Dead Gods: Seven
Mid-afternoon, Sam points the rental car towards Battle Creek.
It had taken him the better part of the day to find Lisa’s sister. A For Sale sign had been speared into the manicured lawn of her house in one of the pricier suburban neighborhoods of Indianapolis, and the rooms had been empty and vacant when he peered through the front window. A gossipy neighbor had told him with no little relish that Sarah Evans had taken her daughter and moved to ‘some place in Michigan’ after the death of her husband and disappearance of her nephew, but hadn’t known exactly where.
Sam decides ‘some place in Michigan’ must be Battle Creek, so he checks out of the hotel and drives up that day. He can’t find a listing for Lisa’s sister anywhere in or around Battle Creek, but a little bit of research reveals that Lisa’s house is still rented in her name, the rent paid promptly by the first of every month by Lisa’s dead brother-in-law’s very wealthy parents. Sam’s instincts and experience tell him that Lisa’s house is the right place to start, and when he pulls up into the driveway a little after seven, the lights are blazing bright in the early evening darkness.
“I haven’t seen one of you in a while,” Sarah Evans says when she opens the door to Sam and his fake badge. She looks a great deal like Lisa - same dark eyes and hair, same wry, wary expression - but older, more worn, though she is the younger of the two. “I don’t suppose you’ve come bearing good news.”
Sam puts on his best grim-but-sympathetic Fed face. “I’m afraid not. I just have some questions about your sister and nephew.”
She sighs wearily. “Of course you do.”
And just like that, she lets him in.
The house looks much like he remembers it. The same pictures of Ben still hang in the foyer - Ben in his baseball uniform and Ben as a baby with his face smeared with birthday cake and Ben in front of a bouncy castle dressed like a miniature Dean. She gestures that he should follow, and she leads him through the living room, same simple suburban décor as before, though young children’s toys are scattered across the floor. A little girl in pink pajamas is sitting in front of the TV watching an animated movie with talking animals. She has a raggedy doll in a pink gingham dress in her lap, and her thumb is in her mouth while she watches a singing princess with wide eyes. She doesn’t even look at them as they pass.
In the kitchen, the kitchen that also hasn’t changed since Sam was last here, Sarah offers him a drink, which Sam declines, then takes a seat at the kitchen table and gestures at the chair across from her.
“I don’t know what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police and everyone else who has been in and out of this house for the past month.” Under the bright kitchen lights, she looks exhausted; heavy dark circles hang under her eyes, and the slump of her shoulders reminds him of Theresa Dixon. “I’ve told the police everything I know.”
“I understand, but I’m only looking into the Braedens’ disappearances for a possible connection to another case.”
“What other case?”
He gives her more grim Fed. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
She sighs. “Of course not.” She gestures impatiently. “Well, go ahead.”
Sam pulls out his pocket notebook and feigns flipping through the pages for information. “Did either Lisa or Ben mention someone new in their lives?”
“No, no one new. Lisa hadn’t really been willing to let anyone in after Dean left and Matt was killed in the home invasion.” She hesitates. “Do you know about Dean and Matt?”
Sam flips back a page or two, pretends to read something over. “Dean Campbell and Matt Collins? Yes.”
Sarah seems satisfied by that, so Sam continues with his questioning. “Were they behaving differently?”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t see them a lot after they moved here. I mean, we Skyped every couple of weeks so that Lucy wouldn’t forget them, and we tried to get together on a weekend here and there, but I never noticed anything weird. Although, the last few times I talked to Lisa before she disappeared, she did mention that Ben had been acting oddly.”
“How so?”
“She said he had grown very distant and had withdrawn from his friends.” She shrugged. “I mean, it could have been a teenager thing. But he was also asking about his father. He even called me to ask about him.”
Sam perks up at that information. “And what do you know about Ben's father?"
Sarah purses her lips, shifts awkwardly in her chair. "That’s a complicated question.”
“Why?”
“Lisa said there was some ‘biker at a bar’." Sarah makes quote marks with her fingers. "But I’m pretty sure Dean Campbell is Ben’s father.”
Something eases in Sam’s chest. “Lisa told you that?"
