Supernatural - Carved in Flesh E-Book

Tim Waggoner

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 398

Beschreibung

After Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious supernatural force as young children, their father taught them how to hunt and destroy the paranormal evil that exists in the dark corners of America. After their father's demonic death, they discovered that they are descended from a long line of hunters and chose to continue their mission.

Leseprobe

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SUPERNATURAL

CARVED IN FLESH

TIM WAGGONER

SUPERNATURAL created by Eric Kripke

TITAN BOOKS

Supernatural: Carved in Flesh

Print edition ISBN: 9781781161135

E-book edition ISBN: 9781781161166

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St, London SE1 0UP

First edition: April 2013

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

SUPERNATURAL and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Cover imagery: Cover photograph © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Trees 1 © Dreamstime. Trees 2 © Dreamstime. Biohazard ©

Shutterstock.

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With the exception of the characters from The CW’s Supernatural series, this publication, including any of its contents or references, has not been prepared, approved, endorsed or licensed by any third party, corporation or product referenced herein.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

This novel takes place during season seven, between “Time After Time” and “The Slice Girls.”

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

About the author

ONE

“I’m surprised they haven’t left for the winter yet.”

Joyce Nagrosky glanced sideways at her companion. He stood at the edge of the pond, tearing small pieces from a slice of wheat bread and tossing them into the water. A half dozen ducks had gathered close to shore, and whenever a morsel landed close to them, they extended their necks, heads darting fast as striking snakes, and snatched up the snack in their rounded beaks. When the bread was gone, they stared at the humans, eager and alert for the next offering.

“Not all ducks fly south for the winter,” Joyce said. “As long as it doesn’t get cold enough to damage their feet, they can make it to spring just fine.”

Ted turned toward her, an amused smile on his face. “I thought you retired from teaching. Besides, you taught English, not biology.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “Once a know-it-all, always a know-it-all, I suppose.”

Even in his sixties, Ted Boykin was a good-looking man, with a full head of thick white hair, a trim goatee to match, and the most striking blue eyes. Back when he’d been principal at the school where Joyce had taught, he’d been clean-shaven, and while she was normally indifferent to facial hair on men, the beard gave him a roguish air that she liked. She’d worked alongside the man for more than twenty years, but while she’d respected him, even in some ways counted him as a friend, she hadn’t been attracted to him. But now here they were. Life sure was funny sometimes. In fact, it could be downright hysterical.

It was dusk in early November, and although it had been on the warm side throughout the day, now that the sun had dipped toward the horizon it was getting cold. Ted seemed comfortable in his brown jacket, but Joyce had donned a blue windbreaker before leaving her apartment, and it didn’t do much to ward off the chill in the air, especially since she wore only a T-shirt beneath. She wished she’d at least thought to grab a hat or scarf before walking out the door.

Why so addle-pated all of a sudden, my dear? she asked herself. Could it be that you were a wee bit nervous to rendezvous with Mr. Boykin down by the duck pond? She wanted to tell herself that it was a ridiculous thought. She was a grown woman, for god’s sake! Overgrown, truth be told, if not vertically then at least horizontally. And the pond was hardly lover’s lane. Even so, she had to admit to a certain uneasiness at being there. She’d been alone since her husband had died a few years back, and while she still missed him, in all that time she hadn’t felt the need to seek out a replacement. But then a week ago she’d bumped into Ted—almost literally. She’d been backing her Volvo out of the parking space in front of her apartment at the same moment Ted had been passing in front of her building. He’d barely managed to stop his Bronco in time to avoid ramming her rear end—And isn’t that a phrase rife with naughty possibilities?—and that’s when they’d discovered that after the deaths of their respective spouses, they’d both sold their homes and moved into Arbor Vale Apartments. In fact, Ted lived in the building next to Joyce’s, and had for almost two years, without either of them knowing the other was there. Small world, and all that.

The next day they’d met for lunch, and the day after that, dinner. They’d seen quite a bit of each other over the past seven days, and in that time, Ted had been a complete gentleman, not trying to kiss her or even hold her hand. She was, quite frankly, getting tired of it. She wished he would go ahead and make a move already. She was far from shy and would have made the first move herself if he hadn’t been so tentative toward her. The last thing she wanted to do was scare him off by being too direct: Don’t you think it’s time the two of us had sex? It’s not like we’re getting any younger. Somehow, she didn’t think that would work.

