Kings of the Night (Part Three)
part three
It was the sound of their father’s voice that woke Dean; a familiar baritone drawl that was unusually soft in the quiet of the morning. Yawning, he blinked his eyes open, grimacing a little when he noticed the way that the skin of his stomach was sticking unpleasantly to his brother’s back. Sam shifted slightly as Dean slowly peeled himself away, and for a moment the elder wolf half-expected his brother to wake up and scowl at him; instead, the kid nuzzled his head into the pillow and curled himself into an even tighter ball.
His eyes finally located their father, leaning against one of the counters in the small motel kitchen. He grinned at Dean a little, tossing his phone on the cracked surface of the table.
“You could’ve gotten cleaned up before you went to sleep,” He reprimanded lightly.
Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Figured that you’d just be happy that we stuck to the bed. No broken tables to report to the manager, this time.”
John grinned, shaking his head fondly.
“Who was on the phone?”
The eldest Winchester’s smile turned a little darker at the edges. “That was one Bobby Singer. Seems like he’s worked out who our demon is - goes by the name of Azazel. Ranked high enough that he’s even got a mention in the bible.”
The twenty-one year old frowned a little. As far as things went, the Winchesters were more than adequately able to take out most other supernatural creatures; hell, they’d taken out more than a few demons in the nine years since Azazel had killed Mary Winchester in Sam’s bedroom and their quest for revenge had begun. They’d never been faced with anything powerful enough that it was in the goddamn Bible before, though.
He glanced towards his brother, taking in the younger man’s still sleeping form. He looked deceptively innocent, sleeping - it was hard to believe that he’d never lost a fight from the moment he hit his teenage years, that he was quick and sly and cunning, and he knew more ways to kill a person than anyone could fully comprehend.
“You got a plan?” He asked his father after a long moment.
John raised a piece of paper in the air, grinning wickedly. “I have in my hand the address of some kind of hunter’s Roadhouse, where we will find a young MIT drop out by the name of Ash. According to Singer, he can help us track the yellow eyed sonofabitch.”
**
Ellen had met a lot of scary people in the years since she’d married Bill Harvelle.
Hunters weren’t, as a rule of thumb, exactly your bog-standard group of people. Most of them were battle worn and scarred, paranoid and - at times - more than a little trigger-happy. Ellen had no disillusions about the fact that, at any time, ninety-five percent of the Roadhouse’s clientèle were armed to the teeth and bore no compunction about using the weapons stashed under their clothes.
Usually, it was some sort of sense of comradeship that kept things sailing smoothly at the roadhouse. Whilst there was no way of avoiding a few scuffles here and there, the Roadhouse’s patrons tended to stick in their own little groups and leave everyone else alone. In the twenty years working behind the bar, Ellen could count on two hands the number of bar fights that had required the intervention of either her or Bill.
After a few years, she’d begun to find the hunting community a lot less terrifying than she had at the start. She began making friends, surprised to find that Bill wasn’t the only hunter out there with a wife and kids, and over time she settled into her new life.
And then the Winchesters showed up.
**
The bar was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday afternoon.
Quite honestly, Ellen had been anticipating the quiet evening to do her weekly stock checks and perhaps coax Jo into helping her shift around some of the boxes in the basement; she’d been more than a little disappointed when a hunter by the name of Freeman dropped by and alerted her to a large party of fifteen hunters headed in her direction.
Word had it that they were headed through to Buffalo, where a large nest of vamps was consuming more than a small chunk of the local population. It wasn’t the first time that Ellen had heard of hunters banding together, but it was the first time that she’d heard of so many of them teaming up at once. By the time that they’d arrived, split between seven trucks and two slightly smaller cars, she’d fully prepared herself to be witness to be more than a few arguments over the duration of the evening.
There was a reason that hunters liked to work separately, after all.
In the end, it turned out that there was seventeen of them in total. Most of them, Ellen recognized from previous visits to the Roadhouse - one or two of them had even worked with Bill, back before that goddamn demon had stolen her husband from her. A few of them were new faces, and the cynical part of her wondered just how many of them would make it back from the hunt.
Her evening was spent pouring beer after beer, barring a brief interval that had spent once again giving Ash a firm lecture about smoking pot in her bar, and she was just starting the think that she might have gotten off lucky when the door swung open.
