Sam scanned the room with sleepy eyes, only to get a sense of his whereabouts in the dark. He paused. He couldn't be sure when he had fallen asleep or when he had woken up, but it was a chill down his spine and feeling that something was amiss that woke him. Everything seemed normal in the room though. Dean and Mae were both sleeping, her arm still safely cuffed to the headboard and Dean curved protectively around her. The thought passed through his mind that it was odd how his brother was so eager to deny that he needed Mae but was unwilling to do what he needed to do to really be free of her. One day, Dean would admit to himself that he didn't really want a life of disconnection. But Sam didn't think much about that in his barely awake state. His feet shuffled with the heaviness, on autopilot.
He fought full wakefulness. Had he not, perhaps he would have listened to that initial sense of uneasiness. Perhaps he would have noticed the figure of the woman before she was a flicker in the corner of his eye. But she was there, in front of him. Mae. He didn't have much time to think as her eyes caught his. It was too dark to make out much of the woman except for her presence and her eyes. He knew he couldn't see her eyes clearly in the dark. He could feel them, locking with his. It was intense and he couldn't move from her gaze.
No, he was still able to move, he realized as he opened his mouth to speak until she touched him. "Shhhh," she pressed her fingers against his lips. "help."
He thought, wonder, if her voice was strained, odd. Sam wasn't sure what was wrong with it exactly, what was wrong with her. Her hand moved from his mouth to cup his cheek and then he did feel his body stiffen, against his will. Then it felt like his whole mind softened. There was something quite appealing about her, alluring. A part of his brain screamed at him to do something, anything, to stop her. Everything else in him however over road that. He wanted to give in. He didn't even know what he was giving into but he that's what he wanted. She smelled earthy and her breath was oddly warm against his lips when her mouth touched his. Somewhere in the distance of his mind, he thought he should push her away or tell her to stop or even call out for help. Instead, he relished the way her lips parted his. Until her tongue pressed forward. His body froze now at the foreign intrusion.
From the outside, it might have looked like a first kiss, hesitant and tender. But she wasn't kissing him as some kind of large, long appendage entered his mouth. He could feel his energy sap and realized that it was the creature or whatever had control over Mae siphoning his life force, not unlike the striga he and his brother hand encountered. Once again, he fought against her with all of the mental force he could muster until whatever she was doing pushed him into the dark of unconsciousness.
He couldn't call out. His brother was only feet from him, and he was powerless to get Dean's attention, powerless to do anything but let this happen. And then, she stopped. He didn't know but he remembered that the sensation stopped before everything went fuzzy and black.
Dean couldn't pinpoint what had awakened him, but he was wide awake the second his eyes had opened. Despite being awake, he tried to assess what was going on without indicating he had waken up. He assessed what was going on. Mae was still sound asleep next to him, the room was dark but as he shifted, trying to pretend he was only shifting in his sleep, the bed creaked. After the creak, everything froze. And then he heard a thump, followed by something that sounded like footfalls but of something with an hesitant gait.
He threw caution to the wind, knowing that any advantage surprise might have given him was gone his hand flew to turn on the light and he caught the flash of...something opening the door and running into the night. His eyes scanned the room, assessing and gathering as much intel as he could as he bolted from the bed. The thump, he surmised, had been his brother, who was now crumpled on the carpet, twitching slightly.
"Damnit! Sam!" Dean slapped his brother's cheek, trying to jar him awake. it took a few more tries but he did come to, incredibly groggy.
"Wha...?" Sam blinked, a bit discordantly. a headache lingered on the edges of his consciousness, and he felt like he'd been hit by a tractor trailer. Again. His brother stood over him.
"Sammy, what the hell happened?"
Sam didn't know, not exactly. He had a vague recollection of waking up and then...something. Something was in the room with them, something attacked him, but he didn't know what or why. "What happened?" He asked, rubbing his eyes.
"You tell me, pal. You're the one waking up on the floor."
"Yeah. I... Mae?"
Dean's eyes flicked for a moment from Sam to Mae. She was still asleep in the bed, undisturbed by the commotion. He reached up and shook her foot firmly to wake her. "Red, stay here and check on Sammy."
He didn't check back on her, having lost more than enough time following the trail of whatever he saw. He grabbed a gun and the room key as he followed in pursuit. In the parking lot, he cursed to himself because his worst instincts rather than training had taken over. The night was quiet, a little slight chill in the air, but that could have been his bare feet and lack of warmer clothing than his underwear and a t-shirt. Maybe he would have gone further into the night had he not stood in the parking lot for five minutes without seeing any other sign of moment.
Maybe whatever he had seen bolt from the room was just waiting him out or maybe it had made it was far enough from the motel that he wouldn't be able to catch it on foot. But there was no sign that anything was still out there. He still had to worry about whatever happened to Sam. I couldn't be good. After all, every man who'd been attacked by the thing had, at the very least, ended up in the hospital. He knew he'd be lucky if that was the worst thing that happened.
And none of it should have. Maybe it they'd taken shifts, this wouldn't have happened. Dean sighed, heading back to the room. He couldn't go over the missteps right now. He needed to sort out what had happened and make sure that Sam was okay. Hopefully, Mae had been able to bring him around.
"Shit," he cursed to himself, as he opened the door back up. He'd left Mae cuffed to the bed.
She was clever enough to pick the lock and she'd had enough time if she had found something to pick it with. Still, he wasn't that surprised to see her still in bed. What was odd was that she wasn't glowering at him or trying to talk to Sam. He knelt on one knee in front of his brother, who was still on the floor but had managed to gather himself into a sitting position, legs pulled up to his chest, forehead resting on his knees.
