Chapter 3

“Dean!”

Much to his father’s dismay Sam had jumped from the truck before it had even come to a complete stop and had taken off in a dead run for the Piney Knob Lodge. The boy was in a bad habit of letting his feelings get the best of the sharp intellect he was blessed with. It was going to get him killed one day.

“Sam! Wait, damn it.” John knew he was wasting his breath. His hardheaded son wasn’t going to heed any caution, not if his brother was in danger. He grabbed his shotgun and a 9mm from behind the seat and took off after him. So much for the brilliant plan that they had discussed on the way over. Well, he’d done most of the talking, but he’d assumed Sam was listening. Maybe that was his first mistake. Sam didn’t listen to him.

Only one thought played itself over and over again in Sam’s head as he rushed up the plank stairs that led to the entrance of the lodge. He’d turned it over and over in his mind like a mantra on his way back to the Piney Knob, drowning out his father’s droning voice and passing the agonizing minutes until he could get to Dean. Please, God, please let me be wrong. Please let Dad be right. Please let me be wrong.

Dean would never take a werewolf on without back up. So, if John was right, his big brother would be upstairs waiting for them. Then, they’d go kick the evil thing’s ass together and get the hell out of this God-forsaken place.

However, all hopes of that faded as Sam entered the large sitting room of the hunting lodge. His heart began to race faster, and it was amazing it didn’t pound through his chest wall, considering the pace at which it had already been thundering against his sternum. One couch was overturned, and a lamp was lying discarded on the floor, it’s bulb shattered and glittering on the wooden surface.

Sam fought down a surge of panic as he caught sight of a familiar jacket and smashed Walkman among the melee. He could not lose it. Not yet. Keep it together, Sammy.

He bent down to pick up the destroyed pieces of his brother’s beloved cassette player and something caught his eye. A puddle of thick red fluid stained the floor a few feet from him. It glistened in the firelight and more splotches of the substance dotted the floor and the stone mantle. Sam felt the bile rise to the back of his throat. Okay he was going to lose it.

The fifteen year-old had seen lots of blood and gore in his short life, but it was rarely associated to something he was so connected to. His brother had been hurt before on hunts, so had he, but this was different. This time Dean had been alone, and Sam couldn’t help but to feel as if he had let his brother down.

“Dean!” His father’s voice echoed loudly in the large room, causing Sam to jump, his thoughts tumbling back into the present moment. “Dean!”

Sam turned frightened eyes to his father. “He’s not here. Hayes has him.” Sam wasn’t quite sure how he knew for certain that his brother was no where in the massive lodge, but he did.

John’s trained gaze took in the scene, knowing his son would have put up one hell of a fight.

“Dean’s hurt.” Sam pointed to the blood as he slowly stood. “We’ve got to find him, Dad.”

John nodded and handed his son the 9mm. “We will, son.”

Sam‘s eyes suddenly filled with tears, and he began to feel just like the little kid he struggled so hard not to be. He wanted his brother. He wanted Dean to rush right in and make it all right, to tackle the monster in the closet, to turn the lights on and make the nightmare disappear. “It’s all our fault.” It’s all your fault. “ We shouldn’t have left him alone.”

John stepped forward and grabbed Sam by the shoulder. “Listen to me, Sam. Losing it isn’t going to help your brother. All the victims were killed in the forest. You researched this whole area. You know where the bodies were found. This guy will stick to his pattern.”

Sam wiped the back of his arm across his eyes, and shook his head. “He’s already broken his pattern. The men were first attacked in the woods. What if he continues to deviate?”

Didn’t his dad realize that the man had to be desperate to take Dean from the Lodge. His kills had been growing in number and frequency. Sam had studied serial killers in some of their research. They were dealing with a loose cannon.

“He’ll want to keep as much to the routine as possible. You’re the one always telling me that there are no coincidences, Sam. Logic is your friend, right?”

Sam raked a hand through his hair and tried to pull his thoughts together through the overwhelming emotion of fear for his brother. “Most of the victims were discovered near or around the gorge, where you and Dean set up the video camera when we first arrived. There were a few found at the bluff, not too far from there.”

John nodded. “We’ll split up then. You go to the bluff and I’ll go to the gorge. If you find anything fire a round into the air. We’ll get this bastard, Sammy, and we’ll get your brother back.” John looked at the teen, and tried not to think of countless times that he’d seen fear in those dark eyes. My God, what would Mary think of him. “ He’ll be okay. I promise.”

