Bright White Light - Supernatural/X-Files fic: Chapter 6
Warnings, rating and summary are in the Master Post.
Both Winchesters slept deeply that night, in turns, despite the cold and the fear of the Air Force or the FBI suddenly kicking the door in and taking them away to a foster home. It was Sam who was watching as the night turned to dawn, and Max exited his trailer again. He walked off into town, but returned fifteen minutes later, heading straight for their room before remembering to be sneaky and edging sideways around the white latticework instead, approaching from the direction of the office instead.
"Max is coming over," Sam called to the sleeping Dean, from his perch by the front window. Sam had perked up at the thought of speaking to someone other than his extra-bitchy brother, and hurried into the dark of the main room. Max knocked quietly, and Sam let him in, watching closely as Max stepped over the salt, Dean observing from the bedroom door, close to the shotgun.
"Hey, guys." Max was carrying a brown paper bag with him, and Sam could smell hamburgers. "I didn't know if your dad had left you any cash, so I got some hamburgers to go from the diner."
"Thanks!" Sam all but cheered, and Dean gave him a dirty look. Sam rather hoped that Dean wasn't going to refuse the burgers, but surely Dean's stomach wouldn't let him say no.
"We'll pay you back, Max. Thanks." Dean was indeed reaching out for the food.
Instead of politely refusing the offer, Max looked pleased. "Oh, uh, that would be great. I think they've put the prices up now all these journalists have moved in. My disability check isn't due for a week yet." He pulled grease-paper wrapped hamburgers from the bag and handed one to each boy, keeping the third for himself. "Can you even see in here? It's so dark."
Dean, already gnawing his way through his thick, sloppy burger, shrugged. "Yeah, sure, there's plenty of light from outside."
Sam took one more bite of his burger, then put it on the table, and grabbed his flashlight from the table, and waved it at Max. "Can I shine this on you?" Max nodded, and Sam shone the light on his face - his eyes had the same dull, silvery sheen as Heather Kovacs' had. "Look, Dean."
Dean was suddenly focused entirely on Max, his hamburger abandoned. "Max, I don't think your aliens are good for you. We saw someone else whose eyes looked like yours, and she's sick. And her parents died."
Max didn't seem alarmed, and didn't stop eating, though he turned his face away from the flashlight's clear beam. "There's nothing wrong with me, seriously. Don't worry."
"No, actually- " Dean started talking, but Max cut in over him.
"I came here to ask you something, actually. There were three of us being held by the Air Force - me, your dad and the other guy staying at this motel. He knows more than he's telling, I'm sure, because I've seen him in UFO magazines. He's written articles."
"So, what do you want from us?" Sam's skepticism was echoed in Dean's folded arms, and neither of them picked up their burgers again.
"I saw you break into the office, before." Max didn't look angry or threatening in the slightest, like this was a completely normal conversation for him to hold, and something about that reminded Sam of Pastor Jim, who could talk about God, hunting and doing the dishes all in one breath. "I need to get into his room. Will you help me?"
"Why did they send you and him back to Townsend, but not our dad? Besides, the Air Force already tossed the room."
Max sounded apologetic. "I think I'm the only one they released, actually. I don't know why, I really don't. I hope there's some answers in that hotel room - I don't think the Air Force would know what to look for."
Sam looked over at Dean, who shrugged. Max was certainly not the smoothest bargainer in the world - it would have made more sense to promise them something in return, or at least withhold the hamburgers until they agreed, but at the same time, Max's openness was far more enticing than any glorious promise.
"Okay." Dean picked up his hamburger again. "We'll get you in."
Max grinned and took a big bite of his hamburger, but kept talking. "He told me he'd seen wreckage. Of an alien craft. And he had photos of the Air Force hosing it down, and putting a laser cordon around the whole area."
"Really?" Sam boggled.
"Well, the Air Force confiscated his film when they captured him, of course. But he says there's a huge search going on out there, not just a clean-up operation. Maybe an alien escaped the crash?"
Dean and Sam looked at each other, both thinking the same thing - if a ludverc was flying around out there, burning people, the Air Force was never going to catch it, whether or not they thought it was a human being.
"Okay, Max. Let's go break into this room and see what you can find."
Dean carefully peered out the window for more jeeps, or journalists, but there was no sign of anyone up and about, at least no closer than the main road, and they were well shielded from that. The office, however, was open again, so they would need to be careful that Shawna and her employees didn't catch sight of them. Still, the locks were both simple and old, and it should only take a few moments to open. Dean handed the lock pick roll to Sam, who slipped quickly out the door and up to the room, making short work of the lock. Dean and Max joined him, and Max reached over Sam's head to push the door open. The room inside, slightly smaller than the Winchesters', was an absolute mess - books, paper and clothing lay scattered all over the floor, and all the furniture had been systematically and ruthlessly searched, even down to slitting the mattress cover.
"Wow." Max surveyed the damage. "The FBI's going to be pissed when they get this bill."
Sam and Dean looked at him in horror. "That guy's the FBI agent?" Dean gasped.
"But we talked to him!" Sam stared at Max with wide eyes, then tugged Dean's sleeve. "Let's go! Now!"
"No kidding," Dean muttered, then suddenly shoved Sam further into the room. Sam turned as he stumbled, and saw the source of Dean's panic just as the door shut. A shiny new rental car had pulled into the parking lot, and in it was the FBI agent himself - the very man who had pretended to be a UFO chaser last night - along with a red-haired woman in the passenger seat. They were just a dozen feet away, and as soon as they got out of the car, they'd have a perfect view of the motel room's only door.
"Max, we've got to get out of here!" Sam was horrified to see that Max looked far more panicked than Sam or Dean, but rather than immediately fleeing, he was trying to gather up papers from the floor and bed.
"Come on!" Dean grabbed Sam's shoulder and pulled him into the bathroom. "If this room's like ours, the bathroom window opens."
"But Max -"
Dean called back to Max, "The bathroom window opens!" Dean didn't hesitate, though, and neither did Sam. Dean cupped his hands and boosted Sam up to the small window. Sam opened it and wriggled through head-first, grabbing the windowsill as he went through to give himself time to fall without hurting himself. He scrambled backwards on the damp concrete behind the row of motel rooms to give Dean room to fall.
