Five of a Kind 2/6
Adam packed his duffel quickly, excited to be getting back to hunting again.
His first official hunt had been a disaster-very nearly a fatal one-but he could still feel the thrill. Granted part of that thrill had involved being chased by a bloodthirsty demonic monster, an insane ghost, and a resulting concussion, but Adam didn’t care. He had a real hunt under his belt, and the proverbial scars to prove it.
He idly wondered if his dad would be proud. John Winchester had kept Adam away from all of it, hoping that anonymity would keep him and his mom safe. Adam couldn’t help but think that if John had trained him the way he’d trained Sam and Dean, maybe the ghouls that had come after them wouldn’t have succeeded.
Adam shook his head. All of that was ancient history. Casting a final look around the bedroom to make sure he had everything, he zipped the duffel and headed out the door.
He hoped his brothers were as jazzed as he was about the new case.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Dean heaved the weapons bag into the trunk, and began distributing its contents into the proper places in the hidden compartment. Sam was beside him, packing the salt and holy water in with the various talismans and journals. At the rate packing was going, they wouldn’t reach L.A. until almost nightfall. Probably too late to visit the coroner’s office, but maybe they could scope out the crime scenes before turning in for the night.
One more restful day might be just what his sunburn needed, anyway.
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noticed that Sam had stopped moving. Glancing over, he saw his younger sibling staring at the ocean, and followed his gaze. The tide was coming in, and had already obliterated all traces of their earlier football game. He looked back at Sam, and the thousand yard stare.
“I can hear you thinking, Sammy.”
After a long moment, Sam blinked and turned to face him. “Hmm? Oh. Yeah.”
Dean went back to packing. “What?”
Sam shrugged, but went back to his work as well. “I’m gonna miss this place.”
Dean smiled. “Heh. Me, too.”
More than ever, Dean was glad they’d taken their vacation. His brothers had learned to cope, as best anyone could, with their experiences in the Cage, and Dean felt better than he had in years. He’d even managed to re-establish contact with Lisa and Ben. It was just the occasional text message for the moment, but it was a far cry from the way they’d left things the previous year. They’d never go back to their living arrangement, but irregularly regular contact was something.
Ultimately, she’d been there when Dean had needed her most, but once his true family had returned…. Hunting and normal don’t mix. He and Sam had both learned that the hard way.
“Dean…” Sam spoke again, interrupting Dean’s thoughts. “Are you sure we wanna-? I mean-”
Dean knew the rest of the unspoken question. Do we want to start hunting again? It was a question he’d been asking himself over and over ever since they’d told Bobby they would look into this case. Truth was, he didn’t have an answer.
“I...don’t know, man. Honest.”
Adam came out of the house and locked the door, then jogged toward the car.
Dean smirked. “He seems sure.”
Sam shot him a sideways glance. “He’s young. And new at this. It’s adventure for him.”
Dean glanced at his brother, noting how much older than twenty-eight he looked around the eyes. “Don’t let him hear you talk like that. He’s already running faster than you.”
“Because I let him,” Sam huffed, but smiled faintly at Dean’s attempt to lighten his mood.
“Besides,” Dean continued, cutting his eyes toward Adam as the younger man approached. “He might have a different last name, but he’s still a Winchester. If we try to back out of this, he’ll probably decide to do it by himself.”
Sam snorted. “Yeah. I get that. I guess I’ve just gotten used to…you know. This.”
Dean sighed. He still didn’t have an answer. He zipped the empty duffel and stowed it against the spare tire. “Well, maybe we’ll luck out, Sammy. We’ll get up there and find out it’s some mutant coyote with opposable thumbs that likes hot food.”
Sam raised an eyebrow at that.
“Hey, it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing we’ve ever run across.”
Sam cocked his head and mimicked deep thought. “True.”
Closing the lid to the weapons compartment as Adam closed in, Dean spoke more quietly. “Hey, let’s just take care of this, then we can decide what we want to do. One thing at a time.”