She brushed her black hair over her ear, even though there was no need. The air was still, and as short as she kept her hair, it rarely got mussed. Since childhood, she’d been something of a tomboy, and now that she no longer had to dress for work, that tendency had reasserted itself. She preferred simple clothes like T-shirts and jeans and wore no makeup. She’d recently taken to collecting jewelry that she picked up at auctions and estate sales, for reasons she couldn’t articulate clearly even to herself, but she rarely wore any of it. She wished she’d put some on today, though. Maybe if she seemed more feminine to Ted, he wouldn’t keep her at arm’s length. Maybe he hasn’t gotten over the loss of his wife yet, she thought. Or maybe he still sees me as one of his teachers instead of a woman. She was surprised by how much this latter possibility depressed her.

The pond lay behind Arbor Vale’s buildings, at the bottom of a gently sloping grassy hill. On the other side were woods of oak, elm, and ash trees, their leaves a splendorous mix of yellows, reds, and browns. Most of them hadn’t fallen yet, but Joyce knew it wouldn’t be much longer before they began drifting to the ground. A week, maybe two. Autumn was her favorite time of the year, partly because it was when school began, but mostly because of the energy that filled the crisp air. It was a delicious paradox that even as the world prepared for the temporary death brought by winter—to be followed by resurrection come spring—it seemed, at least to her, to be the most alive.

To hell with it, she thought. Life is for living. She took a step closer to Ted, reached out, and took his hand.

She felt him tense and feared he would pull away, but then he relaxed and clasped her hand firmly. Joyce didn’t look at him, and he didn’t look at her, but they both smiled and gazed at the water. Ted tossed in the last of the bread, and once it was gone, the ducks milled about, hoping for more, but doomed to disappointment. Joyce admired the way the reflections of the trees on the opposite shore rippled on the water like shadowy ink.

She was wondering what the chances were of Ted kissing her later, and perhaps doing more than just kissing, when she heard a low growling sound. Fear jolted her, and she tightened her grip on Ted’s hand.

The ducks let out a series of alarmed quacks as they reared back, spread their wings, and one by one took to the sky, flapping with frantic urgency as they fled.

The sound came again, a deep rumbling like a truck engine in dire need of repair, only it was louder this time. And closer. The sound came from their right, and when Joyce and Ted turned in that direction, they saw a large dark shape emerge from the woods and come toward them, walking on all fours.

It moved with the slow, menacing deliberation of a predator, and at first Joyce thought it might be a coyote. In recent years, the animals had moved into Ohio, and while they were by no means common, there were more of them around than most people thought. Joyce had never seen one outside of TV and the zoo—not alive, anyway. The animals were masters of concealment that preferred to avoid humans whenever possible, and the only time she’d seen one was when it lay dead on the side of the highway after being struck by a vehicle. She had been surprised by how much larger it looked than she expected. Ohio coyotes had shaggier coats than their desert-dwelling cousins, which likely accounted for the seeming disparity in their sizes. But Joyce quickly discarded the possibility that this creature was a coyote. There was something wrong about it. The gloom of dusk cloaked it, rendering it a mobile shadow that moved with a lurching, uneven gait, as if it were injured. Its growls weren’t sounds of pain, though, but rather of hunger combined with almost human anger. Could it be a wolf? As far as Joyce knew, no wolves lived in Ohio, at least not in the wild. Maybe this one had been someone’s pet that had escaped or been turned loose for some reason. Yet its form lacked the feral grace of a wolf, and seemed more canine than lupine.

Then the smell hit her, a thick miasma of musk and rot that made her gorge rise.

Sweet Jesus, what was that thing?

“It’s okay,” Ted said. His voice was shaky, but he didn’t hesitate as he let go of Joyce’s hand and stepped between her and the approaching whatever-it-was. Normally, she would have hated having a man—any man—treat her as if she were some delicate thing that needed protecting, but something about this... this creature triggered a deep atavistic fear in her, and she was grateful for Ted’s gesture. She thought, too, that perhaps his actions were as much for his benefit as hers. As a former principal, he was used to being in charge and dealing with problems head on. It was his default setting, a comfortable role that he could fall back on in a time of crisis.

Still, as much as she appreciated what he was trying to do, her instincts told her it was a bad idea. Very bad.

She put her hand on his shoulder. “Please, don’t.”

Ted gave no sign that he heard her. Instead, he took a step toward the creature and drew himself up to his full height, arms held away from his sides, hands balled into fists.

He’s trying to make himself look larger, Joyce realized. More threatening. She wondered if he’d done something similar in high school when dealing with potentially violent teenage boys. But hadn’t she read somewhere that directly facing a canine and making eye contact was a form of challenge to them? In that case—

The creature rushed forward, mismatched limbs moving with surprising speed, growl so loud it was nearly a roar. It moved so swiftly that in the dimming light of dusk Joyce could only make out the most basic details of its grotesque form: different-sized legs, a single ragged ear, bare skin alternating with patches of fur, and worst of all, a crooked muzzle filled with sharp teeth, far more than the mouth of a simple dog should have been able to hold.

