Archive of Our Own

The Best Things in Life are Free

Hospitals had always unsettled Alice Keene, ever since she was a little girl. It was something about the smell of antiseptic and linoleum; the bland, inoffensive colours of the walls. Lawrence & Memorial Hospital, New London was no different. She would rather be anywhere but here.

A doctor appeared, a tall lady with red hair, and Alice rose from her uncomfortable seat in the waiting room, stomach twisting once again.

“How is he?” she asked, tugging at the loose button on her favourite green cardigan. She really needed to find the time to sew it back on…

When the doctor – Dr Christina Ross according to her nametag – gestured for her to sit again, Alice’s heart sank.

“The quite simple fact, Miss Keene, is that we don’t know what’s wrong with your father.”

Although delivered in a kind tone the words still struck her like punches.

“But you’re a doctor,” she said, feeling stupid even as she said it. “You must know what’s wrong with him.” “We can find no explanation for why his body is doing what it is.” Dr Ross shook her head, eyes pinched in distress.

“There is some explainable damage from his sudden, extreme, alcohol intake, but not enough to countenance this kind of organ failure. His body is literally shutting down bit by bit, for no apparent reason at all. Nothing we’re giving him is slowing the process.”

“So what can you do?” Alice felt the last thread holding the button in place snap. How poetic, considering her father was her last tie to New London, and a frail one at that.

Dr Ross shrugged, helpless. “Until we know what‘s wrong there’s nothing we can do. We can make him comfortable, but apart from that…” She rested her hand atop Alice’s chilled one. “Would you like to see him?”

Every part of her screamed that no, she didn’t want to see her father, but she nodded and followed the statuesque woman to her father’s room.

He looked so small, so fragile, lying grey-skinned in the hospital bed. So different from the ruddy-cheeked, loud man she had known. A pillar of the community, a key member of the fire brigade for forty years, and here he was, still and shrunken in one of those papery hospital gowns. She wrapped her arms about herself, marking how strange it felt to be the one standing above now. For so many years it had been him looming over her.

“I know it may be a personal question,” Dr Ross said, breaking the painful silence, “but is your mother still around?”

Alice answered without turning. “She died when I was three. Car accident.”

“I’m sorry.”

The doctor may have felt sorry, but Alice was past caring. Mentioning her mother brought back every painful memory of what living with her father without her had been like.

Cold.

Emotionless.

Trying to live up to impossible standards every day of her life.

Well, now she was done.

She turned to go without another look but Dr Ross stopped her.

“I have his personal effects here.” She gestured to a plastic bag laid on his bedside table. “I thought I’d better leave it until you came. Just in case you needed something.” A message over the PA informed that Dr Ross was needed on the second floor and so she excused herself, leaving Alice alone with her father.

Wandering over to the bed she picked up the bag, frowning. There was the leather bracelet he never took off, along with his wedding ring, and the silver crucifix that had been her mother’s. Alice fished it out and put it on. She’d wanted it for years but her father wouldn’t be parted from it, not even for his daughter.

She noted the absence of his watch, the golden timepiece given to him on retirement from the fire service nearly a year before.

On a whim she drew out his wallet, deciding he could at least stand her lunch considering how much the bus ticket here had cost. Much to her chagrin the wallet was all but empty: only a dollar and twenty cents in change.

Underneath the wallet sat a neat cellophane bag, tied with a gold plastic ribbon. Inside were dozens of colourful sweets – orange, green, blue, yellow, red, all glittering like jewels. Strange, her father never indulged in this sort of thing. She pulled the bag out, turning it about, examining it.

All Natural Fruit Candies by Green Valley Confectioners.

With a shrug Alice opened the packet and popped one into her mouth. They were pretty good - fruity. She found her father’s house keys and stuffed the rest into her back-pack to deal with later.

“See you tomorrow, Dad,” she said, not looking at the man hooked up the machines as she headed for the door.

Just as she reached it, the door opened and a nurse rushed in. She was short, not much taller than a child, everything about her completely forgettable. Except for her eyes. They were a glowing green, almost yellow in places.

Alice couldn’t help but stare at them, fascinated.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Did I disturb you?”

“No, no. I was just leaving.” Alice peered closer, then realised she must seem rude, staring at a stranger’s eyes like a crazy person. “Sorry if I sound a little creepy, but…are those contacts?”

The nurse shook her head, a strange smile pulling at her lips. “No, dear, these are mine. Actually, I’m glad I caught you. I just need you to sign this form.” She thrust the clipboard out.

Alice dug around in her pocket for a pen, finding a cheap biro she had picked up in the college library. After signing in three different places for things she was less than certain about she handed the form back.

As she moved towards the door there was a sharp pain in her scalp and she flung her hand up to soothe it. Strange…

“Are you alright, dear?” the nurse asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Alice replied, massaging the area. Without another word she left, her boot heels clicking on the hospital floor.

The nurse smiled again, her face curling and crinkling to hold the leer. Wrapped around her fingers were several long, shining strands of hair, plucked from Alice as she passed. They flared with light before vanishing from her hand. Then, with the hiss of a strong breeze, she too disappeared, leaving only the clipboard to clatter to the floor.

‘Take it Easy’ by the Eagles flowed from the radio on low volume and the Impala rumbled, content, under Dean Winchester’s hands. He took a moment to stroke her leather-wrapped wheel, as one might a favoured dog, or even a lover. His brother, Sam, was asleep next to him so there was no one to mock the tender show.

Flickering glances between the road and his – not so little – little brother, Dean managed to dig some positivity from underneath his worry. Considering how bad it could have been, Sammy was doing okay. No passing out, no sudden psychotic episodes, and no dying. He’d take a win where he could get one. If only he could get Sam to feel the same…

With a quiet start Sam came awake, as if feeling his brother’s scrutiny. Despite the eighty mile nap he’d just taken, dark bags hung under his eyes and his face still held that feral leanness his un-souled body had honed.

The kid needed some food, Dean decided, and lots of it. Maybe something sweet or that really clocked in the calories. He’d keep an eye out when they hit town.

“How far out are we?” Sam asked, stretching as much as his six four frame could in Baby’s interior.

“Quarter hour, half hour tops. I looped us off the I-95 to miss some construction so we’re a little behind.” Dean jerked his chin towards the pile of paper sitting in Sam’s foot-well. “Give me the details again. Might make you stop yawning.”

Sam determinedly smothered another yawn as he scooped up the pile of papers holding their research, shuffling scraps about until he found the main page. “Uh, there’s a sudden rash of unexplained illnesses in New London, Connecticut. All the patients exhibited extreme fatigue, leading to collapse, that in turn became a coma. Doctors are baffled as there’s apparently nothing medically wrong with any of those who fell ill.”

“But it’s not a shtriga?” Dean pulled over a lane and then off the highway. He checked the map laid beside him on the seat – Fog Plain Road then onto Chester Street, turn onto Jefferson Avenue…then he could either turn left and up on Broad Street or come in the quieter way. Needed to find a motel at some point on the route too…

“No.” Sam squinted at the pages, neck going taut as he held in another yawn. “For a start, only a few of the victims are children, and none of them under the age of fourteen. That, and people aren’t technically getting sick like with the one in Fitchburg. They’re just…fading out. The bodies shut down for no apparent reason.”

“Any connections between the victims?” Dean headed downtown. He’d seen a sign for a motel on Broad Street – Red Roof Inn Mystic – that was only a few minutes behind them. Looked cheap but passably comfortable. They needed food first though.

“None that’re immediately obvious. I mean, one of them isn’t even American. She was on holiday from…Germany.” Sam looked up, taking a second to realise they had stopped.

Dean revelled in the gentler presence by his side. It was hard to believe that the Terminator impersonator he’d been riding with for months had been this same guy, the one who looked more like a confused Labrador puppy than a stone cold killer.

“I’m going to go grab us some food,” he said. “You wanna stay here? Grab some more shut-eye?”

Sam shook his head, blinking a few times more than was normal, squinting “I might find a pharmacy or something. I can’t shake this headache.”

“Okay.” Dean dug some cash out of his back pocket, handing Sam several folded bills. “Here. And I think the first-aid kit might need restocking. Check, will you?”

Sam looked from the cash to Dean and back again. “Dude,” he said, “tell me you didn’t sell all of the stuff we found with the dragons?”

Dean shrugged, unrepentant. “It’s not like I could give any of it back. And I didn’t sell all of it. Always smart to save for a rainy day…or in our case when we’re between credit cards.”

Sam rolled his eyes as he pushed open the door and unfolded his long frame from the low-slung Impala. He limped around to the trunk, stretching the stiffness from his legs as he dug to find the medical kit.

“You hungry for anything in particular?” Dean asked. “I’ll even get you some special rabbit food if it means you’ll eat.”

“Anything is good.” Sam’s answer came from somewhere near the left back wheel where he was still bent over the trunk.

Dean shrugged and, with a last check on his brother, set off to find someplace that did take-out. Then they’d get a motel room, eat, and settle into this case. Life was back to normal.

Sam sunk as low in his seat as was possible, eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses he’d found in the glove box, a beading bottle of water pressed to his aching temple. The two painkillers he’d taken had done very little to ease the pain, heat still pounding behind his eyes.

He’d been fine on the last case. A little off balance…but that’s what comes with waking up to find not only had he been gone over a year, minus a soul incidentally enough, but he’d also picked up quite a few pounds of muscle.

Dean kept making sly little comments about how easy it’d be to pick a chick up at a bar now – in every sense of the word, and, in fact, he was fairly sure he’d be able to bench press Dean if he tried – but Sam, he didn’t like it. He felt too big, too powerful, like when he’d been handed a shotgun for the first time. After spending most of his life trying to draw attention away from his size, the added muscle felt like a neon sign above his head saying how dangerous he was. And now that he knew he hadn’t been using the extra size for good, the muscles were even more of a burden to carry.

He took a drink, then switched the bottle to the other temple, sighing at the momentary relief the cold touch gave. If only he could get rid of this headache, then maybe he could think clearly…

“Present for you.” Dean’s voice came from outside the car a second before he threw a package through the open window into Sam’s lap.

Sam dropped the bottle, knocking off his sunglasses as he fumbled to catch the bag.

Dean snickered from the window and slung several plastic bags into the back seat before taking his place by the wheel. “It’s moments like that which make me mourn your pro-football career, Sammy. You had such promise…”

Sam smacked his brother on the shoulder, scowling but secretly enjoying the ribbing. There had been a tension in the car of late that he couldn’t shift, although he did understand it.

“You’re a jerk,” he said, eyeing up the bag in his lap.

“Bitch.” Dean was trying hard not to look expectant as Sam turned the bag this way and that, reading the blurb on the back.

“Organic, huh? Are you telling me that you, Mr Cholesterol himself, voluntarily went into a health food shop?” He pulled off the ribbon and tried one. Huh, they were kind of nice. Fruity. He had another.

“Nah. There was a little stall outside one of the diners.” Dean jerked a thumb back towards his other supplies as he started the engine. “Got some herbal teas that are supposed to ease headaches.”

Sam gave his brother a level stare.

Dean sputtered somewhat. “I mean, I’m not into all that…herbal….healing crap…but you are and…the girl selling them was hot, even if she was tiny. Amazing eyes. Mmhm.” He smacked his lips in remembered appreciation. “Hey, give me one of those.”

Sam snatched the bag out of reach, then felt mean and fished one out.

Dean started the engine, making a small noise of pleasure at the taste of the sweet.

Sam watched him, the bag in his lap feeling like an olive branch and a reassurance of normality all at once. “Thanks, man,” he said, plucking at the gold plastic ribbon on the cellophane packaging.

Dean gave no reply, ostensibly checking the traffic, but one corner of his mouth quirked up into a contented smile. Yeah, life was back to normal.

“So,” Dean swallowed the mouthful of hotdog he was very obviously enjoying, “do you want the hospital interviews or house interviews?”

Sam didn’t look up from the laptop he was half-hidden behind, his box of burger and chilli cheese fries going cold beside him.

Dean kicked his brother’s leg under the table. “Hey, you with me?”

Sam’s head flicked up. “Huh?”

“I said, do you want hospital or house visits?”

“Um,” Sam fished out another sweet from the bag beside him, “I’ll take the house visits. That okay?”

Dean nodded, mouth stuffed full again. He swallowed and nodded towards the food by Sam’s hand. “Something wrong with yours? Or are you just on a sugar binge?”

Sam looked from the burger to the half-empty bag his hand was currently inside. “Oh. I guess…I guess I’m just not feeling hungry at the moment, not for heavy stuff anyway.” He popped another sweet into his mouth. “I think I need the fruit sugars or something because these are really hitting the spot. And the chilli fries are kinda turning my stomach.”

Dean shrugged, pulling the box closer. “Well, if you’re not going to eat them…”

“Something about the chilli,” Sam said, gaze going distant. “Did we have a case in Mexico recently? I feel like I remember something about a lot of spicy food.”

Dean stopped with a fry half-way to his mouth. There had been one – a difficult, messy case where he had spent as much time watching his back around Sam sans soul as the dangers they had run up against. And that woman…

He blinked to find Sam staring expectantly at him. “What did I say about trying to remember stuff?” he said, aware that Sam would know he was avoiding the subject but not caring at this point. “We’re walking a knife edge with that noggin of yours. Let’s not start poking at stuff, okay?”

Sam’s mouth pursed in displeasure but then he relaxed, big shoulders dropping. “Fine,” he said, dragging the box away from Dean and taking up the burger.

They ate in silence for a while, Dean polishing off his meal and the abandoned chilli cheese fries and Sam taking slow bites of the burger that was, admittedly, excellent, but sat heavy in his stomach.

“You gotta love people sometimes,” Sam said, breaking the silence, clicking on something on the laptop.

“You do?” Dean wiped his greasy hands and mouth and began balling up the trash.

“Yeah. There’s a mystery illness cropping up in the city yet the top headline on the local news is about a giant wolf that’s come down across the border.”

“A wolf? Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s meant to be damn huge too.”

“Huh.” Dean dug through his duffel bag for his suit. “I guess the upside is we’re won’t have a lot of attention on us. Not if everyone’s losing their shit over some overgrown canine.”

“Lupine,” Sam said without looking up. “Wolves are canines but they technically belong to a smaller sub-group called lupines-”

“Alright, alright,” Dean grumbled, retreating to the bathroom. “Nerd.”

Dean left Sam with the car as, doing house visits, the younger Winchester had more distance to cover. It was a couple of miles to the hospital – Lawrence and Memorial – from the motel, so Dean caught a taxi.

Maybe once he would have walked the distance, but he had money in his pocket for once and there was a twinge in his knee he was trying to ignore but it was determined to make its presence known. God, when did he start feeling so old? He was only thirty-two, knew hunters twice his age, but it was getting harder to bounce back like he may have before.

He watched people bustling about on their daily routine, saw a mom, dad, and son sat outside a restaurant and felt a crushing moment of nostalgia for Lisa, with her tender touch, her dark eyes and the light smile he had never tired of looking at, and for Ben, with his terrible jokes and earnestness. Even if the boy wasn’t his by blood, for a few months Dean had been a father.

But then he thought of Sam, and the jagged rip his death had left, and knew that as much as he loved Lisa and Ben and the brief taste of normal he had been given, none of it was real, none of it was worth it without his brother by his side. Maybe he could fix things with Lisa someday, but he had never been able to fix the loss of Sam.

"Here you are, man." The driver had pulled up to the curb.

Dean snapped out of his haze, quickly handing over some cash and getting out of the cab. The smell of salt water from the estuary hit him and he stood, taking it in for just a minute. His phone buzzed and he dug his mobile out of his suit pocket.

Sam: Leaving first house now. Nothing. Pick up more sweets?

Dean grinned at the last part of the message. It seems something was finally agreeing with Sam.

Dean: At hospital. Will do.

Sam knocked on the plain blue door, looking along the front of the house as he waited for an answer. He felt pretty good. The pleasant taste of sugary fruit still lay on his tongue and the herbal tea he had drunk before coming out had actually made some impact on his headache.

The first house had been a bust. The mother had been so distraught she was nearly unintelligible. With two of her children in the hospital, neither looking like they would wake up, it was forgivable and Sam excused himself quickly, but not before doing a discreet circuit of the house with the EMF detector. It had turned up nothing and he left the grieving mother with a heavy step and an ache in his heart.

The door in front of him opened and he pasted on a smile he had trouble holding as he took in the figure in the doorway, his mind slamming back nearly a decade. The girl in the doorway could have been Jessica's little sister – long blonde hair, same shape to the eyes and the lips. She was about the age Sam had met Jess at: eighteen or nineteen.

She eyed him somewhat nervously and he pulled himself together, digging out his fake badge and replacing his fake smile.

"Alice Keene?"

She nodded, half-shielded by the door.

"I'm Sam...Moore." The name slipped out before he thought about it. "I work for the CDC. I'm trying to find out what happened to your father and the others? May I come in?"

Alice looked from the badge to his face and back again. Finally, she opened the door wider. "Come on in."

The living room was blunt and functional, definitely a room decorated by a man, and one with minimalist taste. Alice perched on one of the worn brown armchairs, one leg curled up beneath her as if ready to push off and run. Sam sat opposite her, trying to shrink down as much as he was capable. This was not a girl comfortable around large men; her body language screamed mistrust.