For a moment, Ellen honestly didn’t notice the problem. The tattered old jukebox was churning out Bon Jovi’s Dead or Alive, and she was happily humming along to herself as she wiped down the sticky surface of the top. Distantly, she recognized the sound of the door swinging open and the sudden lull in conversation; it was the same every time someone new turned up. They’d step inside, everyone would make a quick and paranoid assessment of one another, and then everyone would start talking again as if nothing had happened.
Except the silence was dragging on too long. Ellen’s head shot up, taking in the three figures lurking in her doorway.
There was a man roughly her own age at the front, spearheading the little arrows-head formation that they’d fallen into; his hair was dark, shot through with the faintest glint of silver, and his eyes were dark and cold. Even from across the room, the sight of them made Ellen shiver a little.
Behind him, two younger boys stood shoulder to shoulder. There was something in the clench of their jaw, the similar way that they stood, that alerted her to the fact that they were probably the stranger’s sons; the shorter one was grinning cockily, mischievous grin and green eyes that just seemed to radiate trouble. His brother was taller by an inch at most, and his eyes were sweeping steadily over the room; when they locked with hers she was surprised by the intensity there, and the almost hypnotic way that they seemed to shift color in the dim light.
They would have been beautiful as individuals. Together they were just as much intimidating as they were striking.
“Holy shit,” Someone breathed from one of the barstools to her left, voice ringing awkwardly in the near-silent bar. “They’re the goddamn Winchesters.”
Ellen’s eyes widened as the stranger’s words suddenly jolted her brain to make the same connection. Over the last couple of years, the Winchesters had become a sort of legend in the Roadhouse - a common topic of gossip that never served to keep her entertained. Honestly, she hadn’t even really believed that they existed.
There’d been enough people spouting off stories about the three mysterious men to pique her curiosity, but as soon as people had started suggesting that they might be more than human themselves, she’d dismissed the whole thing as the drunken ramblings of some far-away hunter trying to big up one of his hunts somehow. It wouldn’t be the first time that a rumor had spun wildly out of control in the hunting community.
Now, though, she began to wonder if those rumors were true.
The bar seemed to be in some kind of limbo. All eyes were on the Winchester men, and they weren’t moving; instead, the three of them stood in the doorway and, slowly, the father began to grin. When he finally moved, it wasn’t a sudden jerk towards the middle of the room, or a hesitant step inside. Instead, he moved with the grace of a predator, steel-toed boots making no sound at all as he crossed the room, his boys never more than a step behind him.
For the first time in years, Ellen found herself pressing her knee against the barrel of her shotgun for reassurance, out of an instinctive urge to know that she had some way to defend herself if things turned ugly. It sure as hell looked like it was heading that way.
None of the Winchesters seemed particularly fazed by the situation, from what she could tell, but she could practically see the hunters around them bristling. It seemed that, hunters or not, nobody was in any rush to welcome the Winchester three into their fold.
Ellen forced herself to pull in a deep breath and release it slowly as John finally dropped into the stool directly next to her. His boys hopped up on the two stools to his right, and she couldn’t help but second guess her estimate that they were brother’s when she observed the deliberate way that the older one tangled their feet together. Lovers, more likely.
“What can I get you?” She asked amicably, almost amazed that her voice came out strong and sure and without even the slightest trace of the tremble she’d feared would be there.
“Three beers,” The eldest one answered curtly, and then leant back in his chair as she slid them across the counter. “And if you could point us in the direction of Ash, that would be great.”
Ellen felt her motherly instincts kick into overdrive. Ash might not actually be her son, but he was a big enough part of her family that she sometimes felt like it - these strangers looked dangerous, and the last thing she was going to do was to lead them to him. Unfortunately, the young man’s sense of self-preservation was apparently severely lacking; even as she opened her mouth to inform the stranger that she didn’t know he was talking about, Ash rose from his stool.
“What can I do for you, guys?” He asked curiously. He didn’t seem in the least bit worried about what their intentions were, and she couldn’t keep the scowl from her face as she mentally tried to work out whether he was still high or honestly stupid enough to drop himself in it like that. He crossed the room, settling into the stool next to the eldest Winchester with no hesitation whatsoever, and Ellen reluctantly concluded that it had to be the latter.
“The name’s John Winchester.” The dark-haired man introduced. “These are my boys, Sam and Dean. Singer sent us - said you could help us track a demon by the name of Azazel.”