“When I finally asked her if it was Dean, she didn't exactly deny it. And honestly, I doubt she would have ever taken Dean in if he weren’t his father. She never let any of her other boyfriends move in with them.”
"So, there couldn't be anyone else?"
Another weary shrug. “I suppose there could be. Back then, Lisa always had lots of ‘boyfriends.’” She makes more air quotes with her fingers. “But I would put money on Dean. Five minutes in the same room with the two of them, and you could tell. Here, let me show you."
She gets up and goes to the bulletin board propped up on the counter, shoves a jar of coins and bills labeled ‘Swear Jar’ out of the way to get at the pictures. Sam has a flash of memory, of standing in the house in Cicero and examining the same bulletin board with the same pictures pinned among the coupons and shopping lists, baffled by why seeing Dean grinning out of pictures with Ben had made him feel nothing more than bland disinterest.
“See?” She puts a picture down in front of Sam. It’s a picture of Ben and Dean, standing beside an old truck and covered in grease, both grinning at the camera with the exact same smile. “Ben is his little clone. He looks exactly like him, and he even has a lot of the same mannerisms. If someone else is his father, he must be Dean’s twin.”
Dean’s twin. That’s what he’s looking at, isn’t he? Ben is little clone of Dean, just like Amy Dixon had been a little clone of her father, and he bet if he compared the other dead children with their fathers, he would see a lot of little clones. And the mothers probably would have sworn on the lives of their children that the man they were with the night of the child’s conception had been their husband, and he had behaved and spoken exactly right. There had probably been no question in their minds of who their partner was.
“They do look alike,” he says casually, like he’s looking at pictures of strangers and not as someone who had been an eye witness to how like Dean Ben had looked in his green jacket the night before, or the way he had mirrored Dean’s stance at the abandoned gas station in Georgia, had flicked the top of his water bottle into the brush with the same snap of his wrist. “Did she ever have a paternity test done?”
“If she did, she kept it to herself.”
There’s a shuffling sound behind him, and Sarah’s daughter materializes next to them, the top of her head barely clearing the table.
“Movie’s done, Mommy,” she says and raises her arms to be picked up, the doll dangling from one hand.
Sarah gives her a watery smile and pulls her into her lap, combs her hand through her hair with idle affection. The girl stares at Sam with the same dark eyes as her mother, her thumb in her mouth. In the other room, Sam can hear the soundtrack of the movie playing through the credits.
“Did you ever notice anything different about Ben?”
Sarah frowns, her fingers catching and smoothing down a stray lock of her daughter’s hair. “Different? How so?”
“Did he have any special talents or abilities? Something that would have drawn attention?”
She considers a moment then shakes her head. “No, not really. He’s a normal kid. He’s usually just a B student, but he loves sports. He’s always happy and energetic and he has lots of friends. And he’s so sweet.” She smiles, her whole face lighting up. “It’s like he always knows when you were sad and he’ll just run up and give you this big hug, and it’s like the sun parting the clouds, you know?”
Lucy pulls her thumb out of her mouth long enough to say, “Ben makes my booboos go ‘way.”
“That’s right, baby.” Sarah kisses the crown of her daughter’s head. “Ben always kisses your booboos better.”
Sam stares at Lucy, with her big brown eyes and her thumb in her mouth, remembering what it was like to be so little and so sure that Dean could make things right, remembering how he used to insist that Dean kiss his booboos over and over again, expecting Dean’s big brother magic to make the scrapes and bruises go away....
And the tumblers just fall into place.
Sam clears his throat and shifts forward. He knows exactly where this conversation needs to go. “I have some unusual questions for you now, Ms. Evans. Please bear with me. How often do you and Lucy get sick?”
Sarah blinks in surprise at the change in direction. “Not often.”
“What about in the last few years, since Lisa and Ben moved away from you? Have you been sick more often?”
She frowns in confusion. “I suppose. My allergies have been worse than they used to be. Bill and I got the flu last winter, and we hadn’t had that in years. Lucy has had a several of bad ear infections in the last couple of months, but she just started preschool, or had before Lisa and Ben and Bill-“
She pauses, sucks in a deep breath. Pain briefly flashes across her face before she smothers it again. “I don’t understand, Agent. What does our health have to do with anything?”