"So, Miss Keene," he said, pulling out his notebook, trying to look professional "when did your father fall ill?"

Alice fidgeted, tucking some hair behind her ear, plucking at a silver crucifix around her neck and Sam had another flash of memory – Jess curled up in a chair by a window, a sketchbook on her lap, blonde hair falling to obscure her face. He blinked, realising Alice was speaking, the other woman drifting back into memory.

"It was about a month ago," she said. "I don't live here – I'm at college in New York – so I didn't know he wasn't doing so good until I got a call from the hospital. He'd collapsed."

"You don't talk much with your father?" Sam didn’t really need the answer.

Alice shrugged. "We're not exactly close. Never have been. He wouldn’t have asked me for help anyway...he's kind of stubborn."

"So he just collapsed for no apparent reason?"

"That's what the doctor's say." Alice stopped playing with her necklace and looked at him squarely for the first time. "He did start drinking in the weeks leading up to it. Like hard-core alcoholism kind of drinking. Out of nowhere."

Sam scribbled it down. "And he didn’t drink previously?"

Alice snorted. "I wasn't allowed sugar except on holidays or birthdays. No alcohol until I was twenty-one, not even on holidays. He might have a beer once a week, two or three if he went out with his friends or it was a party. He went from that to having eight bottles of whisky in the bedroom alone. I've been cleaning this place up and I've never seen so many bottles. And I’m at college."

"But the doctor said his condition isn't caused by that?"

She shook her head. "They said there's some damage, but not enough to cause this. It's like the life is just draining out of him."

Sam frowned, writing it all down. It sounded so like a shtriga, but there were just as many things saying that it wasn't. There had been no rotten handprints anywhere on the other house and he could practically guarantee there wouldn't be one here. Wouldn't hurt to check.

"Would you mind if I had a quick look around? It's just standard practice. Unless there was anything else you remember that seemed out of place?"

"Like what?"

Sam shrugged, trying to frame his strange sounding reply as professionally as possible. "Strange sounds, smells, suddenly feeling cold? Things being mislaid or breaking and you don't know how? Blacking out?"

Alice shook her head. "You're welcome to look but this place is as blank as he was. And I don't think I'm coming down with anything...there's been nothing like that. I mean, I can't find his watch, the gold one he got when he retired, but that's not too weird. It’s not like I mislaid it and forgot. I'm likely to find that at a pawn shop."

Sam smiled weakly. The headache was starting to bite at his temples again but he pushed it back. "Okay. I'll just look around quickly and then leave you in peace."

The interior didn’t set anything off on the EMF meter, as bare of any supernatural presence as it was of personality. Sam then took the outside, scanning the walls and windowsills for tell-tale black rot or any other indicator of a malevolent presence.

Nothing.

No dead ground or rotten wood or anything out of the ordinary. The only interesting thing was the amount of rubbish stacked out back. Bottles and bottles, interspersed with mouldy tubs from barely eaten microwave meals and several familiar cellophane packets with their curling gold ribbons. It seemed the strict Mr Keene had developed a sweet tooth as well as an alcohol addiction.

Sam stepped back in through the back door, looking at the hooks empty of coats, the single pair of hiking boots on the boot rack. He paused, something in the damp mud on the left boot heel catching his eye. Carefully, he crumbled away the dirt and pulled it out.

It was a thorny sprig of blue-black berries, small and hard. He could already hear Dean's disbelieving tone as he asked if that was all the evidence he had found all afternoon, but something about it was as familiar as it was foreign. Something just beyond his reach, behind that barricade in his mind, something he knew was massively important for some...faint...reason.

"Everything alright, Mr Moore?" Alice said from behind him. "Did you find anything?"

Sam pocketed the berries and stood. "Nothing that helps me, I'm afraid." He pulled a card from his pocket. "If you remember anything else, or start feeling unwell yourself, give me a call. Any time."

She took the card. "I will. Thank you for your concern."

Sam sat in the car for some time, the sprig pinched between his large fingers. It gave off a pungent odour he couldn’t quite place.

The curtains twitched in the window of the Keene’s bland living room and Sam realised how conspicuous his continued presence was. The block engine roared to life and the house was soon in his rear view.

On the seat beside him, his phone buzzed and he glanced down at it as he reached a red light.

Dean: Meet me @ Bank Street Roadhouse.

Dean: Any luck?

Sam typed quickly as the cars ahead of him began to move again.

Sam: On my way. Maybe.

Although Dean would no doubt be unimpressed with his ‘evidence’, Sam was certain the berries were important. Deep inside, he dug a fingernail into the cement of the vast wall he had woken up with. The horror on the other side he couldn’t imagine…but he needed answers.

 The bar wasn’t very busy, but that was to be expected on a Wednesday afternoon. Dean had snagged a corner booth and when Sam slid into the seat opposite his brother there was a beer waiting for him, alongside one of the largest chicken sandwiches Sam had ever seen.

“Hey,” Dean said, half-way through a plate of mozzarella sticks, grease shining at the corners of his mouth.

“Hey.” Sam took a mouthful of beer and pulled a face. If the brewers were going for subtle undertones of overripe fruit then they’d succeeded. He pushed it aside. “Anything useful at the hospital?”

Dean shook his head. “Nothing we don’t already know. So, pretty much a steaming pile of jack all.” Reminded of something he wiped his fingers and dug into his jacket pocket, tossing Sam a familiar package. “Went back to the stall and got some more like you asked. I’d savour these though – the chick said they were low on stock.”

Sam pulled the ribbon off and threw three of the fruity gems into his mouth at once.

“You better not leave that sandwich for candy,” Dean said, taking a drink of his own beer.

“Whatever, mom,” Sam replied, eating another two.

Dean raised his hands in mock surrender. “Anything at the houses?” he asked.

“Nope. Just grieving, confused families. Well, most of them.” He paused. “There was one girl – her dad is the most recent case. Let’s just say I doubt he’s got much father of year memorabilia lying around.”

He thought again of the girl and of the woman she echoed. Funny, he hadn’t thought this much about Jess in years…

“So nothing at the houses?” Dean was looking at him closely, gauging his reactions.

“Um, no. No sulphur, EMF, shtriga handprints, or anything else remotely indicating it’s our kind of gig. Except…”

That caught Dean’s interest. “Except…what?”

With some reluctance Sam took the sprig of berries out of his pocket and placed it on the table. “Except for this. I feel like I’ve seen something like it before, on another case, but I can’t remember where.”

“That’s it?” Dean looked from the berries to his brother and back again. “Our only possible lead is a bunch of tiny grapes?”

“They’re not grapes. I don’t know what they are.” Sam sagged back in his chair. “I know I’ve seen something like it before, Dean. Hell, I keep feeling like I’ve done a case like this before.” He stuffed the sprig back into his pocket.

“It’s a bunch of berries, Sam, and a twig. It’s just a twig and berries.”

A few heads turned at his comment and Dean lowered his voice. “And as for you thinking you’ve worked something like this before, I don’t want you to even think about thinking about it, okay? Do not touch the wall.”

“People are dying, Dean, and the only possible lead we’ve got could be somewhere in my head. What if I know how to save them?” Sam wished his brother would hear him; stop just blindly grabbing onto him. Surely the wall wasn’t that frail? Trying to remember a case from…before…shouldn’t bring the whole thing tumbling down like Jericho.

“There are eight people slipping away in comas, Dean, some of them not even old enough to have graduated high school. They have families. Parents who are scared out of their minds.”

“And if there’s a way to save them, we’ll figure it out the old fashioned way.” Dean reached for his beer but didn’t drink. “I won’t risk it, Sammy. And I won’t let you, either.”

Sam didn’t reply, just stared blankly at the plate in front of him.

Dean shifted in his seat, thumbnail picking at the label of his beer. “Sam-”

“Hey, do either of you guys own the big black Chevy outside?”

Both brothers looked up at the voice. Sam because he’d been the one to park the Impala and Dean because of the mention of his baby and the body attached to the voice.

She looked mid-twenties, dressed similar to them – faded jeans, plaid shirt layered over a plain tank-top, and sturdy boots. Her golden blonde hair just brushed her shoulders, one side clipped back away from her face. She smiled at them, brows over clear blue eyes raised in question.

“Oh, um, yeah.” Dean hurried to hide his stumble. “That’s my car. Beauty, isn’t she?”

Sam rolled his eyes and turned away. His brother truly was incorrigible.

She made a small movement of her head that left her opinion on the aesthetic appeal of Dean’s car unclear. “It’s getting towed in about thirty seconds.”

Dean shot out of his seat before Sam could insist he was sure he’d parked in a safe spot, swiping the keys off the table and hurrying outside.

“Damn it,” Sam said, resting his head in his hands, elbows propped on the table.

“I’m sure it’ll be okay,” the woman said, patting his shoulder. Her accent was strange, like it was almost too American to be real. “Your friend’ll get there in time to talk his way out of it. He seems like he could talk a good game.”

Sam shrugged away from her touch. “Yeah, I’m sure he will. Thanks for letting us know.” He didn’t really feel like company right now.

“No problem.” She took the hint, leaving him in peace.

If only to distract himself Sam drank the rest of his beer, grimacing at the taste. He pushed the bottle away and then tried a few half-hearted bites of his sandwich, eventually abandoning it in favour of more sweets.

It had maybe only been five minutes of so when the nausea hit him in one violent wave strong enough to make him dry heave right there at the table. Not wasting another second Sam fled toward the bathroom, desperately trying to hold back the contents of his stomach. He stumbled against the jukebox as passed, half-falling against the door to the men’s room.

Yet it wasn’t the bathroom he found himself in, but the alley behind the bar, lined with rubbish and puddles of stale water. He braced himself against the wall beside the dumpster, dry heaving again and again but bringing nothing up.

“Not fun being alone and in pain, is it?”

Turning to look, he fell onto his side in the muck, eyes swimming with tears of effort.

A woman with dark hair stood close by, smiling at him, but made no move to help. A gun rested loosely in her hand and before Sam could make a sound she had raised it and fired.

He felt a pricking in his shoulder and sagged back against the wall, only hoping Dean hadn’t been caught up in this, whatever it was.

It was ten minutes before Dean came back into the bar, face tense, cursing under his breath.

The kid driving the tow truck had been as unhelpful as possible, insisting he had been told to come and pick up a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, black, from outside Bank Street Roadhouse. Yes, he was sure. No, there hadn’t been a mistake. Round and round they had argued until the driver called up his home base to verify and discovered it had, in fact, all been a damn frigging misunderstanding.

He tried to shake some of the tension off, not wanting to make the situation with his brother even worse by going in angry. He’d make sure to say that Sam hadn’t parked wrong – he’d seen the guilty look on his face.

“You still not eaten that sandwich, Sam?” he asked, spying the plate on the edge of the table.

The booth, however, revealed itself to be empty of Sam. Dean frowned, then saw the jacket left behind. He was probably just in the bathroom.

Another ten minutes and the worry started, gnawing like a dog at his stomach. He flagged down the waitress, a friendly woman just starting to go grey at the temples of her red hair. He made sure to smile.

“Hey, I don’t suppose you saw where my brother went, did you? Tall, broad, little less good-looking than me?”

She chuckled at that last one. “I think I saw him heading out the back. He wasn’t looking so good, though…nearly fell over the jukebox. Looked like he was going to throw up.”

She moved away to another customer and Dean gathered the belongings spread across both sides of the booth, even wrapping up the sandwich.

Was it some side effect of having his soul stuffed back in finally manifesting? Had this merely been a grace period before it all went to Hell again – literally for Sam? He crashed through the back door, expecting to find some broken, babbling version of Sam curled up by a wall, but instead he found nothing but an empty alley.

Dean stood for a second, looking up and down for some clue. When he saw the money clip, the one Sam carried like he was still in college, his heart stuttered a little. When he saw the drag marks in a patch of muck leading left down the alley, his stomach went cold. When he found the end of the drag marks and the beginning of tire tracks – tires that had taken off so fast they had left a stain of rubber on the road – all fear gave way to rage.

Someone had taken Sam.

That was one hell of a mistake to have made.

It was completely dark when Dean cruised the Impala into an old industrial estate on the outskirts of New London. He’d turned the lights down when he pulled onto the weed-cracked stretch of asphalt, and kept the usual roar of the engine to a quieter rumble. Turning the lights off completely, along with the engine, he drifted the car off onto the side of the road and stopped.

The GPS tracker in Sam’s phone blinked, a small red dot on Dean’s screen. It hadn’t moved in over an hour. He hadn’t allowed himself to consider what this might mean.

Up ahead, lurching out of the gloom, was a squat, square warehouse, overgrown with curlicues of ivy, clawing fingers of vegetation reaching up from below. It was grimy with disuse.

From here Dean could see a dark blue van parked outside – he’d bet his pearl-handled Colt its tire treads matched the ones from the alley.

Dean slid out of the car, closing the door without a sound. Round at the trunk he stocked up on every weapon he thought he might need: holy water, consecrated iron in his pistol, the demon-killing knife, and a sawn-off shotgun filled with salt rounds. He was sliding the pistol into a holster on his thigh when he heard a sound he would know anywhere – Sam in pain. It was a single cry, bitten off, but it was enough.

Dropping into a crouch he ran across a patch of grass tangled with drooping shrubs, shotgun held ready in his hands. Moving whisper-quiet through the darkness he became more than just a hunter – he was the apex predator of the night.

The door in the side of the warehouse was cracked open and even in the dark Dean could see signs of a struggle. An old wooden crate lay smashed like it had been kicked repeatedly and on the edge of the door he could see the dark stain of a blood, the warm, iron scent of it pricking at his nose familiarly.

There was a light shining somewhere inside. Flitting from one pile of shadow to the next he strained for any sign that Sam’s captors were alerted to his presence. A few steps further in and he found Sam’s shoe, discarded in the middle of the floor. The drag marks from his sock dug into the gritty layer of abandonment on the floor, a trail of breadcrumbs to lead Dean on.

Despite the heavy duty boots he wore, his footsteps were inaudible, his passage through the space only marked by the mini dust dervishes he stirred up.

The source of the leaking light was a small office at the back of the warehouse, the thick grime on the windows masking most of it. The door said ‘FLO-R MAN-ER ON-Y’.

As Dean watched from behind a tarp-covered pile of old machinery, the door crashed open and two figures walked out. The sudden influx of light momentarily cost him his night vision and it took some time for him to be able to see again. When he could, however, single-minded rage diffused into confusion.

Framed by the mellow glow of old bulbs stood the young woman from the roadhouse who had alerted him to the towing, blonde hair now tied back in a stubby ponytail. She stood with her shoulders sagging, rubbing one hand across her eyes.

Dean didn’t recognise the second woman who whispered harshly at the blonde, her hands making sharp, insistent movements in the air. She was small and compact, the muscle on her build complimenting her figure. Her hair was dark and long, like strands of storm clouds flying down her back. She looked sure of herself…was probably very capable in a fight.

The two women stood and argued and gestured for some time. Dean watched them, keeping his breathing shallow unless it should echo in the vast space. He only shifted when his calf began to cramp, making certain his boots didn’t scrape on the floor. The tense skin of the silence was broken by coughing and gagging from inside the office, and the blonde women went back inside.

Risking a step closer, Dean leant out as much as he could to try to see through the still open door, just catching sight of a familiar set of shoulders, arms lashed to the chair. The low sound of Sam’s voice drifted out to him, words indecipherable, and Dean twisted forwards to hear better. That was when the barrel of his shotgun clunked against a lever poking out from the tarp. The sound was jarring and unnatural, ricocheting off into the dark.

The woman by the door snapped to attention and Dean pulled back into cover, cursing himself roundly.

One breath.

Two breaths.

Three.

He risked a look out.

The woman was gone; the doorway empty. She was now looking for him. His presence had been announced.

As much as it pained him, Dean retreated away from the door to put some distance between himself and his last known position. He couldn’t hear the woman – or whatever the hell she might be – despite his finely attuned senses reaching out for any signs of her movement. She was good…very good.

Still listening intently he picked up a lump of rubble from by his foot and flung it in the direction of the door he had come in through. There was a staggering burst of sound, during which Dean crouched and ran back towards the dilapidated office, then aching silence again.

There was only one of them left with Sam now and, whether she was human or not, he could take her. Dean laid the shotgun down, making sure to memorise which pile he was by, then crept closer to the office. The dangerous part was the open stretch from the cover to the door; the clear space was well-lit and he would stand out like a chicken on a duck pond. He listened again for any sign of his hunter and was rewarded by the faintest scrape of a footstep on concrete some way off to the right.

Steeling himself, Dean slipped his pistol from its holster and prepared to launch himself out across the space.

He felt the presence behind him a fraction of a second before the first blow landed – a pistol butt into the base of his skull. It sent him sprawling forwards but he twisted as he fell, lashing out with a kick that connected with the solidness of her ribs. He heard her grunt and kicked out again but she expected it this time and the blow didn’t land. Her full weight landed heavily on his chest, her knees driving into his shoulders and pinning him. The first punch hit his cheekbone, solid and well-placed. Whoever or whatever she was, she knew how to fight.

The blow was repeated with the other hand before he was able to wrench one arm free. He grabbed her by the back of her jacket, using his greater muscle mass to fling her off him, the momentum rolling him up onto his knees. She hit the floor hard but immediately sprung to her feet, taking advantage of the dizzying effects the pistol-whipping had on Dean’s balance.

