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The hot, heavy weight crashed into Sam Winchester, slamming him into the wet mud of the field. The wolf immediately snapped, aiming for Sam's collar bone and shoulder. The beast's head was as big as Sam's torso.
The teeth snapped tirelessly at Sam's body, the weight forcing him deep into the muck beneath. Saliva from the cavernous mouth above him dropped ceaselessly onto his face.
The werewolf lunged at his face -
Sam used all his energy to shuffle to one side, so the wolf's jaws clamped beside his ear. The smell of dirty, dog-like stink burrowed in his nostrils.
He looked to his left for any sign of the remainder of his backpack, and saw a shining blade of his silver knife.
As he went to reach for it, the wolf lunged again, forcing Sam to use his arm instead to block the advance of the powerful jaws.
Sam was mostly aware of was how noisy it was.
He could hear is own heartbeat loud in his ears, from fear, from the pain on the back of his head.
He could hear hot, close snarls of the beast on top of him, teeth clamping frighteningly close to his face - so close he was instinctively swiping his head from left to right to avoid the iron jaws.
He could hear his brother screaming his name somewhere in the background.
He heard shots being fired near him, cracking in the night.
A screeching monster in the distance.
The barrage of teeth above him, which he held at bay with all the power his arms could muster, came closer and closer to his face. The details of the creature are were lost to him as his vision blurred.
As the distant screeching started to fade, the monster above Sam paused. It's ears went back, eyes knowing. An incredibly human flash of hatred came across the face of the wolf, before Sam felt a white hot pain tear into his right side. Sam screamed, the sound too loud in his rattling skull. His body tensed completely, rigid. He drew his legs in towards his torso like a crushed spider, which only drew the snarling, snapping jaws closer ever to Sam's face.
His side burned, distracting him from the chaos of his mind.
Sam furiously tried to focus his pain, his fear and his adrenaline into something useful. He scrabbled with the available hand the ground beside him. The empty gun was within his reach but of no use to him now. He stretched his body to reach further, screaming as the movement pulled at his torn flesh. At his fingertips, he felt the cold hilt of the sliver knife.
He clawed it closer, feeling it slip in his muddied grip. With a decided, painful lurch, he leaned to grab the knife, the strength in his wolf-bearing arm waning as he did so.
With shaking resolve, Sam plunged the knife into the side of the wolf's gargantuan body, parallel to where his own pain radiated from.
The wolf howled wildly barking and lunging closer and closer to Sam's fading face.
Sam stabbed again, and again.
The weight of the wolf above him became heavier and heavier.
The same look of hate ghosted over the wolf's eyes as Sam's arm finally gave in -
And the wolf dropped on top of him.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dean watched the enormous wolf slam into his brother's side. From his kneeling position, Sam seemed to disappear beneath the cloak of shaggy hair.
"Sammy!" Dean shouted again.
From where he was running, and as the light of the flare faded, Dean could no longer see Sam at all. He was completely disguised by the wolf on top of him.
Dean realised at this point he had no idea if his brother was dead or alive in the clutches of the beast.
Dean came to a halt in the field, the dread freezing his muscles. Without once blinking, he pulled his own pistol from his belt, flicked off the safety and aimed at the pile of beast-and-brother not a hundred meters ahead of him.
He held up the gun and aimed at the shoulder blades of the wolf as its head dropped towards its prey.
Dean slowed his breathing, the weight of the task in hand starting to bear on his resolve.
His Sammy. Was he even alive? He couldn't see him. The light of the flare has distinguished, leaving just the light of the moon, the waxy glow barely showing the shadow of the characters on scene.
Dean fired twice, both shots missing. He could see his hand shaking, but the terror of losing Sam - or accidentally shooting him - had completely removed his focus.
As he went to take his third shot, he felt something launch past his shoulder, it's back as high as his head. It ran straight past Dean, completely focussed on the scene ahead of him.
A fourth wolf.
Dean's heart leapt into his throat. Is this a whole pack?
As the wolf bolted past him and without hesitation, he changed the direction of his shot. The final bullet hit the running wolf in the side, and it was quickly on the ground, shrieking.
Dean barely looked at it, dropping the gun into the mud and running towards his brother.
His heart jolted as he heard Sammy cry out.
The sound burned Deans ears, the panic growing in his tight chest.
Was this it?
As Dean approached the snarling snapping mess, it suddenly when quiet and dropped to the ground. Blood oozed from a wound in its side that Dean could only see as he approached, empty gun in hand and raised as a weapon. "Sammy?"