It took Dean slightly longer to get through the window - he was skinny, but the window was very narrow - but he made it out with a minimum of noise. He grabbed Sam's arm and they quietly made their way to the end of the row of rooms, listening carefully for the FBI agents. The agents had left their car, and were walking towards the room that the Winchesters had just escaped.
"Mulder, the hearing is tomorrow morning at ten o'clock."
"That gives us 24 hours to investigate."
Sam held his breath, and he knew Dean was doing the same.
"My assignment is to bring you back, not to help you dig yourself in deeper."
Mulder laughed sarcastically. "'The Last Detail', starring Dana Scully."
The door to the FBI agent's motel room opened, then quickly closed, and Dean risked a look around the corner.
"They've gone in, Sam."
"Did Max make it out?" Sam glanced back, but saw no-one.
Dean's voice was gloomy. "We would have seen him."
They took the brief opportunity to dash back into their own room as quietly as possible. Dean put the chain on the door, and Sam fidgeted, tying his fingers in anxious knots. "Dean, is Max going to get arrested? Is he going to tell Mulder about us? Should we get out of here?"
"I don't know! And if the FBI's involved with the fake train crash, and the aliens, then they probably know all about Dad. Maybe they know about the monsters, I don't know!"
Sam sat down cross-legged on the floor, putting his hands under his butt so that he stopped twisting them about. "I don't think that's right. Max says they arrested Mulder and they took away his camera."
"You're taking things at face value again, Sammy! How do you know that they didn't fake the arrest to get information out of Dad, or Max?" Dean took a breath, and his face took on a thoughtful cast. "But then, that would mean they don't really know what's going on, and they want to find out. And they're just saying it's a chemical spill until they can work out what's really happening."
"Dad's never talked to anyone in the FBI, has he? I mean, Bobby's faked being the FBI sometimes..."
"If there really were hunters in the FBI, then Bobby wouldn't need to do that, would he? No, they're trying to work out what the hell's happening, or they wouldn't need to try to trick Max." Dean looked far more confident now, but then he glanced out the window and gestured to Sam.
"What?" Sam whispered, cross that he hadn't seen it for himself.
"They've got Max. Look."
Indeed, Max and the two FBI agents were walking out of the motel room together. Max and Mulder were chatting like old friends, though the female agent, Scully, didn't seem so involved in the conversation.
Dean turned back to Sam. "Okay, that's it. Max is working with them now. He said he knew that agent, and I guess he wasn't lying. We've got to get moving."
Sam nodded, though he didn't really want to go. "Yeah, we can't stay here. Agent Mulder knows we're by ourselves, and Max knows exactly where we are. What should we take?"
"Clear out one of the bags, get the winter gear and the shotgun. The spare cash. And put on some more clothes. It's going to get cold out there."
Sam headed to the bedroom to get his things. "Are we going to camp out? What if it snows?"
"No, dumb-ass." Dean grinned as he said it, taking the sting out of the insult. "We're going to Heather Kovacs' house."
"Really? What if the ludverc comes back?"
Dean counted on his fingers. "One, we know it's in the forest. Two, we know how to protect ourselves from it. Three, unlike certain people at this motel, it's not likely to break in and arrest us!"
Sam grinned back. It felt good to be on the move. "Can we call Bobby when we get there?"
"Yeah, good idea. Dad'll get in touch with him first when he gets out."
With everything they needed packed up, Dean with a duffel bag and Sam with his school backpack, they crouched by the front window and waited for the FBI agents to emerge from Max's trailer. When they did - without Max - they went straight to their car and drove away, though it looked like they were still arguing.
Unwilling to risk Max seeing them, the two boys climbed through their own bathroom window and out the back of the motel, Dean handing their bags down to Sam before dropping down himself. They moved quickly away from the motel, towards the lakeshore, so that they could avoid the main street. They'd heard enough cars going up and down it to guess at how busy the town was, with all the journalists and Air Force personnel, and more people meant more danger.
Sam giggled.
"What?" Dean snapped, though he also looked more relaxed now that they were on the move.
"We're running towards the monster to avoid the people! People are scarier!"
"Yeah, I believe you." Dean shrugged, but Sam could see he was happy to be outside in the weak sunlight. "Hey, let's go past the doctor's house and grab some of those birch branches you spotted."
"You don't think he'll be at home?"
"No way, the hospital will be busy with all those burned people. Plus anyone who got hurt in the evacuation, and old people having heart attacks because of the sirens...there's no way he'll be at home."
They walked by the lake, past the small cabins that were largely closed up for winter, ducking out of the way a few times when a car passed them, but there were no jeeps and guns out this side of town, and no-one cared to stop them. Several of the houses had birch trees, not just the doctor's, and they quickly scavenged a good collection of branches and twigs from the muddy ground, though Sam's fingers felt frozen even through his woolen gloves, damp with soil and leaf mold. Dean reached over and took a few of the largest of Sam's branches to add to his own load, leaving Sam with one hand free, to put in his pocket for warmth.
"Come on, Sam, we're nearly there. And then we can put the heater on as high as you like."
Dean's encouragement was all that Sam needed to trudge the last half-mile to the Kovacs' house, clutching his birch sticks, while Dean carried an armful of bigger branches. They soon reached the Kovacs' street of larger, newer houses, plentiful trees providing excellent cover for scouting the area. A few minutes of reconnaissance showed that not only was no-one at the Kovacs' home - other cars were in the garage, but Heather's little SUV was absent - but the garage was still unlocked from their visit on Sunday, and they knew that a door from the garage led straight into the house.
Sam and Dean hurried inside, birch branches clutched tightly, and dumped their burdens on the kitchen floor. The central heating in the house had been left on, and they quickly shed their excess layers of clothing to warm their chilly hands on the heated floor tiles in the kitchen.
"Hey, Dean, this place is pretty good for a house that was probably built by a ludverc."
