Fic: Shadows and Dust (SPN, Gen, R) -- Chapter Two
“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Ian.” Sam pressed end and put his cell phone down on Bobby’s desk, in between a lukewarm half-bottle of El Sol and a dusty, dog-eared copy of Matholwch’s Guide to Cryptozoology.
The phone call had been from the eponymous owner of Ian’s Herbal Remedies in Utah. He wasn’t a hunter, but he knew about the supernatural world and the part hunters played in keeping on top of it. His shop even had markings on the front window to tell those in the know that Ian was the real deal and not some New Age wannabe.
Ian had told Sam that he’d had a consignment of Griffin feathers put aside for Annie Hawkins for about four months, that she’d been in a real rush when she’d asked for them, but when he’d called to let her know they were in, he’d only gotten her voicemail. She hadn’t returned his call and he’d been getting nothing but her voicemail for the last three months. He’d heard that Sam and Bobby were looking into missing hunters and thought maybe they’d want to know about Annie.
Sam relayed Ian’s story to Bobby and the older hunter nodded. “I’ve had a couple other people mention not being able to get ahold of Annie for a while and that ain’t like her. She’s usually very sociable.”
Sam nodded. He’d heard that about Annie, but he didn’t want to dwell on the thought too much, because just thinking about her made a buzzing, tingling sensation start up deep inside his head; the kind of feeling he’d learned to associate with an important piece of knowledge trapped behind the wall.
Bobby shook his head. “All right. I’ll add her to the list. So far we’ve got Dean, Grady, Walt, Roy and Lula. And now Annie too. And I got a question mark next to Reggie and Tim.”
Sam’s face darkened and Bobby raised an eyebrow.
“You got issues with Reggie and Tim too? Hell boy, you’re turning out just like your Daddy, the way you ain’t on speakin’ terms with half the hunting world.”
Sam picked up his bottle of El Sol and began to play with the label. “You remember when I took that break from hunting and I spent some time in Garber, Oklahoma?”
“Yeah,” Bobby nodded. “You called me about a bunch of demon signs, told me you were out of the game, couldn’t deal with it, so I sent Reggie, Tim and Steve to look into it. Guess they were none too pleased you’d decided to bow out of the apocalypse.”
“Yeah. And then Steve died.” Sam took a slow, deep breath. “After Steve went down, Reggie and Tim cornered me at work, made me confess that it was my fault; that I’d started the apocalypse, and then they tried to force demon blood down my throat,” Sam was staring a hole in the table, his eyes and mouth downcast. “I spat it out,” he said, lifting his eyes briefly, “and there was a fight. And, well, it’s safe to say they don’t like me much.”
“Does Dean know?’ Bobby asked.
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t tell him. You know how he gets. And we had enough on our plates at the time, what with Michael and Lucifer wanting to wear us both to the Prom.”
Bobby sighed and turned back to the research board on the library wall.
The hunters who’d disappeared had done so predominantly around the mid-west: South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri. Dean appeared to be the outlier; he had disappeared from Montana. Bobby had placed red pins on the last known place where each missing hunter had been seen. White vans had been seen in the vicinity of Lula’s, Grady’s and Dean’s disappearances. Dean had received a text message from Grady shortly before going missing and Lula had received one from Tamara.
“Huh,” Bobby said. “You get in touch with Tamara yet?”
Sam shook his head. “But then she does tend to keep to herself; doesn’t like to work with others. And,” Sam chewed at his bottom lip, “if it wasn’t for me Isaac would probably still be alive, so, you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t plan on returning any of my calls.”
“Could have a point,” Bobby conceded. “Tamara was always the more level-headed of the two, but losing Isaac the way she did,” he trailed off. “I’ll call Missouri, see if maybe she can get hold of her. They’ve always gotten along.”
Sam figured that bringing Missouri in on this was a very good idea. In fact, maybe he should pay her a visit, take her something of Dean’s and see if she could get a reading on him.
Maybe it was time to try Cas too. Dean was still pissed at the angel for spilling the beans about Sam’s year without his soul, and Cas was still busy with the war in Heaven, but Sam thought he would care that Dean was missing.
Sam excused himself and went out into the yard. He found a nice secluded space in the middle of a heap of car bodies and closed his eyes:
“Castiel… I know you’re busy, but if you can hear me, uh, Dean is missing. Someone kidnapped him and-”
There was a flutter of wings and Cas appeared beside him, looking intense.
“Do you have leads?” Castiel asked. “Could Raphael have taken him?”
Sam brought Cas up to speed on what they knew and Cas inclined his head and looked thoughtful. “It doesn’t sound like Angels,” he said. “Perhaps the Alphas are seeking retribution against hunters, because hunters helped Crowley search for Purgatory?”
Sam thought that was unlikely. Only the Campbells and he and Dean had been involved in that and besides, if the monsters wanted retribution, wouldn’t they simply tear the hunters apart? Kidnapping seemed a little too sophisticated. Sam considered that for a moment and had to concede that the Alpha vamp had actually been a lot more sophisticated than him and Dean. He’d also been pissed. Maybe he was behind this? Maybe he was abducting hunters to use as blood bags?
“I’ll look into it,” he told Cas, and then hesitated before asking, “Can’t you feel him? You know, through your profound bond or whatever?” He tried to keep the snark out of his tone, but he didn’t think he was very successful.
Cas’s jaw clenched and when he spoke, he sounded disgruntled. “I cannot simply ‘feel’ your brother. I may be able to appear to him in a dream,” he said, “but I can find him most easily through his prayers. If he needs my help, perhaps he will pray to me.”
“So he hasn’t? Prayed to you?”
Castiel frowned. “If he had, I would have responded.”
Sam wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t remember most of the past year, but Dean had told him that Cas had been a little flaky lately; sometimes too busy with the war in heaven to respond to their prayers.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Well, if you hear anything-”
“I will call you,” Castiel leaned in toward Sam. “I have you in my contacts now.”
Sam clapped him on the shoulder and Cas nodded and then vanished in another flutter of wings.
Sam wandered through the labyrinth of rusting car bodies, back toward Bobby’s house. The weather was mild and he could smell a hint of summer in the breeze. Dean loved summer. The nights weren’t as cold-which made the nights they had to sleep in the car more comfortable- and the ground wasn’t as hard, which made a big difference when you were digging up graves. People were generally happier in summer too; more willing to make a wager on their pool game; more willing to hook up with the attractive, unattached drifter in the back of his car.
Sam realized that his hands were clenched in tight fists and he made himself relax.