“Like I said, unusual questions,” Sam says, barreling forward before she becomes too suspicious. “What about Lisa? How often was she ill?”
“Not often, really. She’s a health nut, though. She’s always been into eating organic produce, never allows high fructose corn syrup in the house, that kind of thing. She’s a yoga teacher, you know.”
The little brother part of Sam finds it hilarious that for a whole year, Dean had to eat his vegetables, but he makes himself focus. He needs to pay attention to what he’s doing.
“And Ben?”
And then he sees it: she tenses, her mouth turns down, her eyes dart away. The compulsion to protect Ben is kicking in. “Like I said, he’s a normal kid. He gets sick like one.”
Sam nods, decides not to press her about Ben or call her on the lie. Her reaction is proof enough.
“And Dean Campbell? When he lived with Lisa and Ben, how was his health?”
“He was fine. Well, physically, anyway. But he was a hot mess when he first showed up.”
“How so?”
“His brother had just died.” Sarah pauses, mouth twisting grimly. “Although, I guess he hadn’t died, there was something about a mix up at a hospital and amnesia, I’m not really clear on that whole story. But Dean was drinking a lot, sleeping all the time. Lisa played it down, but I could tell it was bad when she would actually talk about it. Then, after about a month he leveled out, got a job. After that, I wouldn’t have ever known he was in a bad place if Lisa didn’t talk about it sometimes.”
And that was clincher for Sam. It had taken him much longer than a month to get it together after Dean went to Hell, if you can call getting addicted to demon blood getting it together. And after Dean disappeared into Purgatory, Sam had barely been functional until he met Amelia, and even then, everyday was a struggle.
But Dean, his excessively overprotective big brother, getting it together after a month? Not likely. When Sam had announced he was going to college, you would have thought he was dying from Dean’s epic melt down, but Sam going into the Pit for what they had thought was forever? He seriously doubts that Dean would have gotten himself together within a month, even for the sake of keeping his promise to Sam. Maybe after a few months, maybe more, knowing Dean, but one month to be fully functional?
No, not possible, not without outside influence, anyway.
“Dean’s not a suspect, is he? Because Dean would never hurt them.”
Sam is startled by her question. “Not to my knowledge-“
“Though, you know,” she says, eyes distant as she follows some line of thought Sam hasn’t been made privy to, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Dean took Ben.”
Sam stiffens. “Sorry?”
“Ben called me, oh, about six weeks or so ago, asking if I remembered Dean. Up until that point, neither he nor Lisa would talk about him. They would just get this blank look on their faces and say ‘Who?’ whenever I brought it up. I was so glad that Ben at least had decided to deal with it.” She nods firmly, mostly to herself. “I bet he found a way to contact him. Ben is really very clever when he needs to be.”
Sam doesn’t care for the direction her speculation is taking. “Are you saying that you think Dean kidnapped Ben?”
“What?” she says, aghast. “No. Dean would never do something so horrible. But I think he would have come and picked him up if he called.”
Sam frowns at the various levels of truth in that statement, at the utter surety in her belief in Dean. He’s beginning to suspect that whatever spell had affected Dean and Lisa’s perception of Ben’s healing abilities is a blood-based spell that affects blood relatives and not just the parents. He should probably be unnerved by his own lack of concern for Ben’s abilities, though he isn’t, not really. Maybe it also causes the bearers to recognize others under the same spell unconsciously and to trust them completely? Either that, or Dean just made a really good impression while he lived with the Braedens, despite the drinking.
“That’s a possibility,” Sam says cautiously. “Do you plan to mention this to the detectives on Ben’s case?”
“Oh God, no.” Sarah waves the idea away as if it’s the most ridiculous idea ever. “It’s just a theory. Besides, I wouldn’t want them to start looking to arrest Dean.” Then she stiffens, eyes Sam suspiciously. “Do you plan to mention it?”
Sam is quick to deny it. “No. Not my jurisdiction.”
She seems to believe him because she relaxes, nods thoughtfully. The blood spell again? “Good. Because if Lisa really is gone, and Dean did come for Ben, I want him to be safe with someone who loves him, not get Dean arrested for taking care of Ben when I obviously couldn’t.”
