Supernatural: One Year Gone (8 page)

“Because you’re my grandfather,” he said eventually.

Samuel looked into Sam’s eyes. “Sam?”

“Dean told you about me?”

“Dean told me
all
about you; Stanford, your girlfriend, what a great hunter you are.”

“Dean said that?” Sam asked, truly skeptical that his brother would have complimented him.

“He said that you have a good head on your shoulders. You’re fast, but mostly people trust you. Kind face, I guess. You’re the brains, the yin to Dean’s yang.”

That’s one way to put it,
Sam thought. “Yeah, well, he never told me that.”

“Where is he anyway?” Samuel asked. “I thought you guys were a team.”

“Yeah, um, not anymore. Dean decided to pack it in and settle down with his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend? Really? Well, that’s wonderful. I would love to see him,” Samuel said. “But of course, things are a little different now. You know since... I’ve come back.”

“Yeah, how did that happened?” Sam asked. He needed to know. Two people from the same family being resurrected, one from a cage in Hell—surely it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“No idea. Woke up in a field somewhere. I called my niece—she was the only one I could think of that would be young enough to be alive—and she took me in. She was hunting. Met the group that she hunts with. Just sort of fell back into it.”

Samuel pulled Sam in for a hug.

“It’s great to meet you, son.”

Sam pushed him away. Enough of this family reunion crap, it was time to get back to business.

“So the kid is a god?” he asked.

“Yeah. No need to kill the kid though, just chase the god out,” Samuel explained. “He’s the incarnation of Malsum. It’s an Algonquin Cain and Abel story. The incarnation of Malsum comes every generation, takes the form of a wolf and mostly mutilates cattle as a kind of trick.”

“So you weren’t there to kill him?”

“Not at all. It’s just killing cattle, not people. We have to chase the god out while it’s in the wolf form, not as a child.”

“Then why were you sneaking into the house?”

“I was going to hide under the bed until he changed, then use this on him.” Samuel held up an elaborate bone and herb garland. “Wrap it around his neck, say a prayer three times and it’s supposed to send Malsum back to the dark world.”

“Let’s just wait in the car then. If he moves, we’ll get him,” Sam proposed.

They sat in Sam’s car for another hour or two. Sam wasn’t in the mood for talking, but after thirty-odd years of being dead, it seemed his grandfather had plenty of questions. Sam responded as politely as he could, but he kept to himself the fact that he had been Lucifer’s chosen vessel and had taken Lucifer on and jumped into the pit.

At around ten in the evening, the Sheriff’s little boy appeared on the front doorstep. Sam and Samuel hunkered down in their seats as the Sheriff and his wife carefully peered up and down the street. They then ceremonially kissed the child on each cheek and handed him what looked like a small snack. The child turned his back on his parents and in an instant turned into a silver wolf.

“But the god is a bad god, right?” Sam whispered.

“I guess so. He’s Cain,” his grandfather replied.

“Good,” Sam said. He got out of the car with his shotgun drawn. The Sheriff looked up, saw Sam, and yelled at the wolf to run. The wolf glanced at Sam and took off across the street and over the prairie beyond.

Sam was almost as quick. He ran swiftly after the creature, leaving his grandfather far behind.

The wolf leapt over a twelve-foot-wide irrigation ditch and kept going. Sam jumped, but hit the ground a little short, sliding down the embankment. But moments later, he found his footing and raced up the hill back onto the prairie. The wolf was far ahead now, so Sam leveled his gun and shot. The silver wolf went down.

Satisfied, Sam approached his victim. The creature was breathing heavily, blood draining from the back of its leg out onto the dry ground.

“What did you do?” Samuel yelled breathlessly as he reached Sam’s side.

“Give me the wreath, you say the prayer,” Sam directed.

Samuel did as his grandson said. Sam wrapped the herbs around the wolf’s neck as Samuel said the prayer three times.

The wolf lifted its head one last time then laid it back down on the ground.

“You killed him, Sam. You killed a
child,”
Samuel said. “What is wrong with you?
You don’t kill people!”

Sam looked down impassively at the wolf then unwrapped the herbs and bones from its neck. The body of the wolf disappeared and in its place was the young black-haired boy.

Silently, Sam scooped him up. The boy’s breathing was faint. Sam strode rapidly back across the prairie to the Sheriff’s house, put the child in his father’s arms, then got into the car. His grandfather was waiting in the passenger seat. Still without speaking, Sam started the engine and sped onto the highway.

Eventually Samuel broke the silence.

“You shot a boy,” he said.

“I killed a nasty god. The boy will be fine,” Sam replied. He gripped the wheel.

“The fact that you could have killed him means nothing to you? Who taught you that?”

“No one did. I did what needed to be done,” Sam said, staring at the road.

“What happened to you, boy?”

Sam shrugged. “I was sent to Hell.”

The rhythmic thrumming of the tires over the cracks in the Eisenhower-era road lulled Dean into a reverie. This stretch of sun-baked cement was like the thousands of miles Dean had logged with Sam at his side. Dean’s mind swerved again toward that afternoon at Stull Cemetery. He gripped the steering wheel tight and tried to forget. But like an unbalanced axle, he slowly got pulled to the side that his mind favored—Dean thought back to the days before Sam jumped.

“For the record, I agree with you. About... me. You think I’m too weak to take on Lucifer. Well, so do I. I know exactly how screwed-up I am. You, Bobby, Cass—I’m the least of any of you,” Sam said earnestly. They’d had this conversation multiple times and each time Dean had said, “No.” He wasn’t going to let Sam say “Yes.”

