They drove through what remained of the dawn to the roadhouse Ellen ran for the Hunters. Sam wondered if his dad had left his little secret hideaways within
range of Bobby and Ellen on purpose. He supposed it was another unanswered question he'd have to live with.
Even though both of them were curious and wanted to hear what their dad's friends had to say, they were dead on their feet.
Dean's head buzzed after two beers. The half-ton of food he'd eaten hadn't helped revive him. He thought a coma sounded really good. He tried to listen to Bobby as Ellen moved off to make a phone call. He couldn't hear what she was saying but he noticed that she hung up the phone and dialed several other different numbers, having to write some of them down. Finally, after nearly falling off his bar stool, Dean held up a hand and said he was done.
Ellen showed them up to a room they could sleep in and promised she'd have more information when they woke. Dean didn't even bother to take his boots off. He just fell face first onto the bed and closed his eyes. The last thing he noticed before he fell asleep was the charm pressing into his flesh.
The dream was an undecipherable mess of sensation. The bright flashes of light were blinding to his eyes and made his skin feel like it had been sunburned. He saw the trails the light left as it passed by him, too quickly to be seen as anything solid. The buzzing and fluttering noise in his ears made him want to swipe at his head, to bat away something, but nothing was there.
The sound of words, either in a language he couldn't understand, or spoken at a rate too slow or too fast for his brain to decipher, frustrated him. He couldn't tell if he wanted to run forward or run backward. He couldn't tell if he was chasing something or it was chasing him.
The brilliant colors of the lights began to make his eyes ache. He could still see the trails when he closed them. He had to put his hands over his eyelids to get any relief from the aching throb behind them. The pressure forced him to his knees, bowing his head.
The colors shut out sound, made him feel weightless and empty.
Then the dream changed again and he felt sensation crash over him like a wave of ice-cold water. It was almost as if he'd woken up. He felt his body's weight, felt the pressure of air, the sensation of movement, the passage of time. It came upon him in a massive rush before the context of the moment jerked at his attention.
He was naked, in a bed, and he wasn't alone in the semi-darkness of the room. He had a body beneath his, a body reacting to his, and he tumbled headlong into an act started way before he'd become coherent. His sensations caught up, one after another, until he could feel his own damp skin moving against hers, feel himself inside of her, feel the lush, wet, heat he was thrusting through. It was going to be over soon, he could feel that too.
Dean knew it wasn't one of his run of the mill fantasy dreams. The lack of twins and lube wrestling made that clear.
He felt like this was where he was supposed to be, there in the moment with her. It wasn't creepy or pornographic, it just was. He knew her, she knew him. The rightness of it made him never want to leave.
She tightened her hold on him, her smooth legs gripping his hips, her fingers in his hair. Lips found his and his tongue found her taste, tried to memorize it, compare it, remember it. He slid an arm around her body, pulling her up into his chest, feeling the heat of her breasts against his skin. The rhythmic movements of her hips made him moan and he bit down on her lip. He tasted the salt in her blood a second after.
Dean heard her voice for the first time, her answering gasp, but it sounded faded, like an old record. Her fingers gripped his hair even tighter as he felt it all slipping away from him. He heard her moan his name, felt her shake against him. Then she went still in his arms and their kiss started to fade. He held her hard, tried to keep her from falling away, fought hard to keep whatever was pulling them apart from doing it but he lost the battle.
He was thrown back into darkness and his skin went cold with the chill. He instinctively knew something was in there with him and it wanted nothing more than to rip him limb from limb. He could feel its hunger in his head, he could almost smell the vileness of it. But he also felt someone else. He yelled out, thinking it was Sam, but the taste of her blood came back to him and he knew he was wrong. The thing in the dark knew it too. Its intense, invisible gaze swung from him to wherever she was. Dean could feel her tense and turn to run.
Dean's thrashing and moaning didn't bother Sam. He was busy dealing with his own version of What The Hell?
He could handle the weird languages and chanting voices. It was seeing his dad that hurt. It was still way too soon to see vivid, entirely life like visages of John Winchester.
His father clearly wanted Sam to do something. John's face was anxious and impatient. Sam struggled to hear the words his dad was saying over the damn chanting and what sounded like heavy bird wings. He grew anxious himself from his father's intense, frustrated expressions.
