This is set in January 2009, is not canon compliant and features no Dean whatsoever. Thanks for the reviews and yes, sometime relatively soonish, I will be addressing the John issue as I always was a bit curious about that myself. And it'll fit right in with a semi-angsty scene already half written in my head.


Caught Between a Rock and a Liver

"How many days of ice did they say?"

"A lot…" Jane grumped, slouching further down in her seat as Sam navigated the slick roads. "Have I told you that I hate Michigan?"

"It's not so bad…"

"We passed a sign that said hitch hikers may be escaped prisoners, Sam. That's only for movies, not real life." Jane really, really did not like the Upper Peninsula. They had to wait for a few days in Mackinaw City until travel across the bridge was cleared. Mackinaw City looked like it would be a quaint little tourist trap in the warmer seasons, but in the winter, right there on Lake Huron, it sucked.

Taking the Mackinac Bridge had sucked worse. It was so high up and so long, and the wind… apparently it wasn't 'bad' for the season, according to natives, but to her… she had been expecting to die a watery, freezing death. She had had her hands over her face, hunched in the seat, and nauseous the entire trip across, much to Sam's amusement.

"Is… is that where we're going?"

"Sign says so, yeah."

"Only Bobby would send us on a hunt to a place on a major lake, with temperatures below freezing… I call bullshit."

"Hope you brought mittens, Jane, because here comes more snow."

"Gee… wonderful."


Bitterly cold weather aside, Jane stopped whining once they actually got busy doing their job. She really hoped this wasn't Bobby testing her or something, because that would suck. She also knew she wasn't someone he wanted out hunting, and wondered just why he felt the need to send her. He had to know other hunters, or he could have come himself, regardless of what he had said. "I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"These deaths…" Jane stared at the paperwork they had assembled spread out on the motel room table, frowning. "They were all months apart, Sam. Two of them weren't even from this area. One guy was from Canada and the other was from Indiana."

"Canada is, literally, right across the way, Jane." At her exasperated look, he cleared his throat. "But I get your point."

"I don't think it's witches."

He frowned, looking down and stared at the case files before them.

"The deaths are all months apart, and none of them seem to have anything in common other than they were male and died from seemingly nothing."

"Well, let's go find out what seemingly nothing is then."

"Oh… no, coroner?"

He nodded.


The latest death was… looking remarkably fresh given that he had died a few weeks ago and wasn't six feet in the ground. Fresh being a relative term because the body looked skeletal and sickly. Jane still wasn't as 'comfortable' as Sam was around dead people, and whenever it came autopsy time, she usually excused herself, but so far she was managing. If, however, Sam felt the need to get in there and dig around, she was vacating. "Why hasn't he been buried yet?" She asked, grateful for the excuse to look away from Mr. Foulk, dead guy, to Mr. Donald Hook, guy in charge of the dead.

"Ground is frozen and the family doesn't want a cremation." Hook looked at her, his tone indicating he thought she was a bit daft for even asking. "So we're holding the body until the ground thaws."

That explained why he had to 'retrieve' Mr. Foulk from 'storage'.

"What's this?" Sam, who had been examining the body, stopped and pointed to an incision on the upper right side of Foulk's abdomen. He bent down, looking at it more intently. "These aren't the original stitches?"

"No, and that would be where Mr. Foulk's liver resided." Hook sidestepped Jane and moved to point at the holes that marked where another set of stitches had been. "It was removed."

"Removed?" Jane came around to stand on Sam's other side, frowning. "Those stitches are different from those used by professionals."

"Yes, they are, and yes, removed."

"The newspapers said he was healthy before dying."

"He was, prior to whatever illness took him." Hook frowned slightly. "He was very healthy. The sickness came on suddenly and unexpectedly. Excessive vomiting, literal wasting away, he died within a week and we never found out why."

"What about the other three men?" Sam asked, debating on whether or not he wanted to pick up a scalpel. "The others who were 'healthy' before dying?"

"Same thing."

"No signs of illness in anyone else? No indicators before it actually happened?"

"Nothing. We tested the water, soil, any outside, environmental factors that could have caused it. We also ran through the contents of their stomach, blood tests, the works, and there was not a single thing to clue us in. Each man died in a different month, so that didn't help either and none of them knew each other."

"What happened to his liver?" That was the one thing that was sticking for Jane. She got that apparently the four men had died of some mystery illness, but the liver thing was bugging her. "Was it removed for study?"

"It was gone before we got to him." Hook shifted uncomfortably, pulling the sheet back up and covering the dead man in question. "There was… a rock… there instead."

She blinked twice.

"In… all of them, actually."

"Wait," Sam was confused now too. "All four men? Livers removed and replaced with… rocks?"

"Yes."

"Sounds like murder."

"It would, yes, but nothing came of it. You'd have to talk to the police about all that."

"We'll do that, thanks."


Now they had four dead men. All with rocks where their livers should have been, and all having died from being so violently ill that they literally wasted away. Four men who hadn't known each other. Had died months apart from each other. And it wasn't murder as far as the authorities had been able to determine. None of the men had reported anything strange whatsoever prior to their illness.

"Any of this seem familiar or monsterish to you?" Jane asked, running her French fry repeatedly through the puddle of ketchup she had made in the middle of her plate.

"Demon, maybe, but… at the same time…" Sam leaned back, sitting opposite her in a booth at a small restaurant down the street from their motel. His salad was gone and now they were lingering because of her fries, and possibly because it was warm inside and very cold outside. "We ran into a virus once, demon engineered, but it was nothing like this."

"So we can rule demons out?"

"Probably." He gestured for the waitress to bring the check. "We should probably talk to the families."

"There's only two in the immediate area, unless you have your visa and don't mind crossing that bridge solo?" There was no way in Hades she was taking that bridge into Canada.

"Let's just talk to the two here and go from there."

"Fair enough."