Sam considered him for a moment, then relented. “Yeah. Okay.”
“You guys all set?” Adam asked as he joined them and dropped his bags into the trunk.
Dean shared a brief look with Sam, then put on his game face. “I think so.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
O’Melveny Park, California
Dean slept away the three and a half hour drive to L.A., letting Sam handle the trip while he rested his still-stinging sunburn in the back seat. He awoke as Sam guided the Impala into the Granada Hills area, toward the spot where the latest victim had been found. After a quick look around, they would get a motel, then visit the coroner in the morning and see what they could find.
The victim had apparently been trying to reach a parked car, in a dark, isolated lot along the park road. The driver’s side of the car was blackened, along with the asphalt and some of the nearby grass, as though someone had lit a bonfire.
“Creepy.” Adam mused, stepping carefully over a strand of crime-scene tape. The car had been left there, booted to keep anyone from stealing it before the police could return. No cops were nearby, though, which was good for the Winchesters.
“Like a fireball hit it,” Sam said, taking a close look at the charred side of the car. “Spontaneous combustion, maybe?”
“That really happens?” Adam asked, looking at Sam askance.
“There are spells,” Dean answered, picking his way around the perimeter. “A witch, maybe. They’d know a spell for that.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam murmured, reaching into his pocket. He withdrew his lock pick set. “I’ll check for a hex bag.”
“Well, if it turns out to be a witch, let’s be extra careful with the car and the room.” Dean said, moving along the edge of the road. “I don’t want to burst into flames. Me or my baby.”
Sam shot him a look. “Or your brothers.”
Dean shrugged. “Meh.”
“Nice,” Adam shook his head while taking photos of the scene with his phone. “We rank below the car, Sam.”
“And the cassette tapes, probably.” Sam offered, then went back to searching the interior of the car.
Dean scanned the ground around the burned grass. If it was a witch, he or she probably didn’t need to be nearby for the hex to kill, but there still might be something left to put them on the right track.
He walked a few feet further, past the line of scorched earth. Dean was about to turn around when something caught his eye. Turning back, he walked a few more feet, and stopped. There was a depression in the dirt. The shadowy ground almost concealed it. “What the-?”
It was a footprint. A big one. And not human.
“Hey, guys, check this out.”
Sam extracted himself from the front seat of the car and stepped over just as Adam came around from the other side. They followed Dean’s flashlight to the footprint.
“What is that?” Adam asked, gaping.
Sam turned his head to one side, then the other, taking in the print from the sides. “Looks like…maybe a lizard? A big, big lizard?”
Dean glanced up at him. “So…what? She was killed by a T-Rex?”
“That’d be kinda cool,” Adam chimed in, shaking his head. “But she was roasted, too.”
“A fire-breathing lizard.” Dean frowned. “Great, we’re hunting Godzilla.”
Sam didn’t look pleased with the notion. “I think we should get a look at those bodies in the morning.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Los Angeles County Department of Coroner
Examining autopsied corpses was a perk of the job that Adam hadn’t quite gotten used to, yet. He’d been a pre-med student at the University of Wisconsin before his…untimely death at the hands of vengeful ghouls, but now that he was getting up close and personal with the charred and half-eaten remains of victim number three-one Emily Brandt, late of northern Los Angeles-he wasn’t so sure he would have finished his education in that field.
In fact, after watching Sam methodically examine four charred, mangled corpses in a row, he was certain that he was just one more rotting body part away from throwing up his breakfast all over the coroner’s table.
“Regretting all that bacon, big guy?” Dean whispered, appearing next to him at the table.
His oldest brother’s expression was half-sympathy, half-teasing. Adam just nodded. Better to keep his mouth closed.
“This is why I let Sammy do the lifting when we get to this part,” Dean said sagely.
Adam glanced at him sideways, then nodded at Sam, who was busy giving the corpse a thorough once-over. “I don’t know how he can stand this stench.”