When it was within a yard of Ted, the beast leaped into the air, discolored tongue lolling from the side of its misshapen mouth. Its front paws hit Ted on the chest, its weight driving him backward, slamming him against the ground. The impact drove the air from his lungs, and she heard a crack that she guessed was the sound of one or more ribs breaking.

Joyce had managed to sidestep in time to avoid being knocked down, and she now stood less than a foot away from Ted as he struggled with the freakish dog, which was roughly the size and bulk of a St. Bernard, although it didn’t resemble the breed otherwise. It snarled and snapped, intent on fastening its teeth around Ted’s throat, and Ted wrapped his hands around its neck in an attempt to hold it at bay. The dog-beast’s rear legs—one larger than the other—scrabbled at the ground as it fought to get close enough to sink its teeth into its prey. Ted grimaced, his arms trembling with the effort of trying to hold off the animal. Considering the massive size of the thing, it would have been too strong for most men to handle, and whatever physical strength Ted had possessed in his youth was long gone. He was relying on adrenaline and sheer force of will right now, but Joyce knew they wouldn’t be enough in the end. She feared he had only moments, if not seconds, before the monster dog overwhelmed him, fastened its jaws around his throat, and crushed his windpipe in a spray of blood.

Part of her—the primitive animal part that was only interested in self-preservation at all costs—wanted nothing more than to turn and run away as fast as her less-than-svelte legs were capable of carrying her. In fact, without fully being aware of it, she had already half-turned and taken a step away from the pond. But she forced herself to turn back. She would never forgive herself if she ran off and left Ted to die. She had to do something to help him, but what? She wasn’t about to try and grapple with the damned beast, and the closest thing to a weapon she had was her sometimes too-sharp tongue, which had filleted many a lazy student over the years. So, without anything else in her arsenal to rely on, she drew in a deep breath and, using what one of her fellow teachers had once referred to as “The Voice of Irresistible Authority,” she shouted a single word.

“Stop!”

The word sounded harsh as a whip crack on the chill autumn air, and it echoed across the pond. The dog-thing stopped snarling and turned to look at her, confusion and perhaps a touch of fear in its eyes. Joyce had the feeling that with that one word she had reached something deep inside the beast, an inner core which recognized that humans occupied a higher rung on the evolutionary ladder, and thus were its masters. The creature lowered its gaze and its tail—a hairless appendage that looked like it should have been attached to a giant rat—drooped between its legs. It let out a soft whine.

Ted, who’d been just as surprised as the dog by Joyce’s command, loosened his grip on the animal’s neck. Instantly, the grotesque canine’s upper lip curled away from its teeth, and the confusion in its eyes was replaced by blazing fury. The creature tore free from Ted’s grasp and lunged forward with a snarl.

Joyce screamed as the monster-dog sank its teeth into Ted’s throat and began shaking him back and forth, as if he were nothing but a toy. Ted’s eyes widened with fear and pain, but although his mouth gaped wide, no sound emerged. An instant later Joyce understood why, as thick blood geysered upward. It ran down the sides of Ted’s mouth and turned his white hair crimson before soaking into the ground beneath.

She opened her mouth to scream again, but the sound died in her throat. Something strange was happening. She thought at first that it was a trick of the waning light, but Ted’s pale pink skin was losing its color, becoming a dull slate gray. More than that, his skin was drawing in on itself, tightening against his bones, muscle and fat shrinking as he transformed into an unwrapped mummy before her eyes. Crazily, Joyce was reminded of one of the last trips she’d taken with her husband before the cancer spread to the point where he was unable to travel. They’d gone camping in Hocking Hills, and instead of sleeping bags, they’d taken a king-sized inflatable mattress with a battery-powered fan that inflated it within moments. The fan had a reverse switch on it that also deflated the mattress, so that when it was finished, it was completely flat, curled slightly at the edges and crisscrossed with wrinkly lines. That’s what Ted looked like now: a deflated gray air mattress with a skeleton inside.

The monster-dog held its grip on Ted’s throat a moment longer, and Joyce watched as the blood smeared on Ted’s face and the creature’s muzzle dried and flaked away. Like the monster had absorbed Ted’s life energy, drawn it into itself, and was determined not to let go of him until it had gotten every last bit. When it was finally finished, it withdrew its teeth from Ted’s desiccated flesh and turned its attention to her.

