AN: Here we go again!
Speaking of again, we're on about our fifth round of winter here, but I have hope that some day, it will actually be spring!
Janice, who lives where there was also gross weather recently, nonetheless powered through to do her great beta work.
* * *
Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.
Dean headed grimly into the woods. It wasn't even close to the first time he'd walked into a fire for Sam. Some nasty-ass artifact with delusions of grandeur thought it could take on the Winchesters? It was about to learn, as so many others had, what a truly terrible idea that was.
Ace bounded ahead of Dean, almost as eager as he was. Though he hated to pause, Dean stopped and called the dog back. "Hang on, Ace," he told the canine, who was dancing with impatience. "I can't help you with the smoke at all, but we have to do something to protect your paws." He pulled a knife, swearing when something sharp in his pocket drew blood. He ignored it and was about to cut strips off his jacket, which was ruined anyway, when Ace looked him straight in the eyes. He stepped deliberately down on a glowing ember, stayed there for a moment, then lifted his foot for inspection.
The pad was unharmed, and Dean could've sworn that Ace was looking at him with a combination of smugness and can we get on with it now? "Fine," he muttered. "I'm thinking this direction. What do you think?" Shit, when had he started asking a dog, even one with fireproof paws, for advice? Sam was definitely rubbing off on him.
Dean's intuition was directing him south by southeast, which was counterintuitive, since the largest section of woods lay to his west. But the dog clearly agreed, because he ran ahead in the same direction Dean was thinking.
There was still enough fire that Dean didn't need his flashlight to see, though the smoke didn't help anything. He didn't dare touch any of the trees because even the ones that didn't look burned out or have obvious active flames were probably hot enough to burn. The ground was almost as hazardous, with small geysers of smoke erupting from brush piles and grassy tussocks without rhyme or reason.
"Now all we need are lightning sand and rodents of usual size," Dean muttered when a branch near his head unexpectedly went from ember to flame. He descended into a small gully and winced when he startled a warren of rabbits into running. He hoped he wasn't sending them into worse fire. Ace, proving he was still a dog, took two steps after them. But then he froze in place, nose high in the air, before Dean could yell at him to stop.
Then Dean smelled it too. Riding on the heavy wood smoke was a scent he knew all too well: burning flesh. Not just a rabbit, either. With a grimace, he followed Ace toward it.
A good 200 feet on, they found the source of the stench when Dean spotted a human hand not big enough to belong to Sam. He pushed brush aside and found the remains of Leonard Peterson, the squirrel-hater. His legs had mostly burned up, but the rest of him was intact enough for Dean to see that he had the drawn, sunken-in look like victims of boo hags and succubi and the like. Something had pulled out his life force.
With a sigh, Dean sprinkled salt over the corpse and laid the brush back over it to encourage it to burn. Leonard might have been the author of some of his own problems, and he might have been kind of a douche, but he didn't deserve this. Dean couldn't save him, but he could at least keep him from becoming a ghost like the one construction guy. "Sorry, man," he said, and turned back in the original direction he'd been headed.
Ace ranged on ahead, seemingly unbothered by the smoke that was making Dean's eyes water constantly now. Dean considered using an air tank and decided to wait. It was likely to get worse, and he had no idea how far he'd have to go. Or what condition he would find Sam in. He needed to hold off as long as he safely could.
The woods got both thicker and more burned, though even here the fire was only fitful now. There was no wind to clear the lingering smoke, just a barely-there breeze occasionally, meaning the smoke was settling in the lowest areas. Higher up, Dean could breathe easier and see a little better. He was debating going around a low depression which was probably a pond in the spring when Ace whined and took off due south.
Dean's normally trusty gut was divided on what to do. On one hand, he was almost positive that Sam was still east of him. On the other, Ace had been an asset this entire hunt, leading them to a ghost, the ungulus, to Peterson's body, and of course, to the place where Sam had been taken. "You better bat 1000, Ace," Dean grumbled, but followed.
It wasn't an easy descent, and Dean quickly lost sight of Ace. "Hey!" he called. "Where are you?" Looking around, he nearly tripped over a body that had been there a while and was too decayed to be easily identified. A disembodied bark came out of the smoke as Dean quickly memorized the clothing this second corpse was wearing, as it might help him figure out who the poor guy was later.
Ace barked again, closer this time, and came back into sight. He barked sharply at Dean and gestured with his head impatiently. Though there wasn't much about the situation that could be even remotely construed as funny, Dean simply had to ask, "What is it, Lassie? Sammy fall down the well?"
He regretted his ill-timed levity when Ace led him to yet another body. Dean's heart gave a painful leap at the what ifs. This was followed by a surge of relief – and on its heels, guilt for that relief – that this body was a woman, so clearly not Sam.
