Two Wolves for monicawoe 2/2

[summergen-mod.livejournal.com]

TWO WOLVES (con’t)


It would be a half-day’s drive to Fedora, in a borrowed El Camino with no working heater and though it wasn’t snowing, it certainly could’ve been at any second. Despite the phone call, which had wandered into sexually-charged territory before Sam could gear it down, he couldn’t remember what this Holly person looked like. Or why she knew him, though he had an uncomfortable suspicion. Or why the barren landscape heading towards Fedora, as nondescript as it was, blurred by in his peripheral vision with unmistakable familiarity. It wasn’t that it looked like the rest of South Dakota, no. If only it were that easy. He knew this road, could drive it with his eyes closed, knew the heavy sky. It was like seeing echoes.

He predicted the turn-off to the Broken Diamond before it came into view. It sat like a glowworm at the end of a long tunnel, tucked between dark hills and bruise-colored clouds. The gravel parking lot had a handful of trucks in it, most in various stages of decay with gun racks in the back windows. Sam tucked his own gun into the waist of his jeans, at the sway of his back. The jukebox was loud enough to be heard from across the lot and he was anxious to get out of the cold. Anxious for answers.

Every head in the room swiveled when he opened the door. Typical for a small—no, nearly invisible—town. Sam nodded agreeably and rounded his shoulders, curbing his height and conspicuousness.

It usually worked. This time, not so much.

Two men, cut from the same camouflage cloth, lumbered to their feet. Their eyes were impassive, jaws tight behind several days of stubble. They both had the flat, broad-faced look of a lifelong meat-and-potatoes diet, and Sam knew that beneath the padding there was toughness he shouldn’t underestimate.

He kept his hands loose at his sides and quickly scanned the room for someone who might be Holly, any face he might know. Problem was they were all starting to look like someone he used to know. He was getting tangled up in real memories and wanting so badly to recognize things, he couldn’t be sure what was truth and what wasn’t.

“Len. Erwin. How ‘bout a round on the house, huh, boys?” The bartender, an older man with thick silver hair styled in a great sweep off his forehead, stepped to the edge of the bar and spoke loudly, above the jukebox. None of the other patrons said word one, just stared with narrowed eyes.

Sam stepped into the tavern, giving the Cammo Twins a wide berth. He ducked away from the glares and found a spot at the farthest end of the bar to sit, angled so his back was to the wall. He was glad for the press of gunmetal against his spine.

The bartender placated Len and Erwin with draft beers and made his way to Sam. A few sets of eyes drifted away to mind their own business. The tension lightened a hair.

“So,” he said, folding his arms across the pearl snaps of his shirt.

Sam rested his elbows on the bar, trying for casual. “Coffee?”

The man had a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth, and he rolled it around to the other side with his tongue. “Coffee, we can do.” He set a big restaurant-issue mug full of thick brown drink in front of Sam. No cream or sugar, and the bartender’s expression clearly indicated there wouldn’t be any, either.

“Thanks,” Sam mumbled. The stuff smelled burnt but he sipped it anyway. He smiled and tipped the cup. “It’s good.”

“No, it ain’t. But it’s warm. And yer not gettin’ anything stronger this time ‘round. Don’t want any trouble, Johnny.”

This time. Sam’s unease inched up, sitting mulishly in his chest. “Oh, me neither. I swear. Man, I don’t know what happened last time. I was just…” he gestured loosely with one hand “…crazy or something.”

“Mean damned drunk, more’s like. Or somethin’.”

The bartender’s squint-eyed, rheumy gaze just wouldn’t let up and Sam swallowed past the knot in his throat. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry. Must’ve blacked out.”

“Handy, that.”

“No, I just—”

“Why’d you come back, son?” The toothpick shifted again.

Sam stared at his bad coffee and felt a prickle in his brain. The fine hairs on his nape rose.

Before he could fashion something half-way harmless to say, a voice barked from down the bar, either Len or Erwin. The beer must not have been enough incentive for them to keep their noses to themselves. “We told you to stay gone, Johnny.”

Sam heard a stool scuff back and his eyes shifted to the pair. Sitting against the wall had kept his rear protected, but now Sam had only one escape route. They outweighed him easily. He knew he could take Len, the one who spoke, because the guy had a glass jaw. Erwin like to talk smack, too, had fists like hams but no speed. But there was a sawed-off behind the bar, probably within arm’s reach of Lyman—that was the barkeep’s name, he was sure of it—and the old man didn’t like blood spilt in his bar. He’d tell them to take it outside, where the rest of the good ol’ boys would follow, cracking their knuckles—

“There will be no more bloodshed in the Broken Diamond,” Lyman rumbled a warning to Len, who was advancing on Sam’s corner.