"Hey, you okay?" Dean said softly.
Sam shook his head. "I'll get back to you."
"C'mon buddy," Dean said as he helped his brother to his feet and guided him to the unoccupied bed. Sam seemed unsteady still. "Tell me what happened."
Dean sat on the edge of the other bed, patting Mae's hip a bit, trying to rouse her. Sam sat forward, head in his hands. He tried to ignore the worry etched into his brother's face and collect his thoughts. "She jumped me, man."
A frown creased deep into Dean's brow and mouth. "Mae?"
"Yeah. I think so."
Dean shook his head. "She couldn't have. Whatever it was took off. Mae's been here the whole time, right babe?"
He turned to her now, and found her face completely at peace, still in sleep. At least he hoped sleep. Nothing that had happened so far had even disturbed her. He shifted to face her now. He checked her pulse. Still strong. Her breathing was light but if it weren't for her both waking up at all, she looked like she was simply asleep.
"Mae, wake up." He shook her shoulder, gently at first, then with more force. "C'mon, Red."
He leaned over her to grab the key to the handcuffs, and he unlocked the part around her wrist. There were no marks indicating she might have struggled against the restraint. He rolled her to her back. Cupping her face in one hand, he tried to search for some sort of clue in her pale, passive face. Her skin was a little colder than normal but nothing anyone who didn't know her would note. He eased an eyelid up. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and it told him little. And she still didn't wake. He slapped her face, not hard but enough to bring her around under normal circumstances.
This was bad, he though. Maybe he said it out loud because his brother's voice startled him. "Did...something get to her?"
"I don't know. I... nothing seemed to...I don't know what woke me up but the thing that had you was already done doing whatever it was doing and making a run for it.
"Maybe..." Sam started and trailed off. His mind was still fuzzy, thoughts still out so sequence. He was certain it had been Mae in the dark. But maybe it wasn't. He couldn't be certain, and it was too dark to know for sure. The woman, and he was sure it was a woman, didn't seem like Mae, aside from the notion that he thought it had been. "Does she have...an unusually thick tongue?"
Dean turned, scowl on his face more akin to confusion than anger. "What? No. She has completely usual body parts. Why would her tongue be anywhere near you?"
Sam shook his head, scrubbing his hands over his face. "It seemed so much like Mae. I don't know if she...Is she were possessed maybe-"
"There wasn't enough time, not for her to get out of the cuffs, get you, run out of there, and still get back into bed and in the cuff. Plus...it seems like she's out of it."
"I don't know what to tell you. I got up to go to the bathroom and when I came out...she was right there, and I couldn't do...anything. Then she started sucking the life force or whatever out of me."
"Dude, there has got to be a better way to say that." Dean said under his breath. "Did you notice anything? Hear anything?"
"No, just that...I knew I should stop her but at the same time, I didn't want to. Whatever she wanted to do to me. And then she did, and it was like...I knew I was dying but didn't care. Then it just stopped, and you were there when I came to so...that's all I've got. It's not much."
"Maybe, maybe not. All I know is Mae couldn't be in two places at once and she was right here," he pat the bed, "when that thing took off. Maybe it just looked like Mae, like a skin walker of shapeshifter."
"And it drains life force. Kitsune can shapeshift and kill someone by absorbing energy. What happened to me could be the way it does it."
"Yeah. That brings us to Mae and why she won't wake up." Dean stroked her arm, unsure what he should do next to help Mae. He scrubbed a hand over his face before focusing back on his brother. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so." Sam wasn't entirely sure, but he was on his feet again and they would have to wait and see about the rest. "She stopped for some reason."
"Well, that's good considering everyone else died."
"A few days later," he corrected, "So, if it wasn't Mae-"
"It wasn't."
"Okay, well, how did it get in here then? Did it follow us the whole way here or sneak int. We had everything salted. We should have been safe. And why did it stop? Did it get to Mae first and... she didn't have enough?"
"She's not-" Dean wasn't sure what he was going to say. He wanted to believe that she was okay, but it was hard to deny that something was wrong, even if they didn't know what it was. He thought he would have felt or sensed something but if something had attacked her in the night, he didn't even wake. "She's still breathing. She's not dead but I don't know anything else."
"Maybe we need to get her to the hospital."
"What can they do for her?"
"Keep her alive, make sure she'd okay while we track down this thing that tried to kill us."
Dean sighed. His eyes settled back on Mae's face. She looked calm and relaxed, but he had no idea if there was anything he could do to help her. Even taking her to the hospital, even killing this thing might not bring her back. At the very least, he could to better than leave her alone in a motel room while he and his brother put an end to this.
"Yeah, yeah. We gotta get her some kind of help."
They didn't discuss it more, only hurrying to take down and clear out any signs of their work. It would have been easier, Dean thought, if they took her to a hospital but that might lead to more questions about how and where they found an unconscious, unresponsive woman. A more believable story was he was on a road trip with his brother and girlfriend. They'd stopped in St. George for the night and when they woke up, she didn't. They could call the paramedics and maybe they could do something of her right now. Or take her to the relative safety of the hospital.
Then, as they were packing away the photos and articles, the woman groaned, lurched up in bed and then bolted for the bathroom. The brothers exchanged a bewildered look after the door slammed behind her. Dean hesitated for a few moments before he heard retching and decided to follow her in.
She knelt in front of the toilet. When Dean moved closer to pull her hair away from her face and rub her back, she batted his hand away with a gasping 'get away from me.' Her stomach was empty so what came up was mostly bile, but Mae found herself unable to stop, there was nothing left. She sat back on her heels.
"What the hell is going on?" They said in unison.