Then John was gone and a spectacularly bright light forced Sam to his knees. He could sense Dean beside him as his head bowed against his will. The pressure on his closed eyes panicked him. Behind his lids he saw flashes of objects and glimpses of scenes that made no sense to him.
A bright, glowing sword. A crying baby. Dean fighting against John's grip. A gateway, a rift, that had been torn through reality. A man in a trench coat and walking staff. The last, a powerful shadow that filled Sam with pure terror.
He cried out against the pressure in his eyes and then it was gone. He was left in utter darkness. Dean was there but was far away.
She flashed by him so quickly that he almost didn't feel her. Panic, fear, and a deep weariness seeped from her and washed over him in her wake. That was when something in the darkness growled.
He knew what it was without having to think. He also knew it didn't want him. It wanted the girl. It wanted Dean. But it wanted her more. He felt his brother's panic, heard Dean yell, felt her turn to run. Sam yelled.
Dean realized he'd been yelling out loud when Bobby kept shaking him like a ragdoll even after Dean woke. He looked around, wild eyed, his heart pounding. He was still on the bed, still dressed, but soaked through with sweat. His head ached and his mouth was as dry as a desert. Before he knew what he was doing, he wiped his hand across it to see if there was any blood. Bobby stopped shaking him and peered at him, worried.
"Damn, Ellen!" Sam yelped as Ellen slapped him again. "I'm awake! I think I'm awake. Am I awake?" His voice sounded dry and more than a little freaked out.
"What the hell was that thing?" Dean asked hoarsely, feeling chilled as his sweat started to evaporate. "What the hell was that thing?" he repeated as he looked at his brother. Sam looked pale and shaken.
"What were you dreaming about? You two were yelling and hollering like you had Hellhounds on your asses!" Bobby said.
"That's not funny!" Sam shouted, his voice a little hysterical. He never wanted a repeat visit with those bastards again. The ones that had come for the people at the crossroads were bad enough. He didn't want to relive that terror he'd experienced in Evan's office that day it came for him.
"Oh, God, that's what it was," Dean moaned. "Sam, you know that's what it was! It was chasing her!"
"Chasing who? Her who?" Ellen demanded.
"You dreamed the same thing?" Bobby asked, surprised. "You two were in the same dream?"
The brothers looked at one another for a few seconds. "I think we were," Sam said slowly.
"The weird voices, bad juju feeling," Dean said as he wiped sweat off his forehead. Sam nodded.
"The light. I thought my eyes were going to explode," Sam said. They eyed each other again.
"The girl," they both said at the same time. Normally it would have been cause for instant and endless jokes but neither of them could find a single thing that was remotely funny about the dream.
"It wasn't a dream," Sam finally said, "It's going to happen to her and we don't know who she is. We need to go to the crossroads. If it was a Hellhound, it was her Hellhound."
"Yeah," Dean said. He could still feel her - on his lips, against his body, in his head. His chest twisted and he winced.
"You okay, Dean?" Bobby asked as he put a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean stood and wobbled for a second.
"We gotta go, Sam," Dean said as he grabbed his jacket. "We gotta go now."
"Maybe if we kill the demon it will kill her hound," Sam said as he stood up. He swayed for a long second and then shook it off physically.
"I have a bone to pick with that bitch anyway," Dean said. "Killing her is totally an option."
"Boys, wait," Ellen urged as she stepped in front of Dean. "We'll all go together but we want to tell you something first. It may help."
"We rolled the bullets in clay and scanned the images into the computer. We sent them to anyone we could think of. We got a call a few hours ago. The scrolling is actually a language. It's Aramaic or at least the general consensus is saying it is," Bobby said.
Dean jogged down the stairs, forcing them to follow.
"What?" Sam asked, his brows knitting. "I thought Aramaic was a dead language."
"It is. It was lost back in the time of Christ," Ellen said. "There are rumors that the Vatican has the only papers in the world that have the language written out but no one knows what any of it means. Some people believe it's the language of angels."
"Right. Not that dead languages and the Vatican's lack of housekeeping aren't fascinating but can we get back to the Hellhound eating the girl I love?" Dean asked impatiently.
"She'll like me better," Sam said. "I'm all emo."
"Right, because she clearly prefers the unshowered look," Dean said. He looked back at Ellen and found her watching him with an odd expression on her face.
"Long story short," she said. "I think if you shoot anything with these bullets that you're going to have the power of a hell of a lot of light on your side. Can I keep one? I want to show it to my friend in person."