Dean's nose and ears were going bright red with the change in temperature. "You hear me complaining? Once we've warmed up properly we should have something to eat. Heather's not going to notice anything missing, even if Dad does save her. And we know the food's not cursed, now." His face became more serious. "Then we're going to salt this place within an inch of its life, and get those birch twigs across every doorway. And call Bobby."
Sam smiled, lying on his back on the toasty floor, his fingers stinging as they warmed up. "Yeah, yeah. But now we just have to worry about the ludverc, not the FBI. And we're the monster experts!"
By nightfall, Bobby had found an answer to the ludverc problem. He called with their planned two rings, hang up, call again pattern, and Sam picked up.
"Bobby? Have you heard from Dad?" Sam was now wearing just his jeans, t-shirt and clean, dry socks - the Kovacs house had awesome central heating.
"Sorry, Sam. But I do have something for you - to destroy the kind of ludverc you've got now, you need to get it inside a hollow tree, preferably a birch tree."
"How?"
"I called a hunter who'd dealt with one before, over in Ohio, and she said that if you outline a path out of birch sticks, it'll run right down it and into the tree. Then you use the birch or salt to stop it getting out again and it dies. This is for John, Sam, not for you. It might be able to summon people already in thrall to fight you off. "
"Don't worry, Bobby! We're safe and we're not going anywhere - it's great here! They have cable, and food, and heating and everything! Dean made me have a bath!"
"Good boy. You tell Dean the same things, all right? Stay in the house until your dad or I show up."
"Sure thing, Bobby!" Sam hung up cheerfully. Staying here was much better than hanging around a motel.
Dean came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. "Was that Bobby?"
"Yeah. To kill the ludverc, we can make a path out of the birch twigs, then it runs down it into a hollow tree, then we close it up again with salt and the birch twigs. That's it! Oh, and watch out for people in thrall, it might call them if it feels threatened."
"Awesome. I'll go get dressed, you want to check the windows and doors again?"
Sam sighed. "Okay. Then can we have ice cream?"
"Sure, why not? There's hot dogs in the freezer too, if you want some."
Sam punched the air then scurried off to make the rounds again, checking that every possible entrance to the house had both salt and a birch branch or stick across it. The fireplace was particularly well fortified, being the ludverc's previous point of entry - Dean had stuffed a branch up the chimney, as well as making sure that the hearth was entirely covered with salt and sticks. Sam had even salted around the drains and the toilet, though he was fairly sure that a fiery creature like the ludverc wouldn't be very interested in them.
Safely ensconced, Dean and Sam could settle down to a dinner of hot dogs in slightly freezer-burnt buns, vast amounts of ketchup, some reheated corn on the cob as a token gesture towards their dad's insistence on vegetables, and chocolate ice cream. They ate in front of the TV in the living room - Dean had insisted on checking the news in case of further developments - but with no further news on the military's movements or the evacuees, they soon put in a video instead. The Kovacs had a pretty good collection, all nicely shelved by the TV in their big living room, and they even had a few movies that Dean hadn't managed to see, like Point Break.
Once Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves had finished surfing, shooting and blowing things up to everyone's satisfaction, the Winchesters washed up everything they'd used, and cleaned up their garbage. An unexpected getaway still might be on the cards, and although they were no longer dressed for the outdoors, they still needed to keep everything ready to move as quickly as possible.
"We're staying in the living room," Dean told Sam, as they finished putting the clean dishes back in the cupboards.
"There's beds upstairs," Sam grumbled, but he could see why - there was only one staircase, and if someone or something was coming up that, they'd have to drop out a much higher window than the motel bathroom. "Well, does the sofa fold out, or should we get a mattress from upstairs? Or just sleep on the carpet, it's pretty soft."
"Seriously, and it's heated! Dad should get us to stay with people like this all the time!" Dean's expression darkened, a little, but he held onto his smile. "Go check if the sofa's a fold-out, then."
It was, and Sam wasted no time getting their spare plaid blanket out of the duffel bag - in this house, they weren't going to need a pile of them to stay warm. He lined up their shoes, sweaters, coats and now-dry gloves on either side of the mattress, just as their dad would tell them to do, to make sure they were ready to dress and leave in a hurry. Every time Sam glanced up, the two boxes on the mantelpiece that held the ashes of Mr and Mrs Kovacs seemed to be watching him. He knew that was ridiculous, but - with a quick glance to make sure Dean was still in the kitchen - he took them down and carried them carefully to the study instead. It wasn't as if they were going to mind, not now.
Dean wiped his damp hands on his pants as he walked out of the kitchen. "Okay, I'm taking first watch. You catch some sleep."
"What are you watching for now? We're pretty safe here, aren't we?" Sam yawned, and snuggled into the warm, soft sofa-bed, tucking the blanket around himself.
"The FBI, Heather Kovacs coming back, Dad... You never know, Sammy."
"Okay." Sam closed his eyes and Dean turned off the light, though the various appliances around the living room and the street light outside still cast a faint glow. To the sound of Dean's steady breathing, Sam fell asleep.
Sam was on watch in the pre-dawn hours. He was a little cranky that Dean had let him sleep so long, but keeping watch was boring and he'd slept really well, so he hadn't protested too hard. He sat on an armchair, shotgun near to hand, watching the TV's pale flicker. Dean had turned it on sometime in the night, the sound muted, and he'd left it on for Sam, which just told Sam that Dean had been bored, too. It all seemed to be shopping shows and religion at this hour, but Sam didn't mind - it was kind of nice to see that the world was still just the same out there. It meant that his dad would be back soon, that they wouldn't be hiding, that they just needed to catch up with the rest of the world. Everything would be fine.
For a long moment, Sam didn't understand the bright white flash that washed over the room, but then the TV went dead, along with Sam's flashlight, the clock and everything else electronic in the room, and he scrambled down to Dean's side.
"Dean, wake up! I saw it!"
Dean was awake instantaneously. "Here?"
"No, out the window. The TV went off!"