She heard someone whisper, “Run,” and it took her a moment to realize she was the whisperer. Hearing her own voice broke her paralysis, and she turned and ran.

The hill that led back up to the apartment complex wasn’t steep, but she was hardly in the best of shape. When she’d been younger, her idea of exercise had been a leisurely stroll in the park, and now most of her physical activity involved walking around antiques stores. Adrenaline could only do so much to compensate for a mostly sedentary lifestyle, and her heart pounded an uneven rhythm in her ears, and her lungs burned as if they were aflame. Her legs felt heavy and shaky, and they became more so with each step she took. Finally, something gave way in her right knee, her leg buckled, and she went down. She landed on her side and slid several feet down the hill before coming to a stop. She lay there, pulse thrumming, lungs heaving, knowing there was no way she could hope to escape the monster-dog now—if she’d ever had a chance in the first place. She closed her eyes and waited to feel the creature’s teeth sink into her throat.

But she felt nothing.

She opened her eyes and pushed herself to a sitting position. She turned to look back toward the pond, wondering what had happened. Had something scared the dog-thing off? Or had it simply been too full for another meal? For an instant she allowed herself to hope that she might survive this, but then she saw the creature. It sat next to Ted’s corpse, looking at her, head cocked to the side in a very doglike fashion. She understood at once what had happened, and the realization filled her with despair. The monster-dog hadn’t chased her because it hadn’t needed to. She was too slow, old, and overweight to get away. The creature had only needed to wait for her to bring herself down, and she had done so.

As she watched, the great misshapen beast came lurching toward her on its mismatched limbs, crooked mouth open, discolored tongue hanging out, eyes burning with horrible, inhuman hunger.

She screamed, but not for long.

TWO

“I hate this damn car,” Dean said.

“You hate every car that’s not the Impala,” Sam countered.

“Yeah, well, this one’s especially sucktastic. And it smells like feet.”

They’d picked up the brown “crapmobile”—just one of Dean’s nicknames for it—behind a bar in Canton, Ohio. Dean would have preferred “borrowing” something with a bit more class, or at least something that didn’t drive like a turd with tires, but ever since they’d gone off the grid in order to avoid registering on the Leviathan’s radar, they’d been forced to keep a low profile, which meant no Impala. It also meant starting a sideline as reluctant car thieves—all for the greater good, of course. If the brothers failed to kill Dick Roman and ended up as human happy meals for him and his fellow monsters, the rest of the planet would be next on the menu. They were careful to take cars that no one would miss much, junkers that would be easy for their owners to replace and which the cops wouldn’t work too hard to find. Dean had his hands full keeping the rust heaps they stole running, but there was only so much he could do. He constantly kept his fingers crossed that they wouldn’t find themselves in a high-speed pursuit. As rough as the crapmobile was running, if he tromped on the gas, the rods would probably shoot out of the engine like friggin’ missiles.

“Here we are,” Sam said, pointing to a wooden sign on the side of the road. “Brennan, Ohio, which, according to the sign, is home to the Battling Brennan Brahman.”

Dean frowned as they drove across the town line. “Brahman? Aren’t they a kind of water buffalo or something?”

“Sort of. They’re a type of cattle named after the sacred cow of Hinduism.”

“Lousy choice for a school mascot, if you ask me. Alliteration only goes so far, you know?”

After they’d dropped in to the local sheriff’s department as a “courtesy” to let them know that two FBI agents were in town and to glean any additional information they could about the deaths, they drove through Brennan to get a feel for the place. Not that they really needed to. They might have gone from Northeast Ohio to Southwest, but for all the miles they’d driven, they might as well have stayed in the same place. After all the years he’d spent on the road, most Midwestern towns looked alike to Dean, and Brennan was no exception. A downtown consisting of small local businesses housed in old buildings, suburbs dotted with mini malls and chain restaurants, and a decaying industrial section, which in Brennan’s case was a closed bicycle factory on the south edge of town.

“You need a whole factory to make bikes?” Dean said. Sam just shrugged.

They found a cheap no-tell motel not far from the factory called the Wickline Inn, although Dean had no idea who or what a wickline was. They parked in front of the main office, and Sam went inside alone to register them. They always asked for a room as far from the main office as they could get, preferably one with empty rooms on either side. They’d been attacked in hotels more than once over the years, and the last thing they wanted to do was endanger any innocent lives.

Once Sam came out of the office with their room key, they pulled around to the back of the motel, parked, removed their stuff from the car—a couple backpacks with clothes and toiletries, Sam’s computer, and a couple duffle bags containing weapons—and entered the room.

Once they were inside, Dean wrinkled his nose. “Man, this place smells like mothballs and ass.”