Dean crouched and turned her over and realized two things: one, it was Allie Curtis, and two, her position had hidden another body beneath hers, a smaller one. He gave the young woman a silent apology that he hadn't been able to save her, then turned to identify the smaller girl.
Wait. The girl was Hannah Carpenter, and she was breathing.
"Hannah? Hannah, can you hear me?" he half asked, half demanded, finding the pulse in her wrist. It wasn't strong, but it was steady. A quick glance revealed that she had no obvious burns, thanks to the protection of body that had been atop her.
Dark brown eyes blinked glassily up at Dean after he patted Hannah's cheek a few times. He smiled. "Hey, Hannah. You're gonna be okay," he promised, determined to make it true.
"'S Noah okay?" she croaked weakly. "I took...I took his deal so he could get away."
"I don't know where Noah is right now," Dean said honestly. "We need to get you to safety, then figure that out."
Hannah shook her head 'no,' but Dean nodded. "Yeah, that's how it's gotta be. I'm getting you out of here."
But how? Dean had to find Sam sooner rather than later, but he couldn't leave a child in the middle of a forest fire. Not that taking her deeper into it to face the supernatural entity at ground zero was a better option. What to do? Set off a flare and hope Grant or another firefighter came, risking putting them in the line of fire? Send Ace for help and sit on his hands, again putting someone else in danger? Or walk in the wrong direction away from Sam to carry her out and hope he still made it to his brother before he was yet another sizzling corpse?
As he thought it through, Dean moved to block Hannah's view of Allie, but she seemed to realize what he was doing.
"She protected me," Hannah coughed out. "Allie. She was too weak to walk, but she tried to take the deal away from me. Then she talked to me to distract me and covered me up from the fire and told me that I should stay under her even after…" She coughed again and Dean couldn't let her struggle.
He disregarded Grant's directions and prepared the first oxygen tank. "I'm gonna put this on you so you can breathe better," he told the girl. "Have you seen anyone else around here? Tall guy with brown hair? Or whatever it is that's hurting people?"
Hannah shook her head again at the first question, but pointed east at the second. She sat up, leaned against Ace's side, and pulled the mask off. "I wanna go with you to find Noah."
"Put that back on," Dean said, though he noticed the smoke was lessening considerably. He wanted to argue with her. He should argue with her, but he didn't have it in him to walk in the opposite direction and leave Sam for any longer than he had to. And, barring leaving the woods entirely, the safest place for Hannah to be was with him. As soon as he got into a fight, he'd stash her until he'd finished ganking the artifact that Foster had referenced. Maybe the dog could help keep an eye on her.
Besides, he didn't have it in him to deny the preteen when she was clearly devoted to Noah. "Do you think you can ride on my back?" He wasn't positive she had the strength to hang onto him, but it would leave his hands a lot more available than any other options.
Hannah hesitated, then suddenly took a deep breath and much of the stress went out of her posture. "It's gone!" she said. "The – the deal that was holding me is gone!" She put a hand on her sternum as if she could physically feel the absence of the onus.
Dean believed her. She already looked healthier, he thought. But he couldn't help wondering how Sam had gotten Hannah's deal revoked, because there was no doubt in his mind that it was his brother's handiwork...or that he'd be willing to take a stranger's burden on himself somehow.
"Let's go find some missing little brothers," Dean said. He helped the girl to her feet, impressed at the resilience she was showing.
With only one false start, they managed to get Hannah onto Dean's back and holding on without strangling him. She readily promised – twice – to obey him without question or hesitation. Though she was light, Dean's bad leg protested the extra weight. The smoke had lessened considerably, but Dean's lungs were soon burning anyway, reminding him that they'd taken a significant beating lately. He trudged on.
He was fighting through a patch of unburned underbrush when the ground beneath him began to vibrate. Dean went down to his knees, and Hannah gave a scared little shriek in his ear. Dean reached back as he fell to try to make sure she kept her perch, but the tremble in the ground abruptly ramped up to full-on shaking, and he ended up face down on a bunch of ferns. Hannah tumbled off to one side as the rumbling grew into a roar. The ground bucked like a restless bull. The trees above them were actually swaying, so Dean hooked Hannah and pulled her under his body. He had the very depressing thought that it would really suck for the girl to find herself underneath yet another corpse.
But before anything more than a small stick or two fell on them, everything settled back down again and went quiet. Dean didn't move for another couple moments, until Ace nudged his cheek with a wet nose. Then he rolled away from the girl, grimacing at the nasty twinge his bad leg made. She sniffed and he realized that she was shaking and quietly crying.
"You hurt?" he asked gently, keeping his own pain out of his voice.