"Get dressed and stay low." Dean scrambled into his own clothes and hurried over to the big windows, still lined with salt and birch, keeping his head below the level of the sill. He peeped over the edge, his hands busy tying his shoelaces, and carefully assessed the scene. Sam struggled into his clothes, then crawled over to Dean's side.
"Can you see anything?"
"Sort of - there's a glow down towards the center of town, a white glow, not like a fire." Dean pointed, but it was easy to spot in the entirely dark town - the white light was the only light of any kind. "Power's out everywhere."
Sam squinted at it and frowned. "Dean, is it getting bigger?"
"Shit, no, it's getting closer. Get down!"
Dean pulled Sam down to the carpet as the glow loomed huge through the window, blotting out everything, outlining the room in violent brightness. Suddenly it seemed to be coming from all directions, shining right through their eyelids. Dean put a hand over Sam's eyes, holding him tightly, but even so, the light gleamed through, stabbing into their vision no matter which way they looked.
Then it was gone. Sam gasped, his vision full of spot and lines, and Dean let Sam go. They both sat up, but stayed right where they were, blinking and staring. The darkness around them was cool and comforting, but a perfect canvas for the visual tricks their dazzled eyes played.
"Sam, you okay?"
"Yeah, um, just my eyes hurt. They're getting better, I'm okay."
"Me too." Dean clambered to his feet, but stumbled against the edge of the sofa. He got a hand on the shotgun, though, then sat back down with Sam.
Sam stared out the window, trying to make out the shapes before his eyes. His eyes must have been recovering faster than Dean's, because some of the bright shapes resolved quite quickly.
"Dean! The trees are on fire!"
Dean squinted out the window, and saw what Sam meant - all the trees around the house, the tall pine trees that had provided them with such good cover, were catching fire, great flames shooting up the branches. "We kept it out of the house, but it's burning the yard. We've got to get out of here, Sammy."
"Will the fire burn the house?" Sam scrubbed at his eyes and saw that the fire was spreading into the ivy on the porch at the back of the house.
"Looks like a regular fire to me! Check the back of the house, see if the back yard's on fire too." Dean quickly shoved their belongings back in the duffel bag and zipped it closed, and started collecting some of the birch sticks that they had laid around the room.
Sam ran for the back of the house and peered out the window. "Yes it is! The whole yard's on fire, Dean, all around us!" He couldn't understand why Dean was remaining so calm. Even if the fire didn't kill them, the Air Force and the FBI would surely be here in a minute. The sudden shrill of smoke alarms filled the air and Sam ran back to Dean, who was pulling the biggest of the birch branches from the fireplace. "Dean! What are you doing? We've got to get out of here!"
Dean yelled over the smoke alarms. "It's no good running without a plan - if the ludverc's still around, it'll get us the second we step outside the protections we set up. Here, take the salt and get your backpack on!"
Sam quickly obeyed, and took the birch branch that Dean held out to him.
"Come on!" Dean ran through the kitchen, bent forward to keep his head low, down the hall and out into the garage. Less insulated than the house, it was already filling with smoke and heat. "Get in the car, Sammy!"
Sam climbed up into the nearest car, a big green SUV, and Dean, coughing, shoved the birch branches and the shotgun in after him. Dean ran over to the garage doors and swung one upwards, pulling his hands away from the hot door and sprinting back for the car in the red light of the flames outside. The concrete driveway itself was clear, but the trees lining both sides were entirely alight, flames shooting up into the air, crackling and roaring. Sam flung himself across the front seats and threw the driver's door open. Dean jumped in, pulling keys from his pocket and starting the car.
"Where did you get those?" Sam shouted.
"Key rack in the hall!" Dean bellowed back, slamming the car into reverse and shooting out of the driveway as fast as he could. Both boys yelled as a huge, charred branch hurtled through the air towards the windshield, but they were moving backwards fast enough that it landed in front of the car rather than on it. They reached the street - trees near the Kovacs house were catching on fire too, now, and people were running from their houses - and sped off in the SUV, tires screeching on the hot asphalt. The sound of sirens followed them as they streaked away, and Sam looked over his shoulder to see that the house was no longer visible behind the great sheets of flame. No other houses were on fire, but it looked like they soon would be. The fire leapt forty feet into the air, burning hot and bright even in the November damp.
The entire town was dark, but for the red glow of the flames behind them, and Sam had no trouble spotting the bright light again. It was moving across the dark, low sky, in an arc that looked quite slow at a distance, though almost certainly wasn't. It was heading towards the beginnings of a pale dawn.
"Dean, look! It's heading due east."
Dean slowed down so that he could turn his head and see for himself. "Yeah, I see it." He turned right at the next intersection, and pointed the car east. "Keep that shotgun handy, Sammy."
Sam rearranged the pile of birch branches that lay across his legs to secure his grip on the gun. "Are we really going after it?" He felt exhilarated and terrified at the same time - thrilled that their protections really had held, that they could defend themselves against something so dangerous, but his stomach churned at the thought of seeking it out.
"Look, Sammy, Dad's not back. We don't know where he's gone, but wherever it is, it's not here. And the ludverc is here. No-one else knows what it is or how to fight it."
"We could wait for Bobby?" Sam felt he should put up at least a token protest, even though he thought Dean was right. When he glanced across at Dean's taut mouth and narrowed eyes, he was glad that he'd said something. Dean was just saying what he thought they should do, rather than what he really wanted to do. Dean looked more than a little scared to Sam, though someone else might not have seen that. Not even Dad - Dean was especially well-practiced at hiding any supposed weakness from him.
"We'll call him as soon as we can get to a phone, okay? He should know."
"How about this for a plan, Dean? We track it down and protect the area with the birch twigs and salt, so it can't fly around hurting anyone. It must be going to ground somewhere - maybe it was trying to hide out at the house, but we stopped it? Then we can wait for Bobby, no problems."
Dean grinned. "Awesome, dude! I like the plan! And it'll save us from Dad kicking our asses when he gets back."
"Yeah, well, that's one good part of it." Sam grinned back, pleased with himself. If Dean was trying to throw himself into danger, trying to be Dad in Dad's absence, well, Sam didn't have to let him do that.