“No argument there,” Sam said.

They put their stuff on the beds and gave the room a quick once over, checking the bathroom, looking under the beds, and testing the window locks. Only when they were satisfied the room was clear did they lock the door. Every hunter worth his or her rock salt-filled shotgun knew better than to cut off a possible exit until they were sure they didn’t need it. The brothers didn’t bother unpacking in case they needed to grab their gear and get the hell out of there in a hurry. Not for the first time, Dean thought how much his life resembled that of a criminal on the run. He’d never told Sam, but for a while now, whenever they settled into a hotel room, he thought of his time with Lisa and Ben, and how damned nice it had been to go to sleep and wake up in the same place day after day.

The room had a small desk by the window, and Sam set his laptop on it, raised the lid, and booted up the machine. When the screen came to life, he said, “Once again the Winchesters are open for business.” He sat down in front of the computer and started typing.

Dean sat down on the end of one of the beds, removed Bobby’s flask from the pocket of his brown leather jacket, unscrewed the lid, and took a drink. He didn’t take much, just a sip for maintenance. When he finished he replaced the lid, but instead of putting the flask away, he held it in his hands and looked at it for several moments. He remembered finding the bullet hole in Bobby’s cap, remembered turning around in the van and seeing the corresponding hole in Bobby’s forehead, remembered the blood...

“This is bull crap, Sammy.”

“What is?” Sam didn’t turn away from the computer screen. Once he got absorbed in the virtual world, he was harder to distract than a soul-starved demon intent on making a deal.

“This,” Dean insisted, gesturing to take in the room. “Screwing around in Ohio when we should be nailing Dick Roman’s hide to the wall.”

Sam stopped typing and turned to look at his brother. “I know how you feel. I want to get Dick as much as you do.” He frowned. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”

“Ha ha. That’s friggin’ hilarious. Quit fooling around, Sam. I’m serious.”

“So am I. Well, not about the dick joke. But I want to stop the Leviathan, too. Not only to keep them from turning the human race into quarter pounders, but because I want justice for Bobby. Just like you.”

Bobby Singer had been shot in the head by none other than Dick Roman himself during a scuffle with the Leviathan, and he’d died in a hospital not long after.

The Leviathan were among God’s first creations, predating humans and even angels, but the beasts proved too wild and uncontrollable, concerned only with sating their savage hunger, and God banished them to Purgatory. Good work on that one, God, Dean thought. Their friend and ally Cass—also known as the angel Castiel—had inadvertently released the Leviathan when he absorbed all the souls in Purgatory in order to gain the power to defeat the archangel Raphael. Once free of their ancient prison, the Leviathan began planning to take over the world, intending to keep humanity alive solely as a food source. Among other things, the creatures possessed the ability to analyze a human’s DNA and transform into an exact physical duplicate of their target. So the leader of the Leviathan assumed the guise of billionaire businessman Dick Roman, and used the man’s considerable financial and political assets to build a secret empire around the world.

The brothers knew that the Leviathan’s ultimate plan was the subjugation of humanity, but exactly how they intended to accomplish this—and how the Winchesters could stop them—they didn’t know. That lack of knowledge gnawed at them like rabid rats, especially in Dean’s case. Bobby had been more than an encyclopedic source of information, an endless fount of useful contacts, and a perpetually grouchy pain in the ass. He’d even been more than a close family friend. Bobby had been like an uncle to Dean and Sam. Hell, he’d practically been a second father to them, especially since their own dad had been on the road hunting and killing monsters much of the time while they were growing up. Both brothers missed him like hell.

There wasn’t anything in this life that Dean wanted more than to take down Dick Roman, and every second he and Sam spent doing anything other than bringing the pain to that shark-toothed son of a bitch was a second wasted as far as he was concerned. But they were here, so they might as well get to work.

He remembered something he’d been told recently. Hunting’s the only clarity you’re gonna find in this life. And that makes you luckier than most.

Preach it, Brother Ness, Dean thought. He could use a double-shot of clarity right now. Make that a triple. Besides, their detour to Brennan might not be a complete waste of time. Who knows? There might even be a decent strip club in this town.

“All right.” He sighed and took another hit from Bobby’s flask. “Anything new since we left Canton?”

Sam looked at him a moment longer, and Dean thought his brother was going to say something about his drinking, but instead he turned back to face the laptop. He typed for a minute, stopped, then leaned forward and stared at the screen. Dean had seen him like this a thousand times before, and he knew what it meant.

“You got something.”

“Yeah. Looks like there’s been two more deaths, an older man and woman this time. According to the local paper—The Brennan Broadsider—they were found near a pond in back of the apartment complex where they lived. It happened two nights ago.”

