by Tim Waggoner
Sam stuck the card in his inner jacket pocket, and together he and Dean started down the hill toward the pond.
“Can you say paranoid?” Dean said.
“You can’t blame him. Something bad did happen here.”
“You think that bad had anything to do with the black dog Braveheart mentioned?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Could be.”
Sightings of spectral black dogs went back centuries—it was the legend Arthur Conan Doyle based The Hound of the Baskervilles on—but there was no definite answer to what the creatures were. Most hunters tended to believe one of two possibilities: either they were creatures of demonic origin or they were forms taken by shapeshifters. Sam didn’t see any reason why both explanations couldn’t be true. After all, the ecosystem of the supernatural world was just as varied in its own way as that of the natural one.
“Could be something living in the pond,” Sam continued.
“Maybe,” Dean allowed. “But if there is, the ducks don’t seem to be bothered by it.”
As they drew near the pond, they saw two smaller taped-off areas, one close to the water, one a bit farther uphill, both arranged in roughly rectangular patterns.
“Looks like the local PD believes in being thorough,” Dean said. “I’m surprised they didn’t put up a great big I’d Turn Back if I Were You! sign.”
“A musical reference?” Sam asked. “I would’ve expected something from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or maybe Porky’s II.”
“Just trying to broaden the repertoire.”
The brothers swept their gazes back and forth as they bantered, senses alive and alert. A big part of being a hunter was paying attention to your environment. Sights, sounds, and smells could all provide clues to the presence of a supernatural manifestation, but the most important sense of all was one that didn’t have a name. It wasn’t psychic, exactly. More like heightened instinct. Hunt long enough, survive long enough, and you developed the ability to know when something wasn’t right. It was a subconscious process, not a cognitive one, but both Sam and Dean had learned long ago to trust it, and right now that sense was telling Sam that whatever had happened here to cause the deaths of two people, it hadn’t been natural.
They reached the tape rectangle on the hillside first. Sam removed his EMF detector from his outer jacket pocket, turned it on, and held it close to the ground. The electromagnetic readings in the area were normal, and he switched the machine off and placed it back in his pocket.
“So we know that whatever did this wasn’t a ghost,” Dean said.
“It’s been two days since the deaths,” Sam pointed out. “Any electromagnetic energy left behind might’ve faded in that time.”
“I suppose.”
Both brothers squatted to get a closer look at the ground. They didn’t break the tape, though. They preferred not to disturb crime scenes any more than necessary, just in case it turned out that an ordinary human scumbag was responsible instead of a thing that went bump in the night.
“According to the Broadsider, this is where the woman’s body was found.” Sam pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and opened it to the most recent entry. “Her name was Joyce Nagrosky, and she was a retired high school English teacher. The other victim was Ted Boykin. He was retired, too. Used to be the principal at the school where Joyce taught.”
“Think they came down here for a little extracurricular workout?” Dean asked. “Just ’cause they were enjoying their golden years doesn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy each other, too. I mean, the guy’s last name was Boykin. Boink-ing. Get it?”
Sam just looked at him.
“I thought it was funny,” Dean muttered.
Despite his brother’s lousy joke, Sam knew there was a serious question behind it. Supernatural creatures preyed on humans for a variety of reasons, but the most common one was to feed. Some, like the Leviathan, fed on humans literally. Vampires drank human blood. Some ate only certain parts of the body, like kitsune, which fed on the pituitary gland.
Amy’s face flashed through his mind, and for a moment he thought he heard her voice whispering in his ear. All the coolest people are freaks... He shoved the memory of her aside, along with the pang of guilt that came with it. He had work to do.
Some monsters drained life energy. Some, such as succubi and incubi, fed on sexual energy. If Joyce and Ted had been doing the wild thing by the pond, they might have attracted the attention of something even wilder.
“I don’t think so,” Sam said after a moment’s consideration. “They may have been a couple—the paper didn’t say anything about that—but this area’s a little too close to the apartment complex for them to have any privacy.”