"As long as I can put down a dog with them I don't care if you put them up on Ebay," Dean said as he snatched the three bullets off the counter top. "I'll give them back when we're done. Can we go now?"
As they waited for Bobby and Ellen to mount up, Dean fidgeted in the car, wanting to be about fifty miles out already.
"So, about the girl," Sam said, a note of interest back in his voice. Dean didn't turn to look at him, simply stuck a warning finger into Sam's face.
"I will kick your ass as if you scratched my car," he warned. He somehow knew his interaction with her had been much different than Sam's. Sam knew it too.
"Did you see her face?" Sam asked. That time Dean did turn to look.
"No," he said. "I could have done without the rest if I could have. Did you?"
"Nope," Sam said. "She say anything to you?"
"Technically, it wasn't a word," Dean said. "More like a noise."
"I saw Dad."
Before Dean could respond, Ellen and Bobby tore out of the lot in Bobby's truck. Dean followed, silent and anxious.
When they got to the crossroads it was dark, deserted, and creepy as ever. Sam let himself sit for a moment to see if he could feel any of that paralyzing evil that had been so vivid in his dream. He simply didn't feel it.
"I think we're good," he said.
"Sure," Dean said. "Let's go wake up that evil bitch."
He went to the middle of the intersection and dug for the box he knew to be there. Once he'd wrestled it out of the ground he opened it up to see what was inside. On top of the old identification cards and scraps of paper with names was another carved bullet. He crouched there, staring at it.
He was startled as hell to see that his dad's girlfriend had been there.
"Uh, guys?" he asked as he stood and turned to them. He held out his palm so they could see it.
"What the…." Bobby's words died as he took a step forward, his eyes on the bullet.
"She was here?" Ellen asked, her voice shaky.
"You weren't able to find her?" Dean asked.
"No," Ellen said quietly. "She's disappeared. Gossip is that she's hunting down religious artifacts for the church."
"But why was she here?" Dean asked, his voice tight. "And what does it have to do with the other girl and the Hellhound?"
"Dean, those dreams were really disjointed. It felt like being yanked into different periods of time. Maybe her connection with Dad lingers. Maybe she left us this trail for the dream girl," Sam said.
"I don't have time for maybe's," Dean said. He turned back around, knelt, put one of his endless driver's licenses into the box and reburied it.
Even though both of them were curious and wanted to hear what their dad's friends had to say, they were dead on their feet.
Dean's head buzzed after two beers. The half-ton of food he'd eaten hadn't helped revive him. He thought a coma sounded really good. He tried to listen to Bobby as Ellen moved off to make a phone call. He couldn't hear what she was saying but he noticed that she hung up the phone and dialed several other different numbers, having to write some of them down. Finally, after nearly falling off his bar stool, Dean held up a hand and said he was done.
Ellen showed them up to a room they could sleep in and promised she'd have more information when they woke. Dean didn't even bother to take his boots off. He just fell face first onto the bed and closed his eyes. The last thing he noticed before he fell asleep was the charm pressing into his flesh.
The dream was an undecipherable mess of sensation. The bright flashes of light were blinding to his eyes and made his skin feel like it had been sunburned. He saw the trails the light left as it passed by him, too quickly to be seen as anything solid. The buzzing and fluttering noise in his ears made him want to swipe at his head, to bat away something, but nothing was there.
The sound of words, either in a language he couldn't understand, or spoken at a rate too slow or too fast for his brain to decipher, frustrated him. He couldn't tell if he wanted to run forward or run backward. He couldn't tell if he was chasing something or it was chasing him.
The brilliant colors of the lights began to make his eyes ache. He could still see the trails when he closed them. He had to put his hands over his eyelids to get any relief from the aching throb behind them. The pressure forced him to his knees, bowing his head.
The colors shut out sound, made him feel weightless and empty.
Then the dream changed again and he felt sensation crash over him like a wave of ice-cold water. It was almost as if he'd woken up. He felt his body's weight, felt the pressure of air, the sensation of movement, the passage of time. It came upon him in a massive rush before the context of the moment jerked at his attention.
He was naked, in a bed, and he wasn't alone in the semi-darkness of the room. He had a body beneath his, a body reacting to his, and he tumbled headlong into an act started way before he'd become coherent. His sensations caught up, one after another, until he could feel his own damp skin moving against hers, feel himself inside of her, feel the lush, wet, heat he was thrusting through. It was going to be over soon, he could feel that too.