“Of course, ma’am. I understand.” Sam tucks his notepad into his pocket with the picture of Lisa and the thing that hadn’t been Henry Dixon. “I think you’ve answered all of my questions.”
Sam pushes away from the table and stands. He has more answers than he expected to get, and now he needs time to sort through it all, to see what is coming together and what he still needs to know.
“Did it help you with your case?” Sarah asks as both she and her daughter crane their necks to look up at him at his full height.
“I think so.” His eyes catch on the picture of Dean and Ben, still lying on the table; he itches to take it with him, but he forces himself to keep his hands to himself and say the same inadequate thing he said to the Dixons: “Thank you so much for your time.”
His phone wakes him up not long after nine; Dean groans, rolls over, grabs it off the table next to the bed.
“So, I know what Ben’s superpower is,” Sam says when Dean grunts a greeting into the phone.
Dean blinks into the darkness. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“He’s a healer.”
“Well, yeah.” Dean rubs a hand over his face, blinks some more to convince his eyes that they do need to be open. “I could have told you that. Would have saved you a trip to Indiana.”
“No, man,” Sam says impatiently, like he thinks Dean is being dumb on purpose. “I’m not talking about what’s been happening to him for the past few days. I’m talking about his whole life. He’s a real, legitimate healer. Not an angel with amnesia, not a skeevy faith healer backed by reapers. We’re talking laying-on-of-hands, healing-by-touch healing. The real deal, Dean.”
Dean sits up, his post-road trip lethargy wearing off pretty damn quick. “How do you figure that?”
Sam hesitates. “Well, you’re going to be mad.”
Dean tenses. It’s like he can’t let Sam out of his sight for five minutes. “What did you do, Sam?”
“Just hear me out before you lose it. I spoke to Lisa’s sister.”
Dean wishes he were surprised. “Why would you do that?”
“You know why.”
Dean sighs. “Only you, Sam. Just tell me you didn’t tell her Ben’s with us. Because the last thing we need is to become suspects in a kidnapping.”
“I’m not stupid, Dean.” Dean can easily imagine the bitchy expression on Sam’s face. “I went in as a Fed.”
“And she just up and told you that Ben is a healer? Dude, Sarah’s just this side of being a Stepford wife; I don’t think she’d recognize a vampire if it bit her.”
“No. I experienced it firsthand. Talking to her just helped me realize it.”
Sometimes getting information out of Sam was like pulling teeth, very convoluted, irritating teeth. “What are you talking about?”
“Last night, when I coughed up the blood?”
“Yeah?”
“It hurt. There was this burning feeling. First time ever. And then Ben touched me, and it just... went away. Gone.”
Dean was quiet for a moment, taking it in. On the one hand, he was not pleased to hear that Sam was now experiencing pain along with the coughing, but on the other, he felt an absolute lack of surprise, like he had always known that about Ben but hadn’t realized it, yet.
“Ever experience anything like that around him?” Sam asks, all cautious and gentle. It kind of makes Dean want to punch his little brother in the face. Too bad he’s in Indiana or Michigan or where the hell ever.
“Maybe,” Dean says, reluctant. There’s a pressure building behind his eyes, promising a headache in the near future.
“Maybe?”
“There was this one time.” He stops, scrubs his hand over his mouth. He hadn’t thought about that day in a long time, just shoved it down deep with all his other awful, shame-filled memories. “I was drunk off my ass in the garage, and Ben found me there. I couldn’t even stand, I was so drunk, and he touched me on the arm. It was like.... My head just cleared right up. I was still drunk, but not flat on my ass in the garage drunk.”
Dean leaves out the part where had had the gun in his mouth only moments before, so close to blowing out his brains, and the part where Ben escorted him into the house after and skipped school to spend the day babysitting him.
They are both quiet for a moment.
“You figure out what’s killing those kids, yet?” Dean finally asks to break the silence, to escape the weight of that memory.
“Not yet. I’m going to stop for the night and get a room, see if I can’t narrow it down. There are a few things I want to follow up on before I leave the area.”
And that’s pretty vague for Sam, which means he’s working Dean like a witness, now. Which, right, no big surprise there. But that also means he’s knows something that he isn’t sharing. “What aren’t you telling me, Sam?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing to tell, yet. All I’ve got is a bunch of clues that don’t make any sense and a few theories. Just, you know, hang out with Ben and, I don’t know, get caught up on the The Walking Dead or something.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean sighs. Sam’s going to do what Sam’s going to do, and Dean will fight it out with him when he gets back. “Just call me when you’ve got something.”