“Get a few burritos in him, you’ll find out all about stench.” Dean deadpanned, jutting his chin in Sam’s direction.
“Don’t remind me,” Adam groaned, feeling a little more nauseated at the memory of lunch in El Paso three and a half months earlier.
“You guys know I can hear you, right?” Sam asked idly, using a magnifier to get a closer look at something along Ms. Brandt’s calf.
“Find anything?” Dean asked, sidestepping his sibling’s question.
“Maybe.” Sam glanced up briefly. “Adam, can you hand me that scalpel?”
Adam looked over his shoulder to make sure the coroner wasn’t nearby before snagging one of the blades off the tool cart. The clearly overworked coroner had been more than happy to go back to his forms and files after they’d flashed their FBI badges and started looking at the bodies. He didn’t seem to care what they did after he was excused.
Adam handed the scalpel over to Sam. “What do you see?”
Sam ignored the question for a moment, cutting a small incision into the corpse, and then prying something loose. He held it up so Adam and Dean could see the object.
“Is that a tooth?” Dean asked, pulling on a latex glove and holding his hand out.
Sam dropped it into his hand. “Yeah, reptilian, I think. Like a snake, but a lot bigger.”
“So,” Dean mused, staring down at the four inch fang with a grin forming slowly on his face. “We’ve got a giant lizard footprint at the scene, and a giant lizard tooth broke off in our vic’s leg…my guess is we’re looking for a giant lizard.”
Sam smiled patiently. “That’s real perceptive of you, Dean.”
“Screw you,” Dean shot back without heat, handing the tooth off to Adam. “I don’t see the Walking Encyclopedia of Weird coming up with any explanations either.”
“If I had any, I’d give it to you.”
Adam glanced up at Sam from his examination of the fang. “And Dad’s journal doesn’t have anything about big lizard teeth?” He’d read the book from cover to cover, partly for his on-the-job training as a hunter, and partly to get a better sense of who John Winchester really was, besides the guy who’d taken him to a baseball game for one birthday and taught him to play poker and drive. But, Adam hadn’t seen anything like this, and his brothers had been scouring the book longer than he had.
Dean shook his head. “Nah, I’d remember if Dad had ever hunted a dragon.”
“So, we’re nowhere.” Adam sighed, handing the fang back.
“No.” Dean said, holding the fang up to the light. “Not nowhere. I’d say we have one more lead on this than when we came in here.” He cast a glance toward the coroner’s office. “Let’s grab lunch and look over these files before the doc starts asking us too many questions.”
<<<<<< >>>>>>
“A dragon?!” Bobby exclaimed, glancing down at the phone’s handset and wondering if he’d heard correctly. “No, Sam, so far as I know, dragons don’t exist.”
Rufus looked over at him from the desk and mouthed Dragon?
Bobby shrugged. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, do that and I’ll take a look. Okay. Bye, Sam.” He hung up and looked over at his old partner, who was frowning.
“Did I hear that right?”
Bobby nodded. “Yeah, they found some tracks and a tooth. Looks like both came from some kind of giant lizard. They think. Sam’s emailing the photos so we can look at them.”
“Well, outside of Sean Connery movies and the occasional parade in Chinatown, I don’t think anyone’s ever seen a dragon.” Rufus huffed. “That all they’ve got to go on?”
“They’re going through all the evidence now.”
Bobby’s email bleeped. He stepped around the desk and opened message. Sam had sent them four pictures, two photos of the footprint, day and night-with Dean’s foot next to it for scale-and two angles on the tooth. Looked like a giant snake tooth. Bobby swiveled the monitor for Rufus.
Rufus whistled in admiration. “That’s a big foot.”
Swiveling the monitor back, Bobby sighed. “Well, let’s see what we can find out. Um, you wanna look at those crypto-zoology books over there, Rufus?” He pointed to the bookshelf closest to the window.
“Sure. Want me to read them to you too, Singer?” Rufus huffed as he wheeled his chair toward the wall.
