Supernatural: One Year Gone (30 page)

“I bruise easily, sort of the price you pay for being over three hundred years old,” she said conversationally, smiling at Dean. He was gradually getting the point.

“Oh, one more thing,” Perry said as she opened up a door in the grate separating them. “Now be nice.”

“What are you going to do?” Dean asked.

She just smiled wickedly then took out a small vial of liquid. She grabbed Dean’s head with one hand and with the other pried his mouth open. He struggled against her, twisting his head back and forth but Perry had a grip like iron and he was powerless to stop her. She poured the liquid down his throat; he gagged and then swallowed instinctively. She released his head and instantly he fell back, feeling the paralysis spread through his body, until he was completely inert.

After a moment, seemingly satisfied, Perry crawled back into the back seat and shut the cage.

He heard the beeps as she dialed three digits into her cell phone. After a brief pause, she started to speak, her voice small and hesitant with a panicky edge.

“Yes, hello. My boyfriend... my boyfriend beat me up. I don’t know. One moment we where kissing and then he just got real rough. Yeah, he just went into the mall. I don’t know when he’ll be back. Can you come quick? Oh, thank you.” She gave the details of their location and then rang off.

“It will wear off by the time the police get here,” Perry said to Dean, her voice confident and gleeful again.

Just then the squeal of sirens erupted in the distance. Perry flicked her wrist and the binds on Dean’s legs and wrists immediately came off. She hopped out of the vehicle and popped open the back door.

“Whatcha’ gonna to do, Dean? Run and hide or face the music? Either way you’re not going to see your little GF and son ever again,” she gloated.

Dean swung his heavy legs onto the ground, stood up and tried to walk; it was a little more difficult than he remembered it being. He leaned on the side of the car, the sirens were getting closer.

“I’m going to kill you,” he croaked.

Perry pursed her lips as if seriously weighing that possibility.

“Eh, probably not. But you can always try. Here they come. Watch and learn, Dean, baby,” she purred.

A Salem Police squad car bumped into the parking lot and screeched around in a wide circle clearly trying to locate the emergency caller.

Pushing Perry out of his way, Dean took off in a Frankenstein-like run. He could still feel the paralyzing liquid coursing through his veins, and he had to will his stiff legs to keep moving. He headed for the tree line that ran down one side of the parking lot. He tripped and stumbled down into a ravine and splashed into a polluted little stream at the bottom. He could hear Perry’s screams coming from behind him, she was surely pointing his escape route out to the police.

A large drainage pipe led underneath a road, and Dean headed toward it hoping for a little refuge. Gritting his teeth through the stiffness, he stumbled through the pipe, his boots splashing through the fetid water, and emerged on the other side into a small run-off pond. He struggled to climb up the grassy slopes surrounding it, up and into a fast-food joint’s parking lot.

Not far from where Dean paused to catch his breath, a pudgy guy quickly exited his car on a burger run. Dean slid into the driver’s seat. He fumbled with a couple of wires underneath the dash, struggling with stiff fingers, but after a few seconds he touched them together. The spark egged the engine into jump-starting. Dean pulled swiftly out of the parking space. Checking his rearview mirror, he saw a couple of cops appear at the top of the grassy bank. He put his foot down and squealed out of the parking lot.

Dean bashed the steering wheel with his fists in frustration. He still didn’t know where Lisa and Ben were or what had happened to them—they could be dead by now. The witches’ latest sacrifices. He should never have brought them to Salem—what the hell had he been thinking? Family life and hunting just don’t mix. It was too dangerous. He had already lost Sam, what if he also lost Lisa and Ben?

He needed to figure out where the witches were. Trying to calm down and focus, Dean decided to head back to the library. He needed a map, an old one.

At the library the same old woman was at the desk. But minus his professorial clothes and clearly looking as rough as he felt, she looked at him much more skeptically.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for any old maps you might have of Salem?” Dean asked politely, trying to keep the edge of panic out of his voice.

“Everything we have can be found on the Internet if you go to—”

“Listen, I don’t have time for that,” he said urgently. “Where are the maps?”

She pointed to several large cabinets on the other side of the room. Dean nodded his thanks.

Aware of the woman’s eyes on him, he tried to be careful as he hurriedly pulled open each cabinet and riffled through the contents, painfully aware that he wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for. Surely he’d know it when he saw it—he usually did. Then he noticed a modern map of the development plans for the Kirkbride Estates, where Perry had her apartment. It showed the series of buildings some of which had been demolished and some of which had been refurbished. His brain made a sudden connection and he went back to another map dating from 1786. It was the oldest the library had. Both the maps were to the same scale. He placed the older one, which clearly outlined old Salem Village, over the new one. Salem Village and the Kirkbride Estates lined up.

The circle in which the insane asylum and then the condos had been built was directly over what used to be Salem Village.

“So Salem Village was torn down?” he called over to the librarian.

“More or less,” she replied, “sure there are some buildings in Salem Town that date back to those days, and that were used during the witch trials, but Salem Village where the actual trials took place, those buildings were mostly demolished and left to rot. The insane asylum was built right tip-top on it.”

“Well ain’t that something.” Dean thanked the woman. Then he remembered something else. “Oh I need to see that Campbell journal again, if I could?”

She led him back to the reading room and produced the box in which Dean had left John’s journal, then left him alone.

Dean pulled the Campbell journal from his jacket and took one last look at it. His family came from a lineage of hunters who had always sacrificed themselves for the good of others. He only wished he could share his discovery with Sam.

He switched out the journals and left the library. But not without pocketing the last couple of pages of the Campbell journal. They were sort of his by rights, anyway.