Sam makes a noise of agreement, and Dean ends the call. He heaves himself off the concrete slab Sam claims is a bed, shoves his feet back into his boots. He needs coffee. He wants a bottle of Jack and maybe a beer chaser, but he’ll have coffee because he’s got Ben and getting shitfaced isn’t going to fix anything.
He heads towards the kitchen, but stops at his bedroom, looks in on Ben, tangled up in the blankets, one foot hanging off the edge. He had put Ben in his bed around noon, since it’s actually fit for humans use, and the kid had been asleep every time Dean had checked on him since. Dean wonders if that should worry him, how much Ben has been sleeping in the past two days, especially now that the pneumonia seems to be gone. Well, worry him more than all the other crap - visions, monster doctors, and the like - that he had to worry about. It’s hard to prioritize. Always is.
Ben rolls onto his back, throwing one arm out. Dean feels a rush of affection - his kid, his - then a clenching, agonizing twist of terror that feels a lot like letting Sam do the trials, like watching him jump into the Pit, like leaving him behind in a mental institution while his Hell hallucinations slowly took him apart.
Ben snuffles in his sleep, mutters something incoherent.
Dean continues on to the kitchen.
One minute Ben is trying to load the dishwasher before his mom gets home, rinsing the dregs of chocolate milk out of his favorite Batman glass, the one that broke two years ago, and the next, the visions are rolling over him: the wings, rising to block out the stars. Then the stars themselves falling. A young guy with his eyes burned out. A mark on Dean’s arm, bright red against pale skin, but black under the surface. The wings again, the crunching of bone. Sam and the mattress and the books-
A hand suddenly, large and warm, over his eyes.
“Sorry about that,” Dean says, his voice a comforting rumble. “Those aren’t for you.”
A flush of warmth washes through him, and suddenly he’s clearer, looser, like some low, grating pressure has been released.
Ben slumps against the counter in relief. “What did you do?”
Dean reaches around him to turn off the water. “I took away the visions. You should be free of them now.”
“You can do that? Why didn’t you do that before?”
Dean wanders towards the back door. “I didn’t realize. I’m still a little confused. Everything is coming back to me so slowly.” He flicks the curtain aside and peers out into the back yard. “How long have you been seeing the wings?”
“I don’t know. A while now. I already told you that.” He turns back to his task, but all the dishes are done, piled up in the dish drainer and already dry.
Ben stares at them, forlorn. “Why isn’t she home yet?”
“I don’t know.” Dean tries to open the door, but the knob only rattles in his hand and doesn’t turn. “But don’t worry, she’ll be back. Her prophecy hasn’t been fulfilled yet.”
“What prophecy?” Ben asks.
Somewhere in the house, a door slams. There’s a whisper, like someone’s calling him from a far off room.
“Mom?” Ben’s heart leaps in hope and he starts towards the sound, hoping to find his mom coming out of the bathroom or changing the sheets on the guestroom bed.
Dean grabs him by the arm before he can get very far. “Wait. He’s coming. You should probably wake up, now.”
Ben tries to tug his foot away, but Dean has him by the ankle now, which is weird and sort of dickish.
“Why won’t you let-“
Ben opens his eyes.
He’s standing in the hallway just outside of Dean’s room, the cold of the marble floor seeping through his socks. The door is open, and in the light spilling in from the hallway, he can see the blankets have been dragged off the bed towards the door like he’d gotten tangled in them when he was trying to get up.
Which is freaking him out because he doesn’t actually remember getting up.
He stands there and stares, paralyzed, confused, not knowing what it means, but knowing it’s bad without knowing why.
Down the hall, he hears the clop of boots heading in his direction.
Dean is coming.
It suddenly seems really important that Dean not know about this. Ben races back into the room, snatches the blankets off the floor, and dumps them back onto the bed. He throws himself down and grabs his shoes, starts tugging them on like he isn’t in the middle of a huge freak out.
A shadow falls into the room.