“Maybe they were into the whole thrill-seeking thing,” Dean countered, but without much conviction. “I don’t smell anything weird. No scent of sulfur, rotting fish, or decayed flowers.” He sniffed. “No demon dog stink, either.”
“The area’s not cold,” Sam said. “Well, not any colder than normal for this time of year.”
“The ground’s pretty well torn up,” Dean said. “The locals could’ve done it. Like you said earlier, they’re probably not used to handling a real crime scene.”
“Could be,” Sam allowed. “But a dog could’ve done it, too.”
“Size of these marks, it would’ve been a big one.”
“Yep. No blood, though. An animal that big, if it attacked someone, it would’ve made a mess.”
Dean pressed his index finger to the ground and pushed the tip into the dirt. “Hasn’t rained recently. So if there had been any blood, it wouldn’t have been washed away.”
The brothers stood, and Dean wiped his fingertip off on his pants leg.
“Let’s go check out where they found the principal,” Sam said.
The brothers walked down to the edge of the pond and examined the second cordoned-off area. There was less grass there, and the ground was softer. There were obvious prints, mostly from the police and paramedics, probably, but there were also a number of what appeared to be claw marks in the ground, along with a single clear paw print. A damn big one.
The brothers stood thinking for a moment, the ducks on the pond keeping their distance and eyeing them warily.
After a bit, Dean said, “Here’s how I think it played out. Ted and Joyce walk down to the pond. Maybe they’re taking a stroll, feeding the ducks, thinking about getting busy later, whatever. Then our killer dog approaches from over there.” He pointed to the woods. “It attacks them and Ted, being the stand-up guy he is, tries to slow it down long enough so Joyce can get away. She runs, but Cujo makes quick work of old Ted, chases after her, and that’s all she wrote.”
Sam nodded. “That’s how I see it, too. But how exactly did it kill them? The paper didn’t say anything about their bodies being ravaged by an animal.”
“Yeah, I know. They were mummified. Hey, you don’t suppose they were just really, really old?”
“I think we need to take a look at those bodies.”
* * *
As Sam and Dean headed back up the hill, neither of them noticed a shadowy figure step out from between the trees at the edge of the pond and watch them depart.
THREE
A couple hours later, Sam and Dean returned to the pond. They’d ditched their monkey suits for their normal street clothes, something for which Dean was profoundly grateful. He wore his leather jacket, Sam wore his blue coat, and both of them had hoodies and flannel shirts underneath. Even when it was cold outside, the brothers rarely wore anything heavier. Thick clothes could slow you down, and a slow hunter was all too often a dead hunter. Layers were the way to go. You could strip them off as needed, and ditching your outer jacket was a good way to quickly change your appearance in case someone—like the cops—was looking for you.
Dean never felt comfortable in a suit, with the possible exception of his 1940s threads, although he had to admit they had their uses. Not only did they make it easier to
get cops to talk to you, they worked magic on hospital employees. They had no problem getting the morgue attendant to grant them access to the bodies of Joyce Nagrosky and Ted Boykin. Better yet, since the county’s medical examiner suspected some sort of contagion was at work in their deaths, he hadn’t conducted full autopsies. He was waiting for the CDC to report on the tissue samples he’d sent, which meant that Sam and Dean had a pair of pristine bodies to check out. Sometimes the key detail in a supernatural death was subtle, and a doctor might destroy an important piece of evidence without meaning to. But they hadn’t had to worry about that this time.
Both bodies had been the same. They reminded Dean of the empty husks that cicadas left behind when they changed into their adult forms. Damn creepy things, those bugs! According to the ME’s preliminary findings, the bodies still possessed all their internal organs, but it was as if every drop of moisture had been drained out of them. Not just blood, either. All fluid was gone—water, spinal fluid, gastric juices, you name it—leaving Joyce and Ted looking like skeletons covered in thin gray parchment paper. Corpse-a-gami, Dean thought. The bodies shared one other salient feature: vicious gashes on the throat. The ME postulated that the injuries had been delivered post mortem by some sort of scavenger. But the way he and Sam figured it, the wounds had been caused by the monster dog, which Dean had consequently taken to calling Dogula.
