Chapter 6: Dear Agony

I can feel it crawl beneath my skin.

Dear Agony, just let go of me.

Suffer slowly.

Is this the way it's gotta be?

Don't bury me, faceless enemy,

I'm so sorry.

Is this the way it's gotta be?

- Breaking Benjamin

"Oh come on Sammy! We need a night off!" Shelby smiled up at the youngest Winchester. Sam sighed before setting his coffee and phone down on the motel night stand.

"What would we do then?"

"I don't know. Something fun. I can come up with a long list of fun things to do on a Saturday night." Dean chose that moment to step out of the bathroom and into the not-so-shabby motel room.

"Come on little brother, it's just one night. We can get a few drinks, catch a movie, rob a bank, get some hookers..." Dean trailed off. Shelby smiled when she noticed Dean trying to get his brothers attention. While the couple had been talking, Sam had returned his attention to his phone and was scrolling through it.

"I'll take your lack of a 'No' as a 'Yes'. I'll go get dressed." Shelby sprung from the bed she was sitting on and grabbed a pink duffel from the closet. She headed to the bathroom, humming some country tune loudly. She and the boys had been traveling non-stop for the past few weeks. They were long past due for a night out.

"You know, I was paying attention. And I am saying no. I found us a job." Shelby stopped walking and threw her duffel down. Her light humming turned into a deep groan. This wasn't fair. The three couldn't catch a break, between the airplane demon and the creepy mirror girl, Shelby was ready for a weekend of partying with her boys. She shivered, she still was wary every time she passed by her reflection.

"Whyyyyyyyyyy must you torture me Sam?" The brunette huntress whined. Dean smirked at her lovingly while Sam rolled his eyes at her.

"We have to go. It's a friend of mine from school. Her brother's in trouble. Come on, get packed. They're at their parents' place in St. Louis." Sam immediately started packing. Shelby picked up her duffel and stormed outside to the Impala. Why couldn't he just give her and Dean one weekend. That's all she was asking for! After throwing her bag into the trunk, she walked back into the motel room and crossed her hands over her chest.

"Well come on slow pokes. We need to go rescue a damsel in distress." Sam rolled his eyes at her once again and walked past her out the door to the black classic out in the parking lot. Dean smiled and shut the motel door, placing a kiss on her cheek as he passed by.

"Come on Princess, I promise, next weekend we'll ditch Gigantor over there and hit Vegas. Whaddya say?" Shelby giggled and skipped to catch up with Dean. She shoved her hand into his back pocket.

"Don't tease me now! I'll hold you to that!" She squeezed her hand over his perfect tush and ran ahead, calling out shotgun while Sam was throwing his things in the trunk.

-TOL-

"She seems nice Sammy." Dean said suggestively to his brother in the back seat. Shelby gave Dean a look. Even knowing about his feelings towards her, Shelby could still tell that Sam was still hurting from Jess' death. What normal human wouldn't be? Dean needed to back off on trying to get his brother some action.

"Yeah." Was all he could muster. His mind was going over all the information they had gathered. This was something they had never seen before. He didn't like the odds.

"Anyway, way to go. Now we have to dress the part for the cops, Sam. I was hoping for a homeless type theme for this job." Shelby was trying to lighten the mood. It wasn't quite working for Sam. Dean, on the other hand,

"Come on babe, you know I love when you dress all fancy. With those black heels. And those amazing grey pants. What I would-"

"Babe. Cut it out. Please." Shelby eyed Sam in the back. She didn't have feelings for him, not the way Sam would have liked; but she didn't appreciate Dean rubbing their relationship in his younger brother's face. Dean caught on and clenched his jaw. He had been going along with Sam for a while now, and he guessed Sam had gotten the message after Shelby said she had a talk with him, but he was a man... A man who had a beautiful woman at his side. On his other side, his brother, who also had feelings for her. He had a little bit of a right to brag about her with him around. Just as a reminder. Marking his territory.

Shelby punched him in the arm, hard.

"What was that for?"

"You know." Yeah, he knew. How did Shelby know? He mentally took back the thought of marking his territory. Sometimes he swore she could read his mind. Really freaked him out sometimes. Other times…

"Ow. Why'd you pinch me?" Shelby just gave him a look. Yeah, he knew.