As Sam ran quickly through the ever darkening woods around him, thankful for the sparse light the full moon above him was providing, he thought about his father’s promise. He’d heard so many of them from John Winchester before. Most of them, the man had managed to keep. But there were those that seemed to get swept under the rug, and that‘s what worried him. The ones about a real home, and a permanent school, and a break from all the hunting. The important ones always seemed to get broken.

Dean was the most important thing Sam had. Could John Winchester really be trusted with that? “You better not let me down this time, Dad.”

He’d made it within ten feet of the opening into the gorge when he heard it. It sounded muffled, but it was unmistakable. “Dean.”

Dean cried out in pain again, nearly choking on the dirt-covered, musty rag tied roughly across his mouth as Hayes drove the knife into his shoulder again. He’d come to on the cold ground only moments before to find himself trussed up like a roped calf, and the lunatic Hayes standing over him like some monster out of one of Sam’s nightmares.

At first, his scrambled thoughts had betrayed him and he had looked around desperately for his father or Sam. If he were in trouble, then his family had to be around somewhere, but then the insane old coot had stabbed him and it all came back in a white, hot, clarity.

He was alone.

The painful realization was driven home again as Hayes stabbed him once more. Bright lights exploded behind Dean’s eyes and he thought he might be sick or pass out again. Maybe both.

Amos began mumbling something about Jenny and how he, Dean, had defiled her and taken her away. None of it was making much since in his drugged state, but the blinding agony was taking care of pushing the last vestiges of whatever Hayes had used on him out of his system. One thought rang out with clarity.

He was going to die, and with that thought his mind went to Sam.

He prayed that his dad would be the one to find the body. He didn’t want his brother to see what Hayes was going to do. Dean didn’t want to be the cause of any more trauma that his brother might suffer. His whole life had been dedicated to protecting Sam from as much shit as possible in their totally fucked up lives and now he was going to deliver the worst blow of all.

Not only was he going to end up sliced and diced like some Thanksgiving turkey, he was going to do the unthinkable. Dean was going to leave Sam alone with their Dad. Alone to be drug on every hunt their dad deemed necessary on his quest to avenge their mother. Fucking John ‘Don Quixote’ Winchester wouldn’t be satisfied until he’d bested everything evil he could find.

His line of thinking abruptly ended and he jerked in agony as Hayes wrenched the knife from his body and brought it down again, lower on his chest this time. “You will not hurt my girl. You here me. I will send you to hell first.”

People survived worse, right. He’d read stories of victims who’d been stabbed mind staggering times by their crazed spouses and lived to go on the Oprah show. Right?

He was tough, he could do this. He needed to survive this more than Amos wanted to kill him, of that he was sure. It was like the whole fox and rabbit thing. The clever fox would never catch the rabbit, because he was merely after his dinner. The rabbit was running for his life. Dean would be damned if he’d leave Sam without a fight. This was about two lives

Sam fired the gun into the air and then brought it down to level at Hayes’ head.

Sam. Where the hell was John?

The man was knelt on the ground over Dean’s body, his back to the youngest Winchester. He froze as the sound of the blast echoed around them, but didn’t turn or move from his prey.

“Get away from him.” Sam’s voice shook only slightly as adrenaline pumped through his veins, pushing away any reservations he had about killing the thing hurting his brother.

“Get up!” To Sam, Hayes was exactly that, a thing. And Sam had hunted and killed things before. It was true he’d never killed a human, but he’d destroyed things for much less than what this monster had inflicted on Dean. “I said, get the hell away from my brother.”

Amos did as the boy said, roughly jerking the knife from Dean as he went. The young man cried out through the gag again and curled in on himself, protectively.

Hayes turned and slowly lifted his hands in the air, the red-stained knife standing out in the moonlight. “Are you going to kill me, boy?”

Sam’s eyes immediately went to the blood staining the man’s hands and his shirt, and the drops of it, sliding off the blade. His brother’s blood. It was all he could see. His hand shook slightly, as a moan came from the body lying at Hayes’ feet. Yes. Yes, I am.

The words echoed painfully in his head before they left his mouth, as if he were trying them out just to be sure. But there never really was any doubt. From the time he’d heard his brother’s pain-filled scream, he’d known that Amos wasn’t getting out of this alive. Sam wanted to kill the man. “You bet your sorry ass I am.”

Dean watched as if in a dream, helpless to do anything as his baby brother slowly squeezed the trigger. He closed his eyes. Sam should be shooting the winning hoop at his high school basketball game, or slamming one to the fence to score the winning homerun. He should not be about to shoot some sociopath, who’d kidnapped and fucked up his big brother. So much for protecting him. I’m sorry, Sammy.