His teeth clicked together with a sound like an ammunition clip locking into place and his head snapped backwards, her knee under his chin driving him onto his back once again.

He couldn’t hear now, could only feel the throbbing of blood in his head and taste it in his mouth. The light rippled in his visions and the vague shape of a human face appeared at one point – the blonde woman – and he thought she said something to him, voice soft, but he couldn’t be sure.

Then they were gone, the warehouse was silent again, and digging through the pain in his head was the impulse that he had to get to Sam.

Rolling onto his belly he somehow got to his knees and then his feet. With wobbling steps he crossed to the office, sagging against the doorframe when he got there.

The room smelt of vomit. Sam sagged in the chair, breathing uneven. A string of bile smeared down his chin. He was only wearing one shoe. The sock of the other foot was dusty and dirty. His left cheekbone shone red with bruising.

“Sam?” His voice came out cracked and weak, tongue stumbling over the single syllable. “Sam?”

“I’m okay, Dean.” Sam’s voice did not sound okay, more like he had been gargling sand and rinsing his mouth out with thumb tacks, but he lifted his head and twisted to find his brother. “I’m okay.”

Leaning on any piece of furniture he could reach, Dean went to Sam, needing to focus as hard as he could to unpick the knots holding Sam’s arms behind him. They were solid knots, not meant to be worked loose easily. Whoever these monsters were, they were not amateurs.

“What made you sick? What’d they give you?” Dean asked, eventually pulling out the knife from the sheath on his belt. He really hoped he could see straight enough to not accidently cut Sam…

“I dunno,” Sam said, coughing briefly and then spitting a glob of bile and phlegm across the room. “I think they put something in my beer at the roadhouse. Made me feel crazy sick and dizzy but I couldn’t throw up. Then they drugged me out the back and dragged me into the van.”

“Looks like there was a scuffle out by the door. They drop you or something?”

Sam winced as Dean nicked him with the blade. “Nah. The sedative had worked off a bit by then and I tried to break free. Kicked a crate into one of them but the other jabbed me again. Then I woke up here and they gave what must have been the anti-dote. That made me throw up all right.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, finally getting through the rope, “I can smell.”

The two of them got to their feet, Sam just steadier than Dean, and leaning on each other they left the office, not bothering to turn out the light. Dean spent a minute searching for the shotgun he’d laid down and then they wound their way back towards the door. They only paused again for Sam’s shoe.

Back out in the open air they felt better, the cool breeze washing away the last of Sam’s nausea and easing Dean’s throbbing head. The van was gone, as expected, but the Impala was still tucked away in the shadows at the side of the road.

“When I find those bitches,” Dean swore, crawling into the front seat and stretching out, “or witches, or whatever the hell they are, I’m going to make them swallow their own potions and then I’ll take their frigging heads off.”

Sam settled into the back seat – it was a given they were sleeping in the car tonight – but was quiet. “I don’t think they were witches, Dean,” he said at last. “I don’t even know if they’re the bad guys here.”

“My head disagrees,” Dean snapped. “First thing in the morning we work to find those things and I’ll think you’ll find the case wraps itself up from there.”

He then flopped down, driving himself into a tense sleep, but Sam stayed awake for some time after that, picking at the wall in his head.

Dean woke at just after 4 a.m. with a headache that made him freeze in pain. With tentative fingers he felt out the golf-ball sized lump on the back of his head.

“Here.” A bottle of water and two white tablets were held in front of his face by a ghostly hand.

“You couldn’t sleep either, huh?” he groaned as he sat up, closing his eyes until the world stopping rocking, and then took both offerings from his brother.

“They didn’t even ask me any questions, Dean.” Sam spoke so low it was barely audible and he picked at a loose thread in the stitching to avoid eye contact.

“So?” Dean tossed back the tablets, chasing them with half the water. “You think witches like that actually want something from you? They just needed you out of the way to keep going with their evil-ass plans.”

“They put a lot of time and effort into snatching me, Dean, and-” He swallowed back the words.

“And what?” Dean focused on all he could see of Sam; a dark, curled form in the back seat.

“They knew who I was, Dean. They knew about the tattoo.” He pulled briefly at the collar of his shirt and, from the way the material fell open, Dean knew the buttons had either been unfastened or pulled off. “And I heard them arguing outside about something. About whether I was ‘safe’ or ‘faking it’.”

“It was probably nothing.” Dean tried to sound dismissive. “If they’ve heard of you it’s no big surprise. I mean, we did kinda start and end the Apocalypse. All the bad things know about that.”

Sam curled in on himself even more. “I think…I think I worked a job with them, Dean. Before. When I was…not me.” He swallowed. “I think I did something to them.”

“Or you’re just desperate to feel guilty about this and we’ve never met these witches before and they’re just gunning for us because we’re trying to shut them down.” Dean threw the water bottle into the back and slid into the driver’s seat, ignoring the waves of pain. “Stop reading into this, Sam.”

“Reading into this?” Sam leant over the back of the bench seat. “I told you I feel like I’ve worked a job like this before. And then I get drugged and taken by two people who seem to know who I am? Why would they do something like that if I hadn’t screwed them over last time we worked together?”

“Sam, so help me, you better shut up about this.” Dean flung the car into drive and wrenched the wheel around, sending loose asphalt spitting from beneath her tires as he spun back onto the road.

Sam’s shoulders tightened. “And ignore the fact I screwed up? That I probably hurt these people and a lot more besides because…it’s what? Inconvenient to think about?”

Dean could see Sam in the rear-view in bars of light from passing street lamps. It looked like flickering fire on his face, the bruise on his cheekbone darkened to a smear of ash. “Not the word I’d use, but yes. You ignore the hell out of it before you tear down that wall. Because that could kill you and I’m not-”

Sam punched the back of the seat so hard Dean lurched forwards into the steering column. “If it was so dangerous then you shouldn’t have done it! I didn’t want you to but you did it anyway!”

Dean was thankful for the complete lack of traffic because the swerve he made at Sam’s words took them over onto the other side of the road. He yanked them back to the right and locked his eyes onto the intermittent yellow dashes running down the centre. They blurred and he blinked, feeing dampness at the corner of his eyes. Damn headache…

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Sam said, softly, from the back. The fire was now on his chest and belly. “I didn’t mean it.”

“Just…leave it alone, Sam.” Dean closed his eyes for a second longer than he should have while driving. “Please.”

“Sure.” Sam slid across to his customary right hand side and rested his head against the window. Dean glanced back at him briefly, but had to look away.

The lights caught Sam’s eyes, like hellfire shining through a hole in a wall.

The police scanner chattered and crackled on the table between the brothers, white noise to fill the space. It had been almost two days of solid searching and neither had come up with much. So they’d sat and worked, taking it in turns to go out and buy food and drinks, occasionally crashing into sleep for a few hours before starting the whole thing again. Empty food wrappers spilled out of the bin, smelling of grease and necessity. Sam still wasn’t eating much and his half-eaten meals went stale in the fridge.

“Okay,” Dean took another drink of the herbal tea by his elbow – it wasn’t his first choice but Sam insisted it helped with headaches, and it didn’t taste that bad, and maybe his head did feel a little better, but whatever – and made sure he had Sam’s attention. “So it looks like these girls only got into town a few days before we did. But the van… they didn’t arrive in that. It was a rental, paid for the day they grabbed you, all in cash.” He dug through the chaos of paper on the table until he found several grainy photographs. “I got the owner of the bar to let me look at the security footage.”

“Anything from the alley?” Sam asked, looking up.

Dean shook his head. “But there was one out the front. I caught some glimpses of them on that and they definitely followed me in. Man, they’re pretty good…I never even knew they were there.” He tossed the photos aside. “How about you? Anybody recognise them?”

Sam checked his notebook. “Some did. I checked with the victims’ families and some of them recognised the photos we got from the bar. Usually one or other, never both, so I’m assuming they either split up or one would do the talking while the other cased the house. But get this…the people who didn’t recognise the pictures all said there had been some kind of disturbance over the past week. Mostly at night mostly going through the trash when it was dark.” He sagged back in his chair, massaging his eyes. “Why the trash?”

“It’s the natural feeding ground for rodents and scavengers,” Dean said. “Perfect place for them.”

“Don’t you think you’re kind of jumping to conclusions a bit here, Dean?” Sam asked. “I mean, do we have any proof they’re the cause of all this? They arrived after most of the cases happened. That doesn’t really fit with your theory.”

“Hey, I don’t try and understand why the bad guys do what they do. I just stop them,” Dean said, standing and crossing to the kitchenette to fill his now empty cup with coffee. “I talked to the guy at the van rental place and he said the girls arrived in a black pickup. He thinks it was a Ford, but he wasn’t sure.” He poured the coffee, the smell sharp. “I got some stills from the security footage of the plates, been trying to track them. So far, no luck. They must be holed up somewhere out of the way. Or…” He cocked his head in thought. “Or, they’re right in the centre of everything so they wouldn’t need to drive anywhere.”

The cup hit the counter so hard coffee sloshed over the rim onto the stained surface. “There aren’t that many low-priced motels out here. They’ll be paying in cash, like us, keeping under the radar, like us…"

“They’re working like hunters,” Sam said, quietly, but Dean didn’t hear.

“Thinking like the predator, not the prey.” Dean snatched his jacket off the bottom of his bed and slipped his pistol into the waist of his jeans. “I’m going to go and check out local, cheap motels. Two women, paying in cash for an extended stay…can’t be a very common thing.” He opened the door, fresh air flooding in, but Sam’s voice stopped his step.

“What if they are hunters, Dean? What then?” Dean couldn’t see Sam’s face, only the dip of his head and the inward curve of his shoulders. “We’ve had issues with hunters before,” he said eventually. “If they are like us, then I’ll make it clear not mess with us again instead of salting and burning them.”

Then he was gone out of the door.

Sam tried to keep working but there was very little he could do. There were only so many resources about berries and after identifying the sprig as being from a juniper tree there was nothing else to do with it. Dean was chasing the only lead they really had. It was difficult to focus when he still felt nauseous.

He tried drinking coffee to wake himself up but it tasted like ash and the only thing that tasted any good – the herbal teas – had been finished by Dean. Instead he dropped to the floor and tried to do some push-ups, but the ease with which he did fifty of them was an accusation.

He went back to staring at his laptop screen.

Closing his eyes Sam let the noise of the radio and the air conditioning, the light of his laptop and the late afternoon sun slanting through the window, the smell of the old food and that musty scent made by two guys being stuck in a room for too long, the feel of the chipped table under his hands and dull throbbing in his head all blend into one to sit in his brain as a lump of information too big to be processed and just let himself feel blank.

“God, are you even human?”

“Don’t know if I qualify anymore. Don’t really care.”

His eyes snapped open and he scrabbled for the memory – it had been him, but not him, he sounded so cold – but it was gone.

Right then the door burst open to allow a triumphant Dean.

“Right across the goddamn street at the Clarion Inn, there’s a black Ford pickup in the parking lot.” He locked the door behind him. “Asked at the check-in desk and what do you know, two women, one blond, one brunette, checked in just over a week ago, paying entirely in cash. Jackpot.”

“So now what?” Hiding the shake in his voice wasn’t easy but Dean was too elated to be paying full attention.

“We stake it out. See what happens.” Dean pulled his duffel out from under the bed and started rooting through it.

“And if they’re hunters?”

Dean paused. “We’ll see what happens.”

They found a good spot opposite the parking lot of the motel, the Impala’s gleaming body disappearing into the unlit alley. There was very little talk between them, the tension a third passenger.

It was just after ten when the door to room twenty-seven opened and the two women came out. They were dressed darkly and each carried a rucksack which they dumped into the bed of the pickup. The truck’s rear lights lit up like the eyes of a beast and Sam felt an uncomfortable pressure flare just behind his eyes. Something about the red…

“Showtime,” Dean murmured, pulling out into the light traffic two cars behind their quarry.

The women seemed to know where they were going, driving confidently out of the city, across the Thames River and off along the I-95, splitting onto the 184 and then onto the 201 towards the Nature Conservancy.

“The hell…?” Dean said what they both were thinking.

The pickup parked in a clearing just off the main road while the brothers watched from a pull-in just past the junction.

The headlights went out on the pickup and Dean gave it a minute before jerking his head in the universal signal for initiating action. Keeping low they crept towards the vague shape of the pickup in the wan moonlight, Dean on high alert, knowing how soundless the brunette could be.

There was an old metal trailer at the back of the parking area, slowly being reclaimed by nature. Its roof was shrouded with several years of dead leaves and grass grew tall around its feet and base. There was a light on inside and Dean had the strongest moment of unpleasant déjà vu. Let’s hope it ended slightly better this time.

With a signal from Dean they both moved forwards, guns at the ready, flasks of holy water heavy in their breast pockets.

“We’d better check inside first,” Sam whispered. “I think there’s an uncovered window at the back.”

Dean nodded and led the way.

Avoiding dry wood and rustling leaves they got around the end of the trailer, finding the blind pulled up and the window cracked. Inside were the two women and another woman tied tightly to a chair. Or at least they thought it was a woman – she was so tiny she looked child-like.

Sam crouched to watch and Dean followed suite, keeping the safety of his pistol thumbed off.

Inside, the blonde was pouring something over a large knife, the surplus running off and dripping onto the woman. At its touch she shrieked and writhed in the chair, skin smoking.

“Demon?” Sam whispered.

“No devil’s trap on the floor,” Dean pointed out. “Plus, no sulphur. All I can smell is…ice cream…and pie?”

“Food? Now? Really?” Sam shook his head, wincing as he watched the blonde place a precise cut across her prisoner’s collarbone. The wound smoked and bubbled and the brunette held the screaming creature’s head wrenched back with hands covered in…chain mail?

“What do you smell then? Tell me you can’t smell that?” Dean continued to sniff, head turning this way and that like a curious dog.

Sam breathed deeply. He didn’t smell pie, or vanilla. All he could smell was a warm, spicy memory of breakfast in bed and waking to a tangle of sunlit hair spread over his chest.

“Curve Crush,” Sam said, taking a breath and holding the scent in his lungs. “It was called Curve Crush.”

“What?”

Sam shook his head, trying to push the scent out of his nose. It made an ache rise behind his ribs that had nothing to do with broken bones or scars…not visible ones at least. “It was the perfume Jess used to wear. Curve Crush.”

Dean shifted next to him and Sam could tell he didn’t know what to say.

“How the hell do you even remember that?” he eventually whispered, staring just a bit too hard at the scene unfolding in the trailer.

The woman in the chair shrieked again, then spat some words at her captors, though neither brother could hear them.

Both women paused, seeming to have a conversation between themselves with their eyes, then the blonde poured more of the liquid onto her knife. Turning back towards their prisoner, she looked at the brunette who nodded and pulled the tiny woman’s head back even further.

“Damn…” Dean muttered as the blonde stabbed down, burying the knife into the woman’s chest.

The body twisted and jerked, gagging and shrieking, then finally went still. It shimmered as a glamour spell melted away and the figure in the chair became even smaller, with leathery, pale skin, a long hooked nose, and sharp, bony joints. Immediately, the brothers gagged as the delightful smells turned to one solid tone of foul decay.

“Go now,” Dean said, low, holding back a retch. “We’ll trap them in the trailer.”

They crept around the edge of the light and then across the front of the trailer, listening to the murmur of voices from inside and trying not to breathe too much through their noses. Sam crossed to the one side of the door while Dean stayed on the other, one hand reaching for the handle, gun held tight in the other. He held up three fingers and counted down – three…two…one…

He ripped the door open, leading with his weapon, Sam covering him from behind.

“Don’t move!” Dean snarled. “Either of you!”

The two women froze, both reaching for weapons in their belts but quickly stopping, realising they were outdrawn.

Dean kept his eyes on the brunette, leaving Sam with the blonde. The stench was awful but neither woman looked affected so he kept a straight face, refusing to gag.

“Hands on your heads,” he said. The knife was still in the creature’s chest, the flesh around it turned purple and inflamed.

“I told you this would happen,” the brunette said to the other as they both raised their hands. Her accent was English with the hint of a dialect Dean couldn’t recognise. “I told you we should have taken them both and put them right out of the way.” She stared at Sam with such anger Dean automatically put himself between them. “There’s nothing but trouble wherever he goes.”

“Alright, Downton Abbey, on your knees.” Dean made the most of his size, looming in towards her.

“Bet you say that to all the girls,” she said with a sneer, but dropped regardless. Her eyes were grey as gunmetal and held the same threat of danger.

“Can you maybe stop antagonising them, Laura? Just for a second?” The blonde threw Dean a pleading blue-eyed gaze. “I think we all need to talk.”

“Do I know you?” Sam’s gun was starting to dip. “Did we work a job together?”

The brunette, Laura, glared over at him. “Don’t pretend you don’t remember, King Kong.”

“Hey,” Dean took a step forward.

“You’re Dean,” the blonde said.Sam’s gun was completely down now but she made no move to drop her hands. “His brother.”

“What did I do?” Sam asked. Making a decision, he tucked the gun into his belt.

“Sam, what the hell are you doing?” Dean kept his gun trained on Laura. “A few soppy words and you’re done? They frigging kidnapped you, man. Messed you up.” He glared at Laura. “And you pistol-whipped me.”