Dean knew it wasn't one of his run of the mill fantasy dreams. The lack of twins and lube wrestling made that clear.
He felt like this was where he was supposed to be, there in the moment with her. It wasn't creepy or pornographic, it just was. He knew her, she knew him. The rightness of it made him never want to leave.
She tightened her hold on him, her smooth legs gripping his hips, her fingers in his hair. Lips found his and his tongue found her taste, tried to memorize it, compare it, remember it. He slid an arm around her body, pulling her up into his chest, feeling the heat of her breasts against his skin. The rhythmic movements of her hips made him moan and he bit down on her lip. He tasted the salt in her blood a second after.
Dean heard her voice for the first time, her answering gasp, but it sounded faded, like an old record. Her fingers gripped his hair even tighter as he felt it all slipping away from him. He heard her moan his name, felt her shake against him. Then she went still in his arms and their kiss started to fade. He held her hard, tried to keep her from falling away, fought hard to keep whatever was pulling them apart from doing it but he lost the battle.
He was thrown back into darkness and his skin went cold with the chill. He instinctively knew something was in there with him and it wanted nothing more than to rip him limb from limb. He could feel its hunger in his head, he could almost smell the vileness of it. But he also felt someone else. He yelled out, thinking it was Sam, but the taste of her blood came back to him and he knew he was wrong. The thing in the dark knew it too. Its intense, invisible gaze swung from him to wherever she was. Dean could feel her tense and turn to run.
Dean's thrashing and moaning didn't bother Sam. He was busy dealing with his own version of What The Hell?
He could handle the weird languages and chanting voices. It was seeing his dad that hurt. It was still way too soon to see vivid, entirely life like visages of John Winchester.
His father clearly wanted Sam to do something. John's face was anxious and impatient. Sam struggled to hear the words his dad was saying over the damn chanting and what sounded like heavy bird wings. He grew anxious himself from his father's intense, frustrated expressions.
Then John was gone and a spectacularly bright light forced Sam to his knees. He could sense Dean beside him as his head bowed against his will. The pressure on his closed eyes panicked him. Behind his lids he saw flashes of objects and glimpses of scenes that made no sense to him.
A bright, glowing sword. A crying baby. Dean fighting against John's grip. A gateway, a rift, that had been torn through reality. A man in a trench coat and walking staff. The last, a powerful shadow that filled Sam with pure terror.
He cried out against the pressure in his eyes and then it was gone. He was left in utter darkness. Dean was there but was far away.
She flashed by him so quickly that he almost didn't feel her. Panic, fear, and a deep weariness seeped from her and washed over him in her wake. That was when something in the darkness growled.
He knew what it was without having to think. He also knew it didn't want him. It wanted the girl. It wanted Dean. But it wanted her more. He felt his brother's panic, heard Dean yell, felt her turn to run. Sam yelled.
Dean realized he'd been yelling out loud when Bobby kept shaking him like a ragdoll even after Dean woke. He looked around, wild eyed, his heart pounding. He was still on the bed, still dressed, but soaked through with sweat. His head ached and his mouth was as dry as a desert. Before he knew what he was doing, he wiped his hand across it to see if there was any blood. Bobby stopped shaking him and peered at him, worried.
"Damn, Ellen!" Sam yelped as Ellen slapped him again. "I'm awake! I think I'm awake. Am I awake?" His voice sounded dry and more than a little freaked out.
"What the hell was that thing?" Dean asked hoarsely, feeling chilled as his sweat started to evaporate. "What the hell was that thing?" he repeated as he looked at his brother. Sam looked pale and shaken.
"What were you dreaming about? You two were yelling and hollering like you had Hellhounds on your asses!" Bobby said.
"That's not funny!" Sam shouted, his voice a little hysterical. He never wanted a repeat visit with those bastards again. The ones that had come for the people at the crossroads were bad enough. He didn't want to relive that terror he'd experienced in Evan's office that day it came for him.
"Oh, God, that's what it was," Dean moaned. "Sam, you know that's what it was! It was chasing her!"
"Chasing who? Her who?" Ellen demanded.
"You dreamed the same thing?" Bobby asked, surprised. "You two were in the same dream?"
The brothers looked at one another for a few seconds. "I think we were," Sam said slowly.
"The weird voices, bad juju feeling," Dean said as he wiped sweat off his forehead. Sam nodded.