When Dean learned that Sam had come out of the cage without his soul, he hadn’t rested until he’d figured out how to get it back; Sam had no intention of letting his brother down now that he needed him. Sam picked up his pace and bounded up onto Bobby’s porch and through his front door. Sam would eat supper with Bobby and then he would head out to Lawrence to talk to Missouri. Sam was getting his brother back, no matter who he had to go through to do it.
--
Dean was almost asleep when some asshole banged on the bars of his cell door with a metal pipe. He was on his feet in a fighting stance before he’d even had a chance to process the noise and the Lanista gave him a nod.
“Good reflexes,” he said. “Get your gear on; training starts in ten minutes.”
The…what had Grady called it? A manny-ki? Whatever it was called, getting it onto his left shoulder and upper arm and fastened across his upper back was awkward without Grad to help, but he managed it with only a few curses.
Dean was still lacing up his second sandal when a guard appeared at his cell door and cleared his throat.
“Let’s go, Slave.”
Dean ignored him and, predictably, a moment later he was gritting his teeth as the guard delivered a short, sharp burst of bone-tingling pain through the wrist band.
Dean looked up. “That ain’t gonna make me go any quicker. These laces are a bitch.”
The guard sneered. “Take your time, Slave. No skin off my back if you report late for training.”
Dean finished tying up his sandal and stood. The guard told him to stand in front of the cell door, several big steps back from it, and to put his hands on his head. When Dean was in position, the guard unlocked the door and stepped back, motioning Dean out of the cell.
There was a second guard waiting outside and he told Dean to follow him. The first guard brought up the rear and Dean didn’t need to look to know that his finger was poised over the button on his wrist controller, ready to zap Dean again, if he should step out of line.
Dean took advantage of his first time out of the cell to gather as much intel as he could about his surroundings. They were obviously deep underground, judging by the cold, the damp and the long shadows; the way the artificial lights barely fought back the gloom in the large cavernous space.
And it was large. His cell was one of six all in a long row and there were another six, way over on the opposite side of the cavern. Each cell was recessed deep into the stone of the cavern, so that even if you stood with your face pressed against the bars of the window, visibility was limited, adding to the feeling of isolation.
In between the two sets of cells, there was a huge expanse of space in which there were four large squares of sand, spread out in a row. Each one was about 20ft square by Dean’s reckoning, and they were all about ten feet apart. Next to each sandpit was a tall chair, like the ones tennis umpires used.
In the very center of the cavern there was a line of gladiators, guards behind them, and in front of the gladiators were half a dozen men-including the Lanista-dressed in togas. Dean couldn’t help his eye roll, but he managed to restrain his urge to quip about steam rooms and toga parties. Given the Lanista’s earlier suggestion that Dean could earn extra kill points by volunteering to be a fuck toy, a joke that could be misconstrued as him volunteering to get naked and sweaty with the guys in charge was probably something he should take a pass on.
Besides, these guys didn’t seem to like any attitude from him and Dean had just spotted a St Andrew’s cross behind the dudes in the togas. He’d spent enough time tied to one of those in Hell to be completely uninterested in a reprise; especially given that his flayed skin wouldn’t be restored with a hand wave here.
As Dean got closer he could see that there were also several trunks filled with wooden swords, lassos, whips, nets, clubs, shields and wooden spears behind the toga guys.
And then he spotted Walt.
“Hiya Walt,” he called out, and was promptly rewarded with another short, sharp jolt of pain.
“No talking,” the guard at his back hissed.
Walt though, turned to look and when he spotted Dean his face went slack and grey and his eyes widened.
“I’m back, you son-of-a bitch. And I’m pissed.”
“I said, no talking!”
The pain lasted longer this time; Dean could feel his bones throbbing and aching, but he clenched his jaw and breathed through it and didn’t break stride.
Everyone’s attention was on him now and when Dean’s guards delivered him to the line of gladiators, the Lanista came and stood before him.
“Getting into trouble already, Decimus.”
Dean summoned his trademark smirk. “What can I say, I have a problem with authority figures and I don’t respond well to threats.”
The Lanista inclined his head, a smirk of his own playing on his lips. “Hmm,” he said and moved his hand slowly to his wrist controller. Dean lifted his chin.
“Let me tell you what I have a problem with,” the Lanista said. “I have a problem with uppity slaves.” He pressed a button on his wrist controller and this time it was the full whack, sending Dean to his knees in a flood of agony.
By the time it was over, he was in the fetal position, his face-and the sand beneath him-wet with tears.
“Get up,” the Lanista said dispassionately.
Dean took a surreptitious deep breath and then climbed unsteadily to his feet. There was no lingering pain, but his hands were trembling.
“Step out of line again today and I’ll have you whipped. Do you understand?”
Dean nodded curtly, his eyes flicking briefly to the St Andrew’s Cross.
“The correct response is, ‘Yessir’.”
Dean picked a spot over the Lanista’s shoulder. “Yessir,” he said flatly.
“All right,” the Lanista clapped his hands. “On with the show. Doctores, teams of two, half an hour on each weapon, a short break, and then they’ll switch partners, reprise,” he picked up a clipboard and scanned it. “I want Una with Septimus, Quartus with Octavus, Quintus with Sexta and Nonus with Decimus. Master Sword, Una and Septimus are with you--” the Lanista matched each set of gladiators with a master.
Dean was with Master Hand, which made him roll his eyes again. Seriously? Could these guys be lamer dicks? The trainer called for Decimus and Nonus and began walking away. Dean followed and so did Walt.
Dean sniggered. “Nonus? Really?” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
Walt glowered, but didn’t respond.
Dean and Walt spent the next half hour in hand-to-hand combat.
Walt was Dean’s height, but a little heavier than he’d been when he’d shot Dean dead. He had a beard now too and even though he could move quite stealthily, he wasn’t fast on his feet.
Despite all the cheeseburgers that Dean ate, underneath his many layers he was actually still quite slender. Lithe and light on his feet, he was able to dance out of Walt’s reach easily during their first round, taunting him into chasing after Dean and taking useless outraged swings at him. Eventually, Walt got weary enough that Dean was able to skip past his defences and lay him out flat.
Master Hand watched from the sidelines with a bored expression.
He waited until Walt staggered back to his feet and then shook his head and sighed. “Pathetic. You let him goad you,” he turned to Dean. “And you. I want a real fight this time. This is training. I want to see all your moves.”
Over the half hour, Walt got a few punches in, but he didn’t take Dean down once.
“Nice moves, Nona,” Dean clapped Walt on the shoulder as they moved across to Sword training. “Hey? Isn’t that Italian for Grandma? Sounds about right, the speed you move.”
“Fuck you, Winchester,” Walt said evenly. “Everyone knows they should’ve put you with the monsters, not with us, you fucking undead piece of shit.”
