knowledge that they would do this for real, against foes who would not fall with a single blow and who would not stop when they were down. Who would eat them if they lost.
He shunted the memory aside and shoved hard against the floor, staggering to his feet.
"I screwed up. She knew how to cover her tracks. To cover mine. She always told me not to play with my food," he said softly, turning to face Sam.
Sam looked down at him, seeing the surprise in the neon-blue eyes.
"She was right," he said, driving the knife deep into the kid's side, his hand knotted in the collar of the jacket, holding him up, bracing him as he twisted it.
The blue light died out of the eyes and he let the body fall, doubling over as a coughing attack brought up another mouthful of blood, this one from deep inside.
Charlie led them down one corridor and up another, finally stopping at a pair of double doors with Ward A painted on them. They pushed them open, and barricaded them shut behind them.
"The thing is, the loop has to have something to key it – it's not like this in the real game. Something's changed and it has to be a key, but I can't figure out what it is."
"What do you mean, a key?" Dean asked, looking down at her.
"Like a reason, a – a – something to make it loop," she said, her voice holding an edge of frustration. "There's got to be some reason for it to reset back to the beginning."
Dean turned around and looked down the length of the room. A four bed ward, it wasn't long. Only two of the beds were occupied, the curtains drawn around them. He walked to the closest, lifting his hand and drawing back the curtain, knowing exactly who he was going to see lying in that bed.
He was right. Gertrude Middleton lay there, no respirator in the dream, but the same not-quite peaceful look on her unconscious face, the same red hair, cut short, for ease of care.
"Charlie," he said, glancing at her. "I know who this is."
Charlie's dream, he thought. Charlie's fear. Charlie's pain.
Charlie walked to the bed and drew back the other curtain, looking down at the woman lying in the bed for a moment before she turned to Dean.
"What are you talking about?"
He looked at her, hearing the denial and anger in her voice. He knew that feeling, knew it so well. For most of his life, denial and anger had filled his voice when anyone had mentioned his mother.
"When you went missing, Sam and me found the place in Topeka. Saw the payments that you make for her," he said gently. "So, I went and visited your mom … looking for you."
Charlie swallowed. She wasn't sure what was closing her throat, compressing her chest. That he'd found out about her, about her and her mother … or that he and Sam had actually looked for her. She didn't want to lie to them anymore. She didn't want to feel so completely alone anymore.
"She's the reason I'm in Kansas," she said, her gaze flicking between his face and the floor uneasily.
The tension slid out of him as he listened. No more lies. Turning away from him, Charlie looked at the woman in the bed.
"I sneak into the hospital whenever I can, and I just … I read to her," she said, her mouth twisting up a little. "She used to read me to sleep, when I was a kid."
Memories rushed in, warm and comforting. The bedroom, purple, not pink. Bookshelves and posters of dragons and elves and endless mountain ranges and secret caves – and curled deep in the soft, light quilt, sleep tugging at her, but desperate to stay awake for a little longer, just till the end of the chapter, the next chapter. Her mother's face, alight with life, filling her voice with the excitement of the story, each of the characters, loved and brought to that same life – just stay awake till the end of the chapter.
"She read me The Hobbit," she said, lips curving into an unconscious smile. "And C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle, and Kipling and Le Guin."
She forced the memories back, exhaling sharply as she turned back to him. "She's the reason I love the stuff I love."
Dean looked at her, knowing what she was talking about. Charlie's fear. "I'm sorry for your loss."
Charlie's face twitched as she looked away. "She's not gone," she snapped at him, grabbing the curtain and drawing it closed as she spun away from him and faced the door.
He exhaled softly, drawing the other curtain closed and turning to look at the other occupied. Pulling the curtain back, he froze as he saw his brother lying in the bed.
"Sam?"
Charlie heard the name and the deep doubt in his voice and walked to the bed. She'd never looked at the other patients before, but she was reasonably sure that Sam wasn't in her dream at all. "Is this my nightmare, or yours?" she asked Dean.
He shook his head, turning away abruptly. In the corridor outside the ward, a growling noise echoed.
Charlie followed him, checking her rounds and shifting her footing on the smooth floor.
The crash against the doors was heavy and Charlie put a round through the door, under the small observation window. She flicked a glance at Dean as she pumped the slide, loading the next round.
"This is it, the boss battle," she said, turning to the door, her fingers tightening around the gun. "Come on, we've got to save the patients."
"Wait, wait, wait," Dean said, wondering how the hell he was going to explain to her that she was trapping them in this game. "You said we're stuck in a loop, right?"
She nodded, her gaze cutting back to the door as the growling got louder.
"But out there, in the real world, you're dying, and I might be too," he said, flicking a glance at the door as a fist punched through the glass window. "We gotta find a way to break this loop."
