Chapter 8 – Close Encounters

It had been four days of researching towns, and they had finally managed to create something of a shortlist. Bobby had produced a whiteboard from somewhere, and Dave had spent the last half-hour scribbling furiously on it, shutting out the sounds of the others shuffling behind him and becoming lost inside his own head. This was how he worked best, he had found, being able to write down his ideas and visualise them graphically before him.

Recapping his pen, he stood back and examined the board before him. The tiny red dots on Sam's monitor had encompassed a surprisingly large number of towns, and it had been half a day before he managed to create a system of filtering them into possible, likely and unlikely locations of demonic activity. After that had come more research, more filtering, and it had all come down to this largely incomprehensible board in front of him. His eyes flitted over the different sections, and he felt a small swell of satisfaction. Finally, they were getting somewhere.

Dave jumped as he felt a warm figure move beside him, and his neck whipped around to find Dean standing at his shoulder. "Relax, kid," Dean said with a smirk, before raising his left hand. He was holding a beer, and Dave hesitated for a minute before shrugging and accepting the bottle. One of the things he had come to appreciate about the Winchester brothers – they weren't exactly strict on underage drinking. For the last four nights, when his brain felt woollen after hours of staring a screen, Sam and Dean had taken him on an adventure of discovery, and so he now knew that beer was tasty and made him happy, scotch burned like hell and made him way too tipsy very quickly, and harder spirits were really fun for a while, but made for a bad morning after.

Taking a swig of his beer and ignoring Bobby's long-suffering look from the corner, Dave let out a groan of satisfaction and tilted the neck of the bottle at his board. "So, I think I've narrowed it down a little," he said.

"Thank god," Sam said vehemently, slamming his laptop closed from where he sat at the table. "If I have to read one more paper about how someone tragically overcooked a pie in a fifty-person town in Texas, I might go on a murderous rampage myself." He stood from his chair, stretching his legs, before ambling to the fridge to retrieve two more bottles of beer for himself and Bobby. He circled around to where Dave was standing and rested against the table. "Go ahead, show us what you've got."

Dave considered his board, before pointing out the different sections. "So, the way I see it, we've got six major contenders. These are towns that are situated in areas of high storm activity, that also have a history of weird and wonderful happenings.

"So first up we have Chicago. Now I'm hoping it's a dead end because there's way too many places to hide there, but I couldn't cross it off, unfortunately. There's one area in particular that seems to have an unusually high number of disappearances, trauma, and freak natural deaths. It's on the map, here." He indicated to a print-out of Google maps that he had stuck onto the board with Blu-Tac.

Dean shifted beside him, eyeing the map with a strange expression on his face. "Actually, I don't think that's it," he said cryptically.

Dave stared at him. "What?" he asked, frustrated. "Why?"

Strangely enough, Dean seemed to hesitate for a moment, glancing at Bobby before replying. "Because I know that area. I've been there before. There's a pizza shop there that is a personal favourite of Death's, so dollars to doughnuts he's the cause of all the omens going on."

Dave blinked once, then rubbed his ear with his hand furiously. He turned the words over in his head but, no, they still sounded the same. "Are you seriously trying to tell me that Death, the Horseman of the Apocalypse, is a fan of a pizza shop in Chicago?"

Dean nodded, mouth twitching slightly, and Dave sighed. "Yeah, you're going to have tell me the full story one day, okay?"

Turning back to his board, Dave drew a cross through the Chicago corner and turned to the next section. "The other five options are small towns that you've probably not heard of. They all seem to have a strange number of disappearances, deaths and other happenings in them that made them stand out from the rest. The ones in red are those that have had disappearances, and the ones in blue have had unusual deaths. The numbers next to them indicate their order of likelihood of being Abaddon's location.

"Number one on our list is Halliday, Arizona. There's been a run of recent disappearances in the town that seem to have started around four months ago, which would fit with Abaddon's escape. There's been six disappearances so far, men and women aged thirty to sixty, and they've all gone missing from their own homes with the doors locked. There's definitely something strange going on there."