On to Chapter 7
Back to Chapter 5
Master Post
Both Winchesters slept deeply that night, in turns, despite the cold and the fear of the Air Force or the FBI suddenly kicking the door in and taking them away to a foster home. It was Sam who was watching as the night turned to dawn, and Max exited his trailer again. He walked off into town, but returned fifteen minutes later, heading straight for their room before remembering to be sneaky and edging sideways around the white latticework instead, approaching from the direction of the office instead.
"Max is coming over," Sam called to the sleeping Dean, from his perch by the front window. Sam had perked up at the thought of speaking to someone other than his extra-bitchy brother, and hurried into the dark of the main room. Max knocked quietly, and Sam let him in, watching closely as Max stepped over the salt, Dean observing from the bedroom door, close to the shotgun.
"Hey, guys." Max was carrying a brown paper bag with him, and Sam could smell hamburgers. "I didn't know if your dad had left you any cash, so I got some hamburgers to go from the diner."
"Thanks!" Sam all but cheered, and Dean gave him a dirty look. Sam rather hoped that Dean wasn't going to refuse the burgers, but surely Dean's stomach wouldn't let him say no.
"We'll pay you back, Max. Thanks." Dean was indeed reaching out for the food.
Instead of politely refusing the offer, Max looked pleased. "Oh, uh, that would be great. I think they've put the prices up now all these journalists have moved in. My disability check isn't due for a week yet." He pulled grease-paper wrapped hamburgers from the bag and handed one to each boy, keeping the third for himself. "Can you even see in here? It's so dark."
Dean, already gnawing his way through his thick, sloppy burger, shrugged. "Yeah, sure, there's plenty of light from outside."
Sam took one more bite of his burger, then put it on the table, and grabbed his flashlight from the table, and waved it at Max. "Can I shine this on you?" Max nodded, and Sam shone the light on his face - his eyes had the same dull, silvery sheen as Heather Kovacs' had. "Look, Dean."
Dean was suddenly focused entirely on Max, his hamburger abandoned. "Max, I don't think your aliens are good for you. We saw someone else whose eyes looked like yours, and she's sick. And her parents died."
Max didn't seem alarmed, and didn't stop eating, though he turned his face away from the flashlight's clear beam. "There's nothing wrong with me, seriously. Don't worry."
"No, actually- " Dean started talking, but Max cut in over him.
"I came here to ask you something, actually. There were three of us being held by the Air Force - me, your dad and the other guy staying at this motel. He knows more than he's telling, I'm sure, because I've seen him in UFO magazines. He's written articles."
"So, what do you want from us?" Sam's skepticism was echoed in Dean's folded arms, and neither of them picked up their burgers again.
"I saw you break into the office, before." Max didn't look angry or threatening in the slightest, like this was a completely normal conversation for him to hold, and something about that reminded Sam of Pastor Jim, who could talk about God, hunting and doing the dishes all in one breath. "I need to get into his room. Will you help me?"
"Why did they send you and him back to Townsend, but not our dad? Besides, the Air Force already tossed the room."
Max sounded apologetic. "I think I'm the only one they released, actually. I don't know why, I really don't. I hope there's some answers in that hotel room - I don't think the Air Force would know what to look for."
Sam looked over at Dean, who shrugged. Max was certainly not the smoothest bargainer in the world - it would have made more sense to promise them something in return, or at least withhold the hamburgers until they agreed, but at the same time, Max's openness was far more enticing than any glorious promise.
"Okay." Dean picked up his hamburger again. "We'll get you in."
Max grinned and took a big bite of his hamburger, but kept talking. "He told me he'd seen wreckage. Of an alien craft. And he had photos of the Air Force hosing it down, and putting a laser cordon around the whole area."
"Really?" Sam boggled.
"Well, the Air Force confiscated his film when they captured him, of course. But he says there's a huge search going on out there, not just a clean-up operation. Maybe an alien escaped the crash?"
Dean and Sam looked at each other, both thinking the same thing - if a ludverc was flying around out there, burning people, the Air Force was never going to catch it, whether or not they thought it was a human being.
"Okay, Max. Let's go break into this room and see what you can find."
Dean carefully peered out the window for more jeeps, or journalists, but there was no sign of anyone up and about, at least no closer than the main road, and they were well shielded from that. The office, however, was open again, so they would need to be careful that Shawna and her employees didn't catch sight of them. Still, the locks were both simple and old, and it should only take a few moments to open. Dean handed the lock pick roll to Sam, who slipped quickly out the door and up to the room, making short work of the lock. Dean and Max joined him, and Max reached over Sam's head to push the door open. The room inside, slightly smaller than the Winchesters', was an absolute mess - books, paper and clothing lay scattered all over the floor, and all the furniture had been systematically and ruthlessly searched, even down to slitting the mattress cover.
"Wow." Max surveyed the damage. "The FBI's going to be pissed when they get this bill."
Sam and Dean looked at him in horror. "That guy's the FBI agent?" Dean gasped.
"But we talked to him!" Sam stared at Max with wide eyes, then tugged Dean's sleeve. "Let's go! Now!"
"No kidding," Dean muttered, then suddenly shoved Sam further into the room. Sam turned as he stumbled, and saw the source of Dean's panic just as the door shut. A shiny new rental car had pulled into the parking lot, and in it was the FBI agent himself - the very man who had pretended to be a UFO chaser last night - along with a red-haired woman in the passenger seat. They were just a dozen feet away, and as soon as they got out of the car, they'd have a perfect view of the motel room's only door.
"Max, we've got to get out of here!" Sam was horrified to see that Max looked far more panicked than Sam or Dean, but rather than immediately fleeing, he was trying to gather up papers from the floor and bed.
"Come on!" Dean grabbed Sam's shoulder and pulled him into the bathroom. "If this room's like ours, the bathroom window opens."
"But Max -"
Dean called back to Max, "The bathroom window opens!" Dean didn't hesitate, though, and neither did Sam. Dean cupped his hands and boosted Sam up to the small window. Sam opened it and wriggled through head-first, grabbing the windowsill as he went through to give himself time to fall without hurting himself. He scrambled backwards on the damp concrete behind the row of motel rooms to give Dean room to fall.
