Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (33 page)

Relieved rather than remorseful, he said, “Good riddance.”

A voice spoke, not from without, but from within:
“Come to me
!”

Ryan Bramble sat on the ground behind the small shopping center consisting of Sal’s Sandwich Shop, LH Liquors, Tattoo U, and Tony’s Pizzeria, hidden between two of the four Dumpsters. Rocking back and forth, his hands pressed to the sides of his head, he tried not to think about the secret his father had kept from him his whole life. Because each time he thought about it, he wanted to kill his father. He debated walking the three miles back to his home and finishing what he’d started. As much as he tried to calm himself, the anger boiled up inside him.

He had pushed Sumiko away and was afraid to go near her now. Her computer monitor had been the first casualty of his insane rage, and he couldn’t bear the thought that he might hurt her.

What’s happening to me?

The sour tang of garbage filled his nostrils, but the unpleasant odor fitted his mood. At the moment, he didn’t trust himself to be around anyone.

Movement registered on the periphery of his vision. Glancing down, he saw a rat’s head poking out from under the Dumpster on his right, its nose twitching excitedly. The same smells that disgusted Ryan probably filled the beady-eyed rodent with delight.

He sat still as the rat edged closer. Maybe it was going to challenge him. This was the rat’s turf and Ryan had intruded. Its pink paws took a couple more tentative steps toward him.

Ryan was unaware that he had bared his own teeth until he flicked out his hand and caught the rat, wrapping his fingers around its back and attempting to squeeze the life out of it. His dark fingernails cut into the nearly boneless flesh. The rat squealed and clawed at him, its sharp teeth nipping into Ryan’s fingers, drawing blood. No matter how hard he squeezed, the damn thing wouldn’t die.

He slammed the rat’s head against the blacktop so hard he bruised his knuckles. Then he rammed it against the side of the Dumpster. Still it twitched in his grip. Uttering a string of obscenities, Ryan brought the rat to his mouth and ripped a chunk of flesh out of its belly. Then, disgusted with himself, he spat out the hunk of raw flesh and fur and hurled the rat against the back wall of the tattoo parlor. He trembled with rage.

As rat blood dribbled down his chin, he ran his hands over the twin lumps protruding from his scalp. Some of his dyed blue hair had fallen out round the lumps, and its natural red color was showing near the roots.

Without warning, bile surged up his throat. Leaning sideways, he vomited against the side of the Dumpster, blotting out the smeared rat blood.

He stumbled away from the smell of his own vomit and dropped down next to the last Dumpster, tucking himself into the corner. Now he was almost certain he had caught something, probably something fatal, like mad cow disease
or something else that made you crazy before you died.

Fumbling in his pocket, he took out his cell phone and called Sumiko.

“Hello?” she said. “Ryan?”

He had only wanted to hear her voice, he’d forgotten that his name, number and photo would show up on her phone’s display. “Hey, Miko.”

“Where are you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I wanted to hear your voice.”

“What’s happening, Ryan?”

“Have you—What have you heard about the diseases, the epidemics?”

“The flu, MRSA, food poisoning—that’s what you want to talk about?”

“No,” Ryan said. “I mean … I wondered if anything really bizarre was affecting people. Crazy stuff. I figured, for your blog, you might …”

“To hell with the blog, Ryan,” Sumiko said. “What’s happening with you?”

He laughed bitterly. “My dad told me he isn’t, you know.”

“Isn’t what?”

“My father,” Ryan said. “He was—My mother was … Some guy attacked her.”

Sumiko was silent for a moment. “Oh, Ryan, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“You and me both.”

“Can we talk? Where are you? I’ll come to you.”

“Not a good idea,” Ryan said. “I … need to be alone. For now. To process.”

“Okay,” she said. “Understood. But I’m here, any time you want to talk.”

“I’m sorry,” Ryan said, “about your monitor. I don’t know what came… I mean, I’m sorry. No excuses. And I wanted to say thanks.”

“For what?”

“If it hadn’t been for you,” Ryan said, “I would’ve… You were
—are
a good influence.”