Dean stopped walking and smiled. It was his patented Dean Winchester is about to rip your throat out smile and it was just as effective on Walt as it was on demons and monsters.
“And how did I get dead, Walt? Oh that’s right. You murdered me in cold blood. Me and Sam. It must really piss you off to know that God himself brought us back. He had plans for us. We mattered. But you? You’re nothing. Just a pathetic, dickless coward. You shot us, and God snapped his fingers and fixed your stupid mistake.”
Walt turned an interested shade of puce, but before Dean could twist the knife a little more, Master Sword let loose with a piercing whistle, his face dark with disapproval. Dean and Walt hurried to his patch of sand and Master Sword got right up in Dean’s face, so close that Dean could smell the smoked salmon and egg roll he’d had for lunch.
“One complaint, Slave, just one and the Lanista will have the skin flayed from your back. Am I going to have to make that complaint?”
“No Sir,” Dean said.
Master Sword retrieved two wooden swords from a nearby box.
“Really?” Dean grumbled. “I fucking hate wooden swords.”
Master Sword raised an eyebrow. “You’ve trained with wooden swords before?”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. When we were kids our dad used them to train us, wouldn’t let us move on to the real thing until Sammy was fifteen. My brother’s really good with a sword. Even better with throwing knives.”
Master Sword’s eyes were alight with interest. “How old were you when you started training?”
Dean chewed on his bottom lip as he tried to remember. “Six, I think. Some of the earlier stuff might’ve been training too, but I just thought it was playing, you know?”
Master Sword looked at Dean with approval. “Your father was a smart man.”
Dean looked at the sword master closely. There was something in his tone, something that made Dean suspect he might actually have known John Winchester.
“Yessir, he was,” Dean said. Maybe if he sucked up to the trainers and impressed them with his awesome skills they might let slip with some important information. Something he could use to escape. It was worth a try.
“What do you consider your best weapon?” Master Sword asked.
“I’m good with guns,” Dean said and the Master Sword’s lips turned down. “Seriously. For training, Dad used to make us shoot our pistols at targets fifty-five yards away. The guy who won Gold in the 50 Meter Pistol event at the Atlanta Olympics? When I compared his winning score to the scores I was getting in training, I was better. I’m good with a long gun too. Dad used to say the only time I could stay still for more than five minutes was when I had something in the crosshairs.”
Master Sword nodded. “A natural predator. We don’t use guns here, of course, but let’s see how you handle the sword,” he handed Dean a wooden gladius and then gave one to Walt who was glowering sullenly beside him. “An on-target touch stops the action, so that I can assign points. En garde.”
Fifteen minutes later Dean had ‘killed’ Walt nine times and Walt had scored one point, for a ‘scratch’ to Dean’s forearm.
Dean spent the rest of the half hour session duelling with Master Sword. He ‘killed’ Dean more often than Dean ‘killed’ him, but the fact that he was more than holding his own against the sword master soon drew a crowd of onlookers. Their last bout, which ended with Dean on the floor with the tip of the wooden sword at his throat, even drew a round of applause.
“He was an excellent choice for recruitment,” Dean heard Master Sword say to the Lanista, as he and Walt made their way to the next sandpit to train with nets and lassos. “Of course, with his bloodline I suppose there was never any doubt. Such a shame we couldn’t recruit his brother too.”
Dean’s ears pricked up at that. Why hadn’t they tried to grab Sam too? They obviously knew who the Winchesters were; they had to know that Sam would come for him. Why not alleviate that risk by taking him too?
“Focus!” Master Whip snapped and the only part of the Lanista’s answer that Dean managed to hear was ‘damaged’.
--
Missouri’s hair was a little greyer than it had been the last time Sam saw her, and he thought she might be a little heavier too…until her hands went to her hips and her eyes widened and then he concentrated on thinking that she looked good; healthy (which she did).
Missouri snorted. “A lot healthier than the last psychic you consulted. Poor Pamela, got her eyes burned out and then got stabbed,” she shook her head and then turned away.
“Come on, boy,” she called over her shoulder as she headed into the house. “What are you waitin’ for? An engraved invitation?”
Sam followed after her into the living room, which was much the same as Sam remembered it; an old sofa with a brown, cream and orange striped woollen throw rug tossed over the back, round lacquered lamp tables, a big-leaved pot plant in the corner, a glass topped coffee table littered with magazines and white lacy doilies everywhere. Missouri was sitting on her sofa and she patted the seat beside her. She gathered one of Sam’s hands in both of hers when he sat down beside her and held his gaze.
“Oh, Sam,” she said.
Sam looked down at their hands.
“No,” Missouri said firmly, “don’t you go feelin’ like that. You were manipulated by powerful, ancient beings who’d been plotting their endgame for generations. And you and Dean still managed to get the better of them in the end.”
Sam swallowed. “A lot of good people died because of us.”
“No, sweetheart. They died because of the angels and the demons. And Dean’s right, you know?” She looked up at him sharply. “You gotta stop scratching at that wall. I know you want to fix anything bad you did while you didn’t have your soul, but if that wall comes down, it will kill you. I can sense your soul, Sam and it’s ragged. So torn and frayed. But the blackness I sense behind the wall? Don’t mess with it, Sam.”
Sam shook his head, he wasn’t going to argue with her, but he didn’t want to talk about it. “So, uh, I’ve come to see you because--”
“Because Dean’s missing,” Missouri concluded, her hand fluttered to her lips. “Oh no,” she looked down at the black Led Zeppelin tee-shirt that Sam was clutching in his other hand. “That his? Hand it over.”
Missouri held Dean’s tee shirt in both hands and pressed it up against her chest. She closed her eyes and Sam could see the rapid movement of her eyes behind her eyelids.
“He went to help a friend who was hurt. He was at the door. Room 12. And then,” Missouri’s eyes began to flicker even more rapidly behind her closed lids. “He heard a noise. And he turned,” Missouri gasped. “Tasers. Two men with tasers,” she opened her eyes. “They knocked him out cold and after that, I just can’t get anything.”
Missouri looked up at Sam. “I’m sorry, Sam. He was alive when they took him. But where that is,” she shook her head. “He’s either in another dimension or wherever they’re keeping him is well-warded.”
Sam asked her if she’d seen a white van and Missouri nodded. She closed her eyes again and held up a finger. When she looked back at Sam she shook her head. “Dean only saw it side on. I didn’t recognize the make and I couldn’t see the plates.”
Missouri fixed them sandwiches and they talked well into the afternoon, brainstorming who was most likely to be kidnapping hunters. Sam was acutely aware that they were just guessing; they didn’t have enough information to go on and his frustration was building.