Ash raised an eyebrow. “Azazel? He’s pretty biblical, dude. If you’ve got a set of parameters, then I could maybe hook you up. You said Bobby sent you?”
John nodded, and Ellen let her eyes flicker over to his sons. Their heads were bowed close together, the two of them talking quietly; there was something in the way that they were sat, the way that Dean’s hand rested low on his brother’s back and their knees pressed together, that made her feel uncomfortable. She fought back the urge to shudder and decided not to think about it. Some things were best ignored.
“Sweet.” Ash grinned. “My laptop’s in my room. Why don’t you come around back and we’ll see what we can figure out?”
John grinned, a quick flash of teeth that looked almost sinister, and shifted to his feet in a graceful movement. For a moment, Ellen almost found herself insisting that she go with them - in the end, it was the realization that the boys were staying seated that kept her behind the bar. As much as she hated to leave Ash alone and unprotected, the idea of calling Jo in to watch the bar whilst the two Winchester boys were sitting there seemed infinitely more disastrous.
Anxiety fluttered in her stomach as she watched Ash lead John towards the back of the bar, where the little room that he had claimed all those months ago was tucked away. Almost comically, hunters shifted awkwardly out of the way of Winchester as he passed, a few of them even going as far as to avert their eyes. It didn’t make her feel any better.
Sam shifted in his seat, drawing her attention back to the two remaining Winchesters, and she hurriedly grabbed a dirty glass off the bar when his hazel eyes flickered up to meet hers. In the dim lights of the bar, it was hard to tell whether they were gold or blue - instead, they seemed to constantly shift, and it made something lurch uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach as he watched her.
She busied herself with doing menial tasks that she usually left to Jo; collecting and washing the dirty glasses from along the bar’s counter, placing them back on the shelves that they were stored on. She changed out the empty bottle of Jack, re-filled the large ice bucket, and felt her shoulders begin to relax a little as the people around her fell into a stilted impression of normalcy.
She did her best to keep her eyes off Sam and Dean, but couldn’t help but shoot a quick glance at them every now and again. They didn’t seem at all bothered by the people around them, heads still bowed together and voices hushed as they talked quietly. She caught snatches of their conversations every now and then as she passed, gradually piecing together the clues that each snippet gave her, and eventually concluded that they were planning some kind of run in the woods. Quite honestly, she’d expected something a little more dramatic.
She was relieved that they showed no signs of moving. That they apparently had no intentions of trying to befriend the other hunters, or even trying for a game of pool. She was sure that their reception would have been more than a little hostile if they had.
Roughly a half hour or so since their father had disappeared off after Ash, she noticed that their beer bottles were empty. Quite honestly, she considered leaving it until they flagged her down for another, before a sense of duty forced her hand. It was her business, at the end of the day, and she’d done her best to run it for the past twenty years without judging any of its patrons (with the exception of Gordon, because he was a mean son of a bitch and Jo had harbored one hell of a crush on him until he tried to use her for bait).
She stopped next to them the next time her errands carried her past, reaching out to collect the beer bottles. Dean’s eyes swung from his brother to her so fast that she almost flinched; they were vividly green, piercing and hard, and she was reminded of the cold stare of a snake when she looked into them.
“Can I get you another?”
Dean’s face broke into a small smile, and he shifted his weight on his stool, crossing his arms on the counter and leaning forwards. It was the first time anything had properly taken his attention from his brother since the moment that they’d sat down, and Ellen instantly regretted her decision to offer them a refill.
Sam, on the other hand, just looked bored. He reached for a beermat, tipping it onto a corner and somehow managing to balance it there as he knocked it into a spin, long fingers already reaching for another. She’d never seen anyone manage to do that before, and was impressed despite herself.
Dean followed her gaze, grinning widely as he leant forwards even further, voice deep and husky. “Believe me, that’s not the least of what Sam here can do with his hands.”
She felt a flush make its way across her face, leaving her blushing scarlet like a schoolgirl at the open innuendo in his voice. Her stomach churned and she could feel a lump in her throat, because Jesus Christ, they were brothers. She opened her mouth to speak, but was beaten to it by a familiar deep voice.