“Dean, put the gun down, please.” Sam looked to the still nameless blonde. “Can you ask your sister to stand down too? I think it’s safe to assume we’re all on the same side here.” He flickered his gaze to Laura’s burning scowl. “Pretty much.”

There was a full minute of tense silence – Dean saw it tick by on his watch.

“Our quarrel isn’t with you,” Laura said to Dean, testing the boundary by lowering her hands slowly. “Hell, my issue with your brother falls into second place right now.”

“So the kidnapping was because you were bored?” Dean asked, sneering.

“Dean…” Sam said, trying to placate.

“It was a necessity,” Laura said, meeting Dean’s eyes without a flinch. “Had to make sure he wasn’t here looking for us. Strike first before he could.”

“So you frigging poisoned him?”

“It wasn’t going to hurt him,” the blonde said. “It was an extract of rhododendron, nothing lethal. It would just make him sick.”

“We have a job to do.” Laura said. “I’m sure you understand.”

“We do,” Sam said. “Honestly, we do. We’re hunting the same thing as you, after all. Even if we don’t know what it is.”

They all looked at the melting corpse in the chair. Now he was closer, Dean could see that its wrists were locked in what looked like iron cuffs curling with intricate runes.

“It’s a goblin,” Laura said, getting to her feet, dusting off her jeans. She was now completely ignoring Dean’s gun still trained on her. “The last of a caravan we’ve been hunting for…well, let’s just say some time.”

“Caravan?” Dean started to lower his gun. “Goblins?”

Laura kicked at the thing’s legs. “Goblins work in groups called caravans. The one in town now we’ve tracked over two continents and an island. We’ve taken down dozens of these creepy bastards. It’s time for the boss fight.”

Sam peered at the foul body. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He looked up at Laura quickly. “Not that I remember, anyway.”

She didn’t answer him, instead moving towards the door. Dean took a step forwards and she stilled.

“I’m only going to get the stuff to get rid of this thing,” she said, one dark eyebrow raised mockingly. “You can send your brother out with me if you’re desperate.”

Dean looked at Sam who nodded and followed her out into the dark. They left the door open and fresh air curled into the trailer, chasing out the foul smell of rot.

“It seems we’ve got a lot to talk about.” The blonde, who had stood quietly to the side, held out her hand for Dean to shake. “I’m Lizzie. Beckett”

He looked hard at her, then finally lowered the pistol. “Dean. Winchester.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Dean.”

“Most of it bad, no doubt.” He flicked on the safety and tucked the gun into his waistband.

She shrugged. “Some, not most.”

Laura and Sam returned, the former carrying a large bag made of heavy duty plastic, the latter several bottles and a large canister of salt.

She gave a grin only a hunter would understand, animosity put aside in favour for the joy of a hunt gone well.

“Let’s melt this bitch,” she said, “then we can take it in turns to hop up onto the shrink’s couch and talk things out.”

Dean and Sam watched in fascination as the British hunters disposed of their latest kill. It was nothing like the fast and dirty – but effective – salt’n’burn they had been raised with.

Sam made several motions that suggested he was going to offer help, but Dean held him back with a hand on the arm. Sometimes it was better to let hunters do it their own way and not interfere. The truce was strained enough already without some insult being inadvertently given. Instead they stood and watched, left to hold the various bottles Sam had carried in.

The sisters first dragged the body out of the chair and folded it into the large plastic bag Laura had brought from the pickup. It was messy work. At one point the whole bottom half of one leg, from knee to toes, pulled loose of the rest. Stringy strands of mucus-like flesh dangled from both sections and Dean had a hard time keeping his dinner down. It made him feel a little better that everyone else looked as green as he felt, even Lizzie and Laura.

“They decompose quite fast,” Lizzie said as they dragged the body outside. The head bounced off each step, each blow pulping it even more. “It’s disgusting but it makes the next part so much quicker.”

With the body in the bag now laid on open ground, Laura came over and grabbed one of the bottles from Sam. “Bringing anything back yet?” she asked, sharp, shaking the bottle a few times, eyes not leaving Sam.

“I think we’ve established Sam has no memory of working with you,” Dean said, voice hard. “Which, from what I’ve seen of you so far, is a blessing.” Laura squared up to him, the lines of her face and her body tightening in the low light.

“You think you’re in any place to start with me, mate?”

Sam stepped between them and Lizzie pulled her sister back.

“We can deal with that later,” she said, taking the canister of salt from Dean more politely.

Laura snorted but backed off. Twisting the lid free she poured the contents of her bottle into the bag, keeping her head tilted away. Dean understood why when the acrid smoke rising from the bag hit him.

“Is there anything about these…goblins…that isn’t completely gross?” He moved downwind, not surprised when Sam followed him.

Lizzie laughed and it reminded Dean of the Impala’s engine on a good day: low and throaty, coming from the heart.

“Not really,” she said. “I suppose we’ve just got used to it.”

“You never get used to this,” Laura said, coughing a little as she held the bag open.

Lizzie poured about half the canister of salt into the bag, which was then sealed with several heavy-duty cable ties. “Give it ten minutes and that’ll be completely liquid,” she said, giving the foaming mass in the bag a tentative poke with the toe of her sturdy black boots.

“What did you put in there?” Sam asked, managing to ignore the suspicious look Laura gave him.

Lizzie stared at him for a moment too, before shaking her head and answering. “Iron sulphate, commonly found in plant food or lawn greener. Goblins are vulnerable to iron – the shackles were enchanted iron, my blade was iron, you get the point. It corrodes them. The salt is just for good measure.”

“Less time consuming than burning. Draws less attention too,” Laura added. “You just pour what’s left out of the bag and it soaks away. Probably leaves the grass extra green too.”

“You said you’d tracked them, the caravan, over two continents and an island?” Sam said. “How long have you been after them?”

The sisters exchanged a look Dean could tell was both a conversation and a reminder of a shared joke.

“Let’s finish this and then I suggest we go back to one of our motels,” Lizzie said. “It’s a long story.”

“Our motel would be better,” Laura said, pulling out a flick knife. “If you guys are telling the truth and he,” she gestured to towards Sam with the lethally sharp blade, “doesn’t know anything about this, however that may be, then we have a lot of research I imagine you’d like to see.”

“You don’t mind us stepping in on your hunt? Especially one you’ve been on for so long?” Dean knew he sounded incredulous but he’d never met a hunter who would welcome unknowns onto a job with no quarrel.

Lizzie laughed again. “We have a lot less ego than you American hunters. We’re used to working with large teams, sometimes international ones.” She turned to Laura who was shaking the bag. “Remember the Ripper case? That team was from what? England, France, Germany, and…Italy?”

Laura nodded. “I love Italian hunters,” she said, shaking the bag once more. “They’re impulsive, but fantastic at spotting patterns.”

Dean caught the impression of half a face and some floating fingers in the bag of purplish grey liquid.

“Ripper?” Sam frowned. “Do you mean Jack the Ripper? The London serial killer?”

“Eight hundred year old vampire serial killer,” Laura corrected, “but yeah. Caught up with him near Naples. Very picturesque place to burn such a monster.” She gave the bag a last poke. “Okay, reckon we’re done here.”

Everyone stood back while she slashed the bag open, top to bottom, releasing the liquid and more vomit-inducing smells. It soaked down into the ground among the grass and leaves and weeds, leaving nothing but a few white bone fragments that would be mistaken for a fox’s kill.

Balling up the bag and throwing it into the back of the pickup Lizzie turned to the brothers. “I assume you know the way back? And to our motel probably?”

Dean nodded. “We’ll see you back there.”

In the driver’s seat of the pickup Laura started in the engine, waiting for her sister to get in and put her belt on before reversing quickly out onto the road, spinning around and, with a grumble from the engine, driving back towards the main road.

Sam watched the red taillights float away down the darkened stream of the road, hands jammed into his pockets, frowning.

“Crap just got a whole lot more complicated,” Dean said from beside him, looking down at the white slivers in the damp grass.

“What did I do to them, Dean?” Sam asked. “Laura hates me. Doesn’t trust me as far as she could spit. What did I do?”

This time Dean didn’t respond with a gruff command to not think about it, to stop obsessing over it, because he knew something had happened between Sam and these hunters. Another consequence of the domino effect their decisions – demon deals and desperate measures – had caused.

There was no answer he could give and instead he turned away, beginning to walk back to the Impala, hearing his brother fall into step behind him. Nothing more was said on the drive back. So Sam’s words remained what they were: a plea for absolution from someone just as flawed.

They left the Impala in front of their room and walked to the Beckett sisters’ base of operations across the road.

Laura was leant against the wall outside the door, her dark clothes blending well with the poorly lit space. The tip of a cigarette bloomed volcanic in the dark, fading quickly to embers as she exhaled the smoke in plumes from her nostrils.

“Lizzie’s waiting for you,” she said, smoke turning her voice gravelly. “All ready to share and care.”

She blew another cloud and Sam felt his nausea rise again as the smoke reached his nostrils. Strange, cigarettes had never made him feel sick before. Dean would have one sometimes, often stretched out on the Impala’s hood, back to the warm windshield, blowing smoke at the stars. Sam didn’t like the habit, however infrequent it may be, and he had never personally tried one – he had too many bad memories of fire and the taste of smoke to try and hold it in his mouth – but they’d never made him feel like this.

Dean must have seen him falter, turning to give him a once over. “You okay?”

Sam nodded, swallowing the feeling. “I guess I just haven’t eaten in a while.”

“We’ll get something after,” Dean said, knocking once before letting himself in.

It was a difficult feat to achieve, but both Winchester’s were impressed at what greeted them inside.

A laptop and compact printer took up most of the small table but the rest of it was covered in thick files held in brown binders. Everything that wouldn’t fit in those, or wasn’t immediately necessary, was stuck over the green and brown striped wallpaper, on the divider made out of little versions of Big Ben, scattered on the beds among clothes and weapons. The research and effort that had gone into the chaos was astounding.

“Looks like the maid forgot to come this morning,” Dean said, trying to sound off-hand.

Lizzie just gave him a look, one eyebrow raised, unimpressed.

Sam was looking at some of the printouts on the walls, sometimes reading a paragraph or two but mostly flitting across the wealth of information. He paused and looked over his shoulder at Lizzie. “This must be years of work here,” he said, respect curling through his words. “How long have you been on this case?”

“Since 1859,” Laura said, coming in through the door.

“Excuse me?” Dean said, not sure if he had heard right.

“We started the case in 1859-” Lizzie started but Laura gave her a pointed look and she paused, looking apologetic. “Before we say anymore we need to check you’re…you. Human.”

“Fair enough,” Dean said, inclining his head and rolling up one sleeve. “As long as you do too.”

“Fair,” Laura said. She was stood by the far bed with an open duffel bag in front of her. “Come on over and we’ll do it in one.”

They crossed over to her and stood waiting. “First test clear,” Lizzie said. She kicked aside the cheap rug to reveal what looked like a portable devil’s trap stuck to the floor.

Each hunter passed the tests, holding knives of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, having their eyes checked for reflective flares, gums checked for retracted fangs, all rounded off with a shot of holy water.

“Always fun making new friends,” Laura said, putting away the flask etched with an ornate crucifix.

Sam noticed she no longer looked at him with open hostility, knowing he wasn’t some creature, but distrust still lingered behind her eyes.

“I’ve got rum or whisky,” Lizzie offered, holding up two half empty bottles.

“Whisky,” Dean said. “Always.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” Lizzie said, stretching to reach the two more glasses from off the shelf. It pulled her shirt up over the small of her back, leaving an expanse of her skin uncovered except for several red, puckered scars raking down her spine and down below the waistband of her jeans.

“Bet there’s a story behind that,” Dean said, pulling out on of the chairs and settling down. Sam knew his gun was still within easy reach though.

“My amazing backside or the scars?” Lizzie asked over her shoulder, a wide grin on her face.

Dean didn’t skip a beat. “Both.”

Sam rolled his eyes.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Lizzie said, still smiling as she gave him a half full glass, “you’re not my type.” She poured herself a generous measure. “But don’t feel too bad…nobody is. And the story of the scars is for another time.”

“Like the 1850s?” Sam asked. He was sat at the end of the other bed, parallel to Laura, looking at the swirling amber in the water-stained glass.

“I got them after that little debacle,” Lizzie said, “but I can take a hint, Sam. However…this story comes with one condition.” She looked from Sam to Dean and back again. “We tell you this, let you onto our hunt, then you have to tell us why the Sam Winchester I met tonight is a completely different person to the one I worked with last time.”

Dean looked back at Sam, his face saying they would walk away from this – the hunt, the new contacts, everything – if Sam didn’t want to share, if he wanted to keep the events of the last however many months curled up and hidden just between them. But Sam nodded, squaring up to it.

“Fair deal,” he said. “You first.”

 “We’ve tackled goblins before,” Laura said, talking to them both but mostly looking at Sam. “Only one or two at a time though. You rarely see a whole caravan now…they’ve split up, quietened down. Then we heard about this one working just outside of London back in ‘09. Lots of people were getting sick but it got lost by most hunters under all the panic of a swine flu epidemic going on.”

“So we trot off down there, thinking the job will take a week, ten days maximum,” Lizzie said. “We’re expecting some little pusher like the one we took out tonight. Low grade. Melt it and go home.”

“But what we didn’t know is that higher grade goblins can create…portals,” Laura said, “can rip a hole in time and space like the bloody Tardis and hop off.”

“You’re joking,” Dean said, sitting forward, interested. “I’ve never heard of anything that can do that. Much less some reject from the Leprechaun movies.”

“Goblins are sort of like the ugly cousins of demons, without the ties to Hell or the ability to possess.” Laura got up and dug a book out from a pile on the kitchen counter, flicking to a marked page and reading. “Goblins are more similar to faye or imps than to any demonic entity, except that, like demons, a select number are able to manipulate the metaphysical fabric of the universe, including time and space.” She shut the book. “Devil’s traps don’t work on them, although we’re working on a modified version. Salt rings burn but they can push through it, and consecrated iron works a real treat.”

“Anyway,” Lizzie said, pulling back to topic, “we try to take this thing out. Middle of the night in a suburb of London and we corner it. I’ve got an axe, Laura’s got a knife. Narrow alley with no way for it to get around us.”

“Next thing we know, it starts sparking like it stuck a fork into the plug socket. Then we’re face down in a field and it’s no longer the era of indoor plumbing.” Laura tossed back the rest of her whisky and poured another. She offered the bottle to Dean. “Another?”

He shook his head. “Still working on this one.”

“How long were you there for?” Sam asked. His whisky was sat on the floor, untouched.

“Nearly two years,” Lizzie said, quieting, her eyes clouding. “Two very long years.”

They all sat in silence, each hunter recalling time spent removed from loved ones and the familiar world.

“So how’d you get back?” Dean asked, not wanting to think anymore.

“Same way we arrived,” Laura said, also eager to move away from memories, “but the second time it was mostly on purpose. We managed to corner it in Germany after tracking it for weeks. Then when it started to jump, we threw some nice barbed iron hooks into it to make sure we came along for the ride.”

Sam frowned and Dean could practically hear the cogs in his big brain start to whir. “But…how did you manage living back then? No connections, no lore, no resources. I’m amazed you didn’t end up in an asylum – two mysterious women dressed like men and carrying weapons, talking about mythical creatures.”

The sisters shared another of those communicative looks.

“We met up with some family,” Lizzie eventually said. “Our family have been hunters for generations. Lots of families in Britain have. With a country as old and multi-cultural as that you end up with a lot of trouble in not a lot of space.”

“It’s a different culture,” Laura added. “Six main families, including ours, are part of an unofficial society that’s practically the supernatural MI6. Hell, we even sent out ambassadors and resources to set one up over here but that disappeared in the 50s. Some demon took every single one of them out.”

“Damn,” Dean said, sitting back. “Trust you guys to make a job this awesome all official and regulated and stuff.”

“At least we don’t have outstanding warrants for our arrest,” Laura said. Her voice was cool but her eyes held mischief.

“You kidding?” Dean said, grinning. “That’s one of the best bits. Roaring down the highway, the law on your tail, just a rebel with a cause.”

“But someone must have helped you get to your family,” Sam cut in. “Someone must have given you clothes and food and directions.” He sat up straighter. “Like a young poet on a morning walk. Someone who believed in the unexplainable.”

“The hell are you talking about, Sam?” Dean gave him an odd look. “What’s a poet got to do with anything?”

“Backwards up the mossy glen turned and trooped the goblin men, with their shrill repeated cry, ‘come buy, come buy’.” Sam looked from Laura to Lizzie. “I always thought that poem sounded like a hunt.”

“Not the copy that got printed,” Laura said, snorting. “Talk about incestuous undertones. That girl had issues.”

“Seems we’re not the only ones misrepresented in literature, Dean,” Sam said, grinning at his brother’s confused face. “It’s a poem called ‘Goblin Market’, written by a young woman – Christina Rossetti – in the 1850s.”

“She ended up tailing us on the hunt,” Lizzie said. “We told her not to tell anyone what she saw but,” she shrugged, “writers, you know.”

Dean looked from one face to the other, bemused. “I have no idea what you’re all talking about,” he said. “Trust it to be you, Sam, to be the one who knows about poetry.” He drained his glass and pulled a face. “This stuff tastes weird. Almost like it’s…off or something.”

“Whisky can’t go ‘off’,” Laura said, drinking hers. “It tastes fine.”