While Missouri made coffee, Sam rang Bobby and confirmed that there was definitely a white van involved in the kidnappings. He also suggested that Bobby should start putting the word out, warning hunters that they were being targeted for kidnap and advising them to call and talk in person to any hunter who texted asking for help or a meet up.
Bobby agreed that he would do that.
Sam drank his coffee quickly and then said good bye to Missouri, turning down her invitation to stay in her spare room. Sam wasn’t good company right now; he needed to do something. Maybe he should summon a demon? Torture it for information? Or maybe he should take a leaf out of his brother’s book and burn out his frustration in a bar fight.
Sam checked into a motel and spent a few hours poring over police databases looking, again, for information about white vans and kidnappings. He found one case in LA involving a child, but he doubted it was related to his case.
Sam slammed his laptop shut and picked up his keys and his phone, planning to head out to the nearest bar and dare some asshole to look at him wrong.
He didn’t get that far.
--
Fucking Keystone. In a can. It was like drinking cold piss. Dean imagined.
Still, alcohol of questionable quality was infinitely better than no alcohol, so Dean drank it. Maybe not with relish, but it did a passable job of washing down the hot beef stew and biscuits.
His meal finished, Dean stretched out on the cot. He’d changed back into his dress and he had nothing to do now except let the food settle in his belly and wait for someone to come and escort him to the Arena.
A running sheet of sorts had been delivered with his meal. Tonight Dean would be going up against a vampire and (assuming the vamp didn’t kill him) he would be taking part in the grand finale, which involved all of the hunters taking on a small horde of zombies. Dean grinned. Killing zombies was fun.
Dean folded his arms behind his head and remembered the last time he’d been locked in a proper prison cell. He’d spent plenty of nights in holding cells throughout his life, most recently last November in Indiana when he’d thought the DA was a fairy and attacked him. Dean grimaced. Not one of his finer moments.
Police station holding cells were a very different ball game to a real prison like Green River County Detention Center, though. It was almost five years since he and Sam had gone in there to hunt a ghost that was killing prisoners. Dean had spent the first night slouched on his cot, worrying about Sam. The guy in Dean’s room had been quiet and Dean was confident he could take him if he had to. The guy in Sam’s cell had been freaking huge; way bigger than Sam. And if Sam’d had one mark on him the next morning, Dean would’ve gone after the guy, screw the hunt. But Sam had been okay.
Truthfully, the experience of being in prison hadn’t fazed Dean as much as he’d expected it to. The food was all right. He won a lot of cigarettes playing poker. And he only had to get into a couple of fights. Sam had thought it was weird how well Dean had fitted into the prison environment, but Dean had shrugged it off.
If Sam were here now, he’d probably think it was weird that Dean wasn’t more upset about this kidnapping than he was. He wasn’t happy about it, sure. But he meant what he’d said to Grady earlier. He was getting three hots and a cot and all he was going to have to do was kill some monsters, which was his usual job anyway.
And he’d enjoyed the training they’d done today; it had reminded him of simpler times, the days when his dad was in charge and saving the whole freaking world again and again wasn’t sitting squarely on his shoulders.
Dean was still going to escape as soon as he could, but in meantime, he couldn’t really say that he was unhappy. If sucking up to the trainers and being apt pupil boy made them discount him as a threat, then surely that would make escape easier than if they were suspicious of him and being super vigilant around him.
Dean closed his eyes and relaxed completely, letting himself get into the zone. He wished he had his favorite machete with him. He liked its weight and its balance and he really liked beheading vampires with it.
When the guard came for him, Dean was already dressed and waiting several steps back from the cell door with a wolfish grin and a glint in his eye.
“Take me to kill monsters,” Dean said to the guard.
--
When Sam opened the motel room door he found a man and a woman standing on the doorstep. The woman looked like Oprah Winfrey, circa Sam’s grade school days, complete with big hair and a ruffled blue blouse underneath a loud purple cardigan. The man looked like he’d stepped out of a Michael Jackson music video.
Sam had a bad feeling about them.
“Can I help you?” he asked
The woman smiled; all teeth.
All two sets of teeth.
“Alpha wants to see you,” she said.
There was a stretch limousine with darkly tinted windows idling out in the parking lot.
Sam swallowed. “And if I say no?”
The male vamp’s lips twisted, like he’d been sucking lemons. “Alpha guarantees you safe passage. He just wants to talk.”
Sam had met Lenore and her crew; he knew that evil was largely a choice with vampires, and with a lot of other monsters. If they weren’t actively killing humans, Sam favored leaving them to get on with the accident of their birth or turning, unmolested. It was something he and Dean didn’t quite see eye to eye on, but Sam believed the Alpha vamp when he gave his word that Sam would be safe.
“Okay,” he said, with a decisive nod. “Lead the way.”
Not that he couldn’t find the limo without their guidance; it was right opposite him. He just didn’t want them at his back.
The Alpha was in the back of the limo and Sam slid in beside him when Oprah opened the door.
“My children are being taken again,” the Alpha said without preamble.
Sam nodded. “Hunters too. Do you have any leads?”
The Alpha turned his gaze on Sam and suddenly Sam could hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears. He felt dizzy and his face was hot and tingly.
“What…?” he managed to get out, one hand outstretched toward the Alpha.
The sensation stopped, like a tap had been turned off.
“My children show me what they see,” the Alpha said. “Unfortunately, I can’t share that with you. You are too…human.”
Sam wasn’t quite sure what to say to that so he just nodded and then asked the Alpha what his children had seen.
“They see locked cells, deep underground. They see guards. They see hunters in an arena. They see an audience,” the Alpha paused and steepled his hands in front of his face. Sam watched, entranced as the Alpha’s fingernails began to grow into long, lethal-looking talons. “They see death. It seems they have been captured in order to fight against your hunters, for the entertainment of paying guests.”
“Do they recognize any of the people holding them captive?”
There was a very long pause and then the Alpha said in a carefully modulated tone, “I recognized several of the guards that my children saw. They were also guards at the facility where Samuel Campbell kept me imprisoned at the behest of Crowley.”
For one very brief moment Sam wondered if the Alpha intended to kill him and then he dismissed the idea. In his experience supernatural creatures kept their word far more consistently than humans did.
Still, he had to swallow a couple of times before he was able to ask the Alpha if he thought Samuel Campbell was behind the kidnappings.
“Samuel,” the Alpha said, “or someone from his team. The Campbell Compound is in Lansing, Michigan, is it not? And I believe it has a substantial number of underground bunkers. Perhaps you should start searching there?”
He then fixed Sam with a deeply unsettling smile and said that if Sam found and released the hunters, but killed the captive vampires, they were going to have a problem. Sam believed him. He wasn’t sure how releasing the vamps would go down with the other hunters, but he gave the Alpha his word that he would.
