I tossed all the food wrappings in the trash while Sam grabbed the box of thumbtacks from his bags along with all the articles and information we had on the job so far and started tacking stuff up on the wall. "All right, the ME's reports aren't exactly lies, the most recent bodies all have the same wounds and look like the died the same way. What he isn't stating is a hunch I have but it's a pretty strong one based off how pale his face got when I asked if any organs were missing."

"He said no but meant yes?"

"Yeah, here look. I printed off some pics I took while I was waiting for you to pick me up and trying to lose my tail. Notice anything?"

"Yeah, the ME knows Photoshop, there's more wounds then in the pics I found."

"Exactly."

"And all the new ones are all nice and neat and right over some major organs. Those bite marks don't look vampish though. Did he alter how those looked too?"

"Not sure, but in the first photos they were still all bloody so made it hard to tell for sure. They don't look like vamp or mountain lion bites."

"They were also pretty crappy shots," Roy chimed in. "I didn't really say anything at first since you guys look at these things all the time but they didn't really get any detail. The shots you took with your phone look better."

"Good point." Sam agreed, "I should have picked up on that."

He pinned up all the crime scene photos, a map, the obits and all the newspaper articles about the various deaths then stepped back. Some hunters have gone to doing all of this on laptops or computers but that never worked as well for me. Maybe I'm old school but I can make those random connections that give you the hints you need to go to the right part of the lore and find what you're up against a lot easier when I can see everything at once. Maybe Sam and I need to invest in one of those TV screen sized monitors for the Bunker, that could come in handy for other things as well.

"Dean!"

Sam interrupted that train of thought, damn him. "Huh?"

"Do I even...no probably not. Dead bodies, remember?"

"Right, yeah." Maybe it was because I was thinking about positions that drew my eyes to how the bodies were laid out at the crime scenes. "Hey, look at how they're posed at the scenes."

"That is kind of weird."

And he says porn's not useful.

Roy took a closer look and something registered in his mind. "Wait, look." He pointed at the photos of the bodies Sam took, "These two, the henna tats on their wrists. Don't they kind of look like how they were posed?"

"Nice catch." He gave me this odd, shy, grateful grin that disappeared fast. It was just one corner of his mouth but I was definitely going to have a talk with Oliver. I mean, I'm not the best with positive reinforcement but still, it's not that damn hard to say good job every now and again. Something about the symbols struck a nerve with me, "Sam? Those aren't usual witchcraft stuff. Don't they look kind of Native American?"

"Now that you mention it, they do."

"Well so much for that idea."

Sam sighed and started typing on the laptop, "It was a nice thought while it lasted."

"What? We don't deal with Native American monsters?" Roy asked.

"We do."

"So?"

"So. These aren't vampire kills. Which means no vampires. Which means complicated. Which I really didn't want our first job back from vacation."

"Oh. Uh. Sorry?"

"Not your fault Roy, I picked this job not you."

"Which was our first mistake," Sam pointed out.

"Thanks, really."

Roy ignored us and kept staring at the photos. "Uh guys, is that supposed to be a swastika?"

"Looks like, but it's backwards."

"Uh what?" Sam stopped typing and stared at the photo. "Oh hell."

The woman's arms and legs were bent at right angles, not broken but there was a definite attempt to replicate the symbol.

"Neo Nazi's?" Roy offered.

"Not necessarily, Hitler perverted the meaning of the swastika," Sam explained, in that half muttering, half excited way he gets when he's putting clues together. "It was tied up with Navajo culture, along Indian as in Hindus and pretty much throughout the world. Usually meaning good luck, peace or healing. Look it up some time, this is backwards though."

"Which usually means the opposite of whatever it's supposed to mean, so in this case bad luck, war or death." I added, "What's the symbol on the other body? "

Sam started typing again, "Uh rough guess? Avanyu, the feathered skysnake and he deals with violent, sudden change. I really wish I had gotten to see the other three bodies, they'd already been released to the families. I'll see if I can enlarge any shots of their wrists and look for tattoos."

"Well, we know they're laid out to match those tats. Before you do all that pull up some Native American stuff see if we can match it."

"On it."

"Hey," Roy said, "If whoever did this went to the trouble of posing them and tatting them do you think they put them in places on purpose?"

"Probably," I hate it when things get layered like this, Sam loves it. I like my jobs easy, give me whatever it is I need to kill the monster and point me at it. "Let's plot the bodies while Sam's busy."

It didn't take us too long and after the third one I already knew how it was going to end up. "This is not good." There was one body at each point of the compass and the snake god one was in the middle.

"No, it's not. More rough guesses but take it for what it's worth." Sam said and turned the laptop around so we could see the screen.

There were a few options to pick from since so much of this symbolic stuff has multiple meanings but the general theme was death, destruction and righting wrongs. Pretty much all the things that give Sam and I bad days, or weeks. Hell let's be honest, years. "Great."

Sam frowned, "Dean, I think we're a bit out of our league here. The Men of Letters don't have a lot on Native beliefs and even if they did it it's all back home and I'm getting the feeling that something big is going to go down soon."

"Someone's prepping something that's for sure. I'll call her."

Roy had been trying to keep up but was pretty well lost at this point, "Call? You guys know someone that's an expert in this stuff?"

"Yup, she's a Shaman, used to be a hunter."

"Among other things," Sam decided to add and a whole ton of unasked questions popped up in his eyes. I decided to ignore them for now and grabbed my phone, "Her name's Running Coyote, Coyote for short, she's Lakota." And, mostly to avoid thinking about the questions Sam wasn't asking I went out on the balcony and shut the door before I'd even pulled her name up on my phone. This was gonna to be interesting.