Sam felt the buzz of adrenaline hit his belly. He kept one hand curled around the heavy mug, the other resting on the sticky bartop. No need to pull his gun unless someone pulled a knife first. And he knew neither man carried blades, or at least they didn’t the last time…the last time…

“I’m just here to see Holly, is all,” Sam said, so unruffled he even had himself fooled.

Well. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Erwin’s porcine face turned a quick, hot shade of red and he shoved past Len. Sam got to his feet before he realized he was standing, and Lyman lunged for the shotgun.

Then Len screamed and slapped a hand to the back of his neck. This pretty much stopped everyone dead in their tracks. A man screaming is wont to do that.

Len spun away to reveal a slender blonde woman with a cigarillo pinched in her fingers.

“You fucknuts,” she drawled. “If anyone’s gonna beat on Johnny, it’s me.”

She cut past Len, who might even have stepped back a piece, and eased onto Sam’s abandoned seat. “Y’all can go away now.” She flicked her fingers. “Shoo.”

Lyman sighed, weary or relieved, probably both. “Holly, sweetheart, you’ll need to not smoke in here…”

She slid a slow grin to the bartender and dropped the cigarillo into Sam’s coffee. “Better?”

“You got ten minutes.” He furrowed his overgrown brows at her and moved away, ushering Len and Erwin to the far side of the bar. As far away from Sam’s corner as possible. Clean out the door, in fact.

Holly waited a few heartbeats until Lyman was out of earshot before she turned her attention to Sam. She wore too much mascara and not enough clothing, but behind all that calculating artifice, her eyes were sharp and bright and ticked off.

“And to think I took you for an educated man,” she said, pinging chipped fingernails against the mug.

“School doesn’t make a person smart.” Sam smiled half-heartedly, looking at her in earnest. Despite the tepid lighting, he knew her irises were pale green. Just as he somehow knew she was a natural blonde.

Holly lowered her voice. “Woulda been a might bit wiser to meet at the trailer, yeah? Avoid the local color?”

“The trailer.”

“You deaf?”

“Your…trailer?”

Her nose wrinkled in clear distaste. “What do you take me for, Johnny Black? Some ten-cent white-trash piece of skirt in a double-wide?”

Sam’s mouth worked around a few words that never came out.

“Your trailer, Einstein,” Holly clarified. “You do still have the Airstream, right?”

How it was more appropriate for him to be keeping a trailer somewhere, instead of her, eluded Sam. The very fact he had a trailer period made not a lick of sense. Or maybe it did. It made about as much sense as anything else right now. “I honestly don’t…maybe?”

She canted her head, fixing him with a bothered squint. “Okay, enough of this bullshit. I suspected you were crazycakes the first time I met you, but it was kinda…endearin’. I mean, for a weekend squeeze ‘n squirt. Now? It’s just…” She tossed a look down the bar and caught Lyman tapping his wristwatch, lips pinched tight. Holly rolled her eyes at him and carried on, regardless. “What is your damage anyway?”

Sam caught the old man’s gesture too, and the apparent time-constraints did nothing to assuage the impression he was heading deeper into enemy territory. Customers were still shooting wary glances over hunched shoulders or sneaking a glare across the rim of a pint glass. “It’s complicated.”

“And that’s a cop-out. Look, I’ve got better things to do on a Saturday night than play pussyfoot with you, big guy. You called me, remember? You wanna hang out or what?”

“Is there somewhere, um, less of a fishbowl we can—”

“Hello, trailer?”

“Right. The trailer.” Sam gave her his most practiced and charming smile. “Where was that again?”

But Holly wasn’t buying it and she stared him down with her raccoon-ish eyes. Sam could almost see the realization dawning. “You really are crazycakes, ain’t ya?”

“Aren’t we all? Just a little?”

Holly exhaled hard through her nose and poked a finger in his chest. “If you turn out to be one of those psychos who likes his girls with fava beans and a nice Chianti, I’ll—”

“Look, I have a feeling I’m not the first psycho you’ve met, nor will I be the last. Which, I think, says more about you than it does about me. But as psychos go, trust me, I’m pretty damned tame.”