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Back to Masterpost
The phone call had been from the eponymous owner of Ian’s Herbal Remedies in Utah. He wasn’t a hunter, but he knew about the supernatural world and the part hunters played in keeping on top of it. His shop even had markings on the front window to tell those in the know that Ian was the real deal and not some New Age wannabe.
Ian had told Sam that he’d had a consignment of Griffin feathers put aside for Annie Hawkins for about four months, that she’d been in a real rush when she’d asked for them, but when he’d called to let her know they were in, he’d only gotten her voicemail. She hadn’t returned his call and he’d been getting nothing but her voicemail for the last three months. He’d heard that Sam and Bobby were looking into missing hunters and thought maybe they’d want to know about Annie.
Sam relayed Ian’s story to Bobby and the older hunter nodded. “I’ve had a couple other people mention not being able to get ahold of Annie for a while and that ain’t like her. She’s usually very sociable.”
Sam nodded. He’d heard that about Annie, but he didn’t want to dwell on the thought too much, because just thinking about her made a buzzing, tingling sensation start up deep inside his head; the kind of feeling he’d learned to associate with an important piece of knowledge trapped behind the wall.
Bobby shook his head. “All right. I’ll add her to the list. So far we’ve got Dean, Grady, Walt, Roy and Lula. And now Annie too. And I got a question mark next to Reggie and Tim.”
Sam’s face darkened and Bobby raised an eyebrow.
“You got issues with Reggie and Tim too? Hell boy, you’re turning out just like your Daddy, the way you ain’t on speakin’ terms with half the hunting world.”
Sam picked up his bottle of El Sol and began to play with the label. “You remember when I took that break from hunting and I spent some time in Garber, Oklahoma?”
“Yeah,” Bobby nodded. “You called me about a bunch of demon signs, told me you were out of the game, couldn’t deal with it, so I sent Reggie, Tim and Steve to look into it. Guess they were none too pleased you’d decided to bow out of the apocalypse.”
“Yeah. And then Steve died.” Sam took a slow, deep breath. “After Steve went down, Reggie and Tim cornered me at work, made me confess that it was my fault; that I’d started the apocalypse, and then they tried to force demon blood down my throat,” Sam was staring a hole in the table, his eyes and mouth downcast. “I spat it out,” he said, lifting his eyes briefly, “and there was a fight. And, well, it’s safe to say they don’t like me much.”
“Does Dean know?’ Bobby asked.
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t tell him. You know how he gets. And we had enough on our plates at the time, what with Michael and Lucifer wanting to wear us both to the Prom.”
Bobby sighed and turned back to the research board on the library wall.
The hunters who’d disappeared had done so predominantly around the mid-west: South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri. Dean appeared to be the outlier; he had disappeared from Montana. Bobby had placed red pins on the last known place where each missing hunter had been seen. White vans had been seen in the vicinity of Lula’s, Grady’s and Dean’s disappearances. Dean had received a text message from Grady shortly before going missing and Lula had received one from Tamara.
“Huh,” Bobby said. “You get in touch with Tamara yet?”
Sam shook his head. “But then she does tend to keep to herself; doesn’t like to work with others. And,” Sam chewed at his bottom lip, “if it wasn’t for me Isaac would probably still be alive, so, you know, it wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t plan on returning any of my calls.”
“Could have a point,” Bobby conceded. “Tamara was always the more level-headed of the two, but losing Isaac the way she did,” he trailed off. “I’ll call Missouri, see if maybe she can get hold of her. They’ve always gotten along.”
Sam figured that bringing Missouri in on this was a very good idea. In fact, maybe he should pay her a visit, take her something of Dean’s and see if she could get a reading on him.
Maybe it was time to try Cas too. Dean was still pissed at the angel for spilling the beans about Sam’s year without his soul, and Cas was still busy with the war in Heaven, but Sam thought he would care that Dean was missing.
Sam excused himself and went out into the yard. He found a nice secluded space in the middle of a heap of car bodies and closed his eyes:
“Castiel… I know you’re busy, but if you can hear me, uh, Dean is missing. Someone kidnapped him and-”
There was a flutter of wings and Cas appeared beside him, looking intense.
“Do you have leads?” Castiel asked. “Could Raphael have taken him?”
Sam brought Cas up to speed on what they knew and Cas inclined his head and looked thoughtful. “It doesn’t sound like Angels,” he said. “Perhaps the Alphas are seeking retribution against hunters, because hunters helped Crowley search for Purgatory?”
Sam thought that was unlikely. Only the Campbells and he and Dean had been involved in that and besides, if the monsters wanted retribution, wouldn’t they simply tear the hunters apart? Kidnapping seemed a little too sophisticated. Sam considered that for a moment and had to concede that the Alpha vamp had actually been a lot more sophisticated than him and Dean. He’d also been pissed. Maybe he was behind this? Maybe he was abducting hunters to use as blood bags?
“I’ll look into it,” he told Cas, and then hesitated before asking, “Can’t you feel him? You know, through your profound bond or whatever?” He tried to keep the snark out of his tone, but he didn’t think he was very successful.
Cas’s jaw clenched and when he spoke, he sounded disgruntled. “I cannot simply ‘feel’ your brother. I may be able to appear to him in a dream,” he said, “but I can find him most easily through his prayers. If he needs my help, perhaps he will pray to me.”
“So he hasn’t? Prayed to you?”
Castiel frowned. “If he had, I would have responded.”
Sam wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t remember most of the past year, but Dean had told him that Cas had been a little flaky lately; sometimes too busy with the war in heaven to respond to their prayers.
“Okay,” Sam said. “Well, if you hear anything-”
“I will call you,” Castiel leaned in toward Sam. “I have you in my contacts now.”
Sam clapped him on the shoulder and Cas nodded and then vanished in another flutter of wings.
Sam wandered through the labyrinth of rusting car bodies, back toward Bobby’s house. The weather was mild and he could smell a hint of summer in the breeze. Dean loved summer. The nights weren’t as cold-which made the nights they had to sleep in the car more comfortable- and the ground wasn’t as hard, which made a big difference when you were digging up graves. People were generally happier in summer too; more willing to make a wager on their pool game; more willing to hook up with the attractive, unattached drifter in the back of his car.
Sam realized that his hands were clenched in tight fists and he made himself relax.
When Dean learned that Sam had come out of the cage without his soul, he hadn’t rested until he’d figured out how to get it back; Sam had no intention of letting his brother down now that he needed him. Sam picked up his pace and bounded up onto Bobby’s porch and through his front door. Sam would eat supper with Bobby and then he would head out to Lawrence to talk to Missouri. Sam was getting his brother back, no matter who he had to go through to do it.