Dean got back into his stolen car and headed to the Kirkbride Estates. He was going to have to do some real quick thinking since he was without guns or salt. He’d had to abandon his duffle bag when Perry pulled a gun on him back in Rockport.

As Dean pulled into the estate, he noticed something he hadn’t clocked the previous day, when he and Lisa had rescued Ben. A couple of kids were hanging around by the side of one of the buildings. A car approached and slowly came to a stop in front of them. One kid in a baseball cap leaned in through the passenger-side window, and something was passed between the driver and the kid. The kid nodded then went back to his friends. The car pulled away.

These kids were Salem drug dealers.
And where there were drugs, there were sure to be guns,
Dean mused. Thank God, Perry hadn’t found the wad of cash in his sock. Dean had never bought drugs; they were not something that was really worked with the hunter lifestyle. Hard liquor definitely, but drugs, not so much.

Dean stopped the car, but kept it idling in case he needed to get out quick. He tried his best swagger approaching the group of kids.

“You got a load in your pants, white boy?” one of the kids said.

Dean pushed down his pride.

“Listen man, I need to buy some shit from you.”

The boys laughed.

“You trippin’ if you think we’re going to sell to a plainclothes. Go back to Captain Crunch and tell him he ain’t catching us today,” the first kid said.

“I hate that fat freak,” Dean said. “I’m not working for anyone but myself, and I need some firepower like two minutes ago.”

“Oh yeah?” another one of them spoke up. “What for? Hunting season hasn’t started yet.”

“Listen, I just need a sawed-off and if you have it, a couple pounds of salt, and anything you have that will blow up.”

The kids cracked up in his face.

His patience rapidly running out, Dean approached the closest heckler and elbowed him in the neck. As he fell, Dean pulled him up by the collar then dropped him at his feet. The kid writhed around in pain.

“Hey!” the first kid spoke again. “That some Schwarzenegger shit man. Why you do that to Tiny?”

“Because I’m not kidding and don’t have time for this crap,” Dean ground out. “What do you have? I have money and I need guns.”

“He for real,” a tall kid called from beside Dean’s idling stolen car. “Car’s hot.”

Dean looked back to the group of kids. The first kid stepped forward.

“You can go to prison for that shit you know,” he said.

“I’ve been to Hell. Try again,” Dean said.

“I believe this guy,” the kid said. “Okay, follow me. Just don’t wake up my Grams.”

Dean followed the kid in through a first-floor apartment door. Inside, an older black woman slept on the couch while the TV blared. The kid gestured for Dean to follow him into another room.

“I’m Tim by the way,” the kid said. He laid out two antique guns on his neatly made bed. “I got this and this,” he said, gesturing.

“Hey. I’m Dean. And no offence Tim but those are ancient,” Dean said disappointed. “I thought we were talking like real guns.”

“These are real guns. I only collect classics. This here dates back to the civil war. And this one before that.”

Dean didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, he shrugged and picked up the guns. He examined them carefully. They seemed like they would do the job. He placed them back on the bed. Dean eyed Tim, and the pristine condition of his bedroom. He noticed a bookshelf was lined with astronomy textbooks.

“You seem like a smart kid,” Dean observed. “Why are you selling guns?”

Tim shrugged. “These are antiques man. I do a lot of research to find good hardware. You won’t need anything else but what you have in your hands.”

Dean reached crouched down and pulled up his jeans, pulling a wad of cash from his sock, along with a credit card. He counted out several notes, shoved the rest back into his sock, then handed the kid the cash and the credit card.

“Take this. It’s hot, but basically untraceable. I think it’s some big agent in Hollywood. Never checks his bills, so feel free to have fun.” He inclined his head toward the textbooks. “Get yourself something worthwhile.”

“Thanks, man,” Tim said, counting the money quickly and easily. He squinted at the credit card. “You can take this too.” He pulled out a small pistol. “I don’t know how much salt my Grams has in the kitchen, but you can just take what you need.”

Dean nodded his thanks, loaded the guns into his pockets and waistband. He then followed the boy into the kitchen where he loaded up on table salt.

Outside Dean offered up his hand to Tim.

“Thanks—you’ve really helped me out.”

“No problem. Hey—what you need the steel for?”

Dean eyed the group of young kids in baggie shorts and big T-shirts. Suddenly they all looked much younger and more vulnerable than they had first appeared. One thing about chasing monsters—makes your average human gang member seem like a pussycat.

“Basically, I think my girlfriend and her kid have been taken by some real bad bitches,” he replied. “And I think it’s all going to go down somewhere around here.”

“No shit. Well you know where to find us,” Tim said. “We just chillin’, so if you need extra bodies—”

Dean nodded in appreciation, then got back into the car and pulled around the corner to the Kirkbride Estates. He sat in the car for a short while, checking his weapons and loading them up. Then he got out and walked around the building.

He spied the parking garage and headed down the ramp. Under the strip lighting, Dean spread out the maps he had taken from the library on the hood of a car. He noticed that the development plans outlined the destruction of a large building in the center of the property, in its place a large swimming pool had been dug. But Dean noticed on the older map of Salem Village the very same space once was a fort built for raids against the Indians. The fort’s outer walls were much larger than the outline of the asylum building or the pool. Dean wondered if the fort somehow still existed.

A loud thump and muffled voices echoed through the parking structure. Sensing trouble, Dean searched the half-empty garage and noticed the steel doors on the other side of the lot. He grabbed the maps, shoving them back inside his jacket, took out the pistol and silently slipped past rows of cars to the doors. Inside he could hear muffled voices.

Dean pushed the steel door open an inch. He stuck the pistol barrel through the opening. The next thing he knew the door was swung open and the butt of a gun cracked his nose with a THWACK! Stars exploded in his eyes and Dean fell onto the cement floor.