The noise was distracting and he put a round through the door under the window, the vamp dropping.
Charlie nodded. "Okay, how?"
"I think the only way to stop this, is to … not play," he said, looking at her.
"What?" Charlie stared at him. "No. No! We gotta save them."
The window in the other door was smashed and Charlie braced herself, taking a firmer grip on her gun. "Nut up, Winchester!"
Dean scowled as he fired through the door.
"See?" Charlie said. "You can't stop either."
"Listen to me, Charlie," Dean said, his voice low as he turned back to her. "This poison, it's designed to put your mind into an endless cycle while your insides turn to mush, okay? And its fuel is fear. Now, call me crazy, but I think that the only way to break this cycle is to let go of the fear and to stop playing the game."
Charlie felt herself tense. "You don't know that!"
"I know that your fear is creating all of this," he said, ignoring the smashing and breaking sounds coming from the end of the room, Charlie's shot into the doors. "But you're not afraid of those super-soldier vamps out there –"
Charlie tried to shut out his voice, pulling shells from the bandolier and loading the tube, tried to concentrate on what she needed to do, ignoring the small voice that said he might be right.
He wasn't.
"– you're not afraid of this game, and you're not afraid of what it did to you," Dean continued relentlessly. "Hey!"
He grabbed her shoulder, spinning her around to face him. "Look at me," he insisted, holding her straight, his fingers digging into her until she looked back at him.
"You're afraid of losing her," he said, letting her go. "Charlie, she's already gone."
"No! No, you don't understand," Charlie said, backing a step away from him. "You don't understand! I was at a sleepover, and I got scared."
Dean heard the fear then, thrumming in her voice, rippling through her and shaking her slender frame, the memories so close and thick around her that he could almost see them as she struggled to tell him, to make him see why she couldn't do this.
"So, I called my parents," she said, her breath hitching as she tried to get air from a chest that was too tight. "To come and get me. They should never have been driving that night."
"It wasn't your fault," Dean said softly.
"I just want to tell her – that I'm sorry – and I love her," she said, looking up at him pleadingly. "And just have her hear it, again – I just need her to hear it one more time – but she can't. She can't."
He watched the tears spilling down her face. Somewhere, lost and deeply buried under twenty five years of a hard life, a five-year old boy sobbed into his father's arms, the same words falling from him, the same pain eating him up, the same knowledge tearing him apart.
"I know," he told her. "Believe me, I know … but you gotta let it go."
Charlie looked at the doors, at the vamps that were clawing their way through. Let it go. She didn't think she could. She didn't think she could live with herself. Didn't think she had that kind of strength. Not her. Not the woman who ran.
Dean watched her turn away, heard her rack the slide, saw the barrel rise as she faced the doors. If she fought them, they would start the level again, he thought, and there would be another chance to do it right. But she might be dead by that time. There was absolutely nothing he could about it.
Let it go. Let her go. Let her be free of the machine and being imprisoned in her flesh when she had someplace else to be. If Edlund's books had given her nothing else, she knew that there was a place for her mother to go. Could she say goodbye? Give up on that need that had driven her and whipped her from place to place, the need to atone for what she'd done?
I'm so sorry, Mom, she thought to the woman who lay in a bed in a hospital, alone. I miss you and Dad so much. I love you so much. I'm sorry.
She let the barrel drop. The noises of the vampires faded away, slowly, gradually until they stood together in silence. Dean glanced at Charlie and walked to the doors, pushing back the cabinet and opening them. The corridor outside was empty.
Charlie looked at the curtain beside her. Hesitantly, she gripped the edge and pulled it back. The bed behind it was empty.
Sam leaned over Charlie, his fingers against her skin. It was still hot. She'd been crying in her sleep, the tear tracks drying on her cheeks. He didn't know what that meant, exactly. Were they still in the dream? He looked down at Dean. Neither had moved an inch since Dean had dropped into sleep.
He checked Charlie's pulse, feeling the rapid beat in her neck. He could see Dean's, in the hollow of his brother's throat, mostly steady, occasionally speeding up, or slowing down. He looked at his watch. It'd been an hour. It'd felt like twelve.
It felt like that house in New Harmony. The field in Pontiac. It felt like Roman's lab, he thought uneasily.
It felt like being alone.
He pushed the thoughts aside. They were alive. Dean would get them out.
He saw Dean's head lift and crossed the space in a couple of strides, a titanic relief filling him. "Hey, Dean."
His brother opened his eyes slightly, looking up at him blearily. Sam reached forward, catching his hand and pulling him upright.
"Hey, hey! Come here," Sam pulled him to his feet. "You okay? What happened?"
Dean shook his head. "I'm okay."