--
Dean was almost asleep when some asshole banged on the bars of his cell door with a metal pipe. He was on his feet in a fighting stance before he’d even had a chance to process the noise and the Lanista gave him a nod.
“Good reflexes,” he said. “Get your gear on; training starts in ten minutes.”
The…what had Grady called it? A manny-ki? Whatever it was called, getting it onto his left shoulder and upper arm and fastened across his upper back was awkward without Grad to help, but he managed it with only a few curses.
Dean was still lacing up his second sandal when a guard appeared at his cell door and cleared his throat.
“Let’s go, Slave.”
Dean ignored him and, predictably, a moment later he was gritting his teeth as the guard delivered a short, sharp burst of bone-tingling pain through the wrist band.
Dean looked up. “That ain’t gonna make me go any quicker. These laces are a bitch.”
The guard sneered. “Take your time, Slave. No skin off my back if you report late for training.”
Dean finished tying up his sandal and stood. The guard told him to stand in front of the cell door, several big steps back from it, and to put his hands on his head. When Dean was in position, the guard unlocked the door and stepped back, motioning Dean out of the cell.
There was a second guard waiting outside and he told Dean to follow him. The first guard brought up the rear and Dean didn’t need to look to know that his finger was poised over the button on his wrist controller, ready to zap Dean again, if he should step out of line.
Dean took advantage of his first time out of the cell to gather as much intel as he could about his surroundings. They were obviously deep underground, judging by the cold, the damp and the long shadows; the way the artificial lights barely fought back the gloom in the large cavernous space.
And it was large. His cell was one of six all in a long row and there were another six, way over on the opposite side of the cavern. Each cell was recessed deep into the stone of the cavern, so that even if you stood with your face pressed against the bars of the window, visibility was limited, adding to the feeling of isolation.
In between the two sets of cells, there was a huge expanse of space in which there were four large squares of sand, spread out in a row. Each one was about 20ft square by Dean’s reckoning, and they were all about ten feet apart. Next to each sandpit was a tall chair, like the ones tennis umpires used.
In the very center of the cavern there was a line of gladiators, guards behind them, and in front of the gladiators were half a dozen men-including the Lanista-dressed in togas. Dean couldn’t help his eye roll, but he managed to restrain his urge to quip about steam rooms and toga parties. Given the Lanista’s earlier suggestion that Dean could earn extra kill points by volunteering to be a fuck toy, a joke that could be misconstrued as him volunteering to get naked and sweaty with the guys in charge was probably something he should take a pass on.
Besides, these guys didn’t seem to like any attitude from him and Dean had just spotted a St Andrew’s cross behind the dudes in the togas. He’d spent enough time tied to one of those in Hell to be completely uninterested in a reprise; especially given that his flayed skin wouldn’t be restored with a hand wave here.
As Dean got closer he could see that there were also several trunks filled with wooden swords, lassos, whips, nets, clubs, shields and wooden spears behind the toga guys.
And then he spotted Walt.
“Hiya Walt,” he called out, and was promptly rewarded with another short, sharp jolt of pain.
“No talking,” the guard at his back hissed.
Walt though, turned to look and when he spotted Dean his face went slack and grey and his eyes widened.
“I’m back, you son-of-a bitch. And I’m pissed.”
“I said, no talking!”
The pain lasted longer this time; Dean could feel his bones throbbing and aching, but he clenched his jaw and breathed through it and didn’t break stride.
Everyone’s attention was on him now and when Dean’s guards delivered him to the line of gladiators, the Lanista came and stood before him.
“Getting into trouble already, Decimus.”
Dean summoned his trademark smirk. “What can I say, I have a problem with authority figures and I don’t respond well to threats.”
The Lanista inclined his head, a smirk of his own playing on his lips. “Hmm,” he said and moved his hand slowly to his wrist controller. Dean lifted his chin.
“Let me tell you what I have a problem with,” the Lanista said. “I have a problem with uppity slaves.” He pressed a button on his wrist controller and this time it was the full whack, sending Dean to his knees in a flood of agony.
By the time it was over, he was in the fetal position, his face-and the sand beneath him-wet with tears.
“Get up,” the Lanista said dispassionately.
Dean took a surreptitious deep breath and then climbed unsteadily to his feet. There was no lingering pain, but his hands were trembling.
“Step out of line again today and I’ll have you whipped. Do you understand?”
Dean nodded curtly, his eyes flicking briefly to the St Andrew’s Cross.
“The correct response is, ‘Yessir’.”
Dean picked a spot over the Lanista’s shoulder. “Yessir,” he said flatly.
“All right,” the Lanista clapped his hands. “On with the show. Doctores, teams of two, half an hour on each weapon, a short break, and then they’ll switch partners, reprise,” he picked up a clipboard and scanned it. “I want Una with Septimus, Quartus with Octavus, Quintus with Sexta and Nonus with Decimus. Master Sword, Una and Septimus are with you--” the Lanista matched each set of gladiators with a master.
Dean was with Master Hand, which made him roll his eyes again. Seriously? Could these guys be lamer dicks? The trainer called for Decimus and Nonus and began walking away. Dean followed and so did Walt.
Dean sniggered. “Nonus? Really?” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
Walt glowered, but didn’t respond.
Dean and Walt spent the next half hour in hand-to-hand combat.
Walt was Dean’s height, but a little heavier than he’d been when he’d shot Dean dead. He had a beard now too and even though he could move quite stealthily, he wasn’t fast on his feet.
Despite all the cheeseburgers that Dean ate, underneath his many layers he was actually still quite slender. Lithe and light on his feet, he was able to dance out of Walt’s reach easily during their first round, taunting him into chasing after Dean and taking useless outraged swings at him. Eventually, Walt got weary enough that Dean was able to skip past his defences and lay him out flat.
Master Hand watched from the sidelines with a bored expression.
He waited until Walt staggered back to his feet and then shook his head and sighed. “Pathetic. You let him goad you,” he turned to Dean. “And you. I want a real fight this time. This is training. I want to see all your moves.”
Over the half hour, Walt got a few punches in, but he didn’t take Dean down once.
“Nice moves, Nona,” Dean clapped Walt on the shoulder as they moved across to Sword training. “Hey? Isn’t that Italian for Grandma? Sounds about right, the speed you move.”
“Fuck you, Winchester,” Walt said evenly. “Everyone knows they should’ve put you with the monsters, not with us, you fucking undead piece of shit.”
Dean stopped walking and smiled. It was his patented Dean Winchester is about to rip your throat out smile and it was just as effective on Walt as it was on demons and monsters.