"The light. I thought my eyes were going to explode," Sam said. They eyed each other again.
"The girl," they both said at the same time. Normally it would have been cause for instant and endless jokes but neither of them could find a single thing that was remotely funny about the dream.
"It wasn't a dream," Sam finally said, "It's going to happen to her and we don't know who she is. We need to go to the crossroads. If it was a Hellhound, it was her Hellhound."
"Yeah," Dean said. He could still feel her - on his lips, against his body, in his head. His chest twisted and he winced.
"You okay, Dean?" Bobby asked as he put a hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean stood and wobbled for a second.
"We gotta go, Sam," Dean said as he grabbed his jacket. "We gotta go now."
"Maybe if we kill the demon it will kill her hound," Sam said as he stood up. He swayed for a long second and then shook it off physically.
"I have a bone to pick with that bitch anyway," Dean said. "Killing her is totally an option."
"Boys, wait," Ellen urged as she stepped in front of Dean. "We'll all go together but we want to tell you something first. It may help."
"We rolled the bullets in clay and scanned the images into the computer. We sent them to anyone we could think of. We got a call a few hours ago. The scrolling is actually a language. It's Aramaic or at least the general consensus is saying it is," Bobby said.
Dean jogged down the stairs, forcing them to follow.
"What?" Sam asked, his brows knitting. "I thought Aramaic was a dead language."
"It is. It was lost back in the time of Christ," Ellen said. "There are rumors that the Vatican has the only papers in the world that have the language written out but no one knows what any of it means. Some people believe it's the language of angels."
"Right. Not that dead languages and the Vatican's lack of housekeeping aren't fascinating but can we get back to the Hellhound eating the girl I love?" Dean asked impatiently.
"She'll like me better," Sam said. "I'm all emo."
"Right, because she clearly prefers the unshowered look," Dean said. He looked back at Ellen and found her watching him with an odd expression on her face.
"Long story short," she said. "I think if you shoot anything with these bullets that you're going to have the power of a hell of a lot of light on your side. Can I keep one? I want to show it to my friend in person."
"As long as I can put down a dog with them I don't care if you put them up on Ebay," Dean said as he snatched the three bullets off the counter top. "I'll give them back when we're done. Can we go now?"
As they waited for Bobby and Ellen to mount up, Dean fidgeted in the car, wanting to be about fifty miles out already.
"So, about the girl," Sam said, a note of interest back in his voice. Dean didn't turn to look at him, simply stuck a warning finger into Sam's face.
"I will kick your ass as if you scratched my car," he warned. He somehow knew his interaction with her had been much different than Sam's. Sam knew it too.
"Did you see her face?" Sam asked. That time Dean did turn to look.
"No," he said. "I could have done without the rest if I could have. Did you?"
"Nope," Sam said. "She say anything to you?"
"Technically, it wasn't a word," Dean said. "More like a noise."
"I saw Dad."
Before Dean could respond, Ellen and Bobby tore out of the lot in Bobby's truck. Dean followed, silent and anxious.
When they got to the crossroads it was dark, deserted, and creepy as ever. Sam let himself sit for a moment to see if he could feel any of that paralyzing evil that had been so vivid in his dream. He simply didn't feel it.
"I think we're good," he said.
"Sure," Dean said. "Let's go wake up that evil bitch."
He went to the middle of the intersection and dug for the box he knew to be there. Once he'd wrestled it out of the ground he opened it up to see what was inside. On top of the old identification cards and scraps of paper with names was another carved bullet. He crouched there, staring at it.
He was startled as hell to see that his dad's girlfriend had been there.
"Uh, guys?" he asked as he stood and turned to them. He held out his palm so they could see it.
"What the…." Bobby's words died as he took a step forward, his eyes on the bullet.
"She was here?" Ellen asked, her voice shaky.
"You weren't able to find her?" Dean asked.
"No," Ellen said quietly. "She's disappeared. Gossip is that she's hunting down religious artifacts for the church."
"But why was she here?" Dean asked, his voice tight. "And what does it have to do with the other girl and the Hellhound?"
"Dean, those dreams were really disjointed. It felt like being yanked into different periods of time. Maybe her connection with Dad lingers. Maybe she left us this trail for the dream girl," Sam said.
"I don't have time for maybe's," Dean said. He turned back around, knelt, put one of his endless driver's licenses into the box and reburied it.