It took Dean slightly longer to get through the window - he was skinny, but the window was very narrow - but he made it out with a minimum of noise. He grabbed Sam's arm and they quietly made their way to the end of the row of rooms, listening carefully for the FBI agents. The agents had left their car, and were walking towards the room that the Winchesters had just escaped.
"Mulder, the hearing is tomorrow morning at ten o'clock."
"That gives us 24 hours to investigate."
Sam held his breath, and he knew Dean was doing the same.
"My assignment is to bring you back, not to help you dig yourself in deeper."
Mulder laughed sarcastically. "'The Last Detail', starring Dana Scully."
The door to the FBI agent's motel room opened, then quickly closed, and Dean risked a look around the corner.
"They've gone in, Sam."
"Did Max make it out?" Sam glanced back, but saw no-one.
Dean's voice was gloomy. "We would have seen him."
They took the brief opportunity to dash back into their own room as quietly as possible. Dean put the chain on the door, and Sam fidgeted, tying his fingers in anxious knots. "Dean, is Max going to get arrested? Is he going to tell Mulder about us? Should we get out of here?"
"I don't know! And if the FBI's involved with the fake train crash, and the aliens, then they probably know all about Dad. Maybe they know about the monsters, I don't know!"
Sam sat down cross-legged on the floor, putting his hands under his butt so that he stopped twisting them about. "I don't think that's right. Max says they arrested Mulder and they took away his camera."
"You're taking things at face value again, Sammy! How do you know that they didn't fake the arrest to get information out of Dad, or Max?" Dean took a breath, and his face took on a thoughtful cast. "But then, that would mean they don't really know what's going on, and they want to find out. And they're just saying it's a chemical spill until they can work out what's really happening."
"Dad's never talked to anyone in the FBI, has he? I mean, Bobby's faked being the FBI sometimes..."
"If there really were hunters in the FBI, then Bobby wouldn't need to do that, would he? No, they're trying to work out what the hell's happening, or they wouldn't need to try to trick Max." Dean looked far more confident now, but then he glanced out the window and gestured to Sam.
"What?" Sam whispered, cross that he hadn't seen it for himself.
"They've got Max. Look."
Indeed, Max and the two FBI agents were walking out of the motel room together. Max and Mulder were chatting like old friends, though the female agent, Scully, didn't seem so involved in the conversation.
Dean turned back to Sam. "Okay, that's it. Max is working with them now. He said he knew that agent, and I guess he wasn't lying. We've got to get moving."
Sam nodded, though he didn't really want to go. "Yeah, we can't stay here. Agent Mulder knows we're by ourselves, and Max knows exactly where we are. What should we take?"
"Clear out one of the bags, get the winter gear and the shotgun. The spare cash. And put on some more clothes. It's going to get cold out there."
Sam headed to the bedroom to get his things. "Are we going to camp out? What if it snows?"
"No, dumb-ass." Dean grinned as he said it, taking the sting out of the insult. "We're going to Heather Kovacs' house."
"Really? What if the ludverc comes back?"
Dean counted on his fingers. "One, we know it's in the forest. Two, we know how to protect ourselves from it. Three, unlike certain people at this motel, it's not likely to break in and arrest us!"
Sam grinned back. It felt good to be on the move. "Can we call Bobby when we get there?"
"Yeah, good idea. Dad'll get in touch with him first when he gets out."
With everything they needed packed up, Dean with a duffel bag and Sam with his school backpack, they crouched by the front window and waited for the FBI agents to emerge from Max's trailer. When they did - without Max - they went straight to their car and drove away, though it looked like they were still arguing.
Unwilling to risk Max seeing them, the two boys climbed through their own bathroom window and out the back of the motel, Dean handing their bags down to Sam before dropping down himself. They moved quickly away from the motel, towards the lakeshore, so that they could avoid the main street. They'd heard enough cars going up and down it to guess at how busy the town was, with all the journalists and Air Force personnel, and more people meant more danger.
Sam giggled.
"What?" Dean snapped, though he also looked more relaxed now that they were on the move.
"We're running towards the monster to avoid the people! People are scarier!"
"Yeah, I believe you." Dean shrugged, but Sam could see he was happy to be outside in the weak sunlight. "Hey, let's go past the doctor's house and grab some of those birch branches you spotted."
"You don't think he'll be at home?"
"No way, the hospital will be busy with all those burned people. Plus anyone who got hurt in the evacuation, and old people having heart attacks because of the sirens...there's no way he'll be at home."
They walked by the lake, past the small cabins that were largely closed up for winter, ducking out of the way a few times when a car passed them, but there were no jeeps and guns out this side of town, and no-one cared to stop them. Several of the houses had birch trees, not just the doctor's, and they quickly scavenged a good collection of branches and twigs from the muddy ground, though Sam's fingers felt frozen even through his woolen gloves, damp with soil and leaf mold. Dean reached over and took a few of the largest of Sam's branches to add to his own load, leaving Sam with one hand free, to put in his pocket for warmth.
"Come on, Sam, we're nearly there. And then we can put the heater on as high as you like."
Dean's encouragement was all that Sam needed to trudge the last half-mile to the Kovacs' house, clutching his birch sticks, while Dean carried an armful of bigger branches. They soon reached the Kovacs' street of larger, newer houses, plentiful trees providing excellent cover for scouting the area. A few minutes of reconnaissance showed that not only was no-one at the Kovacs' home - other cars were in the garage, but Heather's little SUV was absent - but the garage was still unlocked from their visit on Sunday, and they knew that a door from the garage led straight into the house.
Sam and Dean hurried inside, birch branches clutched tightly, and dumped their burdens on the kitchen floor. The central heating in the house had been left on, and they quickly shed their excess layers of clothing to warm their chilly hands on the heated floor tiles in the kitchen.
"Hey, Dean, this place is pretty good for a house that was probably built by a ludverc."