The deafening shot that erupted in the night around them came from behind Dean. He forced his eyes open in time to see Amos Hayes’ body be lifted off the ground by the force of the close range shotgun blast and watched as the man landed in an unmoving heap at least ten feet away from him.

“Sam!” John Winchester stepped into the clearing, and motioned for his son to lower his weapon. “Put the gun down, son. It’s over.” John didn’t even bother with a look at his kill as he knelt by Dean.

He quickly pulled the gag away from his son’s mouth and began working on the ropes that bound his bleeding wrists. Damn it, he was a mess.

Dean couldn’t help the hiss of pain as his father removed the ropes from around his hands and the blood rushed back into them. Funny that they seemed to hurt more than the stab wounds he knew were scattered around his chest. He needed to suck it up. John didn’t need him crying like a baby.

When Sam didn’t appear at his side John turned his gaze back to his youngest son, trying to block out the small whimpers of pain coming from Dean. Sam had still yet to move. “Samuel John Winchester, put that gun down!” John’s hands were shaking now that the reality of the situation was setting in, and he didn’t have time to coddle Sam.

Dean swallowed hard and turned his gaze to his brother. Sam was still looking at the spot that Amos had been standing. He was pale, and Dean could make out the tears silently falling from his eyes as their luminescent trail down his face was reflected in the moonlight.

“Sammy, it’s okay.” His weak voice had the effect that John’s had lacked, and Sam lowered the gun, moving robotically to his brother’s side.

“Dean.” Sam dropped to his knees, the gun sliding out of his hand and onto the ground. His gaze took in the damage to his brother, his eyes watering with the disbelief of it all.

The knife Hayes had used had torn large gashes into his brother’s shoulder and chest area, and he was also bleeding from a large wound just below his hairline, not to mention the cuts and bruises on his face and hands. “Oh, God.”

“Sammy, I’m okay.” Dean knew it was a lie, but he’d never seen the look that was on his brother’s face. He was terrified, and at that moment Dean would have said anything to make it better.

This was a hundred times worse than the time that he’d let a three year-old Sam fall from their make shift tree house and Sam had cried for what seemed like a whole hour. Nothing he had done then could make it better. Dean had given up on trying to take the pain away after the first twenty minutes, instead joining his little brother in his misery. That’s how John had found them. Clinging to each other, bawling their eyes out.

John had finished untying Dean’s feet and now moved his hands to his son’s face. “Dean?” He roughly grasped his jaw, forcing his injured son’s gaze from Sam, and looked into his oldest’s eyes. They were glassy and he was sure the kid was in shock. They’d be in trouble once he started to hurt. “How you doing?”

Dean looked at his father, and tried to smile. “I hate to tell you this, Dad, but it wasn’t a werewolf.”

John bit his lip to keep from smiling. He ran his hand gently over Dean’s bruised face and sighed. “Between you and your brother, I’m going to die of a heart attack before anything Evil catches up with me.”

“We need to get him to hospital.” Sam had seemed to snap out of it some and was busy shrugging out of his light jacket. He handed it to his dad who quickly pressed the material to the worst of the bleeding wounds. “He’s losing a lot of blood.”

“He’s right here,” Dean weakly lifted his arm and waved it in Sam’s direction.

Sam didn’t take his eyes from their father, but caught his brother’s hand and closed both of his around it. “Stay still, Dean.”

Dean arched an eyebrow, amused at the turn of events, despite the dire situation. Did Sam really just tell him what to do? “What?”

“Stay quiet.“ John said, taking another look at Dean. He was starting to shiver. “We can’t go to the hospital, Sam.”

“What?” Sam looked at his father as if he were now the crazy psychopath. “What are you talking about? We’ve got to! He’s going to bleed to death.”

“Sam, if we go to the hospital, there’s going to be questions we can’t answer. Do you realize that I just killed a man. Even if I was justified, I’ll be questioned and detained.” Dean couldn’t help the gasp of pain as his father pressed harder on his bleeding wounds than Dean really thought necessary.

“Sam, I’m wanted for things, you know that.” John wasn’t thinking of himself. If he was put behind bars, what would happen to the boys. “They’ll put me in jail, and you in foster care. We‘ll never find the thing that killed your mother.”

“I don’t care!” Sam couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His brother was dying and John was worried about the hunt. “We’re going.”

Foster care. Two words that struck terror in Dean‘s heart. His father had first told him of what could happen to both he and Sam when he was seven, and he‘d accidentally locked himself out of the hotel room, with a two year-old crying Sam still on the inside. The manager had to call John while he was on a hunt, and Dean couldn’t sit down for what seemed like a week.