-TOL-

The next morning Sam drove. Neither of the two bodies in the back of the Impala were really awake. He stopped behind Zach's house and got out. The two zombies, as he had referred to them earlier, drug themselves out of the car and over to him.

"Why are we up at five thirty in the morning again?" His older brother whined, clearly not happy about his beauty sleep getting interrupted.

"Well, if you detectives had been paying attention at the video tape I played a million times for you, or the paperwork we got from the police chief, you would have noticed a hole in the investigation. The camera caught the perp going in, but not heading out." Shelby seemed to wake up at that. She looked around. She didn't notice anything out of the ordinary for a rich neighborhood alley.

"So they must have gone out the back." She started snooping around the trash cans and privacy fence lines around the alley they were occupying. While his brother and girlfriend were snooping around, Dean leaned casually on Baby's hood, sipping his coffee.

"I don't see anything over here." He mumbled. Shelby rolled her eyes. Dean definitely wasn't a morning person. Sam cleared his throat and nodded his head towards the telephone pole he was standing next to. Shelby followed his nod and walked towards the taller brother.

"Blood."

"Yeah, which means someone or something went this way." Just as Sam finished his sentence, an ambulance flew by them with lights aglow and sirens blasting. Shelby trotted across the one lane alleyway and plopped herself into the front seat. Sam threw Dean the keys to the Impala and hopped in. Dean gulped down the rest of his coffee and tossed it in a nearby dumpster before climbing into the car to trail the ambulance.

About thirty minutes later, Shelby and Sam were back to snooping around the alleyways and in trash cans while Dean mingled with the small group that had gathered around the newest attackers house.

"It's always the nice, quiet types you gotta look out for, huh?" Shelby said, almost to herself. Sam smiled tightly. She and Dean shared the same sense of humor. Which was a morbid one, by the way. When Sam was about ten, he had made friends with a stray cat that hung around the motel they were staying at. He had been feeding it leftover scraps, so it had decided to bring him a present… in the form of a dead mouse. He had yelled just loud enough to grab Shelby and Dean's attention. He wasn't fast enough to dispose of it before Shelby grabbed it by its tail and chased him around with it dangling in front of her, Dean laughing and jogging behind her. Sam shivered; he still hadn't forgiven her for that.

"Maybe, I just don't get it. I mean, Zach would never do what he's been accused of to anyone. From what that jogger said, neither would this guy. But it's weird how similar both cases are." Sam said, digging in a trash can. He was getting fed up with the dead ends. This wasn't normal textbook for them, and it worried him immensely.

"Yeah, same town, just a week apart. It is pretty funky." Shelby replied, helping Sam dig through the trash. Dean walked up to his companions. He cleared his throat. Shelby looked up out of the trash can. Sam clenched his jaw and stood upright, staring at his brother.

"So, heard from the first officer on scene who talked to this guy, Alex, he said that he was driving home from a conference when the wife was being attacked. And he saw himself in the house, knife in hand." Sam looked puzzled. Shelby sighed loudly and threw up her hands in defeat.

"So he was two places at once, just like Zach." Shelby said exasperatedly. She wanted a drink. She thought for a minute before Sam spoke up.

"Well, whatever it is we need to mark it down as a flying creature. Shelby and I found a trail from the back of the house through the alley. We lost it here. Just disappeared." Dean looked at Shelby, who was shuffling her feet, probably still deep in thought. She was so cute when she did that. Stop it, Dean. People are dying.

"Maybe it's some kind of shapeshifter." Shelby hated to think about that. It brought back terrible memories. Dean seemed to understand, but he didn't say anything. If it was, he wasn't looking forward to this hunt.

"What like a werewolf, only like, a were-bird?" Sam quipped back. How could a shapeshifter fly? The only ones he'd read about were human to wolf shifters. Not any other animals. His dad had once mentioned the skin-walker, but as far as he knew, they were only legends. Dean and Shelby had never mentioned killing any before.

"No, skin-walker. And they didn't go up, they went down. Look." Shelby pointed down to the manhole cover Dean was standing on.

The trio surrounded the man hole cover. Shelby stepped back a few feet to allow the boys better access the lift the heavy metal slab out of the way so they could head down.