“And how did I get dead, Walt? Oh that’s right. You murdered me in cold blood. Me and Sam. It must really piss you off to know that God himself brought us back. He had plans for us. We mattered. But you? You’re nothing. Just a pathetic, dickless coward. You shot us, and God snapped his fingers and fixed your stupid mistake.”
Walt turned an interested shade of puce, but before Dean could twist the knife a little more, Master Sword let loose with a piercing whistle, his face dark with disapproval. Dean and Walt hurried to his patch of sand and Master Sword got right up in Dean’s face, so close that Dean could smell the smoked salmon and egg roll he’d had for lunch.
“One complaint, Slave, just one and the Lanista will have the skin flayed from your back. Am I going to have to make that complaint?”
“No Sir,” Dean said.
Master Sword retrieved two wooden swords from a nearby box.
“Really?” Dean grumbled. “I fucking hate wooden swords.”
Master Sword raised an eyebrow. “You’ve trained with wooden swords before?”
Dean nodded. “Yeah. When we were kids our dad used them to train us, wouldn’t let us move on to the real thing until Sammy was fifteen. My brother’s really good with a sword. Even better with throwing knives.”
Master Sword’s eyes were alight with interest. “How old were you when you started training?”
Dean chewed on his bottom lip as he tried to remember. “Six, I think. Some of the earlier stuff might’ve been training too, but I just thought it was playing, you know?”
Master Sword looked at Dean with approval. “Your father was a smart man.”
Dean looked at the sword master closely. There was something in his tone, something that made Dean suspect he might actually have known John Winchester.
“Yessir, he was,” Dean said. Maybe if he sucked up to the trainers and impressed them with his awesome skills they might let slip with some important information. Something he could use to escape. It was worth a try.
“What do you consider your best weapon?” Master Sword asked.
“I’m good with guns,” Dean said and the Master Sword’s lips turned down. “Seriously. For training, Dad used to make us shoot our pistols at targets fifty-five yards away. The guy who won Gold in the 50 Meter Pistol event at the Atlanta Olympics? When I compared his winning score to the scores I was getting in training, I was better. I’m good with a long gun too. Dad used to say the only time I could stay still for more than five minutes was when I had something in the crosshairs.”
Master Sword nodded. “A natural predator. We don’t use guns here, of course, but let’s see how you handle the sword,” he handed Dean a wooden gladius and then gave one to Walt who was glowering sullenly beside him. “An on-target touch stops the action, so that I can assign points. En garde.”
Fifteen minutes later Dean had ‘killed’ Walt nine times and Walt had scored one point, for a ‘scratch’ to Dean’s forearm.
Dean spent the rest of the half hour session duelling with Master Sword. He ‘killed’ Dean more often than Dean ‘killed’ him, but the fact that he was more than holding his own against the sword master soon drew a crowd of onlookers. Their last bout, which ended with Dean on the floor with the tip of the wooden sword at his throat, even drew a round of applause.
“He was an excellent choice for recruitment,” Dean heard Master Sword say to the Lanista, as he and Walt made their way to the next sandpit to train with nets and lassos. “Of course, with his bloodline I suppose there was never any doubt. Such a shame we couldn’t recruit his brother too.”
Dean’s ears pricked up at that. Why hadn’t they tried to grab Sam too? They obviously knew who the Winchesters were; they had to know that Sam would come for him. Why not alleviate that risk by taking him too?
“Focus!” Master Whip snapped and the only part of the Lanista’s answer that Dean managed to hear was ‘damaged’.
--
Missouri’s hair was a little greyer than it had been the last time Sam saw her, and he thought she might be a little heavier too…until her hands went to her hips and her eyes widened and then he concentrated on thinking that she looked good; healthy (which she did).
Missouri snorted. “A lot healthier than the last psychic you consulted. Poor Pamela, got her eyes burned out and then got stabbed,” she shook her head and then turned away.
“Come on, boy,” she called over her shoulder as she headed into the house. “What are you waitin’ for? An engraved invitation?”
Sam followed after her into the living room, which was much the same as Sam remembered it; an old sofa with a brown, cream and orange striped woollen throw rug tossed over the back, round lacquered lamp tables, a big-leaved pot plant in the corner, a glass topped coffee table littered with magazines and white lacy doilies everywhere. Missouri was sitting on her sofa and she patted the seat beside her. She gathered one of Sam’s hands in both of hers when he sat down beside her and held his gaze.
“Oh, Sam,” she said.
Sam looked down at their hands.
“No,” Missouri said firmly, “don’t you go feelin’ like that. You were manipulated by powerful, ancient beings who’d been plotting their endgame for generations. And you and Dean still managed to get the better of them in the end.”
Sam swallowed. “A lot of good people died because of us.”
“No, sweetheart. They died because of the angels and the demons. And Dean’s right, you know?” She looked up at him sharply. “You gotta stop scratching at that wall. I know you want to fix anything bad you did while you didn’t have your soul, but if that wall comes down, it will kill you. I can sense your soul, Sam and it’s ragged. So torn and frayed. But the blackness I sense behind the wall? Don’t mess with it, Sam.”
Sam shook his head, he wasn’t going to argue with her, but he didn’t want to talk about it. “So, uh, I’ve come to see you because--”
“Because Dean’s missing,” Missouri concluded, her hand fluttered to her lips. “Oh no,” she looked down at the black Led Zeppelin tee-shirt that Sam was clutching in his other hand. “That his? Hand it over.”
Missouri held Dean’s tee shirt in both hands and pressed it up against her chest. She closed her eyes and Sam could see the rapid movement of her eyes behind her eyelids.
“He went to help a friend who was hurt. He was at the door. Room 12. And then,” Missouri’s eyes began to flicker even more rapidly behind her closed lids. “He heard a noise. And he turned,” Missouri gasped. “Tasers. Two men with tasers,” she opened her eyes. “They knocked him out cold and after that, I just can’t get anything.”
Missouri looked up at Sam. “I’m sorry, Sam. He was alive when they took him. But where that is,” she shook her head. “He’s either in another dimension or wherever they’re keeping him is well-warded.”
Sam asked her if she’d seen a white van and Missouri nodded. She closed her eyes again and held up a finger. When she looked back at Sam she shook her head. “Dean only saw it side on. I didn’t recognize the make and I couldn’t see the plates.”
Missouri fixed them sandwiches and they talked well into the afternoon, brainstorming who was most likely to be kidnapping hunters. Sam was acutely aware that they were just guessing; they didn’t have enough information to go on and his frustration was building.
While Missouri made coffee, Sam rang Bobby and confirmed that there was definitely a white van involved in the kidnappings. He also suggested that Bobby should start putting the word out, warning hunters that they were being targeted for kidnap and advising them to call and talk in person to any hunter who texted asking for help or a meet up.