There was no response. His heart still pounding, breathe still heaving, Dean pulled desperately at the carcass of the wolf, the body was still hiding the sight of Sam.
If there was anything left of him…
The thought made Dean pull harder, the weight of the beast making him tug at his back. Dean could hear now his dad and Bobby shouting across the field, running across with the same terror Dean had felt. Four dead wolves now lay in the field.
Finally, the weight of the wolf gave and Dean held his breath as he waited to see what was left of his kid brother.
Sam lay flat on his back, coated from head to toe in thick, brown mud.
It didn't look like he was breathing.
His eyes were open, gleaming in the moonlight, empty.
The only sign that he was alive was the shaking of his hand as he held a bloodied, silver blade.
"Sammy," Dean breathed, dangerous relief flooding through his blood.
Sam didn't respond initially. His breathing was short and sharp, worryingly shallow. Dean knelt in the mud beside him, running a visual check over his brother. He cursed when he saw he had knelt in cold mud and worse, Sam's warm blood. Immediately, he pressed his hands over Sam's bleeding side. The kid's shirt had four huge, clean tears at the waist, and Sam's side was a pulped and ripped mess.
Dean nearly jumped away when his kid brother let out a shriek of pain, his hand instinctively dropping the knife and started clawing at Dean's hand.
"Get the fuck off me", the boy squawked, his voice cracking.
Dean leaned over his boy, his hand withstanding the weak pawing, using his other arm to cradle Sam's head. "I'm sorry, Sammy," was all he could say.
Time slowed as Dean assessed Sam's injury, acknowledging the blood loss, the pale and clammy condition of his skin, the large egg-shaped wound on his brother's head. His stomach lurched as Sam continued to cry out, his fear subsiding to the growing pain. "You're gonna be okay," He soothed automatically, not sure if he quite believed it himself. "You gotta relax, please Sam, just breathe for me, okay?"
Dean watched as Sam pushed aside the panic to really look at Dean. He definitely was concussed - there was little recognition in his eyes.
Sam's eyes were glazed. He blinked owlishly, quickly starting to pale. "D'n" he mumbled.
"That's right, I got you little man," Dean mumbled back, taking the opportunity of Sam's hesitation to press harder on the wound. He could feel the blood continuing to drain with every beat of Sam's heart.
Sam hissed, but the fight was leaving him. The worrying part was not knowing if this was him relaxing, or losing consciousness...
Dean looked desperately around for his dad. The scene was pretty horrific around them - the field littered with 4 enormous werewolves at various stages of transfiguration back to their human forms. John was close now, Bobby in close pursuit.
"Sh sh, it's okay Sammy. Stay put just now," Dean murmured keen to keep the kid as still as possible while they stabilized the wound. The edges of each graze were red and raised, the blood slowly starting to clot.
Too slow.
"My head," Sammy said, his voice rasping. Dean was relieved to hear the boy speak - or croak - more than one syllable.
He added the remark to the catalog of things not to lose his shit about. "Don't worry kid. We'll get you looked at proper, okay?"
Sam just squeezed his eyes closed.
John appeared behind them, falling to his knees beside his sons. He placed himself at Sam's shoulder, careful not to encroach on the grip his eldest had on Sam.
Dean didn't respond to his father's presence, lingering between fury with John and shame. "The fuckers got his claws into him," he cursed, "He's concussed, I can't see the wound site. He has a sore head but I'm not too confident how much movement to allow for that - "
Dean didn't move as John worked around them, gently palpating Sam's neck and shoulders for any invisible injury.
Sam didn't respond. He was growing more listless, more pale.
Dean's hackles rose. "What do we do, Dad? He can't walk."
"We need to get him moved and get these wounds under a light," John said, "I need these cleaned before I can patch him -"
"He's going to need a hospital," Dean cut in jarringly, tearing his gaze away from his brother to his Dad.
"Dean," John paused his examination of the quiet boy, "We're now in a field with four dead bodies. We need to get out of town before sunup."
Dean looked over to the wolf that Sam had finished off - which had transformed to the naked body of a man in his late twenties, several puncture wounds where he'd been stabbed by the youngest hunter.
Sam let out a sob and Dean gently turned Sam's face back to looking at his own. "Let it go Sammy, you're okay. It's going to be okay."