Sam picked up his glass and took a sip. “He’s right,” he said. “Tastes like…overripe fruit or something.”

Dean saw Lizzie’s eyes snap up to look at Sam.

“Has anything else tasted like that?” she asked. “Overripe? Ashy?”

Her voice was different, Dean noticed; sharper, more focused.

“Everything, actually,” Sam said, “but we were in a sewer for hours a few weeks ago. We’re probably just coming down with something.”

“First time for me,” Dean said, studying the sisters’ faces. “Why?”

“Have either of you shared food at all?” Laura got to her feet and began digging through the duffle. Her voice had changed too.

Dean also stood; he didn’t like where this was going. “Some. Sweets, fries, and we were both drinking the same stuff.”

“Like what?” Lizzie asked.

“Why do you need to know?” Dean said, his voice a bark. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“We both drank some teas Dean found,” Sam said, some kind of realisation dawning. “They were herbal, supposed to help headaches and I’d been having bad ones for the last few days…”

“Where did you get them?” Laura asked. She had what looked like first aid box in front of her but it was made of iron, inlaid with silver runes.

“A stall on Main Street,” Dean said. “It was this…health food crap, but-”

“That’s how they’ve been doing it,” Laura said to Lizzie, cutting him off. “They must have moved on when they knew we were in town. It’s why there have been no new cases. Goddamn it!”

“What the hell is it!” Dean roared. “What are you not saying!”

“The fruit,” Sam said quietly. He looked very pale. “It’s in the poem, Dean.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about some goddamn poem,” Dean said, stepping up to Lizzie. “Now you tell me what has happened to my brother and me or I swear…” He couldn’t follow through on his threat as his knees folded beneath him and he dropped, curling around the exploding pain in his stomach.

“The holy water must have accelerated it,” Lizzie said, kneeling beside him and pressing a cool hand to his forehead. “Sam, you may want to get on the floor too before you fall. Carrying you to that van was hard enough and you were unconscious. I don’t want to have to try and carry your flailing arse anywhere tonight.”

“The sweets and tea you had,” Laura said, rifling through the box, “were made with goblin fruit. Like Sam said, it’s in the poem, but back then they used actual fruit. I guess now they had to find another way to get it to people.” She pulled out a small cloth bag. “So they used sweets and herbal teas.”

“The sweet bags…” Sam said “They were at one of the victims’ houses.”

“The bags with the gold ribbons?” Lizzie asked, pulling Dean across the floor to lie beside the beds. “They were at every house. We checked the trash.”

“Can you cure us?” Dean asked, pushing himself up to lean his back against the wall. “Do you know how to cure us?”

“You had to cure Laura,” Sam said, “in the poem.” He looked up at Lizzie. “You know how to do it for us?”

Lizzie sighed and laid a hand on Sam’s. His skin already felt fevered…or maybe her hands were just cold.

“I can,” she said, “but it’s not going to be easy. The effects of the cure are like…possession crossed with going cold turkey. I’ll probably have to tie you both down. And, depending on how much you each had, I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

“Do it,” Dean said. His hands were starting to shake and this gnawing, painful urge for…something was clawing at his stomach. He was starting to lose control. “Help us and we’ll owe you.”

Lizzie looked across at him, saw the fever sparkle in his green eyes. “You don’t have to bargain with me,” she said. “No one should have to die like this.”

“I don’t think we need to wait for the withdrawal period,” Laura said, pouring a pale brown power into two of the glasses and handing them to Lizzie.

Lizzie took them to kitchen, mixing it with water. It fizzed like antacids, changing to a light purple. “The holy water speeded up the process, thankfully, otherwise we’d have to wait twelve or more hours for the cravings to start. As if is, I imagine you’d do anything for some of the fruit right now.”

“Please, don’t mention them,” Sam choked out, tendons in his neck pulled taut. “And I think you need to handcuff me to something. Right now.” He closed his hands into tight fists. “From experience I know I don’t do this kind of thing well.”

Laura found the cuffs from earlier and came to crouch by Sam, snapping one end onto his wrist, the other around the leg of the bolted-down bed.

“Drink,” Lizzie said, handing both brothers a glass. “It’s the goblin fruit. It’ll help.”

“Why give us more of it?” Dean asked. He felt restless now as well as the cravings; muscles in his legs and arms were starting to spasm from keeping still.

“It’s like anti-venom after a certain amount of time,” Lizzie said, “but I’m afraid it’s going to taste a lot worse this time around.”

Dean peered at the bubbling purple liquid in the glass, then over to Sam on the other side of the bed. There was panic in Sam’s eyes; Dean didn’t want to know what memories this was bringing back.

“Alright,” he said, raising the glass, “here we go.”

Sam couldn’t remember where he was. Hadn’t been able to for some time.

How much time?

He didn’t know.

Where was he?

It was too hot and it felt like ants were scurrying in dizzy circles around and around under his skin, driving the nerves endings insane but he couldn’t get them out and so they just kept running, and he was too hot and wanted to run…somewhere.

How long had it been?

He didn’t know.

There was something cold clamped around his wrist digging in, biting.

It hurt.

It was on both wrists now and he wanted to pull his arms closed but he couldn’t. He was held open and vulnerable.

Where was he?

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that the floor was rough and he couldn’t lie down. The ants were still under his skin and his hands were freezing and he wanted to protect himself but couldn’t and he didn’t like it.

How many times was it now that he’d been tied open like this?

Too many hunts to count.

And then in the panic room, the dark, cold, room where he’d been alone, hurting like this but worse because he’d done something wrong but he didn’t know it was wrong or maybe he did but didn’t want to think about it.

This was kind of the same, wasn’t it?

He was hurting because of the goblin fruit, because he’d eaten too much and it was poisoning him.

Demon blood.

Goblin fruit.

Produce of unholy things and he just kept on swallowing it down.

Was that why he’d eaten and drunk more of the goblin fruit than Dean?

Because he had a taste for filth?

Because evil sat on comfortably on his palette?

His face was doused in shocking cold and he twisted away, whimpering and kicking out. He hit something and the cold stopped but then the ants came back. The cold had made them leave. He wanted the cold back now but he’d kicked it away. Always kicking away the things that would help him.

Like Dean.

But he didn’t want to kick Dean away. It sometimes just happened. Even when he didn’t mean it.

Though sometimes he did mean it.

Where was Dean?

He didn’t know where Dean was.

Had Dean tied him like this?

Like in the panic room.

Had it happened again?

Had he fallen again?

Had he drunk again?

No, this wasn’t demon blood.

It was goblin fruit.

He couldn’t feel his legs.

Where was Dean?

How long had it been?

Where was he?

Dean watched Sam twist and squirm, eyes clenched shut like a child who didn’t want to see the monsters under the bed. They’d had to handcuff both of his hands when he’d tried to break free, hissing and spitting, eyes wide and red-veined. He’d settled since then, head rolling from side to side as he muttered, curled against the wall as best he could.

Lizzie came over and offered Dean some water but he shook his head. He didn’t think he could keep anything in his stomach for some time yet. The goblin fruit had tasted like wormwood shaken up with something scraped from the bottom of a particularly foul dumpster the second time around, as Lizzie had warned. He had no idea how he or Sam had managed to swallow it all without throwing up.

“It’s worse for him than you,” Lizzie said, leaning on the counter beside him.

Dean turned his head to look at her, unable to move much else. They’d moved Dean to the kitchen, at his request tying him into one of the chairs even though the symptoms with him were mild, milder than any Lizzie said she’d ever seen. No violence, no delirium, no dropping into unconsciousness.

“He had more of it than I did,” Dean said. He didn’t like watching Sam suffer like this, his brother’s cries and exhausted rasps of breath reminding him too much of the panic room, of Sam crashing off the walls, screaming at terrors and tortures only he could see.

“I’m sure he can take it,” Lizzie said. “From what I’ve seen of Sam, he’s impossible to break.”

“The version you knew, maybe,” Dean said, watching every twitch and shudder and flicker of Sam’s eyelids, waiting for the one that was too much, waiting for the wall to break and hell to come pouring out. “This Sammy…not so much. He’s tough, no doubt about it, and the crap the kid’s been through in the past few years…I’m amazed he’s still standing. I’m amazed either of us are. But…he’s got a weak spot…because of something I did to protect him, to save him but it left him kind of fragile. Like a grenade with the pin half out.”

Laura leant over the bed and laid a wet washcloth over Sam’s sweating face, keeping clear of his flailing legs this time. “What version did we know, exactly?” she asked. “Possessed? Psychotic? Because this is not the hunter who nearly got me and my sister killed.”

“Laura,” Lizzie said, shooting her a sharp look. “Are you seriously going to bad mouth Sam to his brother now? Way to give context to the scenario?”

“The Sam you were rolling with, he-“ Dean broke off as a spasm rolled down his back, locking his joints as it moved down him, trailing off at his toes and leaving him panting in pain. Another one immediately followed, tendons snapping tight like he’d been electrocuted.

“Shit.” Lizzie hurried to Dean and checking his pulse – rapid and uneven – before scrabbling at his belt.

The second wave ended and before the third could manifest he panted out, “I thought I wasn’t your type?”

She flashed him a smile but it was tense. “You’re not, you jackass, but you’ll need something to bite down on or you’ll take your tongue off. I don’t know how bad yours are going to get.” She folded the leather and placed it between his teeth, spotting pre-existing teeth marks in the strap. “Looks like this isn’t your belt’s first rodeo either.” She glanced over to Sam, seeing him starting to get more restless. “Laura, get Sam’s belt. If the convulsions are starting then we’re nearing the end.”

Dean spat out the belt. “That’s good, right?”

Lizzie scowled at him and put it back between his teeth. “The fact we’re nearly done? Yes. What’s going to happen next, especially for Sam? Not so much.”

By the beds Laura yelped in pain as Sam kicked her square in the stomach, sending her crashing backwards into the cheap chest of drawers. Her head struck the edge hard and she dropped to the floor, out cold.

“Laura!” Lizzie sprung forwards to cradle her sister. Her fingers came away bloody from Laura’s scalp.

Sam was starting to thrash, body bucking and twisting. Despite weighing at most only half of what Sam did, Lizzie left her sister and unclipped one of the straps from the duffle, wading in to try and get it between his teeth.

Dean watched all of this between convulsions, the scene blurring with the pain, like a television with bad reception. He saw Lizzie try once and miss as Sam whipped his head to the other side, saw her dodge another wild kick. The pain stopped randomly and he tipped his head back, air tearing in and out of his nose.

“Dean?”

Sam sounded like his throat was shredded, the single syllable reaching out across the room like it had since Sam knew how to make the sound of his brother’s name.

Dean looked over and Sam was completely still, eyes wide. Too wide. Staring at things only he could see. Dean didn’t have to stretch his imagination to know the probable content.

Although he wasn’t close, he was sure Sam’s pupils would have swallowed the hazel green ring of iris, the white striped with red blood vessels. He spat out the belt and leaned forwards as much as the ropes would let him.

“I’m here, Sammy. Right here. Don’t you worry, buddy, it’s nearly done. We’re nearly done. Just hang on.”

Sam stared across at him, tipping his head to look past Lizzie until she moved out of the way. It was such a lost look and Dean felt his heart lurch in his chest.

Screw the white picket fence. Screw a happy, healthy life. Screw normalcy. The only thing he needed, as much as the air in his lungs and the Winchester blood in his veins, was for Sam to look at him like that. To look at Dean like he was the most important thing in the world, the thing that would keep him safe from anything that came after him, even if it wasn’t true. This was Sam, not that cold empty shell who had said he didn’t care about Dean or anyone and had tried to kill Bobby to keep his meat-suit empty. This was Dean’s life, not that rose-tinted dream he had floated through for a year.

“I can hear him, Dean.” Sam dropped his head back against the wall, looking so completely drained of hope and strength Dean began yanking on the ropes around his wrists and ankles to get to him.

“Who can you hear, Sam?” It was Lizzie who asked and Dean tensed. She had just stepped into the mess of their lives up to her neck without even meaning to.

“Lucifer,” Sam slurred, eyes rolling up, the lids sliding down. “He’s going to kill Dean again. He’ll kill you too, even though I don’t know you.” Dull eyes opened for a beat. “Sorry.” He drooped back against the wall again, chin resting on his chest.

Lizzie gave Dean a wide-eyed look of confusion.

“Long story,” Dean said, not letting himself say more or think about the implications of ‘again’.

The fact Lucifer would have used it as a torture was no surprise – Dean knew, painfully and intimately, how those evil dicks would use visions of family against you – but he was more freaking terrified by the fact Sam was remembering it. That meant the wall was fracturing. They might only be minutes away from full reactor melt-down. “Burning cold,” Sam said in a mutter.

“Burning cold and freezing hot. Like ants in my skin. Red hot needles…”

Lizzie laid two slim fingers on Sam’s throat to check his pulse and the effect was explosive. His eyes shot open and he wrenched at the restraints harder than ever before, even lunging forwards to try and bite Lizzie’s hand. “Can’t touch me, don’t touch me,” he snarled. “Can’t break won’t break, can’t make me bend, can’t make me bow…”

She stumbled backwards, rolling under the bed to avoid Sam’s kicks.

“Sam!” Dean pulled at the ropes. He saw froth start to fly from the corners of Sam’s mouth, flecked with red as teeth tore into lips. “Lizzie, please! Let me out!”

The strongest spasm yet gripped him, a full body cramp. Despite trying to keep his pain locked behind his teeth a whimper snuck out, followed by one short cry of agony.

Dean tried to catch his breath, watching as Sam tore himself apart. Words that made no sense tumbled from the blood-flecked lips, the foam staining darker.

“Lizzie!” he roared. “Let me get to him!”

“No, I won’t,” she snapped back, scrabbled through the duffle. “We’re in the most dangerous part, Dean. I let you out and you could turn psycho on me before you know you want to.”

Sam vomited up more foam. It was dark purple and thicker than before.

“He’s dying!” Dean felt the skin of his wrists tear as he pulled but he didn’t stop trying. “You cut me loose or I swear to God-”

Lizzie didn’t even look up from whatever she was doing by the duffel. “And that anger is the reason I am not letting you go.” She looked up. “Laura has already been hurt so I’m down half my team. I’m not adding that risk of you being free, Dean, because I can’t help Sam if you’re throttling me.”

Dean heard the click of a magazine being snapped into place and even through the anger he went cold inside. “What’re you doing?”

Lizzie stepped around the end of the bed, eyes lingering on her unconscious sister at her feet. Then she turned to Sam, raised her arm and fired one shot from the small gun in her hand.

“No!” Dean lurched forwards and his chair unbalanced, falling sideways and pulling him down with it. “Sammy!”

From the floor, looking under the bed, he saw Sam go still. The rattling of the cuffs on the bedframe ceased. The choking sounds stopped. There was a vacuum of sound and Dean felt it like a physical touch.

“Dean!” Lizzie dropped the gun and rushed to him, hauling the chair upright again. “Dean, I didn’t hurt him.”

Able to see all of Sam again, he scanned him frantically for a wound, only seeing a small dart stuck in his neck. “What did you do?”

Lizzie crouched to match Dean’s height and caught his eyes. “Sam’s further along in the purge than you are, probably because of the higher saturation of the fruit already in him. It’s pushing his body further, harder, quicker.”

She held up the gun, a lightweight, matte-black…dart gun. “I think he needed a higher dose of the antidote,” she said, “so I filled one of the darts with another dose.” She looked back to Sam’s still form. “It was a risk but he was too close to dying for me to not take it.”

On the floor, Laura moaned and stirred, trying to push herself up.

By the wall Sam twitched and groaned, eyes opening and tracking across the room. “Dean?”

For the first time, he sounded lucid and Dean relaxed.

“Right here, Sam,” he said. “I’m right here.”

Sam didn’t reply, eyes slipping shut again, chest still rising and falling too quickly.

“You gonna let me out now?” Dean asked Lizzie. “It over?”

Lizzie checked her sister was steady before crossing to Dean, crouching to peer intently at his eyes. She then got the bottle of whisky off the table and put it to his lips. “Drink,” she said. “See if it still tastes bad.”

The bottle tilted and Dean took a mouthful, feeling the spice and smoke of it flow across his tongue.

It tasted like memory, of old roadhouses and hurried gulps to dull the pain of rough stiches pulling at his flesh, of hedonistic evenings spent with a spinning wheel of bright faces and of empty rooms shrouded in despair. It tasted of quiet evenings spent propped up on the windshield of the Impala, he and his dad and then he and Sam passing a bottle back and forth. It tasted like his life.

“Tastes fine,” he said, looking Lizzie square in the eyes. “Now can I get to my brother?”

“Absolutely,” Lizzie said, moving behind him and pulling at the knots.

The ropes fell from Dean’s wrists and he bent to do the same to his ankles, blinking back the blast of light-headedness that accompanied the movement.

Lizzie crossed to Sam, doing the same test and waiting for a slurred, “Tastes fine”, before tenderly unfastening the cuffs from his bloody wrists. She lay a gentle hand on Sam’s cheek, wiping at a stray ribbon of sweat. “You’re done, Sam. It’s over.”

She looked back at Dean and he saw the complete understanding in her face. She knew what it was like to have watched your sibling, your charge, your world, go through that.

“Dean’s got you,” she said. “You’re okay.”

Sam came back to the feel of his wrist being wrapped in soft gauze. Blinking slowly, but not yet moving, he watched Dean complete one and move onto the other.