Dean's nose and ears were going bright red with the change in temperature. "You hear me complaining? Once we've warmed up properly we should have something to eat. Heather's not going to notice anything missing, even if Dad does save her. And we know the food's not cursed, now." His face became more serious. "Then we're going to salt this place within an inch of its life, and get those birch twigs across every doorway. And call Bobby."
Sam smiled, lying on his back on the toasty floor, his fingers stinging as they warmed up. "Yeah, yeah. But now we just have to worry about the ludverc, not the FBI. And we're the monster experts!"
By nightfall, Bobby had found an answer to the ludverc problem. He called with their planned two rings, hang up, call again pattern, and Sam picked up.
"Bobby? Have you heard from Dad?" Sam was now wearing just his jeans, t-shirt and clean, dry socks - the Kovacs house had awesome central heating.
"Sorry, Sam. But I do have something for you - to destroy the kind of ludverc you've got now, you need to get it inside a hollow tree, preferably a birch tree."
"How?"
"I called a hunter who'd dealt with one before, over in Ohio, and she said that if you outline a path out of birch sticks, it'll run right down it and into the tree. Then you use the birch or salt to stop it getting out again and it dies. This is for John, Sam, not for you. It might be able to summon people already in thrall to fight you off. "
"Don't worry, Bobby! We're safe and we're not going anywhere - it's great here! They have cable, and food, and heating and everything! Dean made me have a bath!"
"Good boy. You tell Dean the same things, all right? Stay in the house until your dad or I show up."
"Sure thing, Bobby!" Sam hung up cheerfully. Staying here was much better than hanging around a motel.
Dean came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel. "Was that Bobby?"
"Yeah. To kill the ludverc, we can make a path out of the birch twigs, then it runs down it into a hollow tree, then we close it up again with salt and the birch twigs. That's it! Oh, and watch out for people in thrall, it might call them if it feels threatened."
"Awesome. I'll go get dressed, you want to check the windows and doors again?"
Sam sighed. "Okay. Then can we have ice cream?"
"Sure, why not? There's hot dogs in the freezer too, if you want some."
Sam punched the air then scurried off to make the rounds again, checking that every possible entrance to the house had both salt and a birch branch or stick across it. The fireplace was particularly well fortified, being the ludverc's previous point of entry - Dean had stuffed a branch up the chimney, as well as making sure that the hearth was entirely covered with salt and sticks. Sam had even salted around the drains and the toilet, though he was fairly sure that a fiery creature like the ludverc wouldn't be very interested in them.
Safely ensconced, Dean and Sam could settle down to a dinner of hot dogs in slightly freezer-burnt buns, vast amounts of ketchup, some reheated corn on the cob as a token gesture towards their dad's insistence on vegetables, and chocolate ice cream. They ate in front of the TV in the living room - Dean had insisted on checking the news in case of further developments - but with no further news on the military's movements or the evacuees, they soon put in a video instead. The Kovacs had a pretty good collection, all nicely shelved by the TV in their big living room, and they even had a few movies that Dean hadn't managed to see, like Point Break.
Once Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves had finished surfing, shooting and blowing things up to everyone's satisfaction, the Winchesters washed up everything they'd used, and cleaned up their garbage. An unexpected getaway still might be on the cards, and although they were no longer dressed for the outdoors, they still needed to keep everything ready to move as quickly as possible.
"We're staying in the living room," Dean told Sam, as they finished putting the clean dishes back in the cupboards.
"There's beds upstairs," Sam grumbled, but he could see why - there was only one staircase, and if someone or something was coming up that, they'd have to drop out a much higher window than the motel bathroom. "Well, does the sofa fold out, or should we get a mattress from upstairs? Or just sleep on the carpet, it's pretty soft."
"Seriously, and it's heated! Dad should get us to stay with people like this all the time!" Dean's expression darkened, a little, but he held onto his smile. "Go check if the sofa's a fold-out, then."
It was, and Sam wasted no time getting their spare plaid blanket out of the duffel bag - in this house, they weren't going to need a pile of them to stay warm. He lined up their shoes, sweaters, coats and now-dry gloves on either side of the mattress, just as their dad would tell them to do, to make sure they were ready to dress and leave in a hurry. Every time Sam glanced up, the two boxes on the mantelpiece that held the ashes of Mr and Mrs Kovacs seemed to be watching him. He knew that was ridiculous, but - with a quick glance to make sure Dean was still in the kitchen - he took them down and carried them carefully to the study instead. It wasn't as if they were going to mind, not now.
Dean wiped his damp hands on his pants as he walked out of the kitchen. "Okay, I'm taking first watch. You catch some sleep."
"What are you watching for now? We're pretty safe here, aren't we?" Sam yawned, and snuggled into the warm, soft sofa-bed, tucking the blanket around himself.
"The FBI, Heather Kovacs coming back, Dad... You never know, Sammy."
"Okay." Sam closed his eyes and Dean turned off the light, though the various appliances around the living room and the street light outside still cast a faint glow. To the sound of Dean's steady breathing, Sam fell asleep.
Sam was on watch in the pre-dawn hours. He was a little cranky that Dean had let him sleep so long, but keeping watch was boring and he'd slept really well, so he hadn't protested too hard. He sat on an armchair, shotgun near to hand, watching the TV's pale flicker. Dean had turned it on sometime in the night, the sound muted, and he'd left it on for Sam, which just told Sam that Dean had been bored, too. It all seemed to be shopping shows and religion at this hour, but Sam didn't mind - it was kind of nice to see that the world was still just the same out there. It meant that his dad would be back soon, that they wouldn't be hiding, that they just needed to catch up with the rest of the world. Everything would be fine.
For a long moment, Sam didn't understand the bright white flash that washed over the room, but then the TV went dead, along with Sam's flashlight, the clock and everything else electronic in the room, and he scrambled down to Dean's side.
"Dean, wake up! I saw it!"
Dean was awake instantaneously. "Here?"
"No, out the window. The TV went off!"
"Get dressed and stay low." Dean scrambled into his own clothes and hurried over to the big windows, still lined with salt and birch, keeping his head below the level of the sill. He peeped over the edge, his hands busy tying his shoelaces, and carefully assessed the scene. Sam struggled into his clothes, then crawled over to Dean's side.