“Oh, hey. You’re up.” Dean flicks on the light. “I was just coming to get you up. You hungry?”
Ben shrugs as he casually ties his shoe. “Not really.”
Dean drifts closer, and Ben tenses. “You’re shivering.”
He is shivering. His shoulders are shaking hard, and his teeth are chattering like a cartoon character stuck out in the snow.
Ben drops his foot to the floor and pulls the other to his knee. “It’s cold in here.”
“Not that cold.” Dean is quick, hand darting out to feel his head before Ben can dodge him. Reminds him of the not-doctor at the clinic, and this time, when he shivers, it isn’t from the cold. “You still have that fever.”
Ben pulls away in irritation, goes back to the shoe lace. “Yeah, so?”
Dean just sighs and scrubs his hand over his mouth. “All right, well, I’m going to fix something to eat, and you’re going to eat it, whether you’re hungry or not. Come on.”
Ben barely manages to grab his hoodie before Dean is herding him through the maze of hallways and into the silver kitchen. Dean sits him at the table while he pulls stuff out of the fridge, dumping a carton of eggs and a package of bacon and a couple other things on the counter.
“Eggs and bacon all right?”
It actually sounds like the worst idea he’s ever heard, but Dean’ll freak if he doesn’t eat. “Yeah. Sure.”
Ben puts his head down, pillowing his head on one arm, and lets his eyes drift shut. He feels light and floaty, like he does when he’s hanging on the edge of sleep. He’s so tired. He feels like he could sleep forever, wouldn’t even mind it, even though he knows he has had more sleep in the last twenty-four hours than he really needs. He’s pretty sure the fever - the hundred and five degree fever - is to blame. Well, the fever and the trauma of the past four weeks. But he can’t find it in himself to care. He just hopes Dean doesn’t come at him with a thermometer because he’ll lose his shit if he sees how high his temperature is.
“Come here,” Dean says, barely audible over the water running in the sink.
Ben is too comfortable to get up and ignores him.
“Just a taste,” Dean says a few minutes later over the sound of bacon sizzling as it hits the hot pan, which is a weird thing to say, even if it almost but not quite makes sense in the kitchen. Maybe Dean is talking to himself? He does that sometimes when he’s cooking or working on the car.
Ben can’t help it; he raises his head and says, “What did you say?”
Dean looks back over his shoulder. “Huh?”
“You said something.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I didn’t.
Ben glares.
Dean holds up his hands, one hand fisted around a spatula. “Dude, I really didn’t say anything.”
“Whatever.” Ben drops his head back to his arm, irritated. Dean had totally said something.
He is just getting comfortable again, like really, really comfortable, when Dean sucks in a sharp gasp and mutters motherfucker, both of which Ben does hear this time, very loud and very clear. He jerks up, a thrill rippling down his spine, somehow knowing, just knowing, that something is wrong. Dean is wrapping a paper towel around his finger, and the information flickers across Dean’s phantom wounds like news headlines scrolling across the bottom of a TV screen - a small, shallow cut across the pad of his middle finger, blood welling out of it, and a sharp sting out of proportion to the size of the wound.
It’s nothing, Ben can see it’s nothing, hardly even worth anti-bacterial cream and a band-aid, but he’s still up and moving towards Dean--
Things go black for a second.
And then Ben is standing at the sink, holding Dean’s hand under the kitchen faucet, and Dean is speaking to him all calm and even, Ben and kiddo and Hey, snap out of it, even though that wound in his side is pretty much dumping phantom blood all over the floor.
Ben blinks at him, hyperaware of the scent of frying bacon and the rush of the water in the sink and Dean’s hand, clenched in his.
He drops Dean’s hand like it’s on fire.
“Sorry,” he mutters. He steps back, his face hot. “I..I don’t know-“
“Dude, it’s okay. It’s just a little cut.” Dean takes charge of his own hand, pulling it out from under the water and drying his hand on a kitchen towel. “You okay?”
Ben nods, even though they both know he’s lying.
Dean gives him a fake smile that does nothing to hide his distress, and ruffles his hair affectionately. Ben leans into it, soaking up the comfort, until he remembers he’s mad at Dean and jerks away.