Their examination of Joyce and Ted’s bodies hadn’t provided any clues as to the nature of the creature that had killed them, and a follow-up Internet search hadn’t yielded anything of use, so the brothers had brought a variety of weapons with them. Pistols loaded with silver bullets, a Winchester 1887 shotgun filled with rock salt—which Dean carried—a knife of cold iron dipped in holy water, and a demon-killing blade. Like the Boy Scouts, hunters believed in being prepared. Or, as Bobby used to put it, Better to haul some extra hardware than to end up as little chunks of undigested meat in a pile of monster scat.
“This isn’t right, Sam. I know something’s not kosher in this town, and I know I agreed to look into it, but I can’t help feeling that we’re dishonoring Bobby’s memory by putting off going after Roman. And don’t tell me that we have a responsibility to help the good people of Brennan. The world is filled with monsters, and no matter what we do, we’ll never get them all. There are just too damn many of them, and there are only two of us. We have to take care of family business first, and that’s what Dick Roman is—not to mention that he and his army of pet piranhas are a threat to the whole freakin’ world!”
They’d continued walking the entire time Dean spoke, and had reached the edge of the woods. They stopped and Sam turned to face his brother.
“You think Bobby would want us to walk away from this case?” he asked. Then added, “Or any case, for that matter?”
“No,” Dean said, “but that doesn’t mean—”
“Before you go any further, hear me out. After our run-in with Chronos, I started thinking.”
“Started?” Dean snorted. “Do you ever stop?”
Sam ignored him and went on. “The magic Chronos used to travel through time was pretty powerful stuff. Makes sense, because he was a god, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So even though the bodies we saw today didn’t look exactly like Chronos’ victims, there were some striking similarities.”
Dean frowned. “You think we might be dealing with another god here?”
“Too early to tell. But like I said, our run-in with Chronos got me thinking. If we’re going to have any hope of ganking Dick Roman and stopping the Leviathan, we’re going to need some serious firepower. A case like this, where big-time mojo is involved...”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that you want to capture the monster, spirit, god, or whatever it is and use it as a weapon against the Leviathan?”
Sam shrugged. “Whatever the Leviathan are exactly, we know they were the first beings God created. That means they’re alive, right? If that’s the case—”
“Then they could be killed by draining their life force.”
Sam nodded. “Possibly. So if we can learn how Joyce and Ted were killed, along with the two others who died before them, maybe we’ll be able to find some way to use it against the Leviathan.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Sammy. Fighting fire with fire hasn’t always worked out so well for us. Two words: demon blood.”
Sam lowered his gaze to the ground, but otherwise didn’t reply.
Despite his misgivings, Dean could feel his excitement building. He surely wouldn’t mind having the supernatural equivalent of a backpack nuke to shove down Dick Roman’s slimy throat. There was also a certain symmetry to the idea that he liked, and which he thought Bobby would appreciate. The Leviathan—creatures that lived solely to feed—would be destroyed by a power that devoured their life energy.
“So you’re saying this case isn’t so much about ganking some random monster as it is about, what? Research and development?”
“Something like that. And if we get to kill a monster in the bargain, so much the better.”
Dean thought about it for a moment. “Okay, I’m in. Let’s go find Dogula.”
The brothers entered the woods. Oak, elm, and ash trees predominated, and the ground held only a scattering of leaves. Good. They’d make less noise that way. The last thing they needed to be doing was crunching leaves underfoot and giving away their position when there might be a life force-sucking monster running around. Dean found himself wishing that it had rained recently. The ground was too hard for there to be any tracks, and while the underbrush showed signs of something having passed through recently, Ohio had a deer overpopulation problem, and there was no way to tell if it was Dogula or a herd of Bambis. Joyce and Ted had died two days before, and there was a chance that the monster responsible had moved on, but Dean doubted it. The things he and Sam hunted tended to stick to one location, more often than not, whether because their particular species was territorial or because they were mystically bound to a specific area.
Dean spoke in a soft, low voice. “So how did you miss the reports of a black dog running around town? You losing your research-fu?”