"Can you see anything?"
"Sort of - there's a glow down towards the center of town, a white glow, not like a fire." Dean pointed, but it was easy to spot in the entirely dark town - the white light was the only light of any kind. "Power's out everywhere."
Sam squinted at it and frowned. "Dean, is it getting bigger?"
"Shit, no, it's getting closer. Get down!"
Dean pulled Sam down to the carpet as the glow loomed huge through the window, blotting out everything, outlining the room in violent brightness. Suddenly it seemed to be coming from all directions, shining right through their eyelids. Dean put a hand over Sam's eyes, holding him tightly, but even so, the light gleamed through, stabbing into their vision no matter which way they looked.
Then it was gone. Sam gasped, his vision full of spot and lines, and Dean let Sam go. They both sat up, but stayed right where they were, blinking and staring. The darkness around them was cool and comforting, but a perfect canvas for the visual tricks their dazzled eyes played.
"Sam, you okay?"
"Yeah, um, just my eyes hurt. They're getting better, I'm okay."
"Me too." Dean clambered to his feet, but stumbled against the edge of the sofa. He got a hand on the shotgun, though, then sat back down with Sam.
Sam stared out the window, trying to make out the shapes before his eyes. His eyes must have been recovering faster than Dean's, because some of the bright shapes resolved quite quickly.
"Dean! The trees are on fire!"
Dean squinted out the window, and saw what Sam meant - all the trees around the house, the tall pine trees that had provided them with such good cover, were catching fire, great flames shooting up the branches. "We kept it out of the house, but it's burning the yard. We've got to get out of here, Sammy."
"Will the fire burn the house?" Sam scrubbed at his eyes and saw that the fire was spreading into the ivy on the porch at the back of the house.
"Looks like a regular fire to me! Check the back of the house, see if the back yard's on fire too." Dean quickly shoved their belongings back in the duffel bag and zipped it closed, and started collecting some of the birch sticks that they had laid around the room.
Sam ran for the back of the house and peered out the window. "Yes it is! The whole yard's on fire, Dean, all around us!" He couldn't understand why Dean was remaining so calm. Even if the fire didn't kill them, the Air Force and the FBI would surely be here in a minute. The sudden shrill of smoke alarms filled the air and Sam ran back to Dean, who was pulling the biggest of the birch branches from the fireplace. "Dean! What are you doing? We've got to get out of here!"
Dean yelled over the smoke alarms. "It's no good running without a plan - if the ludverc's still around, it'll get us the second we step outside the protections we set up. Here, take the salt and get your backpack on!"
Sam quickly obeyed, and took the birch branch that Dean held out to him.
"Come on!" Dean ran through the kitchen, bent forward to keep his head low, down the hall and out into the garage. Less insulated than the house, it was already filling with smoke and heat. "Get in the car, Sammy!"
Sam climbed up into the nearest car, a big green SUV, and Dean, coughing, shoved the birch branches and the shotgun in after him. Dean ran over to the garage doors and swung one upwards, pulling his hands away from the hot door and sprinting back for the car in the red light of the flames outside. The concrete driveway itself was clear, but the trees lining both sides were entirely alight, flames shooting up into the air, crackling and roaring. Sam flung himself across the front seats and threw the driver's door open. Dean jumped in, pulling keys from his pocket and starting the car.
"Where did you get those?" Sam shouted.
"Key rack in the hall!" Dean bellowed back, slamming the car into reverse and shooting out of the driveway as fast as he could. Both boys yelled as a huge, charred branch hurtled through the air towards the windshield, but they were moving backwards fast enough that it landed in front of the car rather than on it. They reached the street - trees near the Kovacs house were catching on fire too, now, and people were running from their houses - and sped off in the SUV, tires screeching on the hot asphalt. The sound of sirens followed them as they streaked away, and Sam looked over his shoulder to see that the house was no longer visible behind the great sheets of flame. No other houses were on fire, but it looked like they soon would be. The fire leapt forty feet into the air, burning hot and bright even in the November damp.
The entire town was dark, but for the red glow of the flames behind them, and Sam had no trouble spotting the bright light again. It was moving across the dark, low sky, in an arc that looked quite slow at a distance, though almost certainly wasn't. It was heading towards the beginnings of a pale dawn.
"Dean, look! It's heading due east."
Dean slowed down so that he could turn his head and see for himself. "Yeah, I see it." He turned right at the next intersection, and pointed the car east. "Keep that shotgun handy, Sammy."
Sam rearranged the pile of birch branches that lay across his legs to secure his grip on the gun. "Are we really going after it?" He felt exhilarated and terrified at the same time - thrilled that their protections really had held, that they could defend themselves against something so dangerous, but his stomach churned at the thought of seeking it out.
"Look, Sammy, Dad's not back. We don't know where he's gone, but wherever it is, it's not here. And the ludverc is here. No-one else knows what it is or how to fight it."
"We could wait for Bobby?" Sam felt he should put up at least a token protest, even though he thought Dean was right. When he glanced across at Dean's taut mouth and narrowed eyes, he was glad that he'd said something. Dean was just saying what he thought they should do, rather than what he really wanted to do. Dean looked more than a little scared to Sam, though someone else might not have seen that. Not even Dad - Dean was especially well-practiced at hiding any supposed weakness from him.
"We'll call him as soon as we can get to a phone, okay? He should know."
"How about this for a plan, Dean? We track it down and protect the area with the birch twigs and salt, so it can't fly around hurting anyone. It must be going to ground somewhere - maybe it was trying to hide out at the house, but we stopped it? Then we can wait for Bobby, no problems."
Dean grinned. "Awesome, dude! I like the plan! And it'll save us from Dad kicking our asses when he gets back."
"Yeah, well, that's one good part of it." Sam grinned back, pleased with himself. If Dean was trying to throw himself into danger, trying to be Dad in Dad's absence, well, Sam didn't have to let him do that.
On to Chapter 7
Back to Chapter 5
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