Dave noted with satisfaction that Sam was nodding in agreement, and Dean was looking intrigued. Bobby, however, seemed distracted, eyes focussed on a different section on a board and a frown on his face. Following his line of sight, Dave figured he was reading the corner on a small town in California.

"Beacon Hills?" Dave asked, raising an eyebrow at Bobby. "What about it?"

It took a few seconds for Bobby to tear his gaze away from the board, and when he met Dave's eyes he didn't answer his question. Instead, he asked, "What have you found out about it?"

Glancing at the board, Dave frowned. "Honestly? I don't think it's a likely contender. I put it up on the board because it's in the right area and there's been a lot of strange things happening in that town, but the timeframe doesn't fit. The deaths and disappearances in that town has skyrocketed over the last two years, not just the last couple of months."

"Humour me," Bobby said, and Dave wracked his brain to collect the details before responding.

"Okay, so for all intents and purposes, Beacon Hills was a normal town until a few years ago: the occasional disaster or tragedy, but otherwise very quiet. Then there was a string of attacks back in 2011, which were initially thought to be animal attacks but ended up being attributed to a serial killer. She was killed by one of her would-be victims before she could be arrested. A few months later, five people in their mid-twenties were all killed by a psychotic teenager within a couple of weeks, and that's where this gets interesting. One serial killer in a small town I could buy, but two? It seems a bit much.

"From then on, it gets even weirder. Over the next year and a half there's so many deaths and disappearances that I gave up on getting through the list of them before I even got to halfway. The list includes not just murders, but no less than two different massacres at the hospital, and a bomb being set off in the police station."

Sam's eyes had widened as Dave spoke, and he exchanged a glance with Dean. "How have we not heard of this place?" he wondered aloud.

"My guess would be that someone's covering it up," Dave answered. "There's nothing about any of this in national newspapers, which is saying something considering we're talking domestic terrorism here. I only found this out by digging through local papers. There's someone powerful out there who's clearly intent on keeping things quiet."

Bobby grunted, and three faces turned to him in confusion. "That'll be the Argents," he explained. Apparently realising that that had not cleared anything up, he continued. "There are some hunters that don't mix well with others, and the Argent family is one of them. They've been in the game for centuries, and they've claimed that part of California as their territory, which is why your Dad never went there, and why I never sent you there."

"A whole family of Gordon Walkers, then?" Dean asked, and Bobby nodded agreement. "Great, sounds fun. Dave's right, though, interesting though this is, it doesn't answer our question of where Abaddon is. Whatever is going on in that town doesn't fit the timeframe."

"Ordinarily I would agree with you," Bobby said. "But I got an interesting call a little while back. A hunter by the name of Chris Argent has been digging around, asking for information about demons and especially about angels. Seems as though he's had a few run-ins with them recently, and if I had to make a bet, I'd say he's calling from a small town in California."

There was a moment of silence, and Dave realised that Dean was positively thrumming with excitement beside him. "Alright then," Dean said brightly, decisively setting down his beer. "Who want to go catch some sun, kill a bitch, and maybe stop by the beach on the way home?"

Sam's face brightened in response, and Bobby rolled his eyes good-naturedly. Dave managed a weak, half-hearted smile, then turned his face away before anyone noticed.

He had been debating leaving Beacon Hills off his list altogether, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it. Still, he'd been hoping that one of the other towns would be a more likely candidate.

He didn't think anyone else had noticed, but there was one point during his research where his breath had caught and his heart started racing, and he stared in shock at his screen as a picture of himself stared back. Then he had determinedly hit the back button, grateful that the headline had left out the person's name, and skipped right past any future missing persons articles.

The opportunity to find out who he had been was at his fingertips, and the thought of it made Dave feel sick to his stomach. So he pressed his lips closed, and pushed the photo to the back of his mind. They had work to do.

The Impala's engine grumbled comfortingly as Dean steadily turned the corner. "There it is," Sam said, and sure enough there was a car parked beside a wooden sign proudly proclaiming Beacon Hills Preserve, and a man leaning against the car was watching their approach, radiating disapproval.