He turned back to the other chair, memory of the dream flooding back as he saw Charlie lift her hands to her face.
"Charlie?"
She looked up at him, remembering the empty bed.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Sam watched her get to her feet slowly. She took a step forward and stopped, her arms crossing over her stomach as her head dropped, the curtain of bright hair falling and hiding her face. He stared at her. She wasn't making a sound, but her shoulders were shaking. Dean walked to her, wrapping his arms around her. She didn't move or look up, and his hold tightened a little as the shaking got stronger.
Something had happened in there, Sam thought, watching Dean's face as it closed up with pain. Something that had broken through Charlie, and had had an impact on his brother as well.
Lebanon, Kansas
Charlie looked around the large, square bedroom. She'd spent the last thirty six hours in it and in a strange way it had been the most safe she'd felt since … since she was twelve. The furniture was heavy and stodgy, she thought critically, looking at the polished timber pieces. But they were unchanged. Here to stay. And maybe that was what had been reassuring about it.
She turned and walked out, carrying her big leather Gladstone down the stairs and along the hall to the library. Sam looked up as she came in.
"You're going then?" he asked, and she was glad to hear the small note of disappointment in his voice.
She nodded. "I have to, I have … stuff I have to take care of. Real world stuff. I want to help with finding Kevin, and I will, from Topeka, and then Michigan, but I can't just pretend that I don't have ties to those worlds."
"Yeah," he said, glancing down at the laptop.
"Sam, you have been tested in fire and pain and everything else," she said, walking to the table and sitting down in the chair next to him. "You're still here. You'll be strong enough."
His mouth curled up at one side as he looked away.
"Dean has your back, you know," she added, looking at him. "He won't let you down."
Sam nodded. "He never has."
"You won't let him down either, will you?"
"No," he said firmly, looking back at her. "No."
"Then there's nothing to worry about," she said, her voice light as she rose from the chair. "Send me the list of Kevin's cards and aliases and we'll find him. And I'll swing by, in a while, when everything's done."
"Sounds good."
She nodded and walked down through the war room to the stairs, going up and stopping at the gallery rail. "Take care of yourself, Sam, okay?"
"You too."
Outside, Dean was leaning against the railing above the stairs. She walked up them, stopping in front of him.
"Well, thanks for stopping by, Charlie," he said, mouth quirking up to one side. "Always wanted to get Tron'ed. You going back to Topeka?"
She smiled thinly as her gaze cut away. "Yeah, it won't be over until I do. Gotta let go, right?"
He ducked his head, unwilling to comment on that.
"What about you? You going to let it go?" She wasn't sure what she was asking about, he had a million things that he held onto.
"Never," he said, his gaze lifting to meet hers. "Just a natural-born hoarder."
It surprised a laugh from her, through the tightness in her throat. "Wannabe."
"Yeah, well," he said, shrugging. "Sam said something about you helping out with finding Kevin?"
"I'll have to do it remotely for a while, but I'll dig through what I can."
"That'd be a help. Thanks."
She looked at him for a long moment, then away. "I – well – I – it's – you know?"
He lifted a brow, as she looked at him, the feeling she couldn't express in her face, in her eyes. "Yeah."
He took a step forward, reaching out and pulling her into a hug. The little sister he'd never wanted. The memory of the words trickled through his thoughts. That wasn't exactly how it was. But it wasn't how it wasn't, either. She knew too much about him. And not enough. And he knew too much about her.
He dropped a kiss on the bright hair and let her go, and she picked up her bag, walking through the grey mists that swirled around and filled the spaces between the trees. He saw her half turn and lift a hand and then she disappeared in the illusions.
Turning back to the stairs, he walked down them slowly, inserting the key into the door and opening it. Inside, the rooms were warmly lit and comfortable, and he felt himself relaxing, just a bit.
He walked down the curving iron staircase to the war room and up the shallow flight to the library.
Sam pushed back his chair, getting to his feet, his face pensive. "Okay, look, you were right, I should've laid low, I know, I should've hung back, but I'm glad I was able –" He took a step back as Dean kept coming, hitting the back of his chair and stopping, his brother's arms around his neck in the middle of his apology-cum-explanation.
He let his arms creep around Dean, hugging him back, uncertain of what was going on. They were both on roller-coasters, he thought, neither of knowing what the fuck was going to happen in the next five minutes and half the time not knowing what was going on with the other either.
Dean let go and pushed him back a little, hands on his shoulders. "What do you say we go find our prophet?"
Sam stared as he turned away, shucking his coat and dropping it over a chair as he headed for the kitchen. What the hell?
"Uh … by find, do you mean … uh, get in the car and drive around?" he called to his brother's retreating footsteps.
"Yeah, that's what I mean," Dean's bellow carried down the hall back to the library.
"Huh."