“Think you should learn to be a little more polite, son.” Charlie Grayson drawled, shooting Ellen a look that was genuinely apologetic. He’d been a good friend of Bill’s, and after his death, the older hunter had taken it upon himself to see that Ellen and Jo were alright. Hell, she knew for a fact that after the whole fiasco with Gordon and Jo, he’d beaten the other hunter black and blue without ever asking for his side of the story. “That ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”
Dean’s spine stiffened visibly, and Sam turned his attention from his beermat to look at Charlie’s face over the curve of his brother’s spine, shadowed face unreadable. The older boy’s head swung around slowly, and his expression was almost frightening.
“I’m not your son.” He answered quietly. His voice was dark, the amused rumble from before having evaporated completely, and Ellen hated herself when her knees went a little weak at the sound of it. “And you’d do well to remember that.”
Charlie frowned, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. She knew him well enough to know that he hadn’t meant anything by his comment, it had just been a friendly warning for them to watch what they said, but it was clear that things were about to escalate. She couldn’t think of any way to stop it, brain going silent for a brief moment, and she wondered absently if this was what a deer felt in the moment that it first registered the oncoming headlights of a car.
“Damn right,” Charlie scowled. His southern drawl had come out full force, the same way it always did when he was angry or drunk or tired, and she half-expected him to spit out a mouthful of chewing tobacco like a character from a western. “No son of mine would ever talk to a lady like that. You should be ashamed of yourself. Didn’t your daddy never teach you no manners?”
For a moment, she was sure that all hell was going to break loose, right there in the middle of her goddamn bar. And then, miraculously, Dean’s shoulders relaxed and he let a lazy smile cross his face. It certainly wasn’t friendly, not by a long shot, but it was a hell of a lot better than a punch.
“Clearly not,” He offered, with a shake of his head, turning his attention once more to Ellen. “We’ll take those refills, now.”
The woman nodding her head, quickly grabbing two bottles and popping the lids. She slid them easily across the bar, trying to ignore the restless way that Sam was shifting on his seat.
“Pussy,” A voice called out, and Ellen’s head whipped around to find Walt - one of Gordon’s little group of followers - sitting a few stools down from Sam. “What’s the matter, Winchester? Can’t hold your own in a fight without your daddy there to back you up?”
Dean was moving before she even really registered what was happening, crossing the distance between himself and Walt in a few short strides, slamming the man against the pillar that jutted out from the bar with an arm across his throat, fist clenched in the material of his shirt. The payphone’s receiver fell out of the holder, clattering against the counter.
Ellen’s eyes flew to Sam, hoping naively that he might call his brother off in an effort to prevent a scene. Instead, the younger Winchester yawned widely and arched his back in a lazy stretch. He couldn’t have looked less bothered if he tried.
Face dangerously close to Walt’s, Dean’s voice was more of a growl than anything else. “Wanna find out just how well I can hold my own, Walt? I’d be happy to show you.”
Walt’s eyes narrowed, and he twisted his body, swinging his arm around. Ellen caught the metallic gleam of the knife headed towards Dean’s throat in the same moment that the hunter swung his arm up to block the advance. The silver knife just barely nicked the flesh of his forearm, a miracle in itself given the speed of the blow. Dean didn’t react at all, but Ellen found herself sucking in a sharp breath, because the wound was sizzling.
She may not have been a hunter herself, but she knew what that meant. There was only a few kinds of creatures that would have that reaction to silver - skinwalkers, shapeshifters and werewolves making up the main three - and none of them were human. Apparently, the rumours had been right for once.
A split second later, and Walt wasn’t the only hunter with a knife in his hand.
It was like a chain reaction rippling through the bar as the hunter’s realized what had just happened. Guns and knives were produced like some kind of magic trick, popping out of seemingly nowhere, and Ellen could feel her own hands trembling by her sides. This was bad.
Sam yawned again, swinging around on his stool to face the room; he was kicking his legs backwards and forwards like a small kid, eyes skipping from hunter to hunter as he assessed them all individually. It was like some kind of Mexican standoff, the Winchesters vs. the room, everyone waiting with baited breath for someone to make a move.
Brain finally kicking into gear, Ellen reached blindly for her gun, feeling the fear bleed out of her muscles as the sound of it being racked shot through the bar. Sam twisted to look at her curiously over one shoulder, and he mouth split into a feral grin that was so much like his fathers it was eerie.