Bobby agreed that he would do that.
Sam drank his coffee quickly and then said good bye to Missouri, turning down her invitation to stay in her spare room. Sam wasn’t good company right now; he needed to do something. Maybe he should summon a demon? Torture it for information? Or maybe he should take a leaf out of his brother’s book and burn out his frustration in a bar fight.
Sam checked into a motel and spent a few hours poring over police databases looking, again, for information about white vans and kidnappings. He found one case in LA involving a child, but he doubted it was related to his case.
Sam slammed his laptop shut and picked up his keys and his phone, planning to head out to the nearest bar and dare some asshole to look at him wrong.
He didn’t get that far.
--
Fucking Keystone. In a can. It was like drinking cold piss. Dean imagined.
Still, alcohol of questionable quality was infinitely better than no alcohol, so Dean drank it. Maybe not with relish, but it did a passable job of washing down the hot beef stew and biscuits.
His meal finished, Dean stretched out on the cot. He’d changed back into his dress and he had nothing to do now except let the food settle in his belly and wait for someone to come and escort him to the Arena.
A running sheet of sorts had been delivered with his meal. Tonight Dean would be going up against a vampire and (assuming the vamp didn’t kill him) he would be taking part in the grand finale, which involved all of the hunters taking on a small horde of zombies. Dean grinned. Killing zombies was fun.
Dean folded his arms behind his head and remembered the last time he’d been locked in a proper prison cell. He’d spent plenty of nights in holding cells throughout his life, most recently last November in Indiana when he’d thought the DA was a fairy and attacked him. Dean grimaced. Not one of his finer moments.
Police station holding cells were a very different ball game to a real prison like Green River County Detention Center, though. It was almost five years since he and Sam had gone in there to hunt a ghost that was killing prisoners. Dean had spent the first night slouched on his cot, worrying about Sam. The guy in Dean’s room had been quiet and Dean was confident he could take him if he had to. The guy in Sam’s cell had been freaking huge; way bigger than Sam. And if Sam’d had one mark on him the next morning, Dean would’ve gone after the guy, screw the hunt. But Sam had been okay.
Truthfully, the experience of being in prison hadn’t fazed Dean as much as he’d expected it to. The food was all right. He won a lot of cigarettes playing poker. And he only had to get into a couple of fights. Sam had thought it was weird how well Dean had fitted into the prison environment, but Dean had shrugged it off.
If Sam were here now, he’d probably think it was weird that Dean wasn’t more upset about this kidnapping than he was. He wasn’t happy about it, sure. But he meant what he’d said to Grady earlier. He was getting three hots and a cot and all he was going to have to do was kill some monsters, which was his usual job anyway.
And he’d enjoyed the training they’d done today; it had reminded him of simpler times, the days when his dad was in charge and saving the whole freaking world again and again wasn’t sitting squarely on his shoulders.
Dean was still going to escape as soon as he could, but in meantime, he couldn’t really say that he was unhappy. If sucking up to the trainers and being apt pupil boy made them discount him as a threat, then surely that would make escape easier than if they were suspicious of him and being super vigilant around him.
Dean closed his eyes and relaxed completely, letting himself get into the zone. He wished he had his favorite machete with him. He liked its weight and its balance and he really liked beheading vampires with it.
When the guard came for him, Dean was already dressed and waiting several steps back from the cell door with a wolfish grin and a glint in his eye.
“Take me to kill monsters,” Dean said to the guard.
--
When Sam opened the motel room door he found a man and a woman standing on the doorstep. The woman looked like Oprah Winfrey, circa Sam’s grade school days, complete with big hair and a ruffled blue blouse underneath a loud purple cardigan. The man looked like he’d stepped out of a Michael Jackson music video.
Sam had a bad feeling about them.
“Can I help you?” he asked
The woman smiled; all teeth.
All two sets of teeth.
“Alpha wants to see you,” she said.
There was a stretch limousine with darkly tinted windows idling out in the parking lot.
Sam swallowed. “And if I say no?”
The male vamp’s lips twisted, like he’d been sucking lemons. “Alpha guarantees you safe passage. He just wants to talk.”
Sam had met Lenore and her crew; he knew that evil was largely a choice with vampires, and with a lot of other monsters. If they weren’t actively killing humans, Sam favored leaving them to get on with the accident of their birth or turning, unmolested. It was something he and Dean didn’t quite see eye to eye on, but Sam believed the Alpha vamp when he gave his word that Sam would be safe.
“Okay,” he said, with a decisive nod. “Lead the way.”
Not that he couldn’t find the limo without their guidance; it was right opposite him. He just didn’t want them at his back.
The Alpha was in the back of the limo and Sam slid in beside him when Oprah opened the door.
“My children are being taken again,” the Alpha said without preamble.
Sam nodded. “Hunters too. Do you have any leads?”
The Alpha turned his gaze on Sam and suddenly Sam could hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears. He felt dizzy and his face was hot and tingly.
“What…?” he managed to get out, one hand outstretched toward the Alpha.
The sensation stopped, like a tap had been turned off.
“My children show me what they see,” the Alpha said. “Unfortunately, I can’t share that with you. You are too…human.”
Sam wasn’t quite sure what to say to that so he just nodded and then asked the Alpha what his children had seen.
“They see locked cells, deep underground. They see guards. They see hunters in an arena. They see an audience,” the Alpha paused and steepled his hands in front of his face. Sam watched, entranced as the Alpha’s fingernails began to grow into long, lethal-looking talons. “They see death. It seems they have been captured in order to fight against your hunters, for the entertainment of paying guests.”
“Do they recognize any of the people holding them captive?”
There was a very long pause and then the Alpha said in a carefully modulated tone, “I recognized several of the guards that my children saw. They were also guards at the facility where Samuel Campbell kept me imprisoned at the behest of Crowley.”
For one very brief moment Sam wondered if the Alpha intended to kill him and then he dismissed the idea. In his experience supernatural creatures kept their word far more consistently than humans did.
Still, he had to swallow a couple of times before he was able to ask the Alpha if he thought Samuel Campbell was behind the kidnappings.
“Samuel,” the Alpha said, “or someone from his team. The Campbell Compound is in Lansing, Michigan, is it not? And I believe it has a substantial number of underground bunkers. Perhaps you should start searching there?”
He then fixed Sam with a deeply unsettling smile and said that if Sam found and released the hunters, but killed the captive vampires, they were going to have a problem. Sam believed him. He wasn’t sure how releasing the vamps would go down with the other hunters, but he gave the Alpha his word that he would.
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