“Ryan, I’m worried about you,” she said. “Don’t do anything stupid. Okay? You’ll get over this. Things will get better. I promise.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said. “I gotta go.”

He heard her calling his name as he disconnected the call. When she called back, he let it go to voicemail. Something bad was happening to him, and whatever it was, he had to face it alone.

A voice spoke to him.
“Come to me!”

Twenty-Nine

Sumiko jabbed the disconnect button and stared at her phone. “Voicemail,” she said in disbelief. “Seriously, Ryan?”

Putting the phone down, she tapped her fingernails on her desk, a nervous habit she had when undecided about what to do next.

Ryan had dropped a bombshell on her about his parentage and then refused to talk about it. To be fair, Sumiko was the talker in the relationship. Ryan brooded. And he’d just found out he wasn’t related to the man who had raised him, and that he had been born as the result of a sexual attack on his mother.

She grabbed the phone, noting but not reading the multiple text messages from friends and Lion Truth sources about the stadium collapse, then set it down again.

He said he needed time to process the information. She
had to respect that. Right? At the same time, he’d sounded awfully depressed, maybe dangerously so.

What if he tries to … ?

No, she wouldn’t think like that. If he needed time to process, she would give him time to process. But she could be his safety net, just in case. Waking up her computer, she logged into her Show My Pals account and a map popped up with several thumbnail-sized profile photos attached with arrows to green dots. Her photo overlapped with her mother’s, since their GPS locations were both in their house at the moment. A couple of her other friends, with whom she had swapped location access privileges, showed up at various addresses around town. She located Ryan’s dot a few miles from her house and zoomed in on his location, checking the street names. “Tony’s Pizzeria,” she said. “He likes it there. Comfort food. Probably a good sign.”

Unless that’s his last m …

“Stop it,” she scolded herself.

Then the dot started to move.

After a few minutes, she wondered where he was headed. Past Tony’s was a commercial area that had gone steadily downhill as the mall siphoned business away. A lot of stores had gone out of business. Nearby, an extensive home community project had stalled after the economy tanked and credit dried up. The land had been bulldozed and later fenced in to prevent accidents and lawsuits. “Coming Soon” signs bolted to the fence had become ironic, advertising a date almost a year in the past.

“Why that part of town?”

Her internal worry meter started to tick upward. She picked up her phone and ran the Show My Pals app. She grabbed up her laptop, ran down the stairs and asked to borrow her mother’s Honda Odyssey.

I can’t be his safety net five miles away.

“What the hell, Sam?” Dean said as they walked through the door into Roy Dempsey’s log cabin, with Roy once again at home, judging by the silver Dodge Ram in the driveway “You go on hiatus with Lucifer the second we’re attacked? He almost burns us alive, and takes the woman again.”

“Dean, I—”

Roy sat at one of the kitchen stools, chowing down on what looked like a two-foot-long hoagie, which required a lot of focus when you only had one arm. That Dean’s stomach was growling in protest added to his irritation over the oni fiasco. Roy scratched his grizzled chin and stared at Dean.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean grumbled. “I fed your creepy cat.”

“Whatever this is,” Roy said, waving his hand between the brothers, “leave me out of it.”

“Right,” Dean snapped. “Wouldn’t want to spoil your meal.”

“I bought three extra,” Roy said evenly. “In the fridge.”

“You did not,” Dean said, brightening instantly.

He opened the fridge. “You did! I totally misjudged you.”

“You didn’t wreck my house,” Roy said. “Figure I’m ahead of the game.”

Dean took the sandwiches out of the refrigerator. “Know what would make this perfect? Pie.”

Handing one of the wrapped sandwiches to Sam, he said, “I thought you had Lucifer-vision under control.”

“I do,” Sam said, frowning, “usually. This time was worse.”

Dean took a bite of the overstuffed hoagie. “It’s the bad luck mojo!” he said between mouthfuls. “My lighter fails, you visit
The Twilight Zone.
The guy throws banana peels under our shoes. How do we fight that?”