"No. Was that an earthquake?" she asked with a wobbly voice. "Is it going to do that again?"
Both were excellent questions, neither of which Dean had answers to. A high-pitched cry sounded before he could answer. Ace took off like a shot in that direction.
"Noah!" Hannah exclaimed, trying to scramble to her feet. "That's Noah!"
"Hold on," Dean warned. There were way too many things that lured people in by sounding like a child in trouble or like someone they knew. He grit his teeth and stood up, helping Hannah with one hand and drawing his 1911 with the other.
A large shadow passed overhead, whirled, and headed back to the east. As it touched Dean's skin, it felt like being touched by dry ice. He swore. "It's a sharpa. Get on my back now. If it comes back, try not to let it touch you."
"What is that? I could only see the shadow." Hannah's voice had gone up in pitch. "What if it hurts Noah? How –"
"It is the shadow," Dean explained hurriedly. "C'mon, get up. If Noah is out there, we've got to get to him before it does."
The girl finally caught on to his urgency and climbed back onto his back.
The way was even harder now, with trees toppled and some parts of the ground just loose dirt where roots had been pulled up. Dean's leg moved from an ache to a steady throb, but another sob ahead spurred him to move faster. He saw the sharpa before he saw the boy. It was diving like any raptor, except this one was the size of an ostrich and could pass right through the trees in its way.
Dean shot without hesitation, easily leading it and hitting it with all four of the shots he released. The demonic avian wailed and pinwheeled toward him. Dean knew the consecrated iron bullets would kill it, but only if he could hit it in the head. If it got its talons on him, it could freeze him to death in minutes.
He was all too familiar with the creatures and with what attracted them. Like the ungulus, sharpas loved to hang around anywhere Lucifer was or had been. The first time he'd seen them was hovering over Carthage, Missouri, like reaper's kites. They'd haunted Detroit, too. Since then, the Winchesters had occasionally run into the things one at a time in places where the devil had spent some time.
The implications of all of that sucked worse than spending the night in the ER with salmonella instead of getting lucky with Carla Jacobsen, and Dean would know.
He lined up the kill shot, but Hannah ducked her head and started to slide off his back, throwing his aim off. His shot went wide of the mark and only winged the creature (literally). It veered slightly and Dean only had time to twist his body the other direction, not quite enough to get completely out of its path.
A line of cold so sharp it momentarily felt hot seared his chest and he staggered back, holding onto Hannah with his left arm and somehow kept his feet. Now Dean was pissed.
The infernal creature performed an impossible spin, and it must have been ticked off too, because it came straight back at them instead of a sharpa's normal maneuver of rising again so it could dive for the attack. Dean turned his body and extended his right arm so Hannah was as shielded as she could be and fired three more shots.
Bang! The creature faltered but didn't stop its charge.
Bang! The entire body shuddered, but its momentum kept it rushing toward them.
Bang! Just before impact, the shadow suddenly disintegrated, washing over them like an arctic wind. In the heat of the waning fire, the sensation was relieving for more than one reason. "Take that, birdzilla," he taunted.
Ace barked warningly up ahead and Dean moved that way, only stopping to shoot another, smaller sharpa. One shot, gone.
Dean pushed aside a blackened bush and saw Ace standing guard over a small boy.
"Noah!" cried Hannah, sliding off Dean's back.
"Hannah!" the boy called back, then Hannah was on her knees and they were hugging. Dean gave Ace a nod of acknowledgment. He'd found the child, after all.
After giving them a moment, Dean carefully untied the bandanna from Noah's face so he could get a better look at him. He froze for one bare second at the sight of what he was holding. It was Sam's bandanna. There was no mistaking it; it had been washed so many times that it was closer to pink than red, and there was still a curved Sharpie line left from a phallic doodle Dean had made on it many, many years earlier.
Recalling himself, Dean interrupted the tearful reunion to ask, "Noah, are you hurt?"
"Only from coughing, but it's a lot better now," Noah said, sniffing and manfully trying to stop his tears. He looked dirty, tired, and scared, but there was nothing obviously wrong with him.
"Good. Good. I'm gonna get you and your sister home and safe," Dean promised. "Do you...have you seen a real tall guy with brown hair?"
"Sam? He saved me from the angry thing," Noah answered, still clutching Hannah, who was holding him just as hard. "Oh, when he told me to run, he gave me a message for you!"
Dean's heartbeat sped up. Sam was – or at least, had been – here, in the woods, and if not safe, at least coherent. "What did he say?" he asked as patiently as he could manage.
"To tell you it's like, uh, War – en - town. Yes, Warrentown. And, oh." Noah's face fell. "I can't remember the rest. I'm sorry."