“You okay?” Dean asked without looking up, smearing the raw skin with some kind of antibacterial cream.

It was cool, giving a pleasant numb prickling and Sam revelled in it. He tried to shift in his sprawled place by the wall but pain swooped in to stab at him. His shoulders felt like he’d been trying his level best to dislocate them simultaneously; his head throbbed like the strobe lights in a club. His sluggish gaze drifted to where Laura was sitting at the end of one of the beds, an icepack pressed to the back of her head. Anything that had happened in the…however many hours it had been, was little more than a sense of overhanging disorientation.

“Sam?”

Dean had stopped and was looking intently at him now. Behind his brother’s carefully guarded eyes Sam could see a thousand milling fears, dark things crawling and swarming.

“I’m okay,” he said, watching as Dean began to wrap the wrist again with swift proficiency. “Feel like I went thirteen rounds with a meat grinder, but I’m good. You?”

Dean didn’t look up to answer. “I’m fine.”

Sam saw raw red peeking out from under the cuffs of Dean’s jacket – rope burn, probably – but didn’t say anything. Instead he looked back up at the younger Beckett sister. “How about you, Laura?”

She looked over to him and, briefly, Sam thought she was going to ignore him or cuss him out, but she did neither, only shrugging and repositioning the ice pack. “You kick like a mule,” she said.

A vague remembrance of lashing out and hitting something, hard, bubbled up and Sam began to apologise, but Laura cut him off with a wave.

“Forget it,” she said. “I’ve been there. I know how it is. It’s fine.”

The door rattled open and Lizzie struggled in, bringing in the smell of warm food and crisp night air with her.

“Found an all-night diner,” she said, dropping the bags onto the table and crossing straight to her sister. The ice pack was moved aside and Lizzie gently parted the twisting, dark hair to check the wound underneath.

“Ah, diner food at four in the morning,” Dean said. “My personal favourite.”

Sam, assured the room wasn’t going to spin, tapped his brother’s leg. “Help me up, man.”

Dean stood, then grasped above the bandages and pulled his brother upright, placing a bracing hand on his shoulder as Sam wobbled. “You good?”

Sam blinked a few times. The room was only undulating, not spinning – good enough. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m good. Hungry, actually. For the first time in…days.”

“Start slow,” Lizzie said in warning. “The poison is out but your stomach might still be a bit reactionary.”

Laura sniggered, coming over to the table and pulling out boxes of steaming food. “First time I came off it, I woke up starving and proceeded to stuff myself with everything I could find in the kitchen.”

“Which all came back up about ten minutes later,” Lizzie said, nose curling in remembered distaste, “and, as I spent good money on this, I suggest you take it slower.”

Lizzie brought plates and cutlery from the kitchen, the plates a dull green, spider webbed with hairline cracks, the rims chipped. None of the cutlery matched and several tines on the forks were bent out of shape but none of them cared. They all set into the food, grabbing sandwiches dripping in gravy and grease, boxes of mashed potatoes doused in butter, stabbing at sausages and bacon, tearing at a rack of sticky ribs. Dean beamed like a child when he found the bag consisting solely of pie.

There was no talk for some time, only the sound of steady chewing.

“So,” Dean said, after a while, wiping his mouth free of gravy, “you guys were brought back by a goblin jumping through time and space?”

Laura paused in shovelling down mashed potatoes studded with sausage. “A very specific goblin,” she said. “We didn’t get to that part before…” she made a gesture with her fork that was supposed to encompass several hours of intense, supernatural withdrawal, “that.”

“We’ll give you the bones of the case now, start on it properly tomorrow,” Lizzie said, leaving her plate and pulling a large file from the bottom of a stack by the table. “So, most goblins get their kicks just poisoning people. They get the people hooked, then barter fruit for whatever they want. Usually gold, but it could be anything that catches their eye."

“One of the victims had a gold watch missing,” Sam said. “His daughter couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“Alice Keene?” Lizzie asked. “The nervous little blonde?”

Sam nodded, licking sauce off his fingers. “She said it was probably in a pawn shop."

“Maybe, but probably the goblins,” Laura said. “So, yeah, mostly interested in gold, but there is one goblin we’ve come across who’s a little more ambitious.”

“He got a name?” Dean asked, wiping off bacon grease from around his mouth. “Anything to track him in the lore?”

“Ever heard of a Rumpelstiltskin?” Lizzie asked, flicking a look up through her lashes, a pleased smile curling as she took in the brothers’ surprise.

“You’re hunting Rumpelstiltskin?” Sam said, saying it slowly as if to test the words. “As in the guy who spins straw into gold? Makes deals for first born children?”

“The very same. He’s the one who pulls the caravans together,” Laura said. “He’s the top of the ladder.”

“Always the goddamn first born,” Dean muttered. “Damn fairies and goblins and leprechauns. Screw ‘em.”

“And his deals are for higher stakes than a gold watch,” Lizzie added. “Like first born children, but also putting people under thrall and screwing with their lives.”

“Wait,” Dean said, the unfamiliar term jumping out at him. “Thrall?”

“It’s the closest they have to possession,” Laura said, using her fork to gesture. “If he has some physical part of you, he can control your actions, force you to do stuff.” She looked at Sam. “Not going to lie, but I thought you were under thrall when you worked with us.”

Sam stopped chewing. The rattle of the greying air conditioning unit filled the room. Lizzie shifted in her chair, making the cheap wooden frame squeak. Dean stopped eating, noting the location of every weapon in the room he could see. The steam from the food twisted towards the door, as if trying to escape the situation.

“You said you would tell us,” Laura said, unyielding, hand tightening around the cracked plastic handle of her fork. “It was a deal.”

Sam was staring at his plate, shoulders concave.

Dean watched the sisters, searching for the body language warning of imminent aggression.

“Unless you’re going to break this agreement too?” When Sam still said nothing Laura slammed her plate down and surged to her feet.

Dean was immediately there, blocking Sam, but then there was a hunting knife pointed at his throat and gunmetal eyes aimed at him.

“I’ve got no issue with you yet,” she said, voice low with warning, “but your brother, no matter how he acts now, screwed me and my sister over. Left us both for dead. I’m not telling either of you a word more about this job until he holds up his end of our deal.”

“I don’t care how many generations of your hoity toity family have hunted,” Dean growled, “or how slick and smart your methods are. You take another step towards my brother and you’ll be on the ground.” He took a step into her space, closer to the knife, eyes not wavering from hers. “And you’ll stay down.”

“Sorry, Dean,” Lizzie said.

He looked across to see a pistol levelled at him too.

“A deal is a deal,” she said. “And no one threatens my sister without me getting into it.” Her shoulder hitched into a shrug. “You know how it is.”

“Dean.” Sam spoke quietly but Dean heard him. “Dean, it’s fine. Back off. It’s fine.”

Dean took stock of each of the Becketts, of the gun and the knife, then stepped back.

Laura twirled the knife and slid it back into its sheath. “See? No issue.”

“Yeah,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “not yet.”

She gave a slight incline of her head, a shrug, and sat back down, attention shifting to Sam who had set his plate aside.

He sat with his elbows resting on his spread knees, hands clasped between them and Dean knew he was trying to find the words.

“The short version?” Sam said, looking straight at Laura as he did, letting her see the honesty in his eyes. “When I was working with you…I had no soul.”

“Metaphorically?” Lizzie asked, slowly. “Or do you mean literally?”

“Literally,” Dean said, voice sharp. “And he lost it saving the frigging world.”

“Dean,” Sam cut in, mouthing pulling at the corners with distress. “Let me.”

“You can lose your soul?” Laura sounded sceptical. “And just keep walking around?”

“Seems so,” Sam replied. “We’d never come across it before but that’s what happened. It made me…cold, with no empathy, or…human feeling. I was a good hunter but…I didn’t value human life. And the reason we should do this job,” he looked across to Dean, “is to save people, by hunting the things they don’t know about.”

“But, without your soul,” Lizzie said, “you were getting the job done by any means necessary.”

Sam nodded. “And I am so, so sorry for whatever I did to both of you. For whatever danger I put you in or situation I abandoned you in…I’m sorry.”

Laura was silent, then turned to Lizzie. “It’s why the poison didn’t affect him before,” she said, realisation in her words. “It’s why he could break free.”

“From what?” Sam asked. “Break free from what?”

Lizzie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Neither does how you lost your soul. Some things aren’t meant to be shared with everyone.”

“So, that’s it?” Dean asked, one eyebrow spiking up. “You’re just going to take that as your answer and forget all about it?”

“Is there any reason we shouldn’t?” Lizzie asked coolly. “I think every person here knows what it’s like to be without autonomy, to not be in control. Since I doubt Sam gave up his soul willingly or even knowingly, then it’s just the same as a possession or being under thrall. Things like that you forgive freely. Don’t you?”

Dean broke away from the intense blue of her gaze and thought. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you do.”

Laura stood and stepped towards Sam but this time she presented her hand and not her knife. Sam looked up at her, startled, then took it, his hand dwarfing hers. They shook solemnly.

“Well, it’s good to meet the real version of you, Sam,” Laura said. “I got to say, I prefer you like this – less of a Hannibal vibe.”

So do I, Dean thought, watching the smile warm Sam’s face, the weight lift from his eyes for now. So do I.

Sam and Dean left soon after, taking half of the leftovers with them. A strange uncomfortable feeling marked the end of the evening, both sets of siblings happy to be separated for a while. As it often is when an intense scenario forces the speed of intimacy, once it’s all over, the atmosphere becomes tense and awkward.

“What do you think of them?” Sam asked into the dark a few minutes after they had both fallen into bed, only bothering to strip down to t-shirts and boxers.

“I think they’re dangerous in the best way,” Dean said, laying on his belly with one arm propped under the thin motel pillow, his fingers checking for the handle of the knife hidden there. “They’re smart, well-trained, and know how to play well with others. Most of the time, anyway.”

“But they’re an unknown factor,” Sam finished. “We’ve got no point of reference for them. No hunters who might have heard of them.”

“Maybe not,” Dean said. “But if they worked with you, they might have worked with some other people. I’ll put out feelers tomorrow, see what bites.”

“If I screwed them over, I doubt they went running straight to another alliance,” Sam pointed out. “But, hey, maybe they did. They must have at least made some contacts to be getting ammunition and weapons.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, starting to drift towards sleep, the traumas of the day finally taking their toll. “Not like they’re getting it from home. The shipping would bankrupt them…”

He trailed off into a snore and Sam grinned, although it didn’t last long. He hurt all over, and though there was warm, good food in his belly, there was still a sourness in his throat.

It had been one of those neutral days, when the bad and good cancelled each other out like a math problem and he was left at zero. Sam twisted onto his side, the sheets sliding to his waist, and found the vague silhouette of Dean’s face in the dark. He listened to his brother’s breathing. It was the regular, even sound that spoke of exhausted sleep but not the deep draughts of complete security.

Sam wished he could fall into even that exhausted state but his brain kept fizzing. He briefly considered looking through the duffels for a sleeping pill, the ones they saved for when they were badly hurt and needed to escape into a deep, chemical sleep, but he decided against it. Nothing hurt too badly and Dean would only take it as being indicative of something worse than post-stress insomnia.

Sam rolled onto his back, the mattress groaning similarly to his aching muscles. Staring into the dark, knowing dawn would be crawling out to start a new day in not too many hours, he ran through every element of the case he could remember. Fruit. Poison. Poetry. Gold. Thrall. Goblins. Time travel. England. Consecrated iron. Rumpelstiltskin. Withdrawal.

He twisted and flipped them all like the squares of a rubix cube until he finally drifted into sleep.

Only a few miles away, in an empty house in the suburbs, Alice Keene was sat in the blank, brown living room of her father’s house, driven to early morning revision by insomnia. A cup of steaming herbal tea sat on the low table beside her, rebelliously devoid of a mat.

She was startled from her reading by a knock at the front door. Laying down her Religious History textbook she wandered through into the hall, wondering if her Aunt Colleen, who was driving down from Vancouver to stay with her, had forgotten about the key under the bottom step. Glancing at the generic, plastic hall clock she saw it was three a.m. and wondered how long her aunt had been driving to arrive at such a time.

The porch light hadn’t come on and Alice hoped the bulb hadn’t blown. Peering through the peephole showed very little except a dark figure waiting expectantly and was that…pumpkin pie she could smell? Like the one her mother used to make?

She sniffed again and could only smell warm, damp forest, and she wondered if she’d left a window open somewhere. There was another knock and, feeling as if she were fulfilling every blonde-girl-in-a-horror-movie trope ever, Alice turned the lock and, keeping the chain on, opened the door a crack to let light spill out on the wet wood of the porch.

“Hello, Alice,” said a voice that sounded like toffee apples and strawberries and cream. “How about we go for a walk?”

Dean shot from sleep at the sound of a knock on the door. He twisted around, wincing as the fierce sun cutting through the thin motel curtains sliced him across the face.

The clock on the nightstand read nine thirty a.m. in blank green numbers. Considering when they had gone to sleep he had probably got about six and a half hours – not bad, considering.

The knock came again and he looked across at Sam still sound asleep in the other bed. Judging by the shifting around he had heard from his brother’s bed before tumbling into sleep, Sam had not settled easily. Better leave him for a bit longer.

Dragging himself out of the warm embrace of the sheets Dean snatched his jeans and shirt from the floor by the foot of the bed and fought to get them on, still fastening the fly button as he opened the door.

Lizzie stood on the other side, looking fresh-faced and far too awake. She held out a tray of coffee and a temptingly scented bag. “Coffee?”

Dean rubbed sleep from his eyes, grimacing at the taste in his mouth. “As bright-eyed and bushy tailed as you may be, some of us went through a very painful process last night, you know, with the poison and all.”

She rustled the bag. “Coffee and hot doughnuts?”

“It would be rude not to,” Dean said, grabbing for the coffee and stepping outside, closing the door behind him. “So, what’s with the offering? I thought all was forgiven and forgotten?”

Lizzie walked out towards the carpark, settling herself down on a picnic bench in the bright sunshine, hands cradling her warm cup. Dean followed her, the tarmac rough and dusty under his bare feet.

“It was, pretty much,” Lizzie said. “But we were never going to look Sam in the face and say we didn’t forgive, or even believe, him. There’s a job that needs to be done here and, however you look at our previous experience with him, we need Sam.”

“So you lied?” Dean studied the other hunter, trying to get a reading on her.

“Look,” Lizzie said, raising her eyes from the table to meet his, “you remember those scars on my back? The ones you asked about?”

Dean nodded, not liking where this was going.

“I got those on the last hunt we did with Sam…or Sam without his soul.” She shifted as if in remembered pain. “I’m not knocking Sam’s ability as a hunter and, now that I know him, I’m not even challenging him as a person. He’s a damn fine hunter and seems like a good man.”

“But?” Dean drank his coffee, letting the warmth and sugar cleanse his mouth.

She was silent, gathering her thoughts. “When he was working with us last time, we were up in Vancouver, and the closest to catching Rumpelstiltskin we’d ever been. Sam had been key in getting us this close so we naturally took him with us when we went to wipe out the caravan.” She shook her head, the morning sun bouncing off her hair. “But we’d got something wrong and Rumpelstiltskin wasn’t there. The only thing we found was a few of the higher ranking goblins and everyone they’d taken under thrall in that town. Including a damn cougar.”

Dean paused in taking another sip. “They can put animals under thrall too?”

“They can put anything under thrall if they eat the fruit and the goblins get a piece of their physical form,” Lizzie said. “Anyway, we got jumped. Badly. My back got torn up by the cat and I could barely move.” She paused. “We were all tied up and Laura was on the other side of the room to me. I got to watch them force the fruit into her, watch her get hooked again. After I’d risked everything to get her off it the first time.” She turned her head away and Dean saw her blinking quickly, like a piece of dust had got caught in her eye. “They pushed it into Sam and then they were coming for me.”

“But it didn’t affect Sam,” he said. “You said something last night about how it hadn’t worked on him before.”

Lizzie nodded. “He broke free and went after the goblins, but left us behind. I still remember how he looked at me, assessing how bad I was hurt, doing the same to Laura, and then grabbing the weapons bag and leaving.”

“But that wasn’t Sam,” Dean said, not wanting to think about Sam leaving the sisters, not wanting to think about how Sam had stood back and let him get nearly turned by that vampire. He didn’t want to think about any of it.

“Maybe not completely,” Lizzie said, “but that person is inside him somewhere. And all I’m thinking about is what if it happens this time? I don’t know how losing a soul changes someone. Will it happen again? Will we get into the thick of it and he turns into what he was before?”

“No,” Dean said, harsh, definite. “No, it won’t. Because Sam has his soul back and it’s not going anywhere.” He looked her straight in the eyes, letting her know that he was willing to put everything, every part of himself, on the line as collateral for his brother. “I know Sam. I’ve hunted with him since we were kids. I’ve hunted with him soulless. I’ve hunted with him when he got it back. He won’t do something like that again.”

Lizzie took a breath and nodded. “Okay.”

She swung her leg over the bench and stood. “If you trust him that much, if you can guarantee him, I’ll let him come into this with us.”

“You’ll take my word, just like that?” Dean asked, looking up at her, squinting. “You met me less than twenty-four hours ago and you’re going to trust me just like that?”