Dean stood, slipped the flask back into his jacket pocket, and went to look at the screen over Sam’s shoulder.

“Does it say if they were getting their freak on when they died?”

Sam gave him a look.

“Hey, if you gotta go, you might as well go out smiling.”

Sam turned back to the screen. “They were mummified like the others. Literally nothing left but skin and bones.”

“We ganked Chronos, so we know he didn’t do it, but it sure sounds like his style.”

“Yeah, but the pattern’s different. Chronos killed in groups of three over a period of years. So far four people have died in Brennan, all in the last week.”

“And I assume they all ended up looking like they were on the diet plan from Hell.”

“Yep.” Sam continued reading. “The town officials are pretty spooked. They’re worried the deaths are the result of some kind of toxic chemical or exotic disease. They’ve even sent tissue samples from victims to the CDC.”

“Unless those guys have doctors who specialize in Weird with a capital W, I don’t think they’re going to find anything useful.”

Sam closed his laptop. “Looks like it’s up to us then.”

Dean gave his brother a wry smile. “Isn’t it always?”

* * *

“You sure we don’t need protective suits? You know, like the kind they wear in those movies about plagues and stuff?”

Sam regarded the kid from the rental office. He was in his early twenties, probably fresh out of college and working his first real job. He was medium height, thin, with neatly trimmed black hair and an angular goatee that made him look kind of douchey. He wore a semi-expensive tie and highly polished shoes—both looked brand new—along with a dark blue windbreaker. Back at Arbor Vale’s main office, he’d introduced himself as David Something—Stephenson maybe. Although Sam wasn’t sure. His brain wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders these days, and every once in a while it slipped a gear. Beats total insanity, he thought.

After he and Dean had defeated Lucifer and prevented Armageddon, Sam’s body and soul had been separated. His body remained on Earth, while his soul was trapped in the pit with Lucifer and the archangel Michael. Sam’s body retained his memories, but without a soul he was the equivalent of a sociopath, devoid of all human feeling. In many ways, being soulless had made him a more efficient hunter. He was more decisive, quicker to act, and completely ruthless. Unfortunately, he also didn’t care if he caused any collateral damage during his hunts. If innocent people died while he was killing some monster, so what? It was simply the cost of doing business.

Meanwhile in Hell, Lucifer and Michael played with his soul like two bored cats sharing a single ball of string, and those cats had some damn wicked claws. They shredded his soul as if it were tissue paper, and when it was finally rejoined to Sam’s body—thanks to Death himself, no less—the damage done threatened to drive him insane. Death established a psychic wall to protect Sam from the madness that dwelt within him, but that wall had fallen, and it was now up to Sam to hold the insanity at bay on his own. Most days he did a good job hiding the crazy, but it took a lot out of him, and he wasn’t always certain he could trust his senses and memory.

So maybe the kid’s name was Stephenson, maybe not. At least he was sure the kid was real. Well... reasonably sure.

“Not in this situation,” Sam told Maybe-Stephenson. “We’re confident that the danger is minimal.”

“But there is danger,” the kid insisted. “Right?”

Sam and Dean were wearing their best “We’re government employees” monkey suits, and had introduced themselves as agents Smith and Jones. They’d flashed their faux FBI credentials at the kid and claimed they were there to assist the CDC in its investigation. He bought it, and now he was leading them, reluctantly, to the duck pond at the rear of the apartment complex.

Dean glanced sideways at him. “If there was any chance of contamination, don’t you think my partner and I would be wearing...” He trailed off and looked to Sam for help.

“Biohazard gear,” Sam supplied.

“Right,” Dean said. “That stuff.”

“Maybe,” the kid said, “but don’t you guys get special shots or something to inoculate you against deadly diseases, radiation, and other nasty crap? You know, A-level medicine, the kind of drugs the government pretends don’t exist.”

“Let me guess,” Dean said. “You spend a lot of time surfing conspiracy websites, don’t you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“Nothing. Just a hunch.” He gave Sam a look that said, We got us a real genius here, and Sam suppressed a smile.

Arbor Vale was an older complex, built sometime in the seventies, Sam guessed, but it was clean and the grounds were well maintained. It didn’t look like a place where supernatural evil lurked, but if his life as a hunter had taught him anything, it was that appearances meant jack. While monsters, demons, ghosts, and other nasties tended to be drawn to darkness and decay, they were just as likely to be found sniffing for prey in a well-to-do suburb as an abandoned graveyard. Evil—real Evil, the kind with a capital E—could be anywhere at any time.