Hurt flashes across Dean’s face before he shutters it away behind a fake smile. “I’m sautéing some onions. Want some? Or are onions still a no go?”
“Onions are fine.” Ben’s voice comes out like a croak. He clears his throat, and what comes out next sounds a lot better. “And don’t let anything touch.”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember all your weird food rules. Go sit down,” Dean says with a nod towards the table. “It shouldn’t be long now.”
Ben shuffles back over to the table. His hands are shaking, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie as he watches Dean move back and forth, chopping onions and tossing them into the skillet with a paper towel wrapped tightly around the cut on his finger.
Ben puts his head down and lets his eyes drift closed again.
A little past two in the morning, Sam plops down on the creaky motel bed and stares at the map of the U.S. tacked to the wall. He doesn’t usually do his research this way; this had been their dad’s method, covering the walls of nondescript motel rooms with maps and newspaper articles and hand scrawled notes. But once he had figured out the parameters of his search and picked out the pattern, once the murders had passed the dozen mark and the range of the victims’ ages and locations had increased, Sam realized he needed to see the whole picture and broke out the sticky notes and thumbtacks.
He doesn’t have any better idea what killed the children in Indianapolis than his soulless counterpart had had three years ago. What he does have is a list of sixteen more possible victims falling between the ages of 11 and 82, their murders radiating out sloppily from Indianapolis in location and timing. The closer they had been to Indianapolis, the earlier on the timeline they had been killed. The children in Indianapolis were the earliest murders, and the murders in Charlotte, a freshman in the nursing program at UNC Charlotte and a high school senior with a full ride to Julliard, seem to be the most recent.
In between, there had been a chiropractor in Cincinnati, a med student in Ann Arbor, a nurse in Cleveland, and a biology high school teacher in Canton, Ohio. Then three people in Pittsburgh - a high school choral director, a street musician, and the guitarist in a locally famous band. Four more died in New York City; one had been a student at Julliard, another a professor of music history at NYU, and the other two had been an obstetrician and a world renowned heart surgeon. Not long after came a biomechanical engineer in St. Louis, a retired horse vet in Kentucky, and a hospice nurse in rural Arkansas. An up and coming country music singer in Nashville was next, then a pediatrician and a psychiatry intern in Baltimore only three months ago.
The nature of their professions hadn’t escaped Sam’s notice. They had all been unusually gifted in music or in medicine, though there seemed to be a handful of other talents among them. There had been the thirteen -year-old seer in Indianapolis and her twin sister the interpreter, of course. The nurse in Cleveland had been, according to a blog post by her best friend after her death, uncannily accurate with a tarot deck. The vet in Kentucky had been a champion archer in his youth, and the colleagues of the hospice worker in Arkansas had been quoted in the article about her murder as saying that she had always known down to the minute when their patients would pass on.
On that alone, he feels confident that they were all siblings of some kind. His current theory is that they were all fathered by some kind of supernatural brood parasite. It had used human DNA to breed its young, all but cloning them so that the human father would keep them in the nest. He’s also pretty sure that’s why they were killed; souls were worth a lot in heaven and hell and all points in between, but souls with a little more magic in them? Probably pretty pricey in the trade.
After a few minutes of staring, Sam gets up and stabs another tack into Indianapolis; David Lawrence had a stupidly high success rate for his field, and he had gone missing not long after he had been identified as a suspect. After a moment, he reluctantly sticks one in Battle Creek for Ben. He spends another five minutes staring at the map, wondering if he is missing some other pattern, and if it would be worth it to research any of the victims’ lives to see if delving any deeper would help.
Eventually, he decides to walk away for a while, hoping that a little distance might give him some more insight. He brushes his teeth, has a shower, pulls on a t-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. He throws away his left over Chinese in the first trashcan he can find outside so the room won’t smell like fried batter and soy sauce in the morning and stops at the vending machines for a Coke on the way back. He drinks half the soda, pours out the rest, and brushes his teeth again. He repacks his duffle, throws out a threadbare, unmatched sock with a hole in the heel that probably belongs to Dean, because, you know, hole in the heel.
Then he stares at the map for a few more minutes and finds he has no more perspective than he had before.
Finally he turns to the laptop. He only has one more thing to research before he has to give in and accept that his working theory about what fathered the victims marked by brightly colored thumb tacks on his map is true.