She smiled. “You may have lived a life of lying and hustling, Dean, but when you really tell the truth your eyes can’t hide it. And your eyes when you vouched for Sam were showing the same thing mine were when my family asked if it was still safe to hunt with Laura. That’s what I trust about you.”

She turned and walked away without saying anything else and Dean watched her go. Behind him he heard a door open and was unsurprised when Sam dropped onto the bench in front of him a few beats later.

“This mine?” he asked, pointing to the last cup in the tray, making a small sound of pleasure when Dean nodded.

They drank in silence for a while, covertly assessing the others’ state as they did so and finding nothing but a few scratches, bruises, and a general sense of griminess.

“One of the Becketts bring these over?” Sam asked, digging into the bag of doughnuts.

Dean nodded, pulling one out himself, his mind still partially preoccupied.

“Which one?” Sam asked between mouthfuls, his visible contentment at enjoying food again reassuring Dean.

“Lizzie.”

“She want anything else?”

Dean gave his brother a sideways look, trying to decide if Sam had been watching from the room, a skill Sam had perfected from a young age. But there was no studied nonchalance in his manner.

“Nah,” Dean said. “Just came to see how we were doing and tell us to get over there as soon as.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Sam said, gulping down the rest of his coffee and grabbing two more doughnuts from the bag with a bright grin. “I call first shower.”

“Leave me some water,” Dean called after him, sipping his coffee at a more leisurely pace.

“Oh, trust me,” Sam said, coming back a few steps, “with how ripe you smell it would be unfair to the rest of humanity to make you go without a good shower.”

Dean smiled as he heard the door of their room shut. Lizzie had no reason to fear a return of soulless Sam. He sat soaking up the sunshine and sipping his coffee, allowing himself one moment of stillness.

He knew his brother. It was going to be fine…

“Dean!”

His brother’s shout had Dean shooting to his feet.

In the doorway of their room Sam beckoned, all relaxation gone from his face.

Dean left the pool of sunshine and breakfast and jogged over. “What?”

“I put the local news on as I was getting my stuff together,” Sam said, “and a police notice came on for a missing person.” He swallowed as if his throat was too tight. “It was for Alice Keene, the daughter of the last victim. I talked to her a few days ago. Her aunt arrived at the house this morning, found the front door open and Alice gone.”

He took a breath and Dean saw his eyes were bright with distress.

“I think it was Rumpelstiltskin. Dean, I think he’s got her.”

The coffee was sitting in the sunshine, a half-eaten doughnut dropped beside the cup. It looked like an artsy photograph advertising weekend breaks or delicious breakfasts you could pick up on your way to work. The bench was still warm from where Sam and Dean had been sat.

Now both brothers were hunched over a pile of maps and papers in the Beckett sisters’ motel room.

Laura looked away from the laptop where she was scrolling through local news reports, sitting on the bed. “What makes you think this girl-”

“Her name is Alice. Alice Keene,” Sam said, eyes running over the lines of Lizzie neat handwriting as he reviewed the pre-existing case notes. His long frame was hunched into the same chair Dean had been lashed to for safety only a few hours before.

“What makes you think Alice has been taken by Rumpelstiltskin?” Laura asked. “Maybe she just went for a walk and got lost. Hey, maybe she just left town? Went back to college?”

“The door was left wide open, the lights were on, there was still a cup of tea sat on the table,” Dean said, a large leather-bound book balanced on his knees, sat in the other chair. “That sound like someone who went for a walk or skipped town?”

“Fair enough,” Laura said, closing the lid of the laptop. “There’s nothing much in the news to go on.”

“Bet they’re still talking about that frigging wolf,” Dean said.

“What?” Lizzie asked. She was sat on the floor, paper spread out around her like ice blocks spidered with black cracks of ink. “What did you say?”

Dean looked up, a page pinched between his fingers. “There was a massive wolf sighted, oh, about three, four days ago. The news was doing more on that than the folks dying in the hospital.”

Lizzie straightened and looked across to Laura.

“Then he’s here for sure.” Laura gave a sharp, feral grin, eyes like silver coins. “And he’s not going to leave town this time.”

Sam looked up. “What do you mean?”

Laura pushed the laptop from off her knees and swung her feet onto the floor. “In the lore we have there is a long history of goblins holding a close affinity with wolves,” she said. “Something about being creatures of the forest and the like.”

“It’s been recorded by some as a symbiotic relationship,” Lizzie said, taking the book off Dean’s knees and hefting a chunk of pages over to reveal a sketch of a fearsome wolf stood snarling beside a leering goblin. “They work together. Help each other. We found a medieval era hunting journal of a travelling hunter who wrote about a swath of forest in Germany where goblins lived with the wolves, using them to hunt game and sometimes people.”

“But,” Laura said, “the whole element of being put under thrall wasn’t fully known then, or even until recently.”

“So it’s likely the wolves are held under control and used to do the dirty, hard work the goblins can’t do,” Sam said. “And you think this massive wolf everyone was talking about is Rumpelstiltskin’s personal muscle?”

“Exactly,” Laura said. She turned to Dean. “You remember where they spotted it?”

“Up by the border, I think,” Dean said. “In the forest. Was that it, Sam?”

Sam was staring thoughtfully at the map on the table.

“Sam?” Dean asked again.

“I know where she is,” Sam said, eyes flicking back and forth as he checked his facts. “Where Rumpelstiltskin took her.”

“Where?” Lizzie asked, peering down at the map too.

Sam stood up, sweeping the map from the table, not noticing the sheaf of paper it pulled with it. “Help me get this up,” he said.

Laura found some pins and they stuck it to the far wall. Sam then grabbed a black marker and began circling things.

“Okay,” he said, “so Alice Keene and her father don’t live in New London, they live in small village to the north called Waterford.” He circled a small area. “Two of the other victims were also from there.” He circled two other places close by. “However, the biggest hospital equipped to deal with the mystery illness is here,” he circled again, “in the city.”

“So?” Laura asked.

“So,” Sam said, “in Waterford is Connecticut College, a place known for its impressive arboretum of native plants.”

“How do you know all this?” Dean asked. “And why exactly is it relevant?”

“Because,” Sam said, “when I visited Alice to ask about her father I found something in the mud on his boots.”

“The berries?” Dean stared at his brother. “You’re basing this on your bunch of frigging berries?”

Sam ignored him. “The berries I found were from a juniper bush, one of the plants grown in the arboretum near the Keene’s house.”

“Isn’t there something in the goblin lore about juniper?” Laura asked Lizzie.

“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “It’s one of the more positive tales of goblins. In German fairy lore there’s a goblin called Frau Wachholder who lives under a juniper tree and brings back stolen goods. It’s not much of a stretch to suggest they like juniper in general.”

“But he could have picked up the twig weeks before,” Dean said.

“The mud was fresh, Dean,” Sam said, “and by then this guy was up to his neck in booze.”

“I wouldn’t mind being there right now,” Dean muttered.

Sam glared. “There is no way he was going to have gone for a little pleasure jaunt into the woods of his own volition.”

“But he’d go if he was under thrall,” Laura said, catching the point. “How big is this arboretum?”

“Hundreds of acres,” Sam said, “the perfect place for a goblin overlord to hide himself and his massive wolf bodyguard.” He circled the forest on the map. “I think it’s where he’s taken her.”

There was silence.

“Say you’re right,” Dean said, looking at each hunter. “Sam just said that place is hundreds of acres. How the hell are we going to find them?”

The sisters paused in thought and Sam stared pleadingly at Dean.

“We have to try, Dean,” he said. “Who knows what he’d doing to her? What he’s going to make her do. If we can save her from that kind of…assault, that trauma, we should.”

“He’s going to jump again,” Laura muttered, her head coming up in realisation. “It’s what he needs the girl for.”

Lizzie dived for one of the books, a black leather-bound one cracked across the cover and yellowing at the edge of the pages. “The lay lines,” she said. “He’ll need to be on a lay line.”

“What do you mean he’s going to jump again?” Dean asked Laura, watched over her shoulder as she swiftly found a geological map of the area.

“He’ll know we’re closing in,” Laura said, “so he’s planning to jump off to some other time and or place to get away from us.”

“I thought he was an evil goblin overlord,” Dean said, “and, no offense, why would he run from you?”

Laura gave him a look over her shoulder and Dean felt genuine fear flash in his belly for an instant.

“Back in 1859 he nearly killed me,” she said, “but when we hitched a ride home with him we nearly killed him. We’ve tracked him across continents, oceans, time. We have systematically hunted down every single one of his important followers and a good number of the small fry too. He knows how dangerous we are.”

Dean studied her, drawing the set lines of her face with his eyes, seeing the soft roundedness that could have been and the chiselled sharpness grown over time. It suited her better than anything else could have, he decided.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go and drive the point home, shall we?”

The sun was wintery, dripping below the horizon as the two vehicles tore along the road, the snarling pitch of the engines rising and falling. Trees passed in a blur as the sleek, dark shapes flew past.

The pickup and the Impala eventually slowed, pulling off to face some locked iron gates. Their passengers alighted and, rounding to their respective trunks, proceeded to load up with weapons. Knives curling with runes, axes of varying sizes, preloaded pistols, flasks or holy water and the goblin fruit, every blade and bullet and container made of consecrated iron.

The trunks slammed shut and the two sets of hunters faced each other.

“Ready?” Lizzie asked. She held a map marked with the lay lines cutting through the woods. The one Rumpelstiltskin was going to travel by was marked in red.

“Let’s kick some ass and take some names,” Dean said, swinging his hand axe in a loose circle, limbering up his wrist.

It wasn’t far into the woods before they needed to flick on their flashlights to make out the path in front of them. Dean watched, impressed, as Lizzie navigated the route by compass, in the dark, keeping them on course despite the obstacles of literally hundreds of trees.

“Where’d you earn your map reading badge?” he asked, picking his way over logs and ducking under branches.

“The parents would take us up into the Brecon Beacons,” Laura said, holding a branch for Sam to make sure it didn’t snap back at him, “or the Forest of the Dean – no jokes, please – or the Peak District and we’d go off for days at a time, learning to read maps and stars and pathways.”

“When we got older they’d take us out to the arse end of nowhere and dump us,” Lizzie said, pausing to check the map and compass. “They’d tell us a set of coordinates to get to, leave us with basic supplies and give us a few days to get back to civilisation. If we were lucky it would be a pub with a hot dinner and bath waiting. If not, it was a hunt we had to solve.”

Laura laughed. “Remember the one in Yorkshire? The Barghest?”

“The one in the church?” Lizzie checked the map again.

Laura laughed, breaths heaving. “That was bloody fantastic that one.”

“If you can call nearly having your face torn off ‘fantastic’,” Lizzie said, dry, “sure, you do that.”

“A Barghest?” Sam asked. “I’ve not heard of those.”

“Another story for another time,” Lizzie said, folding away the map and pointing. “I think we’re here.”

Looming out of the trees was a high rise of rock. Small saplings grew on top of it, giving it the appearance of having hair.

She sniffed pointedly. “Cinnamon and warm strawberries.”

Laura did the same, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out shakily. “Still the same damn thing…that vanilla and honey candle Mum bought for my room when I was sixteen.”

“Pie,” Dean said. “And the Impala.”

Sam said nothing, breathing noticeably shallower.

“Okay, let’s split up,” Dean said. “It curves away from us, like a horseshoe. If there’s anything in there and we spread out across the opening, we have them cornered.”

He looked over to Laura and Lizzie. “Is that okay with you?” He gave a sweeping gesture with his axe. “It’s your hunt.”

Lizzie inclined her head slightly at the note of respect and Laura nodded.

“Sounds good,” she said, making sure every element of the small armoury hidden on her body was within easy reach.

They fanned out, weapons held ready, creeping in a rough line towards the natural monument.

Dean could see very little beyond the range of his torch and he searched for the bobbing beams of Sam’s light to his left and Lizzie’s to his right. As they got closer, however, he realised he was able to see more and more, a low, flickering light coming from inside the rock formation.

“Um, guys,” Sam said, from a few steps ahead. “I think we might be expected.”

The other three caught up with him, scanning the scene before them.

“Where did he find them all?” Laura asked, her voice low, hand clenching and unclenching around the handle of her axe.

Torches and fires burned around the space, lighting the walls in writhing, leaping shadows. Nearly fifty goblins circled the space.

“They’re cutting us off,” Lizzie muttered, a knife in either hand.

Sam and Dean glanced behind and, sure enough, with barely a sound more had closed in behind, stepping out from behind trees and from under piles of leaves to block the route out.

All of the goblins in the area had spotted them now, tumbling over one another to come and get closer to the four humans.

Dean switched his focus from one hideous face to the other, trying to gauge which was the most hostile. They looked like nothing he’d seen before, completely devoid of the glamours that allowed them to pass unnoticed in the world the rest of the time.

Some were cat-like and rat-like, with whiskers and long tails whipping out behind them. Some had beaks and long avian nails, while others flicked forked tongues out and stared with eyes split by horizontal pupils. Their skin was leathery and purplish grey, joints poking out sharply, but still the sweet smell continued, like perfume flowing from a landfill site.

“What’s the plan then?” Sam asked, aiming his knife at a goblin that barely came up past his hip but whose mouth held rows of needle teeth matching the bristling spines sprouting from its head and neck.

“There’s no quick way out of this,” Lizzie said, kicking out at one rat-faced individual who had scurried too close. “I’ve never seen this many goblins in one place.”

More goblins dropped down from the craggy rocks, giggling and chittering. The rocks formed a thirty foot high horse shoe around them, some thin pines tress clinging to the jagged surface, moss slicking most of rest.

“Crap,” Laura said, pointing into the pool of dark at the edge of the area. “It’s here.”

They all followed her gaze and saw the huge, lupine shape of the wolf unfold from the darkness out into the wavering light of the fire.

Its black and grey brindled coat was split in places by the white lines of old scars and its eyes burned golden as it stared at them. Fastened around its neck and shoulders was a heavy leather harness hung with gold ornaments which, when the light hit them, revealed to have runes etched into the surface. “Where he goes, the wolf follows,” Lizzie said, watching the beast slink across the clearing, goblins scattering from its path.

“Look,” Dean said to Sam, pointing with his head but never taking his eyes off the creatures closing in on them. One snapped at his ankle and he lashed out. “Hey! Back off, fugly.”

Sam looked, up by the base of the cliffs, and saw a flash of blond hair.

It was Alice, white-faced and terrified, but not moving towards them despite the complete lack of restraints on her. She was dressed in only jeans and a tank top, her feet jammed into hiking boots that looked too big. Her hair was wild about her face and he could see a glint of blood on her lip and a scratch across her collarbone and shoulder. She was shivering.

From behind, a hand curled over her shoulder, long fingers pressing down on the mark and making her flinch.

It was a human hand, or at least it looked human. The body it was attached to stepped forward into the light of the sputtering torches looked like a man, his hand pushing Alice ahead of him. Gold dripped from him in watches and rings and necklaces. In his other hand was a cane of ebony wood topped with a snarling golden wolf and he wore a black waistcoat embroidered with golden thread in curlicue patterns. He wore it over a white shirt that looked like it had been stolen from some period romance film, all frills and lace, and he had paired it with black dress slacks and polished shoes.

Overall the effect was startling and he looked completely out of place in the damp, dank forest, surrounded by the slithering, snickering, hideous creatures he ruled.

“Aw, man, did I miss something about dress code?” Dean said. “I guess it must have got sorted into my spam folder with all those other ‘Get big bucks for your gold’ ads.”

The stranger laughed, heartily, and the quartet of hunters shared quick glances. The other goblins picked up the sound and soon tittered laughter was bouncing around off the rocks, poking like needles into their ears.

“Enough!”

At their leader’s command there was immediate silence, and he bestowed a benevolent smile. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, taking his hand off Alice’s thin shoulder briefly.

Sam tried to catch her eyes, let her know they would get her out of here, but she continued staring at the ground.

“No, wait, let me guess,” Dean cut in. “Rumplestoolpill? Ripplestylepool? Am I close?”

“I think it’s pronounced ‘murdering arsehole’,” Laura said, jaw tight in a rigor mortis smile.

“Amusing, but juvenile.” There was a sneer in his voice. “I…am Rumpelstiltskin.”

He held his arms open, gesturing to the crowd surrounding them, the massive wolf stood at his side with bared teeth. “Welcome to your demise.”

“What do we do?” Sam asked, slashing out at a goblin who nipped towards his hand.

“He needs the girl to connect with the lay line so he can jump,” Lizzie whispered, watching Rumpelstiltskin closely. “The…fuel…he gets from the people in the comas, draining them of life. But we think he needs the bloodline of a living human to anchor him to different points in time. Then he jumps from the time of one generation to another. If we can get her away from him before he starts the spell he shouldn’t be able to jump.”

“Unless he gets one of us,” Dean said, eyeing the wolf. “And what about his bodyguard? Will it work if I throw a stick and yell fetch?”

“In an ideal world, yes,” Laura said, “but I don’t think it’s the playful type.”

“Whispering and trying to plan an escape won’t work for you here,” Rumpelstiltskin said, his hand drifting into Alice’s hair. He took a handful of the golden strands and raised them to his nose, inhaling deeply.

She shuddered and Sam felt a roar of rage singe his blood.

“Let her go,” he said. “Or I’ll carve my way through every sonofabitch here and take your head off.”