The pond lay at the bottom of a gently sloping hill, and the Brennan PD had erected a crime-scene tape barrier at the top of the hill to warn anyone from getting too close. The tape was wound between a series of metal stakes driven through orange traffic cones, but despite the officers’ best efforts, the tape drooped low enough for them to step over.

“Seriously?” Dean said as he eyed the tape barrier. “Do the Deputy Dawgs in this town really think that’s going to keep anyone out?”

“I guess they don’t get many major crime scenes here,” Sam said.

The Winchesters stepped over without hesitation, but the kid hung back.

“Do you really need me to go down there with you?” he asked.

Dean gestured toward the pond. “You see those ducks swimming down there? Do you think they’d stick around if there was any toxic goo in the area?”

“Ducks could have a natural immunity to whatever it was that killed those two old people.” The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Or maybe whatever got them was genetically engineered to only be fatal to humans.”

“Man, you really need to lay off the Internet,” Dean said.

“Besides, I don’t want to go anywhere near those woods.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance.

“Why not?” Sam asked.

“Feral dogs,” the kid explained. “Rumor is the woods around town are full of them. I haven’t seen any myself, but lots of people have. There’s one that’s supposed to be an especially scary bastard. Big and black.”

“A black dog.” Dean shot his brother another look. “You don’t say.”

“You can go back to the rental office,” Sam said. “If we need you for anything else, we’ll find you there.”

The kid reached into his shirt pocket, removed a business card, and handed it to Sam, who was gratified to see the last name on it was Stephens. Close enough.

“Tell you what, you need me, call me. Nothing personal, but I don’t want to catch anything from you guys. I don’t want to end up a human-sized prune, you know?”

Without waiting for a reply, Stephens turned and started back toward the rental office, almost but not quite running.

Sam stuck the card in his inner jacket pocket, and together he and Dean started down the hill toward the pond.

“Can you say paranoid?” Dean said.

“You can’t blame him. Something bad did happen here.”

“You think that bad had anything to do with the black dog Braveheart mentioned?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be.”

Sightings of spectral black dogs went back centuries—it was the legend Arthur Conan Doyle based The Hound of the Baskervilles on—but there was no definite answer to what the creatures were. Most hunters tended to believe one of two possibilities: either they were creatures of demonic origin or they were forms taken by shapeshifters. Sam didn’t see any reason why both explanations couldn’t be true. After all, the ecosystem of the supernatural world was just as varied in its own way as that of the natural one.

“Could be something living in the pond,” Sam continued.

“Maybe,” Dean allowed. “But if there is, the ducks don’t seem to be bothered by it.”

As they drew near the pond, they saw two smaller taped-off areas, one close to the water, one a bit farther uphill, both arranged in roughly rectangular patterns.

“Looks like the local PD believes in being thorough,” Dean said. “I’m surprised they didn’t put up a great big I’d Turn Back if I Were You! sign.”

“A musical reference?” Sam asked. “I would’ve expected something from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or maybe Porky’s II.”

“Just trying to broaden the repertoire.”

The brothers swept their gazes back and forth as they bantered, senses alive and alert. A big part of being a hunter was paying attention to your environment. Sights, sounds, and smells could all provide clues to the presence of a supernatural manifestation, but the most important sense of all was one that didn’t have a name. It wasn’t psychic, exactly. More like heightened instinct. Hunt long enough, survive long enough, and you developed the ability to know when something wasn’t right. It was a subconscious process, not a cognitive one, but both Sam and Dean had learned long ago to trust it, and right now that sense was telling Sam that whatever had happened here to cause the deaths of two people, it hadn’t been natural.

They reached the tape rectangle on the hillside first. Sam removed his EMF detector from his outer jacket pocket, turned it on, and held it close to the ground. The electromagnetic readings in the area were normal, and he switched the machine off and placed it back in his pocket.

“So we know that whatever did this wasn’t a ghost,” Dean said.

“It’s been two days since the deaths,” Sam pointed out. “Any electromagnetic energy left behind might’ve faded in that time.”

“I suppose.”

Both brothers squatted to get a closer look at the ground. They didn’t break the tape, though. They preferred not to disturb crime scenes any more than necessary, just in case it turned out that an ordinary human scumbag was responsible instead of a thing that went bump in the night.

“According to the Broadsider, this is where the woman’s body was found.” Sam pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and opened it to the most recent entry. “Her name was Joyce Nagrosky, and she was a retired high school English teacher. The other victim was Ted Boykin. He was retired, too. Used to be the principal at the school where Joyce taught.”

“Think they came down here for a little extracurricular workout?” Dean asked. “Just ’cause they were enjoying their golden years doesn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy each other, too. I mean, the guy’s last name was Boykin. Boink-ing. Get it?”