"Oh, this looks like fun," Dean muttered under his breath, before pulling up beside the man and killing his engine. Bobby's truck sidled in on the other side, and Dean paused as he opened the door to give Bobby a chance to climb out and join them in meeting the newcomer.

The man was tall, lean, and younger the Dean had expected. He was frowning in their general direction, and although he appeared relaxed from a distance he was unexpectedly tense on closer inspection. Apparently Bobby was right, these hunters don't work well with others.

Dean hung back, allowing Bobby to lead the conversation.

"Chris Argent?" Bobby questioned, offering a hand.

The man looked at Bobby's hand then at his face, but didn't take it. Instead, his frown deepened. "I take it you're Bobby Singer," he said. Without waiting for a response, he continued. "I told you not to come. We can take care of this ourselves."

"Yeah, I don't think so," Dean said. Okay, so maybe hanging back wasn't his strong point.

Ignoring Bobby's glare, he carried on, figuring the damage was already done. "Look, you work alone. I get it. But Abaddon is a powerful mother and she wants us dead, so we're not going anywhere until we're sure she's in the ground."

"I promise, we'll be out of town the minute she's gone," Sam spoke up, forever the peacemaker. He turned on his puppy dog eyes, and Dean smiled internally. Good old Sam and his puppy dog eyes, they'd never lost yet.

"Not good enough," Argent said and, damn, apparently Dean had underestimated him. "You want proof, fine, I'll send her body your way. But I don't want you here."

Bobby grunted before taking a half step forward. "Look, Chris," he said, giving up on niceties. "I've been staying out of your way long enough. There's some strange shit going down in this town, and for years I've been willing to look the other way. If I wanted to expose whatever it is you're hiding, I promise you I would have done it long ago.

"We're here for Abaddon, and that's all. Now you know as well as I do that demons aren't your strong point, so stop shooting your mouth off about how you're going to kill Abaddon and let us help you. We'll be on our way as soon as she's down for the count."

Argent stared at him for a moment, clearly conflicted. Something seemed to sink in, however, and he sighed, losing the frown. "Alright," Argent said, before snapping his mouth closed, eyes fixed on the road behind them.

There was a faint grumble of an engine behind them and Dean turned, surprised, hand flying to his jeans and closing around his gun. He tensed, eyes on the bend as the noise increased, and finally a car appeared around the corner. Recognising the gold souped-up Mark V, Dean huffed a sigh of relief and relaxed, smiling a little as the atrocity of a car finally came to a stop behind the Impala.

"Bout time you got here," Dean jibed, grinning as the man emerged from the front seat. The trench coat would be unseasonably warm for any human, but Castiel didn't seem bothered as he approached the group, staring at Dean with wide eyes.

"I was in Florida when you called," Castiel said, serious as ever. "I assure you I drove day and night to be here."

"I know you did, Cas," Dean replied gently. Sometimes he forgot that ribbing went right over Cas' head, other times he remembered very well but couldn't resist. Cas' grave approach to social pleasantries was always amusing.

Argent cleared his throat and man, he did not sound happy. "And this is?"

Bobby made the introductions quickly, before Dean could cause any more friction. "Chris, this is Cas. He's a good friend, he's helped us out many times before, and I trust him. I didn't mention him to you earlier because I didn't think he'd make it here."

Argent seemed to consider this for a moment, before letting out a small noise of disapproval, eyeing Bobby unhappily. "Your reputation precedes you, Singer, otherwise I'd be telling you all to pack up and leave right now." Dean narrowed his eyes at him, but Argent continued before he had a chance to protest. "As it happens, you're a friend of a friend and I've been told that you're good people. So I'll help you out, but I want your word that as soon as Abaddon's dead, you're out of here. All of you."

Bobby inclined his head in agreement, and Argent gave them all a once-over, as though on the verge of changing his mind, before seeming to realise that he wasn't going to win this one. He turned back to his car, leaning halfway into the back seat before pulling back with a shotgun in hand. "First thing's first," he said, "I think I know why she's here."