Sam picked at his sandwich, removed a few items that didn’t meet his seal of approval, then ate with a thoughtful expression on his face. “The lore mentions holly guarding against the oni,” he said. “What if … ?”

Roy gave Sam an odd look.

Dean removed a few bottles of beer from the fridge and passed them around.

“What? You got something?” he asked Sam.

“With all the information on expelling the oni from a town—”

“The soybean confetti?”

“Right. I figured holly guarded against him coming,” Sam said, “and since he’s already here, what’s the point? But what if it guards against the oni’s mojo.”

“And evens the odds,” Dean said, nodding. “Could give us a fighting chance.”

“But he’s still invulnerable.”

“So we can’t gank him.”

“Holly?” Roy asked, so softly Dean almost didn’t catch it.

“What?”

“You need holly for an oni?” Roy said. Both Dean and Sam nodded. “There’s a holly bush out back.”

“You just happen to have holly growing out back?” Dean asked.

“This doesn’t mean I’m involved,” Roy said.

“No,” Sam said. “Of course not.”

“Eighteen years ago,” Roy said after a sip of beer, “before Sally died and…”—he raised his half-arm—“I thought we might have an oni here in town.”

“What?” Sam asked incredulously.

“You’re telling us this now?”

“Look, I had no idea what you were hunting and I liked it that way,” Roy said. “We had a bad flu epidemic, train derailment, factory explosion, some other weird stuff, all in a few days. I researched the lore, but then things went back to normal. Still, I bought an American holly shrub from a local nursery and planted it out back. Boy scout mode back then.”

“Always be prepared,” Dean said, nodding. “That saves us some time.”

Bobby came through the front door, if anything, looking worse than he had after bouncing off the windshield that afternoon. Wincing, he eased his way into the kitchen. Dean handed him the third hoagie from out of the fridge.

“Appreciate it, Roy.”

“Singer, you look like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag.”

“Feel like a rodeo clown with a hangover.”

Sam brought Bobby up to speed on the holly and Roy’s
account of possible oni activity eighteen years before.

“Might be the same one,” Bobby said. “But why come back?”

“Just tell me how to gank it,” Dean said, looking back and forth. “Anybody?”

Bobby sighed. “Wish I had my books. Let me see the laptop. Maybe I’ll spot something we overlooked.”

“What happened, Singer?” Roy asked. “You can’t walk without wincing. Better sit this out. Or are you nuts?”

“Certifiable,” Bobby said with a wry chuckle. “But the job ain’t done.”

Roy heaved a sigh. “I must be as crazy as you, Bobby.”

“So it’s Bobby, now?”

“Oh, shut up before I lose my nerve,” Roy said. “Don’t know if this helps, but the oni comes outta Japanese lore, and the various branches of that monster family tree don’t get along. The
obake
are Japanese shape-shifters, take animal forms, sometimes even
protect
humans. They and the oni don’t trust each other.”

“He’s afraid of animals?” Dean asked incredulously.

“If he thinks that animal might be a threat,” Bobby said, nodding, “an
obake
.”

“Could McClary bring in some K-9 units?” Sam asked.

“They might scare him away, but they won’t kill him,” Dean said.

“If he leaves my town,” Roy said, “that’s good enough for me.”

What about the next town?
Dean thought grimly.
We gotta end this once and for all.

* * *

Ryan arrived first at Hawthorne’s, the locally owned department store that had become yet another casualty of the economy. The derelict building had been on the market for a while with no buyers on the horizon. Graffiti marred the plywood covering all the windows. Inside, the place was an empty shell. Whatever hadn’t sold during the bankruptcy sales had been auctioned off afterward.

Ryan had no idea why he had been summoned to this location. He became increasingly mystified minutes later when Dalton Rourke walked up to him. But when Jesse Trumball drove up in a red Dodge Durango and climbed out to stand beside them, the reason became clear. Ryan noticed the bumps on their heads—even though they had made minimal efforts to hide them with a knit hat and a hoodie, respectively—the red hair coming in at the roots, the darkened nails. As they stood side by side, their near-uniform height, several inches over six feet, was the final piece of the puzzle.