Bobby dropped his face into his hands. He’d never prayed so hard in his life for a wound to heal.
<<<<<< >>>>>>
Dean watched Sam and Adam as they poured over copies of the crime scene reports and a map of Los Angeles on the motel room table. He took the opportunity to study his brothers from the vantage point of being propped against his bed’s headboard, pillows cushioning the still-healing sunburn on his back.
Adam was easy to read. The kid was thrilled to be hunting again. Kid really got the bug…. Eight months earlier, Dean never would have expected Adam to catch on so quickly. He had just been a scared, traumatized victim. Sam had backed their little brother up, more or less, but at first, Dean had shot down the entire notion of training him.
For starters, it wasn’t what Dad had wanted. John had clearly done his best to keep Adam away from the hunting world. He’d even gone so far as to keep the kid’s mere existence a secret. Dean couldn’t ignore that. Dunking their newfound brother head-first into the messy, bloody world of hunting seemed wrong, at least at first.
Secondly, Dean had been reluctant to put either of his brothers back in harm’s way after their experiences in Lucifer’s cage. The feeling of loss from when they’d fallen had been too strong, and Dean didn’t want to risk losing either of them again.
But time, Adam’s persistence, and the disastrous ambush at Lisa’s house by Meg, her hellhounds, and two rogue angels had changed everything. The world was different than it had been when John had concealed his third son. The bad guys-and more than a few of the good guys who’d been screwed in the abortive Apocalypse-would never leave any of them alone. Adam couldn’t go back to a peaceful, free life. Neither could Sam.
Neither can I.
Like it or not, they would be keeping a low profile for years to come. If not forever. At the time, it had seemed reasonable to agree and let his youngest brother into the game. Adam was willing and able, an extra pair of hands was always welcome on a hunt, and who was Dean Winchester to say no, anyway?
But, whatever progress they’d made on a personal or emotional front while staying at Mike’s Baja beach house, now that they were working a case again, Dean…wasn’t sure he wanted to be doing this anymore.
He shifted his attention to Sam, who was circling a few locations on the map. Adam didn’t seem to notice it, but Dean could see the same hesitation in his Sam’s eyes. Hell, it’s all over his face.
Sam had been a reluctant hunter from the beginning. He had never truly embraced the family vendetta against Azazel; he’d been too young to remember what the demon had done to them when it murdered Mary. Unlike Dean, Sam had hated the nomadic, outlaw lifestyle, so much so that he’d left it behind to go to Stanford. Jessica’s death had changed that, but then with Dean’s deal and subsequent captivity in Hell and Ruby’s manipulation afterward, the angels, Lucifer…
Dean couldn’t blame Sam if he wanted to throw in the proverbial towel. Sam had certainly paid his dues, a thousand times over. Between the two of them, they’d done everything that had been asked of them, and too much more. If anyone deserved to fade away, they did.
There was the rub, though. If he and Sam decided that they were truly-finally-done…where would that leave Adam? They couldn’t leave their little brother out in the cold, not after everything. And Adam wouldn’t just quit. Not anymore. Dean could sense that much.
What did that mean for them?
“Dean?”
Dean blinked. Both the siblings in question were looking at him. He realized that he’d completely missed something in their conversation.
“You all right?” Sam asked, frowning faintly.
“Uh,” Dean said eloquently. “Yeah.”
Both Sam and Adam were frowning now.
“I was-um, I was thinking about something.”
“About the case?” Adam inquired, eyes narrowing. “Or about that girl at the front desk?”
Dean smirked. His youngest sibling had just supplied the perfect cover. “Busted. Sorry.”
Adam shook his head, chuckling.
Sam’s brow furrowed more. “You wanna put Stacy’s clothes back on in your mind and help us with this?”
“Sure!” Dean shot back, holding his hands to his temples. “Give me just a sec-oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s- Whoo! Okay, I’m back. What’d’ya got?”
Sam rolled his eyes, but didn’t comment any further. Instead, he directed Dean to the map. “We think we might have something.”