"Hey, we better get some back up. My mom and dad came onto skin-walker one time. Silver to the heart is the most effective way to off the fuckers." Shelby said quietly. She was so pissed that this thing had gotten away with beating and killing two women already. She was not about to let him make it to a third. The boys nodded and ran to the Impala to grab some extra ammo and some silver knives. Shelby stayed where she was to try and develope some sort of plan to attack this thing from all sides.

After heading down the ladder and walking for about an hour, the three came up on a huge pile of putrid smelling, slimy, skin colored gunk. Shelby had to take a few deep breaths before she could talk. By the looks of it, Sam and Dean did too.

"Well, I'd say we're close." Dean, always the one to point out the obvious. Shelby turned around to face the boys and rolled her eyes.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious." Shelby had been in a bad mood since the trio had figured out what they had been hunting, but he was trying to lighten her mood just a bit. Dean smirked for a split second before shining his flashlight behind Shelby and yelling. Sam lunged forward trying to pull her out of the way.

"Watch out!" Dean screamed. It was too late. The skin-walker slammed his fist into the side of Shelby's head, effectively knocking her into a big pipe running along side the wall. She slumped down to the ground. Sam caught her. Dean shot at the monster, but missed. He pulled her out of Sam's arms roughly and moved her hair out of the way. Her eye was already swelling up and she had a huge bruise forming on her cheek. The side of her head where she hit the pipe had a nice sized gash on it that was slowly oozing dark blood.

"Shelby, baby are you okay?" Dean asked quickly, Sam's eyes ran back and forth between the way the skin-walker went and Shelby. She scrambled rather messily out of Dean's arms and waved her hands in the air.

"I'm fine!" She yelled.

"Go get the son of a bitch!" Sam stood along with Dean. Dean looked at Shelby hard.

"Are you sure you're okay? You got hit hard."

"Dean, damn it, if you don't take your brother and follow that bastard, another woman is going to die and another innocent man will be charged. If you don't leave now I'm grounding you from co-ed showers. Now, GO!" Dean didn't have to be told twice. She was cracking jokes, she would be fine. He kissed her non-bruised cheek.

"Okay, call us when you get back to the motel."

"Go Dean!" Sam grabbed Dean's arm and the brothers turned and ran down the sewer, tracking the skin-walker.

-TOL-

Shelby had finally made her way back to the motel room. She didn't want to take Dean's car back because of all the extra ammo in it. She had her .9 mil if she needed it. Taking said gun out of her holster and laying on the kitchenette counter, Shelby began undressing. She was ready for a shower; the boys wouldn't be back until they found another clue or found the monster. Shelby was hoping for the latter. She hoped he went down just as gruesomely as the victims did. Getting a bad feeling, Shelby called Dean's phone. No answer. Maybe they had found the thing and were dealing with it…

After her shower, Shelby walked out of the bathroom in her towel. No sign of the boys yet. It had been at least an hour since she split up with them. She pulled on her panties and bra, then some sleeping shorts. She spotted her her phone sitting on the nightstand. No new alerts. She grabbed it and started dialing Dean's number again. Just as she was about to hit talk, Dean walked in, holding his ringing phone up.

"Hey!" Shelby ran over to him and jumped in his arms, not caring she was only in shorts and a bra.

"I've been worried sick about you guys. Wait, where's Sam?" She asked, concerned. Dean pulled back and shrugged.

"Well, after we took care of everything, we hit up the local pub, Sam ended up finding some lucky lady to go home with tonight. So we have the room all to ourselves. Shelby nodded suspiciously towards Dean. That was weird. Sam was in no condition to be going home with someone. At least from what she could tell from how he's been acting lately. Something wasn't right. If they had taken out the skin-walker, Dean should have smelled like it.

"Well, lucky us." Shelby said as she pulled on her tank top. She was suddenly feeling way too exposed. Dean eyed her appreciatively before stepping close to her again. He leaned in and landed his lips onto Shelby's. Shelby waited a split second before pushing herself off of the monster and turning to grab her .9 mil off of the counter. It had the silver bullets in it. She grabbed it and turned around just in time to shoot. She didn't anticipate the Skin-walker to be as fast as he was. If he had been a few feet further away, she would have gotten him right in the ticker. As it was, the bullet hit him in the left shoulder. It limited him but didn't stop him.