She scowled at him until Sam peaked his brows and plied his patented hopeful-yet-serious face, wrapped up in a blanket of trustworthiness. He’d had twenty-plus years to perfect the technique and like a fine wine, it got better with age. This time, it worked.

Holly snatched up her coat. “Alright, Hannibal, but I’m driving.”


xXxXxXx


They’d been traveling for the better part of the last fifteen minutes, not talking. She drove a beat-up Mustang of indeterminate year—Dean could’ve pegged it—and the space where the radio would’ve sat was just a hole filled with cut wires. Holly’s fingers played over the steering wheel; she didn’t seem bothered by the quiet. She just lit up another cigarillo and cracked the window, letting cold air into the car. It was Sam who spoke first.

“That guy at the bar—”

“Erwin?”

“Was he your husband?”

She cut a look over at him, lip curled like she was smelling something bad. Sam couldn’t figure whether the sneer was aimed at him or the question.

“That was my cousin. Ricky’s still out on the road. Hauling crap to Duluth.”

“You burned your cousin with a…” Sam jutted his chin at the cigarillo.

“Black and Mild? Done worse to him. He’s a twat.”

Blinking, he stared at her.

“Oh, don’t make like this is news to you, Johnny. You don’t remember beating the sense outta Erwin? Along with half the stinkin’ bar last time you blew through town? Please.”

Sam played with a hole starting in the knee of his jeans and felt his brow tighten.

“What?” Holly demanded, her voice as biting as the chill in the air.

“I don’t…I mean I…”

The Mustang took a sharp cut off the road, spitting rocks as she ran the car to the shoulder and slammed it to a stop.

They were miles from civilization. She spun on him, gesturing pointedly with the business end of the smoke. “All right. Enough of this shit. What game are you playing?”

Sam sat up taller, his gun pressed hard between his back and the torn upholstery. He watched her expression keenly, as well as the orange glow weaving in front of his face. “I’ve had an…accident. Brain injury. Honest to God—” Sam almost hated saying that word anymore “—I don’t remember Fedora. Or Johnny. Or you.” This wasn’t altogether true, but starting with a clean-ish slate seemed the better part of valor. He remembered slivers of things but they floated in and out of focus, leaving only faint jet trails in his memory.

She stared at him, mouth slack with doubt. The car was coughing out an irregular rumble, the sickly green glow from the dashboard lights throwing her face into sharp shadow. “You think I’m that stupid?”

“No, I—” Sam dragged his hand through his hair, annoyed. “Holly. I’m not jerking your chain, I swear. Why would I make up something this…this farfetched? This preposterous? I woke up in a fucking diaper and no one will tell me jack shit about the last—oh, I dunno—month of my life so now here I am. Sitting in a piece-of-crap car, in the middle of nowhere—”

Holly mumbled something that Sam talked over and threw a glance past her shoulder, slipping the car back into gear.

“—and I keep finding these…things I can’t explain and doing stuff—”

The car crawled out of the gutter of the road, expelling gravel behind it. “Shut up,” she grumbled.

“—I shouldn’t do but I can and—”

“Christ on a cracker. SHUT. UP.”

Sam snapped his jaw closed with an audible click of teeth.

The wind whistled through Holly’s cracked window, lifting her hair in tangled, wheat-colored hanks. They drove, not speaking, for almost ten minutes until Sam couldn’t stand it any more. Again.

“So. You believe me?”

Holly kept her focus trained out the windshield, not so much as giving her passenger a glance. “What’s your name, then?”

“Sam. My name is Sam.”

She must’ve sensed Sam’s eyes on her because she pushed out a puff of breath, knuckles white around the steering wheel. She shifted in her seat, making the vinyl squeak, none of the tightness easing out of her shoulders. “Johnny never woulda used a word like ‘preposterous’. So yeah. I guess I believe you. Don’t make me sorry.”


xXxXxXx


They continued until the ambient glow of Fedora disappeared, but the moon hung fat and bright in the blue-black sky. Miles and miles of nothing but hilly silhouette rolled by, stabbed periodically by gnarls of bare, stunted trees. Eventually, he convinced her to tell him a bit about Johnny, how the guy blew into town like something wicked. How he filled the doorway at the Broken Diamond and set every man, and a few of the women, on edge but that just made Holly like him better, and Sam felt a disconcerting heat hit his cheeks from the inside out. She talked about Johnny beating Erwin at darts, and Erwin accusing him of being a ringer before Johnny put a dart in Erwin’s ass. On accident, supposedly. And then how Johnny took Holly to his trailer and they, well, they did things Sam asked her not to explain in detail, which made Holly grin, all toothy and sly.