“Sam—” Dean began, but he didn’t know how to carry on. His brother wasn’t the least of them. He’d just taken one too many turns for the worse over the last two years: he had drunk demon blood, shacked up with Ruby, let Lucifer out of the cage. Dean couldn’t deny that Sam had messed up. But who on Earth could take on Lucifer? Dean just couldn’t bear to see his brother killed.

Sam continued. “It’s true. I’m also all we got. If there was another way... But I don’t think there is. There’s just me. So I don’t know what else to do. Except just try to do what’s gotta be done.”

And then Dean had lied to Death’s face; told him he would let Sam jump.

When Dean spoke to Bobby later, he was surprised to find that Bobby agreed with Sam.

“Look, I’m not sayin’ Sam ain’t ass-f of character defects. But—”

“But what?” Dean asked curtly.

“Back at Niveus? I watched that kid pull out one civilian after another. Must have saved ten people. Never stopped, never slowed down. We’re hard on him, Dean. And we’ve always been.”

Dean knew that Bobby was right: At his core—his very core where his heart beat—Sam was a good person.

“So I gotta ask you, Dean. What are you afraid of exactly? Losing—or losing your brother?”

Lisa had become accustomed to that look in Dean’s eyes. She had deliberately overlooked the history of Salem, the witch trials and all the supernatural activity they promised, when Dean mentioned it as his planned vacation spot for them.

A vacation in Salem is better than no vacation at all,
she reasoned.
And a change of scenery is good. He will be okay. This will be okay.
She forced herself to ignore the feeling that perhaps Dean wasn’t telling her the whole story.

“New York State! Just crossed into New York, Ben. Ben, you listening?” Dean said, checking the rearview.

“Whatever.” Ben glanced up from his handheld PSP. “It looks exactly like the last state.”

“Ben,” Lisa said, giving him a motherly warning to not act out.

Ben heeded his mother’s tone.

“It’s cool. Very cool,” he said, clearly trying to sound more enthusiastic.

“Good,” Dean said with a smile. “Seven more hours and we’re there.”

“Seven more? Are you sure you’re okay to keep driving? Shall I take over for a while?” Lisa asked.

“I’m fine. Better than fine,” Dean said. And he was. The closer they got to Salem the closer he got to finding someone to help him raise Sam. Dean was focused on one thing and one thing only—getting his brother back.

“Dean,” Lisa chided, “I know you can spend days straight in a car, but Ben and I can’t. We need to stretch our legs and it’s almost nine. Ben needs to go to bed.”

“I can sleep back here,” Ben offered.

“A proper bed. Please Dean, can we stop?”

Dean looked at Lisa. He didn’t want to stop, he wasn’t used to staggering journeys and waiting around. He just wanted to get to Salem. But he had other people to consider on this trip, it wasn’t just him and Sam, driving through the night to another hunt. He was supposed to be on vacation.

“Sure, no problem. Next town or rest stop, we’ll find a room. Okay?”

“Thanks,” Lisa said, putting her hand on Dean’s arm.

An hour later they pulled off the highway and into a little one-street town. Dean stopped the car in front of the only hotel he could see. It had a Western-style feel to it even though they were in western New York State, not Arizona.

“You check in, I’ll drive park around back,” Dean suggested.

Lisa and Ben hopped out and Dean pulled the car left, back into the street.

SCRREEECH!

Dean stomped on the breaks as a white van careened out of nowhere and past the car.

“Jesus H. Christ, Sam! You think you could maybe not hit your brother’s car while you’re still pretending to be dead,” Samuel spat.

Sam had pulled off Route 86 a couple of minutes after Dean. He hadn’t been following him the whole time, but had spotted the car halfway through Ohio. Samuel had said that they should follow Dean and keep an eye on him. If they got to Salem before him, they risked losing him or worse, being spotted.

“It’s that damn Daddy Caddy. Dean never drove like that in the Impala,” Sam said, scowling.

He held his course and pulled the van into the parking lot of a park a couple of blocks from Dean’s motel.

“Let’s get the MREs and hit the road right after them in the a.m.,” Samuel said.

Sam ate his Ready-to-Eat meal sitting on a picnic table while his grandfather sorted through their equipment in the open back of the van.

Sam looked out over a buzzing little park pond, he liked doing everything himself these days and he didn’t feel the need for company. As much as he trusted his grandfather, he trusted himself more.

Sam bit into a hard foil-wrapped brownie. It was tasteless to him, or maybe it was just tasteless. It didn’t matter. The only hint of a feeling Sam could really understand was satisfaction. He liked getting a job done. He thought about Dean only a couple of blocks away. Whatever Dean was after, if they had to get there first and do it better, that was fine by Sam.

The next day Dean, Lisa, and Ben were on the road early. They stopped at a fast food drive-through for breakfast and then were on their way. Four hours later Dean finally pulled off the interstate.

“Here we are. This looks good enough,” Dean said as he angled the car into a Sunshine Inn parking lot. It was located off a bleak mall and gas station-stuffed suburban thruway.

“Oh Dean, I forgot to tell you,” Lisa said, with a slight smirk. “I made reservations at this cute bed and breakfast in the heart of town. Here’s the address.” She handed him a piece of paper printed out from the Internet. “I think if you pull out of here, take a right, and then take your next right at Waters Street, that will take us right into town.” Lisa gestured the route Dean was to take.

Dean stared hard at the piece of paper. Reservations? He’d never made reservations before.
For anything.