Last thing Shelby remembered was Dean's smiling face down at her before he punched her in the face again, she flew into the counter and dropped her gun. Everything went black.

A few minutes later Shelby opened her swollen eyes. She tried to move but couldn't. She was tied to a damn chair. Not with rope or handcuffs, two things she could have easily escaped from. Zip ties. They had already cut deep into her wrists and ankles. The blood was dripping languidly down the undersides of her wrist and trailing down the cracked, wooden arms rests of the chair. She tried turning her head but was disappointed when it strained her muscles. She heard dark laughing coming from the bed.

"Well, well, well. I was waiting for you to wake up. I've had my eye on you. You're very pretty. Not as much as my last victim, money-grabbing whore she was. You're beauty is much more muted. I'll have fun just the same." Shelby glared at him. Her mind searching for ways to escape. When would the boys be back?!

"Now, I took the liberty of looking through some of your bags while you slept. You have some very naughty things in here." Shelby's mind reeled at which bag he was talking about. The pervert. He pulled out a pair of chopsticks from her weapon bag. She slightly relaxed, not her undergarment bag. She steeled herself again when she remembered how sharp those chop sticks were. He pulled out a few more items from her bag, including pliers, knives, and a hammer. She gulped.

Agony. That was all Shelby felt. Not fear, no. She was long past fearing; she knew it was coming. No denying that. The skin-walker took his time with Shelby. He was getting frustrated when she hadn't made a sound. He smacked her across the face again. Blood splattered on the ground next to her torn tank top.

"Come on darlin' I need just a peep outta you. I'm sure it sounds just wonderful coming out of that mouth of yours." Shelby couldn't see through her swollen eyes. To tell the truth, her lips were so swollen she wasn't sure she could talk if she wanted to. The Dean-look-alike grabbed a knife from his pile. Shelby started to let the tears drip from her eyes when she heard him start to sharpen it. He traced the knife down her collarbone, in-between her breasts, snapping her bra, before he went down to the top of her naval. A thin trail of blood started seeping out, spreading over her bruised upper torso. It burned so bad. Her whole body did. He had made sure to leave bruises over any exposed skin. She had scratches along her arms, and swelling bite marks along her neck and collarbone.

She tried so hard not to scream when the imposter licked up her neck to her ear. She nearly knocked herself over when he grabbed her stud in his mouth and yanked away from her ear as hard as he could. It tore her earring out with a sickening sound. Her neck was warmed once again by the blood seeping down her neck. He spit the silver horseshoe stud out and laughed at her silent tears. He'd never had a woman last this long before. Usually he'd have finished them off, but this bitch was too frustrating. It had been three and a half hours since he had started and not a peep out of her. His patience was wearing thin.

She was so weak, she couldn't hold her head up any longer. She tried to be brave, but she had lost so much blood in so little time. No one was coming for her. She had not been expecting to go out like this. She had barely lived her life. Thoughts of Dean popped up in her mind. Fond memories of when they were kids; still in the life but so much more innocent at the same time. She kept going through her life with Dean, she started crying harder. Dean wasn't here, not her Dean. Evil-Dean was, though. The longer she tried to keep the good memories of him in front of her blacked out eyes, the harder it got. All she could see now was blood-covered Dean, torturing her with her own tools. Those tools were meant for monsters. Monsters like this Dean.

This monster was dragging it out so long. She begged silently for him to end her. This is it. She thought. This was how her short life was going to end. So be it. Let it come. I will welcome death like an old friend.

She took all the energy she had left and screamed. Not the warrior scream she normally carried with her. The sound that came out her was all her pain. Gut-wrenching, blood-curdling, agonizing horror movie scream. She didn't have anything left to fight with. The skin-walker jumped back a bit from cutting her shorts off when she screamed. He held his hands to his ears. Before he could think, the door broke open.

-TOL-

A few hours later, Sam met up with Dean in town. They gave up. They met up with the monster once, a short scuffle had landed both men knocked out momentarily.. The skin-walker's trail had died shortly after that.