“Gonna shoot us?” He drawled. He didn’t sound angry or scared, but simply amused at the entire situation. He was still leaning back against the bar, the picture of relaxation, and Ellen wished that she could believe it was just an act.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Haven’t decided yet. What are you?”
“Werewolves,” Sam admitted happily, taking a long swallow of his beer. “Non-lunars, to be specific. I know just how much hunters love their specifics.”
“Right,” Ellen nodded, doing her best to act like there was nothing abnormal happening. “And what the hell are werewolves doing in a goddamn hunter bar?”
“Because we’re also hunters.” Dean’s voice chimed in. A quick glance revealed that he’d managed to get the knife out of Walt’s hand and it was currently impaled in the wooden pillar supporting the payphone; the hunter was still being supported there by an arm across his throat, but Dean had lost the dangerous intensity that he’d had only moments before, apparently amused by the shift in conversation. “And like you said, this is a hunter bar.”
Honestly, Ellen couldn’t really deny that.
Apparently nobody in the Roadhouse knew when to keep their mouths shut (and honestly, it was a wonder that half of the occupants of the room had lived as long as they had if tonight was any demonstration of their common sense), she didn’t have to try.
“Bullshit.” Roy announced, standing just a few feet away from where his friend was pinned. He hadn’t tried to pull Dean off, which Ellen was currently counting her blessings for, but his hands were curled into fists by his sides and he looked more than a little pissed off. “You’re no better than any of the other things that we hunt. Hell, we should just kill you now.”
Sam rolled his eyes, sliding off his stool and landing lightly on his feet. A few of the hunters with their weapons trained on Dean shifted their attention to Sam, but most of them seemed to believe that Dean was the bigger threat. Ellen couldn’t quite bring herself to see it, because while Dean was bigger and stronger and currently had his arm pressed against a hunter’s throat, Sam was steadily making his way across the room with those hypnotic eyes focused on Roy.
He moved like an animal, calculated movements and soundless feet, and Ellen’s mouth dried up. Her shotgun swung around to train on him.
She expected him to stop a few feet short of the other hunter, or perhaps to lunge for him, but he did neither. Instead, he sidled up to the older man slowly, pressing in close - Ellen knew enough about Roy to know that he wasn’t all too opposed to having a hot young man pressed against him, and the hunter didn’t shove him away.
Instead, his eyes widened in what appeared to be panic, and he raised his hands in the universal expression of surrender.
“That hurts my feelings,” Sam said quietly. His voice held that same raspy quality that Dean had used on her before, and he might only be a teenager, but he sure as hell knew what he was doing. Roy hesitated, clearly unsure of how to react, eyes shooting to Walt as if looking for some kind of guidance. “You wouldn’t really kill me, would you?”
Slowly, unbelievably, Roy shook his head.
A loud laugh broke the tension, and Ellen turned to find John Winchester stood on the other side of the room, grinning wide and honestly for the first time since he’d arrived. Ash was stood a little behind him, one hand clutching a bottle of beer and the other scratching his head in apparent confusion; a mutilated laptop was tucked under the werewolf’s arm, and Ellen figured that he’d gotten whatever it was that he’d come for.
“Boys,” John said lightly. The two young men reacted instantly; Dean released his hold on Walt with one last shove, and Sam moved away from Roy’s side, bouncing lightly across the floorboards to scoop up his beer bottle and drain the last dregs of it. John simply rolled his eyes.
He waited until his youngest son had finished before finally turning to address Ellen, paying no attention to the shotgun she held in her hand, eyes never so much as flitting towards it.
“Thanks for your help,” He told her, winking one of those dark eyes in her direction. “I think we’ll be seeing you soon.”
Ellen forced a smile, lowering the shotgun away from her shoulder as the three of them unhurriedly made their way towards the door. None of them looked back as they stepped outside, and it wasn’t until the door had shut firmly behind them that Ellen finally allowed herself to heave a sigh of relief.
She reached for a bottle of vodka and a shot glass with trembling fingers.
“If those three never come back here,” She told Ash lightly, as he settled into the stool opposite her. “I’ll die a happy woman. That was perhaps the most nerve-wracking experience of my whole life. Even worse than that vampire hunt in Missouri, I’m telling you.”
“Seriously?” Ash raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely surprised. “Huh. I thought they were kind of cool. Totally badass.”
Ellen barely resisted the urge to smack him upside the head.
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