Sam just looked at him.

“I thought it was funny,” Dean muttered.

Despite his brother’s lousy joke, Sam knew there was a serious question behind it. Supernatural creatures preyed on humans for a variety of reasons, but the most common one was to feed. Some, like the Leviathan, fed on humans literally. Vampires drank human blood. Some ate only certain parts of the body, like kitsune, which fed on the pituitary gland.

Amy’s face flashed through his mind, and for a moment he thought he heard her voice whispering in his ear. All the coolest people are freaks... He shoved the memory of her aside, along with the pang of guilt that came with it. He had work to do.

Some monsters drained life energy. Some, such as succubi and incubi, fed on sexual energy. If Joyce and Ted had been doing the wild thing by the pond, they might have attracted the attention of something even wilder.

“I don’t think so,” Sam said after a moment’s consideration. “They may have been a couple—the paper didn’t say anything about that—but this area’s a little too close to the apartment complex for them to have any privacy.”

“Maybe they were into the whole thrill-seeking thing,” Dean countered, but without much conviction. “I don’t smell anything weird. No scent of sulfur, rotting fish, or decayed flowers.” He sniffed. “No demon dog stink, either.”

“The area’s not cold,” Sam said. “Well, not any colder than normal for this time of year.”

“The ground’s pretty well torn up,” Dean said. “The locals could’ve done it. Like you said earlier, they’re probably not used to handling a real crime scene.”

“Could be,” Sam allowed. “But a dog could’ve done it, too.”

“Size of these marks, it would’ve been a big one.”

“Yep. No blood, though. An animal that big, if it attacked someone, it would’ve made a mess.”

Dean pressed his index finger to the ground and pushed the tip into the dirt. “Hasn’t rained recently. So if there had been any blood, it wouldn’t have been washed away.”

The brothers stood, and Dean wiped his fingertip off on his pants leg.

“Let’s go check out where they found the principal,” Sam said.

The brothers walked down to the edge of the pond and examined the second cordoned-off area. There was less grass there, and the ground was softer. There were obvious prints, mostly from the police and paramedics, probably, but there were also a number of what appeared to be claw marks in the ground, along with a single clear paw print. A damn big one.

The brothers stood thinking for a moment, the ducks on the pond keeping their distance and eyeing them warily.

After a bit, Dean said, “Here’s how I think it played out. Ted and Joyce walk down to the pond. Maybe they’re taking a stroll, feeding the ducks, thinking about getting busy later, whatever. Then our killer dog approaches from over there.” He pointed to the woods. “It attacks them and Ted, being the stand-up guy he is, tries to slow it down long enough so Joyce can get away. She runs, but Cujo makes quick work of old Ted, chases after her, and that’s all she wrote.”

Sam nodded. “That’s how I see it, too. But how exactly did it kill them? The paper didn’t say anything about their bodies being ravaged by an animal.”

“Yeah, I know. They were mummified. Hey, you don’t suppose they were just really, really old?”

“I think we need to take a look at those bodies.”

* * *

As Sam and Dean headed back up the hill, neither of them noticed a shadowy figure step out from between the trees at the edge of the pond and watch them depart.

THREE

A couple hours later, Sam and Dean returned to the pond. They’d ditched their monkey suits for their normal street clothes, something for which Dean was profoundly grateful. He wore his leather jacket, Sam wore his blue coat, and both of them had hoodies and flannel shirts underneath. Even when it was cold outside, the brothers rarely wore anything heavier. Thick clothes could slow you down, and a slow hunter was all too often a dead hunter. Layers were the way to go. You could strip them off as needed, and ditching your outer jacket was a good way to quickly change your appearance in case someone—like the cops—was looking for you.

Dean never felt comfortable in a suit, with the possible exception of his 1940s threads, although he had to admit they had their uses. Not only did they make it easier to get cops to talk to you, they worked magic on hospital employees. They had no problem getting the morgue attendant to grant them access to the bodies of Joyce Nagrosky and Ted Boykin. Better yet, since the county’s medical examiner suspected some sort of contagion was at work in their deaths, he hadn’t conducted full autopsies. He was waiting for the CDC to report on the tissue samples he’d sent, which meant that Sam and Dean had a pair of pristine bodies to check out. Sometimes the key detail in a supernatural death was subtle, and a doctor might destroy an important piece of evidence without meaning to. But they hadn’t had to worry about that this time.

Both bodies had been the same. They reminded Dean of the empty husks that cicadas left behind when they changed into their adult forms. Damn creepy things, those bugs!