She and I had had one of the most surreal conversations I've ever had after I got back from Hell. How does one tell a woman that he'd said goodbye to that he's back from thirty years of being tortured, and, although what he'd said in a letter that he'd been pretty sure was the last thing he'd ever say to her was the truth, that it was complicated? Hi, so about that whole dying thing? Funny story. Oh and did you hear about the impending Apocalypse that I sort of started? It had taken me a few months to actually even call her once Cas pulled me out of Hell. I wasn't even sure if I should but something told me she'd hear about it one way or another. Sam and I had gotten a rather large reputation because of that whole disaster so if she was still hunting she was bound to hear about it. I figured it was safer to have her yell at me over the phone then wake up one night with her standing over my bed, pissed and wanting to beat the crap out of me. Not that I would have blamed her.

She took it incredibly well and reminded me that our visions had shown us that I was going to be rescued. Then she snapped at me for waiting so long to tell her, then it got uncomfortable. I hadn't really planned on coming back when I wrote that letter. I hadn't lied, I did love her, I just wasn't sure what to do with that. Fortunately I managed to use the Apocalypse to buy some time. Then Sam came back soul less, then there was the three or four other times we had to save the world or each other, again. That didn't leave a whole lot of time on my calendar for anything else. We still hooked up, at least at first but it wasn't the same, it wasn't better or worse, just different. Those words were always hanging there between us. Then Rising Dove, her mentor died.

I went back and spent a few days with her afterwards. That's when she called me out about it, about us. Told me that now that she was the Shaman of her tribe she had to make some choices. It wasn't just that her people looked down on her having an ongoing fling with me but that she'd have other obligations and stresses to deal with, and couldn't just up and drive six hours to meet me, or be as open to me just popping in whenever I felt like it. I knew that wasn't the whole story and made the mistake of pushing her on it.

Coyote isn't the type to hold back if you ask for the truth and I should have known better. She looked me straight in the eye and said that while the sex was great she was tired of being my port in a storm and not just physically. I'd gotten in the habit of hooking up with her when shit got too bad in my life and I couldn't handle it anymore. I'd either have to start giving some of that back, be willing to go where I didn't want to or end it. I had to admit, I'd called her a helluva a lot more than she called me. I started telling her what was going on, why I couldn't. She stopped me before I got two words out and said, "As long as you keep making the same choices for the same reasons you will always end up in the exact same spot. Alone." Then walked away. That was two years ago or so, we hadn't talked since. I still had her number though, still put what she'd given me all those years ago to help me sleep under my pillow. It was one of the things I'd used to try to fight the Mark. Somehow that little pouch had still managed to break through the nightmares every now and again. I didn't even know if her number would work but I scrolled to it, took a deep breath and sent her a quick text to tell her the number was mine and we needed her help on a job. I wasn't chickening out on calling, I just figured she might not answer an out of state number she didn't know. She called two seconds later.

"Hi." I figured that was a safe way to start, genius that I am.

She was all business, "What's going on?"

"Sam and I are looking at five bodies, what looks like Native American symbols henna tattoed on them, posed mimicking the symbols and left at each point of the compass and one in the middle." Facts are easy, I can do facts. "We're a little out of our depth so thought you could take a look. We think something big is being prepped. From what we can tell all the symbols point to death and destruction."

"Where are you?"

That was too business, even for her. Something was up, "Are you okay?"

"Dean, answer the question."

"Carbondale, Colorado. Red Roof Inn north of the city limits."

"I'll be there in six hours."

"And the reason you're already halfway here is?" There'd only be one reason she sounded like that and was so close.

"What do you think?"

"Vision?"

"Yes. Hit yesterday, I didn't get specifics on location of course but knew I had to head that way."

"Any hints you can give me?"

"My people technically don't believe in Apocalypses but if we did, this would be pretty close to that. On the bright side you don't have to deal with angels or demons."

"And on the not bright side?"

"You'll get to find out just how powerful a pissed off, misguided and corrupted shaman can be. Oh and if we screw this up, your people will get to suffer through what they did to us with a few horrific natural disasters thrown in for fun."

Gallows humor was familiar territory for us so I went with it, "Can I officially retire from anything end of the world related?"

"No. Cougar Kills Bears is with me."

Which meant it was probably worse than what she was saying. "We have a new guy with us, Roy Harper. He's a temp."

"A temp?"

"Yeah, Sam and I are offering classes for hunters now. You get the first hunt free as trial run, after that we charge $600 per credit hour."

Her laugh brought back everything I'd try to bury.

"Finally making an honest living?"

"Please, the rates colleges charge make loan sharks jealous. Do Sam and I need to get you anything?"

"Two rooms, singles, oh and dinner's on you. And no, I didn't bring pie from Take a Load Off. Wasn't sure you were involved till you called. Sorry."

She had to go there, that hurt. Not that she didn't bring the pie but that she'd remembered. It's been years since we'd stopped by there together. I had dropped in once or twice over the past few years and they still had the best food in the country. "I guess I'll forgive you this time." And let the awkward pause begin.

She broke it first, "See you in a few."

"Yeah. Drive safe."

"Always do."

She hung up, I didn't move, couldn't really. The rather large problem with facing your feelings, or being forced to, is that it's much harder to ignore them later on. Which was why I had maintained the practice of ignoring them as much as possible over the years. That was all shot to hell now. Coyote was something Sam and I had talked about up at Oliver's place. Actually he asked, I avoided answering, but since we'd agreed to not go on a job for a few weeks I couldn't actually avoid thinking about it, about her, about what could have been but most of all what she'd said. Making the same choices and always ending up alone. All that tied right in with Sam and I trying to do things differently. I was probably being an idiot anyway, she'd had years to hook up with someone else. I'd made my choice two years ago, so she could have moved on. Should have. Better have. I sure as hell didn't want to find out that she'd been single all this time, except that I kind of did. I hate emotional crap.