Dean fumed silently at how fucked up the situation had got in such a short space of time. He cursed his dad for splitting the four of them, for not doing his research correctly. For choosing to chase a payday. He blamed himself for not following his instinct. He seethed as John moved around the youngest Winchester, working silently.
John gently turned Sam's head the other way and mumbled to himself as he inspected the sticky gash now on Sam's head. Bruising has starting to show on Sam's white complexion. "You're gonna have two black eyes, kiddo," John muttered.
"That's the least of our concerns," Dean remarked, still not breaking eye contact with his kid brother. Sam just fluttered his eyes, his grip failing on Dean's wrist. Dean looked pointedly at his dad. "We need to get him stitched up quick, we're losing him."
John nodded. "Alright."
Dean could tell his dad was uncomfortable with something. Whether it was Dean's blatant disregard for John's orders, or the unusual behavior of the wolves the day before the full moon, or just that fact that his eldest had been right about his youngest, he couldn't quite tell. Whichever it was, Dean knew they were not getting an apology.
Bobby puffed over to the scene, his own rifle swung over his back. "I seen two more, but they ran off. One was a cub."
"Never mind that now," John said gruffly, "We need to get Sam out of here and get him cleaned up."
Bobby looked down at the youngest, surveying the damage. "Oh shit."
John looked at Dean. "Son, take my gun, you can be our point -"
The glare that Dean fired back cut his dad short. "I'll make the decisions about Sammy tonight, Dad. And I'm going to carry him myself from here to the nearest E.R., if I have to. He needs medical help. This is well beyond our pay grade, way more than a few stitches can handle. This is situation smelled bad from the beginning. A rushed job, not enough bodies, not enough weapons. Piss poor preparation," Dean spat, unable to stop himself as the words tumbled out.
Bobby, John and even Sam looked agog at Dean, who hovered over his brother, nostrils flaring, inviting the challenge.
John clenched his fists, Dean's disobedience starting to grate. "This is not up for discussion, Dean. We cannot draw that much attention to ourselves. We have multiple dead bodies, and half a pack of wolves who have our scent. We patch him up and we move on, tonight."
Dean felt his blood start to boil. He felt himself square up to his father, the men staring each other, within arm's reach over Sam's listless body. "You have got to be kidding me, right? Look at him, Dad! He's a mess! The blood loss alone, he might need a transfusion -"
John stood immediately, physically pulling rank. "How are you gonna explain this to a medical team, son? What did he fall on this time? You let me make the big decisions, I'm doing this for Sa -"
"You haven't made a good decision for Sam for years, Dad!" Dean bellowed, standing to meet his father's eye line, "This isn't something you can just patch up, and let him 'sleep it off' in the back of the car. We don't even know what happened with his head, what level of concussion we're dealing with -"
"Concussion, my ass -"
"You don't fuck with head wounds -"
Bobby lurched forward suddenly, still panting from his run. "Shut it, both of you!" he yelled, dropping to Sam's side and turned him as the youngest boy vomited.
Dean fell to his knees, and soothed Sam automatically as he expelled his stomach contents. Sam was weak. The adrenaline had left his system and shock was settling in. He was breathing, but it was short and sharp.
He was a complete mess. He was covered in scratches from blocking the werewolf. He was almost completely caked in mud and shit, and cold from the effect of it. The gashes on his side were still trickling blood, filthy and at risk of infection. The boy had been incredibly lucky, Dean could see that. But there was still opportunity for this all to go to shit.
Bobby shook his head. "We need to get moving, now. Before we do anything, we need to get these cleaned, and get the kid warmed up. You two," he pointed accusingly at Dean and John, "Need to pack this in. This ain't the time for falling out. Not while Sammy needs seen to."
John and Dean shared a furious glance, but nodded silently.
Wordlessly, Dean moved parallel with Sam's head. John joined him and together, they lifted Sam upright. The boy clung onto his crutches, swaying dangerously. Dean grabbed his belt from his jeans and tied it the best could around the wound on his torso and tightened it. Sam barely reacted to this, his head lolling forward.
Bobby gathered Sam's muddy belongings and looked back at the bodies. "We'll have to burn these, John."
"The farmer can do it himself," John grunted as he bore Sam's weight. "Let's get him back to the barn, see what we're dealing with."
Dean murmured to Sam as they limped across the field and past the woodland. Sam only occasionally responded, which did little to convince Dean that he was any further from death's door.
The small party trudged back through the mud, away from the slaughtered werewolves.
A mourning howl sang on the distant ridge.