The spanking was no where near as painful as the picture John painted about the people who would come and take Dean and Sam away from their daddy. And then the unthinkable would happen. Dean and Sam would be separated and given to other families. There was no way he’d risk his brother going into the system.

“Sam,” the pain-filled voice brought Sam’s attention quickly back to Dean, “Dad’s right. I’ll be okay. We can‘t risk the heat.”

“Dean, are you insane?” It must have been the blood loss. “Have you noticed the huge fucking holes in your chest?”

Dean said nothing, but his eyes implored his brother just to let it go. It was in that moment that Sam realized that his brother might quite possible do anything that their father asked of them, including bleeding to death in the middle of nowhere. He’d be damned if he let that happen. “I’m taking you to the hospital, with or without his help. He may not give a shit if you die or not, but I do.”

John’s hands were wrapped in his youngest son’s shirt before he could even register that he was moving. He drug Sam’s face close to his and shook him hard. “Don’t you ever say that, Samuel! Ever!”

“Dad!” Dean tried to raise up, but a sudden blinding pain had him grabbing his side and falling back to the ground. “Let…him…go,” he managed to get out between panting breaths.

“Dean?” Sam recovered from the shock of his dad grabbing him and pried the bigger man’s hands from his shirt, scrambling back to his brother’s side. “Dean what’s wrong?”

“I…can’t…breathe.” Sam shot a panicked look in their father’s direction and tried to help his brother.

Dean felt as if every bit of the oxygen in his body was being squeezed out, and his chest was on fire. He didn’t want to cry, but damn it hurt.

“It’s okay, Dean.” Sam tried to calm his brother down, running his hand over his short hair. “Take it easy.” He looked back at his father. “Dad, please.”

John couldn’t believe he hadn’t even thought beyond the injuries that they could see. He cursed himself for letting his emotions get the best of his common sense and quickly lifted Dean‘s shirt up.

Damn it all to hell. Vivid bruises of differing shades of purple were splashed across his son‘s right side and he didn‘t even have to touch him to know he had some busted ribs.

“Listen to me, Ace. You can breathe, it just feels like you can‘t right now because of your ribs.” John pulled his son‘s shirt back down. “Just take it easy.”

Dean rolled his eyes and squeezed Sam’s hand harder. Did his dad just tell him to calm down. He was bleeding all over the fucking ground and now he couldn’t breathe. Maybe he should have decked him when he’d had the perfect opportunity. Why did he have to love the stupid jerk so damn much?

“Can we take him to the hospital now? Please?” The anger had faded from Sam’s face and John almost found himself preferring it over the sheer helplessness that was reflected in his dark eyes now. “Please, Dad. You promised.”

There were promises, and then there were promises. He’d never been good at keeping the hard ones. Ones that parents shouldn’t make if they weren’t damn sure that they could deliver on them.

John momentarily took his gaze from the road to look at his sons.

Sam was holding Dean, trying to keep him propped up to ease his breathing, while attempting to slow the bleeding enough to keep him alive until they could get help. They’d had a hell of time getting him back to the truck, with John finally having to threaten to leave Sam behind if he didn’t stop berating him every time Dean cried out in pain, because his father was jostling him. Didn’t Sam realize that he was just as worried as him. He was Dean’s father for fucking Christ’s sake. No matter what Sam believed, John Winchester did love his sons.

He turned back to the road. The boys were so different in some ways. Dean was bolder and more outgoing on the surface. He could come off as cocky and unshakeable, but he felt things so deeply. The kid was brave and as loyal as they came and just a little needy, which John was ashamed to admit that he had used against him on occasion.

Sam, on the other hand, seemed calm and collected, but so did a damn duck on a pond. Wheels were always turning in Sam’s mind, his emotions stirring up things, just like feet treading water. Sam was loyal to a point with most people, to that invisible point, where he felt cornered or betrayed. Then he could be as cold as his bastard of a father. Dean was the one exception. Sam didn’t need as much as he wanted, and wants could get you in a heap of trouble fast. John wanted lots of things. He looked at them again.

The pair was talking softly, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying over the hum of the engine. It was probably just as well. He was sure Sam was trying to say anything to comfort Dean, and Dean was trying his damnedest to not let Sam down. He needed to be there for Sam, almost as much as Sam wanted him to be there. They were two halves of a whole. Mary had hoped that her sons would be close, real brothers. She had gotten at least one thing she had wished for.

He sighed, rubbing his tired eyes and straining to see through the rain which had started to fall. There was a part of their world that he was never included in, and probably never would be included in. As he made the turn onto the road that would take them away from the hospital, he was pretty sure he didn’t deserve to be.