Eventually, Holly took a left onto a road far less traveled. The car bumped carelessly over ruts, and Sam knocked his head on the roof more than a few times. A sizeable, dull silver box reflected in the Mustang’s headlights at the bottom of the one-lane gully: an old Airstream trailer, dark inside. They pulled in close and Holly cut the engine.

“Welcome to the love shack,” she said, waiting for Sam to move.

He just sat there, staring at the thing. He expected to recognize it, but the image loomed in front of them, inert. He licked his chapping lips, wiping damp palms on his thighs.

“You gonna get out?” Holly prodded. Her breath was already starting to steam white with the cold.

Sam nodded once and creaked open the door. He unfolded from the small car and dug his heels into the brittle carpet of brown grass.

The moon shed enough light to allow for safe passage to the camper, so he circled it once. He knew where to look for the sigils and yes, they were all there—cryptic designs from many cultures scratched into the metal siding or drawn on it with a black Sharpie marker, in discreet locations. There would be a red devil’s trap painted on the ceiling just inside the door as well, without a doubt. The small, square windows were covered with opaque curtains and Sam heard not a sound from inside.

Holly’s footfalls came up beside him. He smelled her cheap perfume, stained with smoke. She tried the door before he could stop her but it didn’t budge, locked up tight.

“You got your key?” she asked.

“Sort of.” Sam slipped a small black packet from his coat and selected a hook-shaped pick. After a moment of fiddling, the door drifted open, whinging softly. It sounded like a cry and Sam’s skin coursed with gooseflesh. As he stuffed the picks back into a pocket, he swapped them for a penlight. The beam cut a line of illumination across the interior; he half expected to find a den of iniquity: towers of spent beer cans, fast food containers, black-light posters. But it was spotless, Spartan. Compulsively neat. He had an unpleasant flicker of Broward County, Florida.

“We came here?” he said, stepping inside. The trailer listed gently.

“And came and came and came an—”

“Okay, enough.”

“Sorry.” She wasn’t, though; he could hear it in her voice. She stayed at the doorway, peeking inside.

Already, the air in the trailer sat thick in his lungs, pregnant with secrets and bad wisdom. His penlight glossed over weathered cabinets, bare walls, and a flat double-mattress with a wad of sheets in the middle, the only untidy thing in the room. A battery-powered lantern sat on the Formica counter top. Sam tried the knob and it flickered on, stinging his eyes. A cold white light flooded the tiny interior; must’ve been one of those harsh LED bulbs. Sam hated those.

“Looks just like you left it,” Holly said, her voice on the verge of boredom.

But she would have to show a little patience. There were answers here. Sam may not be thrilled once he uncovered them, but they were his answers and he wanted them back.

He opened a few drawers, full of what you’d expect in a camper. The narrow closet contained a handful of shirts, familiar in style, and one pair of weathered boots, Sam’s size. In the cramped corner bathroom, he found a very particular brand of scent-free body wash and a single toothbrush.

That was it. Just mundane things. Minutiae. He was more confused now than when he’d begun this risky quest for Mr. Hyde. He had the sneaking suspicion, though, if he kept digging he’d find the bodies in the basement; in fact he wouldn’t leave until he did. He had no choice but to own his brilliant disaster.

Sam lowered himself onto the unmade bed, gingerly avoiding the sheets, and pressed his fingertips across his forehead. Here he was, at Ground Zero, and he was stumped. It was like there were words on the tip of this tongue he once knew, but now? They were lost to him.

Holly stepped up into the trailer, her slight weight hardly making it shift, shutting the door behind. She nudged Sam aside before kneeing her way across the bed and tossing pillows over her shoulder to the scuffed floor. He watched as her dirty little fingers fit between a narrow crack in the corner and with a quick tug, a piece of paneling popped free, revealing a niche in the wall.

“And you thought you were good at hiding things.” She grinned crookedly and sat back on her haunches, giving Sam room to reach across the mattress and into the void.