He types the name Acestor into Google, clicks on the first link that pops up, and yeah. He’s right.
He just doesn’t know how he’s going to break the news to Dean.
Even if Lisa could remember this happening, this is one of those things she would never tell Ben:
She watches him for a long time before she approaches.
He’s younger than she typically goes for. It usually takes a few more years of hard living than this one has seen to get them rough and hard the way she likes, to turn them into the kind of sharp-edged alpha male that lights her up. But all his trappings are right: the battered leather jacket, the fuck-you-stupid swagger, and the grin that promises you’ll like it. He’s almost too pretty, with his Disney princess eyes and those plump girly lips, but he manages to stay on the right side of masculine even with his delicate bone structure.
She can’t wait to get that gorgeous face all sloppy and wet between her legs.
She takes her beer and drifts closer, stops at the juke box and pretends to browse the songs while she gets a better look. He’s playing eight ball with a grizzled old biker, all his loveliness thrown into stark contrast against the biker’s stringy salt-and-pepper hair and missing teeth. He’s losing badly, his body language telegraphing his frustration and impatience every time he scratches at the corner pocket or the seven ball is just a centimeter too far to the left, and when the biker sinks two balls with one shot, Pretty Boy drops his head and swears.
She can’t say why, but she’s almost certain he’s hustling.
She admires his ass as he leans over the table for his next shot - the nine ball just barely misses the hole - and when he straightens, walks around the table to the high top where his beer is sitting, he catches her looking.
Interest flares in his eyes. His eyes skitter down her body and up again. He licks his lips. Smirks at her knowingly.
She bites her lip, raises her eyebrows at him expectantly. Takes a very suggestive drink of her beer. Nods towards the biker as if asking whose companionship he wants more.
Pretty boy flashes a panty-dropping smile. “Give me a minute, here, sweetheart.”
And then, like promise of getting laid is all he needs, he clears the table, sinks the eight ball, and collects his winnings from the biker who is too stupefied by his sudden loss to get angry.
“Buy you a drink?” he says, tucking the wad of cash into the inner pocket of his jacket.
She lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Sure. Or we could skip that part and get right to the fucking.”
He barks out a startled laugh, those beautiful green eyes sparkling with delight in the light thrown off by the buzzing Budweiser sign above their heads. His usual lays probably aren’t quite so blunt, but Lisa wants him, and why waste time flirting when she knows he’s a sure thing?
“In that case, my car is in the lot. We can go wherever you want.”
She licks her lips hungrily and nods, lets him lead her out into the cold October night with a chivalrous hand at the small of her back. His ride is a vintage Chevy in cherry condition, a sleek and gleaming scorpion black under the sodium lights of the parking lot. He opens the door for her like a gentleman, but when he slides in on the driver’s side, she doesn’t bother acting like a lady, just climbs into his lap and gets to work getting him all sloppy.
He gets her off with his hand down the front of her jeans while Zeppelin IV plays low on the tape deck; she blows him after, dragging out tantalizing moans and devoutly uttered profanity. It’s good and hot and dirty - she made an excellent damned choice, thank you very much - but where she would usually kick her quick fucks out of bed, so to speak, with this one, she goes against every ounce of good sense, against every rule she has made for herself about the men she picks up in the dark, gritty bars she prefers, and takes him home. They fuck through the night, and in the morning, she calls in sick, claiming the flu, and spends the rest of the weekend in bed with him.
It’s beyond good. It’s fantastic. The best yet. The best ever, in fact, but she doesn’t know that yet.
Another thing she will never tell Ben.
She sends him away Sunday morning after one last go in the shower and a lingering goodbye kiss. She spends the rest of the day sleeping and watching bad movies on TV, enjoying the ache of her body, the lassitude of being well laid.
When the knock comes Sunday night just after she has resolved herself to going back to work, she is surprised to see him on the other side of the door, one hand rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, casting a pleading look from under his girl-pretty lashes.
“Car broke down on my way out of town. Think you could put me up for one more night?”
Lisa smiles and bites her lip, steps aside to let him in.
She doesn’t know it then, but the man she lets into her loft isn’t Dean Winchester.
He isn’t a man at all.
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