"Well, let's head back to the hotel. Shelby hasn't called yet. I don't want her to fall asleep in case she has a concussion." Dean suggested. He reached in his front pocket for his cell phone. Cursing loudly he reached into his other pockets. Sam looked at him questioningly. Dean cursed louder this time.

"Son of a bitch, I lost my damn cell phone." Dean opened the door to the Impala and jumped in; starting it while Sam buckled up. He was already anxious to get back to Shelby. She had said she'd be fine but he knew she was shaken up. She doesn't take being put down in a fight well. Now come to find out he lost his phone. Hell, she had probably called him a thousand times by now.

Dean turned the Impala down the street where the hotel was and took in a sharp breath when he saw an ambulance speeding past them. Sam grabbed his arm when they pulled into the parking lot. Their hotel room door was busted open and about fifteen cops were mulling around. One officer was zipping up a body bag. Dean's stomach dropped. His blood ran loud in his ears. He only had one thing on his mind.

"Wait, Dean. We need to chill out and come up with a plan first. This has Shapeshifter written all over it. He could have been impersonating one of us and got to Shelby." Sam's voice cracked when he spoke her name. He didn't want to think about that.

"My money is on you. So let me go check it out and see what happened." Dean clenched his jaw and swung into a parking space in the back of the parking lot. He was fuming. He wanted nothing more than to go check that black bag. It better not have her in it. He would go ballistic.

A few minutes later Sam hopped back into the car and breathed out. Dean could have taken it two ways. He took it that only way his hunter mind would let him.

"No." Was all he could muster up. He didn't even tell her he loved her before they split up. How could he do that?! Sam breathed out.

"It was the shifter. I was right, he was posing as you. From the looks of it, Shelby noticed. She got him in the shoulder. Another two inches down and she would have had him. Dean, I need to go to the county hospital." Dean started the car and backed out, burning rubber out of the parking lot. Sam sighed.

"Dean, you have to lay low. The local cops have your face plastered all over the town as the murderer. If someone in the hospital sees you, a dead man walking around, I don't know what would happen." Dean said nothing while he sped down the highway. He clenched and unclenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth were going to crack. Twelve minutes into what would normally be a forty minute drive, the Impala pulled into the Emergency Room parking lot. Dean shut the car off and looked at his baby brother.

"Sammy, I can't stay away from her. She needs me. If she dies in there, I don't know what I'd..." A tear leaked out of Dean's emerald eyes. He stared forward, not comfortable with his little brother seeing how much this was breaking him.

"Dean, if you get yourself caught, you can't be there for her when she gets out. Let things simmer down a bit and we'll play it by ear. I'll call you with an update. We aren't too far from Bobby's. Go hang out there until I give you a call." Dean sighed. He knew Sam was right. He wouldn't be any good to Shelby in prison. It would be hard to get out of that one.

Sam patted Dean's shoulder before he got out of the Impala. He took a deep breath and walked into the hospital. He shivered. He didn't like hospitals. The smells, the... people. He walked up to the reception desk and cleared his throat. The older woman chewing gum and doing last weeks crossword puzzle looked up at him through her thick bifocals.

"Can I help you?" Sam held back another shiver. Her voice was nasally and annoying.

"Yes, I'm here to see a patient. She was brought in less than an hour ago. A Jane Doe. She was involved in an attempted homicide out at the Starlight Motel." The woman looked through her folders laying messily on her desk. She opened the one labeled POLICE OFFICIAL on it. She read through it for a second and threw it back down on her desk. Sam rolled his eyes. She went back to her crossword puzzle and talked lazily to the man in front of her.

"Police only." Sam sighed and grabbed his fake FBI badge out of his inner jacket pocket. She took a glance at it and buzzed him through. Sam jogged down the hallway, passing by trauma victims, some were screaming, some were crying. He came to the last door on the left. There was an overweight cop sitting down outside the door. Sam flashed his I.D. and the cop let him through.

"Oh, Shelby."

-TOL-

I actually had a lot more planned for this chapter when I originally posted it, but decided to cut it in half, then when I revamped it, I added so much more. Oh well. Reviews are my fuel for the writing fire. Thanks minions. Gooseygirl