He removed a wooden box, roughly the size of a dictionary and covered in wards. A sudden buzzing, faint as a hummingbird, flicked through his brain. Maybe he’d hit pay dirt after all. Maybe this was that anticipatory flutter felt before important events. Or maybe he was having an aneurism. Whatever the case, he eased open the lid.

A knife gleamed inside. The blade was unusually shaped, curved slightly at the tip with one edge sharply serrated, the flat etched with arcane marks and the handle carved of bone. It stunk of sulfur and hunger. Of Ruby.

“Did’ya get that at one of those Ren Faires?” Holly leaned in to get a better view. Her hair hung down and brushed his arm.

“Something like that.” Sam set the knife on his knee and sifted through the remaining contents. He fought the urge to push her back, get some space, but it wasn’t long before he wished he’d actually done it.

“Ew,” she gasped. “Is that a tail?”

It was indeed a tail, slim and rat-like. It sat alongside a pointed ear, lightly furred and partially preserved. And several fangs and a talon. Fish-like scales. A tuft of strange, silky hair. Souvenirs. Johnny kept gewgaws of his hunts. What hunter in his right mind did that? But Johnny was Sam. And Sam thought he was going to vomit.

Holly stared from the box to Sam then back again. “That’s some weird shit right there.”

Sam was so damned thankful none of the remnants looked human. He carefully replaced the lid and rested his hands over it. His heart was pounding.

“Some people keep rabbit’s feet. For luck,” he said lamely.

“Uh-huh.” Holly scooted off the bed and stood, rubbing her own shoulders and shivering slightly, nose bright pink. “So, we done here? You find what you came for? No offense, but I kinda miss feeling my toes.”

“Um, yeah, sure. Go start the car. Give me five minutes.”

“Five minutes, or the wagon leaves without you, cowboy.” She didn’t say it meanly, but Holly’s attention span seemed to have outlived its shelf life and she was ready to move on to the next shiny object. She left, the door swaying wide and hanging open.

Sam gazed around the Airstream one last time. The atmosphere didn’t feel heavy anymore. It felt empty. Whoever he had been, whatever had been done here and left here, it was spent. But there was more to the story; Sam felt it in his bones like foul weather. If Dean wasn’t going to ‘fess up, there was a certain multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent he would coerce for help, if he had to.

The Mustang was running and warm when Sam squeezed inside, clutching the box. They drove back to the bar in an almost-companionable silence, nothing but the road noise for a radio.

Holly let Sam off at his borrowed car and sat with her window down for a moment, lighting another cigarillo.

“Thanks,” Sam said to her, hands shoved into his pockets, the box tucked under one arm. He glanced up into the sky’s million stars. The heavens went on forever.

Holly looked him over, chewing the inside of her cheek.

“You know,” she mused, “my daddy always said inside us is two wolves. One’s good; one’s bad.” She dragged on her smoke and exhaled toxins into the air between them. “Which one wins is the one you feed the most. See ya ‘round. Sam.”

She rolled up the window and the Mustang rumbled away down the pockmarked road.


xXxXxXx


Somewhere between Fedora and Sioux Falls, as the sky was bleaching with the onset of dawn, Sam pulled off down a side road and drove until he found a flat, clear area. Looked like it used to be the concrete slab foundation of a small house, long since razed. He left the car running.

He scanned the area, spotting nothing, not even crows or turkey vultures. It was too early yet. At the dead center of the slab, Sam set down the wooden box with everything but the knife still inside. That, he had tucked into the glove compartment. He liberally soaked the wood with lighter fluid; it was already chock full of rock salt. He pulled a lighter from his jeans, one of those silver flip-top varieties, and bounced its solid, trustworthy heft in his palm.

As he struck the wheel and made flame, he crouched and touched it to the corner of the box. Fire licked across the surface greedily in blues and oranges and gold. Things began popping and stinking, a light breeze tugging away black threads of smoke. Sam pocketed the lighter and held his hands open to the heat.

“Johnny, I hardly knew ye,” he murmured. “R.I.P. Whoever the fuck you were…”

Once the poor man’s pyre was nearly spent, Sam fished his cell phone from his coat. He was pleased to find he had reception in this remote spit of country.

“Hey, Dean. I know you’re sleeping. You guys are something like two hours ahead of me, I think? Anyway, I was up. Insomnia. Just thought I’d call, check in. Talk to your voice mail. Hope nothing’s kicked your asses yet. Call me later, okay?”

Sam watched the phone until the screen turned dark.