“I guess no one made the connection between the black dog and the deaths. No reason why they should.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I forget Joe and Jane Normal don’t know all this stuff exists.”
That was one of the reasons Dean enjoyed horror movies so much. Sure, they were hilarious because of how screwed up their lore was, not to mention how many insanely dumb decisions the characters made. But also, when he watched them, he could imagine what it was like to be an ordinary person, enjoying horror flicks for nothing more than a fun scare, knowing all the time he was safe because ghoulies, ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties were only make believe.
The sound of a branch snapping broke the silence like a gunshot, and the brothers froze. Dean’s senses, honed from hundreds of battles, screamed at him that they were about to be under attack, and he knew better than to question them. He shoved Sam to the side and dove in the opposite direction an instant before a large black form hurtled through the space where they had been standing. The brothers hit the ground, rolled, and came up on their feet in time to see the creature spin around to face them, jagged teeth bared in a snarl. Even by monster standards, the thing was one ugly son of a bitch. Its body was twisted, its features distorted, and none of its legs matched in length. It had patches of bare skin, as if it suffered from mange, but now that Dean got a good look at it, he saw that its fur wasn’t black—at least, not entirely. It was black in places, but it was also brown and gray, and its different-colored fur had different consistencies, longer and thicker here, shorter and thinner there. The creature’s sections were separated by thin lines of red scar tissue, as if it weren’t a single beast but rather a conglomeration of different canines.
“That’s thing’s not Dogula,” Dean said, “it’s Frankenmutt!”
He dropped the shotg
un to the ground. Rock salt wouldn’t be worth a damn against something corporeal. He drew his trusty Colt .45, aimed at the spot between Frankenmutt’s eyes, and squeezed off a round. Sam had drawn his Beretta at the same time and he fired as well, aiming for the same target.
Frankenmutt was roughly the size of a St. Bernard, and ungainly as the creature looked, Dean expected it would move with all the speed and grace of an iron anvil. He was confident their bullets would hit the beast. But instead of Frankenmutt’s brains exploding out the back of its head to decorate the tree behind it, the monstrous canine became a dark blur and a split second later it crouched three feet to the right of its previous position. Bullets ripped chunks of bark from the tree, but Frankenmutt was unharmed. A good result if he and Sam were looking to start new careers as unorthodox lumberjacks, but not so good if they wanted to actually kill the goddamned monster.
Frankenmutt lowered its head and glared at them with mismatched, rheumy eyes. It growled deep in its throat, a strange sound, with separate pitches overlapping, almost as if two dogs were growling instead of one. Dean kept his gaze focused on its eyes. You could always tell when a human opponent was going to make a move by watching their eyes, and this was also true for most supernatural creatures. Those that had eyes, anyway. Unfortunately, Frankenmutt’s were different sizes and colors, and they worked independently of each other, like a lizard’s. Not only was it freaky as hell, it made it impossible to guess the creatures intentions.
Dean was caught off guard when Frankenmutt started running toward them, moving with a weird lurching stride that was surprisingly fast. He managed to get off another round from his .45, but the bullet went wild and struck the ground near the dog’s right paw. The near miss only pissed it off, and it swerved toward Dean, leaping for him, jaws wide and flecked with foam, discolored tongue lolling from the side of its mouth. Dean dropped his .45 and raised his hands in time to grab hold of the dog’s throat as it slammed into him. He maintained his grip as the creature’s weight bore him to the ground. The underbrush softened his landing somewhat, but the jolt still knocked the wind out of him. Frankenmutt snarled with savage rage, jaws snapping as it tried to sink its teeth into Dean’s throat. He managed to hold the creature at bay, but it wasn’t easy. The damned thing was a hell of a lot stronger than it looked. Its teeth were only inches from the soft flesh of his neck, and they were edging closer with each second. If the beast bit him, it would start draining his life force, and once the process began, Dean didn’t know how long it would take. Maybe minutes, maybe only seconds. Dean wondered what he’d look like if he got prune-ified, and the resultant mental image wasn’t pretty.