"It's okay. Warrentown. That was really important. You did great. You might even remember the rest pretty soon," Dean encouraged though inside he was searching his mind frantically. Warrentown. It sounded familiar, but he was having a hard time placing it. He wondered what else Sam had said to the kid and what condition he was in.
Still thinking hard, Dean asked the kids, "Can you two walk?" It turned out Noah could, but Hannah was too weak. She was embarrassed about it, so Dean didn't make a big deal of getting her onto his back again.
If he'd had any doubts that they were going the right way, they were allayed about a hundred feet away. There, the ground suddenly rose up about seven feet, like a giant hand had simply lifted one section of the forest up higher than the rest. Roots stuck out of the bare dirt wall and trees were toppled willy-nilly around the border of the raised section.
Out of the blue, Dean remembered Bobby's voice crackling over speakerphone a whole lot of years ago, "Where the hell is Warrentown?"
It turned out that Warrentown was a rural burg in far western Oregon with a big problem. For reasons even John Winchester couldn't explain, a kraken, shrunken by extreme age, had climbed its wrinkly, milk-white self out of the ocean, dragged itself just shy of five miles inland, hidden in an empty mineshaft, and played trapdoor spider with anything that wandered by that it deemed an appropriate meal.
Ancient and desiccated, it was still the size of a microbus and a formidable challenge for any Hunter. And the only known way to kill a kraken was massive trauma to the tune of blasting it apart somehow. (Luckily, they rarely came anywhere close enough to the surface to be the slightest threat to human beings.)
Sam was old enough to help research but too young to come along, and John and Dean knew better than to enter the creature's lair and they couldn't get it to come out. The situation got to the point where John actually reached out for help. Nobody was available to head to the Pacific Northwest for backup, but everyone had ideas.
Jefferson suggested waiting it out and keeping people away. Unfortunately, they didn't know if that would take weeks, months, or even years.
Caleb offered to track down an RPG (which Dean thought was a fabulous idea, but Dad did not).
It was, naturally, Bobby who offered something helpful. "Them critters get their power from the ocean, so this one's like a nuclear power plant that's outta uranium," he'd said. "Eatin' people and animals helps, a little, but…"
Even at the age of 11, Sam had gotten it first. "But it's like trying to find more power but only has...some batteries, not near enough power. It can't keep it up."
"That's right, boy. It can't keep it up. You gotta make it use up what power it's got left, and it'll be a walk in the park to gank."
Dean nodded to himself. "You two need to stay here and wait for me," he said, helping Hannah down and showing both kids a small hollow where they could be relatively out of sight. He gave the girl both air tanks. "You know how to work these, in case you need them, right?"
Hannah nodded a bit hesitantly, so he quickly showed her again. Then he gave her his phone. "If, uh, I don't come back, I want you to call Grant – he's a firefighter, and he will come and get you. Then call the person listed in here as 'Jodes' and tell her everything." He gave them a quick smile. "But I'm sure I'll be back soon." Hannah nodded again, this time somberly, totally understanding what he was saying.
Noah climbed in Hannah's lap, but the 12-year-old looked at Dean steadily. "What are you gonna do?"
Dean pulled out the two items he needed and weighed them in his hands. "Something really, really stupid."
* * *
AN: When Dean talks about lightning sand and rodents of unusual side, he's referencing The Princess Bride, which is both a book by William Goldman and a 1987 movie. In both, there is a place called the fire swamp, which has the two hazards Dean mentioned and fire spurts. I looked up videos of forest fires, and truly embers can be trapped under a tree's bark and suddenly ignite.
The shadow birds are just my own creation. The word sharpa means shadow or phantom in Uzbek, according to trusty Google.
Warrentown isn't a real place. I understand that Oregon does actually exist, though I've never been there.
Colby's girl: I can't tell you how many time I re-read your comment and laughed all over again! Yes, indeed, I may have some lingering resentment toward weeds. LOL. Thank you do much for the compliment too.
Spnlady: Then I go and make you wait through another chapter that doesn't tell you what's happening with Sam! I'm so happy that you could "feel" the story. Thank you for letting me know.
Lilyfear: Oh my goodness, thank you so much! I absolutely agree about Sam. I promise we'll get more Sam next chapter.
Kathy: Thank you...you're always so sweet! I'll give you more brave, confident Sam soon. I knew you'd like the flashback! Another one here for you.
sylvia37: Forgive me! I promise plenty of schmoop later to make up for all the meanness.
Long Live BRUCAS: The good news is Dean is almost to Sam. And, well, there's still a lot of bad news. LOL. Thanks for sticking with me!
muffinroo: If it helps, Dean is also about to make a potentially Really Bad Choice. Hehe. Thank you, as always, for being so nice.