Rumpelstiltskin laughed. “My goodness, Samuel, such rage.” He smirked. “Yes, I know who you are. I tend to learn about the people who massacre an entire caravan of my horde.”

Sam shifted, hand clenching the handle of his axe and Dean could almost see the anger coming off him in waves of heat.

“And the Beckett sisters,” Rumpelstiltskin continued. “So good to see you again. As a piece of dating advice for the future, if you want to catch a man’s attention, throwing metal hooks into him may not be the way to go. Looks a little clingy.”

Laura responded with a string of words even Dean found inventive.

“Well,” Lizzie said, “seeing as I’m asexual I guess it doesn’t really apply. But I’ll remember not to use hooks next time. Just my axe in your brain.”

“Perhaps another time?” Rumpelstiltskin said. “I really must be getting on. I hear the fourteenth century is very nice this time of year.”

He pressed a thumb to the veins in Alice’s arm. “Irish descent, very nice. The Emerald Isle is very rich in the little folk.”

From his boot he drew a knife with a blade that rippled like an ocean wave. He pointed it out toward the crowd and flicked it sharply sideways. “Kill them.”

With a shriek like nails on a chalkboard the goblins surged forwards and the four hunters were plunged into an attack coming from all sides, fighting for their lives.

Dean lost Sam very quickly in the crush, spending too much time fending off attacks to find his brother’s tall shape.

The iron worked like a charm as the Becketts had promised, leaving sizzling cuts on the goblins. The axes worked well for taking off their heads, the separated sections started to melt into goo only seconds after decapitation.

Laura appeared at his side, purple blood smeared across her face, as well as the axe she carried, and the studded knuckle dusters on her other hand.

“How we doing?” she yelled, punching a parrot-like goblin square in the beak, breaking it into pieces and sending up spatters of blood.

“Well, I’m burning everything I’m wearing after we’re done,” Dean shouted back. “Some things just don’t wash out.”

He slid in the remains of a goblin with racoon markings and teeth four inches long, narrowly avoiding the rat claws of a goblin leaping at his face.

Laura took the head off the attacker and pulled him up again. “True,” she said, glancing up a moment before the wolf barrelled into her with a growl, bearing her to ground and pinning her there.

“Shit,” Dean said, running towards it, only just starting to realise how frigging huge this wolf was. It came up to his shoulder and its head was as big as his torso. “Hang on!” he yelled, swinging his axe down into the wolf’s side.

Laura was punching it in the face with her knuckle dusters, trying to keep her distance from the huge teeth intent on tearing into her.

Dean pulled the blade free and saw only a tiny trickle of blood spring free. “It’s not working,” he said, swinging again.

“The runes are protecting it,” Laura panted, trying to stab the wolf with one of her knives but it took the blade into its teeth and bit down, bending the mental and cracking the handle. “Dean, get me out of here!”

“Hey!” Dean kicked the back of its foreleg, trying to turn its attention away from the other hunter. When that did nothing he reached for the harness, intent on cutting it off. The low, rumbling snarl it let out vibrated through its whole body; Dean felt it through his arms. The wolf slowly turned its head to face him, yellow eyes blazing, muzzle folded up to show rows of razor-like teeth.

“Oh, great,” Dean said.

Sam was getting closer to Alice and Rumpelstiltskin, one kill at a time. When the wolf leapt into the fray he raised his axe, ready to take it on, but it raced past him and Sam only hoped whoever the beast was going after saw it coming.

Over by one of the fires, near the wall of the clearing, he saw Lizzie calmly disposing of one creature after another, her clothing smeared in blood but looking unharmed.

A goblin hissed at him, stabbing at his knee with a little black blade that screamed of blood poisoning. He dodged it and swung his axe.

It leapt back and swiped again, feline mouth wide in a scream of anger, quickly changing to pain when Sam splashed its face with goblin fruit. The liquid burned like holy water, leaving it blinded long enough for him to take its head off.

Panting hard he looked up, finding Lizzie again, and staring around frantically for Alice. That was when he caught sight of the goblin clinging to the cliff face above Lizzie. She was being backed towards the wall by the sheer number of her attackers and the goblin above was armed with an axe of its own, waiting to drop down and crack open her head. Without another thought Sam flung himself towards the fight, drop-kicking several goblins out of his way.

“Lizzie!” he yelled, hurdling a small group. “Above you!”

Hearing him, she looked up and the goblin, seeing the element of surprise slip away, dropped with a screech.

Before it could land, Sam slammed into Lizzie, sending her clear, and the goblin landed instead on Sam’s broad back. The axe swung down, the sharp blade cutting through Sam’s layers to slice across his ribs beneath. He let out a bellow, flinging himself backwards to stun the creature against the rough wall of the cliff. It fell from his back, mewing in pain, and Sam’s axe gouged into its throat a second later. Some of the goblins had backed off for now and Sam helped Lizzie dispatch the few wounded flailing on the floor.

“You okay?” he asked, wiping a smear of blood from his cheek.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks to you. Are you hurt?”

He rotated his shoulder experimentally, only wincing a little. “Flesh wound,” he said. A flash of gold caught his eye.

Alice was now lashed to a thin tree at the back of the clearing. She was shaking and sobbing but making no move to escape. Rumpelstiltskin was throwing ingredients into a bowl, his lips forming the words of a spell. On the tree stump in front of him were four small items: a gold watch, a beaded bracelet of gold, pearl, and jet, a keychain of a dolphin, and what looked like a promise ring.

“They’ll belong to the victims in the hospital,” Lizzie said, following his gaze. “It’s what he drains their life for.”

“I’ve got to stop him,” he said, surging forwards but Lizzie pulled him to a stop.

She held up a hefty pistol. “Something I picked up from the armoury at home,” she said. “I shoot him with this and you get Alice out of here. Okay?”

Sam nodded. “Let’s go.”

Dean rolled out of the way an instant before the wolf’s paw came down with the force of a sledgehammer. “Laura?” he called, scrambling to his feet and slashing at the thing’s muzzle before skipping out of the way again. “Tell me you’re ready?”

“Got it,” she said. “Yeehaw, bitch!”

Pushing off from a tree she leapt onto the wolf’s back, a knife between her teeth and a gun in hand. Grabbing onto the leather harness she wrapped her legs around its sides and clung on like her life depended on it. Which, considering how pissed off the wolf was, it quite likely was.

She fired a whole clip into its neck, the consecrated iron bullets quickly doing their job. The wolf bucked and snarled but as another bullet and another tore through it, the sounds turned to whimpers and its movements became weaker.

Finally, Laura sliced through the thick harness, letting the weighty magical shield and symbol of Rumpelstiltskin’s ownership fall away. She then flung herself clear, the massive beast collapsing moments later, rich red blood spurting from its wounds.

“Hey!” Lizzie shouted, stepping up onto the raised mound Rumpelstiltskin was using as his altar. “I suggest you stop right there.”

He did, eyes snapping to her face, a slow, eerie smile creeping onto his face. “Glad we can finally talk, Lizzie, face to face. Ah, I wouldn’t do that, Samuel, if I were you.”

Sam froze in untying Alice, gaze flicking between the seemingly unconscious girl in front of him and the goblin leader who was watching him with a strange smile.

“I see you got your soul back then, boy.” He leant casually on the tree stump the ingredients of his spell were scattered across. “I was very interested to hear how the attacker of my caravan was soulless. I haven’t seen that in a few hundred years, personally. I would have loved to track you down, had a talk, but,” he shrugged, enigmatic, “things came up, you understand.”

“I understand I’m going to shoot you right now,” Lizzie said, voice grim.

Sam could see her eyes were blazing. Her grip on the gun was firm and her aim was rock steady.

“No,” Rumpelstiltskin said, turning back to her, “you’re not, actually. Because you don’t know how this really works, do you?”

Lizzie said nothing.

“But you know I’ve made some kind of bond to the girl,” Rumpelstiltskin said. “You found that out the last time we faced each other like this.” He squeezed his face into something like pity. “You didn’t save the other girl did you? Couldn’t get there in time and, after all, you needed me to get back home.” He nodded. “So she had to die, really.”

“You shut up, right now,” Lizzie said in a growl. “I will shoot you.”

“You do and the girl will go into a seizure and die,” Rumpelstiltskin said, voice calm but eyes hard. “And if you untie her she becomes little more than a rabid dog, attacking anyone near her. A built in security system against rescue attempts, if you will.”

Sam backed away, making sure he didn’t touch her in case it set off the spell.

Rumpelstiltskin was still talking, taunting Lizzie, but Sam instead looked out across the clearing, trying to find Dean, hoping his brother and Laura were planning some kind of help.

Nearly all of the goblins were dead. Some were crawling around, missing limbs dribbling purple ooze and some, in a move that amazed him, stamped one foot in the ground and dove away into little portals, wailing in fear.

Over the far side he thought he saw Dean and Laura and a pile of silver fur that might have been the wolf. He looked back to Rumpelstiltskin. “You’ve lost,” he said, gesturing to mess of bodies. “Your followers are dead, your wolf is gone. You can’t win this.”

Rumpelstilskin shrugged. “I can get another caravan. I can find another wolf. That doesn’t matter. I can win, dear boy, because if I die she dies too and I know how you hunters are about saving people.” He faced Lizzie. “You kill me with your precious consecrated iron bullets and your numbers will be all body count and no survivors.”

Lizzie paused, eyes dipping to the spell bowl, to Alice, and back to Rumpelstiltskin’s smirking face. “Fair enough,” she said. “Just as well these bullets won’t kill you.”

Three shots rang out and Rumpelstiltskin staggered back, clutching his stomach with a scream.

“Bullets loaded with your own fruit won’t kill you,” Lizzie said, lowering the pistol. “But they’ll hurt like a bitch and cut off your power.”

Alice lurched in her bonds and Sam jumped back, waiting for the attack, but she only began to retch and cough. He quickly untied her and she fell forwards onto her knees, vomiting up wave after wave of purple liquid.

“Alice,” Sam dropped beside her, placing a hand lightly on her back, feeling her shaking. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

She looked around with wild eyes, taking in the bodies and the fire and Lizzie stood over Rumpelstiltskin with her gun and her axe. “What happened?” she asked. “What are you doing here, Mr Moore?”

Sam helped her up, hands gentle where they touched. “My name’s Sam,” he said. “Sam Winchester. As for what happened…I think we can leave that for later, okay. We need to get you out of here first.”

“Wait,” she said, looking closer at Rumpelstiltskin writhing on the floor. “I know him. He came to my house, made me go out into the woods with him. I had to drink this awful stuff.” She gagged again in memory. “He’s a bad guy?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, taking off his jacket and putting it around her shivering shoulders. “Yeah, he’s a bad guy.”

“Sammy!”

He turned at the sound of Dean’s voice and saw his brother and Laura striding across the battlefield.

They were covered in gore and Dean was limping but other than that they appeared unharmed.

“You okay?” Dean asked as they drew closer. His eyes zeroed in on the blood staining Sam’s plaid shirt.

“It’s nothing, Dean,” Sam said before his brother could begin to fuss. “Just a flesh wound.”

“She got the bastard,” Laura whispered, leaving them and going to stand beside her sister.

Sam and Dean and Alice walked closer too, watching the final scene unfold.

Lizzie took her sister’s axe and doused it holy water, then goblin fruit. Rumpelstiltskin whimpered and moaned on the ground, blood-spotted froth bubbling from the bullet holes in his chest and belly.

“This is for what you did to Laura, you bastard,” Lizzie said, raising the axe.

“And this is for what you did to everyone else,” Laura said, drawing her pistol.

The axe came down, the gun fired, and the body was silent and still.

The sisters looked at one another over the already decomposing corpse, not seeming to notice the vile smell all around them.

“We did it,” Laura said.

“We did it,” Lizzie echoed.

“Let’s go home,” Laura said, reaching for her sister’s hand and holding tight.

“Let’s go home,” Lizzie said, and hugged Laura tightly. “Oh, god yes, let’s go home."

“So we’re in this church,” Laura said, “and I’m knocked on my arse down by the altar. Lizzie is scrabbling under the pews for our gun and this frigging massive Burghest is stalking down the aisle towards me.”

It was two days later and the group had reconvened for a farewell before Lizzie and Laura drove to the airport to catch their flight back to England. The two cars were parked on a quiet road down by the estuary, and the four hunters were sitting in the bed of the Beckett’s pickup, drinking beer and telling their wildest hunting stories. In the spirit of fairness Sam and Dean had avoided the topics of angels, Hell, and the Devil himself. Because you couldn’t really top the the Devil, could you?

“A Burghest is like a death omen, you said?” Sam asked, taking a swig from his bottle, subconsciously chastising himself for checking the taste for any ashy or overripe undertones.

“Yes,” Lizzie said. “They’re nasty and really hard to get rid of. It was just our luck to be sent on a hunt with one.”

“Big ugly things,” Laura said. “All teeth and rage and it’s coming at me, mad as hell, and my gun with the consecrated iron rounds is somewhere under a pew.” She giggled and the brothers realised she was a little drunk.

“So what does she do?” Lizzie asked, with the fond exasperation of someone who had heard this story many times before. She sipped her soda, going without to be designated driver.

“I grab the nail they have out on display for Easter,” Laura said, happy to comply, “one supposedly from the crucifixion of Christ. Though how a tiny Yorkshire church in the middle of fricking nowhere got hold of it, I have no idea.”

“The thing leaps at her,” Lizzie said, “and I’m losing my shit on the other side of the room, trying to find the gun, thinking my sister is being turned into dog food and what had she done?”

“I stabbed the bastard right in the eye with the nail,” Laura said, recreating the movement with vigour. “Up it goes in fire and ashes and howls and the lot and then Lizzie and I look at each other, then at the nail I’m still holding, and she says…” She looked to her older sister expectantly.

Lizzie sighed and avoided eye contact. “And I said ‘I guess you could say we really nailed this case’.”

Both brothers groaned and covered their eyes while Laura cackled.

“I’m not proud of it, okay,” Lizzie said. “It just came out.”

“My ace in the hole,” Laura said, ruffling her sister’s hair. “Always ready with a weapon and a terrible pun.”

“Glad to know I have uses,” Lizzie replied dryly, pushing the strands flat again.

The group went quiet for a time, looking out across the water, just drinking and thinking.

“So,” Dean said, “what’s next for you two? Going back to family firm and slipping into ranks again?”

“Maybe,” Lizzie said. “Honestly, I’ve had enough with hunting for a while. I might ask for some time off to work in the research section, or go through the archives.” She grimaced. “In a family so bound up with hunting and glory not much time is put into record keeping or organising. I don’t think anyone has been in the history archive since our grandma passed…oh, six years ago now.”

“I’m going to keep hunting,” Laura said. “I might push over into Europe and work on strengthening our contacts over there.”

“No time with the family?” Sam asked. “I mean, you’ve been gone for a couple of years now. Don’t you want some down time?”

Laura smiled. “I love my family from the bottom of my heart, but we’re all loud, opinionated, strong-willed individuals. We spend more than a few hours together and we’re ready to go for each other’s throats.”

“Ah, family,” Dean said. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.”

“True,” Lizzie said. “What about you guys? You have a home base to get back to?”

Dean shook his head and pointed to the Impala. “That’s the only home base we got,” he said, “and we like it that way. As for what next…something’ll turn up.”

They stayed out there until the wind coming off the water was too cold to stand. The light was fading, everything being put into muted tones of gold and grey and brown.

“Keep in touch,” Lizzie said, handing Dean a card with several phone numbers printed on it, under ‘Beckett International Communications Ltd’ written in an unobtrusive, clean font.

“Will do,” he said. “Never know when we might need some research doing.”

“Don’t be rude. I’m leaving you most of our weapons, jackass,” she said, but it was fond, and they shared a brief hug.

Laura shook Sam’s hand, and then impulsively hugged him. “Even if the whole soul thing is new for me,” she said, “I know this is the real Sam Winchester. I’m just sorry I had to meet the other one first.”

“So am I,” Sam said. “Look, give us a call if you’re ever over here again. It’s never a bad thing to have some good hunters on our side.”

“And we were a pretty good team,” Laura said to Dean, coming and hugging him too.

While Sam and Lizzie did their goodbyes she planted a quick kiss on his cheek, then gave a wink, holding a finger to her lips. “So long, rebel without a cause,” she said.

The two sisters hopped into the pickup, Lizzie at the wheel, and soon their taillights were nothing more than red dots in the distance.

“I like them,” Sam said, getting into the Impala. “Hope we meet them again.”

“It wouldn’t be terrible,” Dean agreed, sliding into the driver’s seat and watching the water as if caught the last of the light. “Nothing went badly wrong. No one died. It went okay.” He turned on the ignition. “How’s Alice, by the way? Her dad woke up, right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “All the victims did. The papers are calling it a miracle and a mystery.” He smiled. “Alice is okay, no side effects of the fruit or anything. She and her dad are talking more and she got his watch back from Rumpelstiltskin. She’s still planning on going back to college as soon as she can. Talking about taking a class on myths and folklore next semester, I think.”

“Just as long as she stays away from the real thing,” Dean said, backing onto the road and turning back toward downtown. “What do you say we go back to the motel, I go grab some food and we watch some pay per view? They had the old Godzilla on there.”

“Sounds good,” Sam said. “Sounds real good.”

Dean smiled, the Impala purring under his hands, and flicked on the radio. It did sound good .

The End