Dean slid off the bed and stepped over, staring down at the layout of the city. Sam had drawn some red lines between circled areas near Granada Hills, and he pointed to them each in turn.
“Here’s where the first victim was found, uh, Jose Sanchez, in Bee Canyon Park.”
“Okay.” Dean nodded, following Sam’s finger across the map.
“Next we have Eric Carter, right here, just off the Golden State Freeway. Police found his body by his car, which had a flat tire. They think he stopped around three in the morning and pulled off the highway.”
“And became lizard food. That would suck.”
“Pretty much,” Sam continued, pointing to a third red circle. “Third vic was Emily Brandt. She worked at the Knollwood Golf Course. Apparently, she stayed after work to go over some receipts. They found her here, toward the north end of the course.”
“And here, on the west side of the course,” Adam added. “And…here at the east-”
“I-I get the picture.” Dean grimaced.
Adam shrugged, sticking his tongue out in a mock gag.
Dean could sympathize. “And the last one?”
“Stephie Gavilan,” Sam said. “Last seen when she went running the other night in O’Melveny Park.”
“Right. That’s the site we visited.” Dean nodded, studying the map.
Sam and Adam waited for him to reach his own conclusion.
“So, all the attacks seem to be within an area a few miles across.”
“Mm-hmm,” Sam and Adam hummed simultaneously.
Dean raised his eyebrows. “Hunting ground?”
“That’s what we think,” Sam confirmed.
“But this is L.A.” Dean crossed his arms, standing straight to get his t-shirt off his sunburned shoulder blades. “Someone’s going to notice Gamera walking around chomping on pedestrians.”
“Who?” Adam asked, squinting in confusion.
“Gamera,” Dean replied, turning to his youngest sibling, who was staring blankly back. “Gamera! Giant turtle? Fought Godzilla a few times?”
Adam just blinked.
Dean sighed. “What did you watch on TV growing up?”
Adam frowned. “Um…I dunno, Power Rangers?”
Dean squeezed his eyes shut and wagged a finger at him. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Anyways,” Sam interrupted. “Yeah, Dean, you’re right. But all of these attacks seemed to take place at night. So, we’re thinking that maybe it stays hidden during the day and goes out to feed after dark. Or close to dark, anyway. Gavilan’s time of death was estimated at about sunset.”
“All right.” Dean lowered himself into one of the chairs. “So why all of a sudden? The coroner didn’t act like this had happened before.”
Adam piped up. “Maybe it just moved here.”
“Yeah.” Sam nodded. “This many kills in just two week’s time…maybe it’s establishing itself. Marking its territory.”
Dean shuddered. “Ugh. I just got an image of Godzilla peeing on Los Angeles.”
“Bet you never saw that movie growing up,” Adam muttered, smirking.
“No, but I did see this video once where this girl-”
“Stop!” Adam held up a hand, shuddering himself that time.
Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, scowling. “Oh, God, I saw that video too…and now it’s all I can see. Thanks, Dean.”
Adam frowned, spreading his hands in silent confusion. Dean patted his forearm. “We’ll show it to you when you’re older.”
“No. No, we won’t,” Sam corrected emphatically.
Adam motioned toward the map. “Can we please get back to-?”
“Yeah.” Sam turned the laptop around so Dean could see the internet window he had open on the screen. “I read up on reptiles, in general. A lot of them hang out in or around water, especially in the hot season. L.A.’s in the hot season now, so I think it might be a good bet this thing will stay around water.”
“And like you said,” Adam added, “people would notice this thing if it was living along the coast and walking fifteen miles into the city to eat.”
Sam pointed to a blue area on the map between his red circles. “So, I think we might look here, Lower Van Norman Lake. It’s part of the local reservoir system.”
Dean was skeptical. “So, you think a giant lizard hangs out by this watering hole all day, in broad daylight, and nobody sees it?”
“Depends how big the thing actually is, and how deep the water is,” Adam countered. “It’s a place to start.”
TBC