Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (5 page)

“That’s thing’s not Dogula,” Dean said, “it’s Frankenmutt!”

He dropped the shotgun 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.

Sam stepped forward, assumed a shooting stance, leveled his Beretta, and fired three bullets into Frankenmutt’s side in quick succession. Dean felt the creature jerk with the impact of each round, and blood issued from the wounds. Not red, though. This stuff was black, thick, and slow-moving, more like syrup. The black goo made him think of the gunk that poured out of Leviathan when they were wounded, but this ichor was darker and it stank like rotten meat. Despite its injuries, Frankenmutt didn’t appear to be in any pain. If anything, it seemed more enraged. It tore free of Dean’s grip, jumped off him, and lurched toward Sam, growling and snapping.

Sam held his ground and fired twice more as the monstrous canine bore down on him. The bullets took out hunks of flesh and made more ichor flow, but the creature barely slowed as it lunged toward him. It fastened its teeth on Sam’s right leg just above the ankle, and Sam let out a cry of pain and fired point blank at Frankenmutt’s head. Part of the dog’s skull was sheared away, taking an ear with it. The beast let go of Sam, staggered backward, and then shook its head back and forth rapidly, as if its head was wet and it was trying to dry itself. Blood and bits of brain matter flew through the air, and then the creature turned and ran off into the woods, swerving as it went, almost as if it were drunk.

Sam sat on the ground and took in a hissing breath. He placed his Beretta next to him, and gingerly began to inspect his wound. Dean got up, retrieved his .45, and walked over to Sam, scanning the area for any sign that Frankenmutt was planning to double back and renew its attack.

“How bad is it?”

“I’ll live.” Sam’s sock was wet with blood, and when he peeled it away from the skin, a ragged wound was revealed. “It’s not too deep. I think most of the damage was caused when I shot him in the head. The impact caused him to jerk away from my ankle, and his teeth tore the skin.”

“All right. Let’s tape you up and get you back to the car.” Dean knelt next to his brother, reached into one of his jacket’s outer pockets, and pulled out a roll of silvery duct tape. Their first aid kit was in the crapmobile, but duct tape would make an effective field dressing until they reached the car.

“I’m fine,” Sam insisted. “We have to go after the dog.”

He tried to stand, but when he put his weight on his wounded ankle, it buckled, and he sat back down, grimacing with pain.

“Frankenmutt can wait until after we’ve plugged your leak,” Dean said. “Now shut up and sit still.” He ripped off a length of tape and went to work.

* * *

Dean’s field dressing was good enough to allow Sam to make it back to the motel. Once there, he went into the bathroom, carefully cut the tape away with a pair of surgical scissors, and threw the blood-smeared mess into the trash. He then cleaned the wound—first with holy water, then with soap and regular water, and finally with alcohol. Afterward, he lathered on some antibiotic cream, then bandaged and wrapped it. Satisfied, he dry swallowed a couple ibuprofen before limping out of the bathroom. The injury was going to slow him down, but not as much as he’d feared.

Dean had tossed his jacket on his bed, and he sat at the table in his hoodie, leaning back in the chair, feet up, staring at the laptop screen.

Sam smiled. “I hope you’re not checking out one of those sites where you have to click ‘I verify that I’m eighteen years or older’ for access.”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. Considering how obsessed Dean had been with Dick Roman in the past few weeks, Sam would have far preferred his brother to visit a few sleazy websites than try to dig up still more information on their least favorite Leviathan.

“I’ve been surfing the web looking for the skinny on butt-ugly patchwork dogs.” When Sam didn’t reply right away, Dean added, “What? Like you’re the only one who knows his way around a mouse pad?”

“Skinny?” Sam said.

“Yeah, well... guess I picked up some new vocabulary in 1944.” He took his feet off the table, sat up, and faced Sam. “Speaking of picking things up, we should probably get you to a doctor before you come down with Franken-rabies.”

“You’re joking, right? Supernatural creatures don’t carry natural diseases.”

“Still, better safe than hydrophobic, right? All it’ll take is a series of incredibly painful abdominal injections.” Dean grinned.

“That’s not how they treat rabies. You get a shot of vaccine in the shoulder, then gamma globulin in the wound and in the hips or the butt. They’re no more painful than normal shots. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t need them.”

Dean sighed. “What’s the point of being the older brother if you can’t torture the younger one every once in a while? Besides, who says Frankenmutt is supernatural? You saw those scar lines, right? He looked like something a mad scientist slapped together from spare parts.”

“Frankenstein
was just a novel by Mary Shelley,” Sam said. “You ever read it?”

“I’ve seen all the movies,” Dean said.

Sam ignored him and went on. “Shelley wrote her novel in the early 1800s, long before the modern era of science. The procedure she wrote about is pure fiction. It could never work in the real world. You can’t make a single body out of a bunch of separate parts. Forget about trying to hook up the central nervous system, the problems with tissue rejection alone...” Sam trailed off when he realized Dean was staring at him. “What?”

“I thought you went to law school, not medical school.”

“My point is that whatever Frankenmutt is, it’s not a product of science.”

“All right, I’ll take your word for it, Dr. Dorkwad.”

Sam had been standing as they talked, and his ankle was starting to throb. He also felt suddenly tired. Maybe he’d lost more blood than he thought. He hobbled over to one of the beds and sat down. Dean watched him closely as he walked, and although he frowned, he said nothing about Sam’s injury, and Sam was grateful.

“Did you find anything on the Net?” he asked.

“Other than stuff about the movie
Frankenweenie,
no.” He closed the laptop and sat back in the chair. “Man, I can’t get over how fast that thing was. The way it looked, it should’ve had trouble just walking, but it moved faster than a cheetah on meth.”

“Not at the end,” Sam pointed out. “After I shot it in the head, it took off, but it didn’t move much faster than an ordinary dog. And it moved in a zigzaggy kind of way, like it was having trouble staying on its feet.”

“That’s because you wounded it. If you were missing half your head, you wouldn’t be moving very fast either.”

“It shouldn’t have been moving at all, but the injury only slowed it down, and I think I know why.”

“Let me guess. It was full of life energy after killing Joyce and Ted, which is why it could move so damn fast, but its needle dropped to E after you shot it, and it had just enough left in the tank to make a getaway.”

“That’s my take on it,” Sam said. A wave of weariness came over him, and he stifled a yawn. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t even five o’clock yet, and he felt ready to hit the sack.

“It’ll do till a better theory comes along. So whatever this thing is, it’s still just your basic supernatural freak show, only with more emphasis on the freak this time. How do you figure all those dog parts came together, though? Maybe we should check the town for a pet cemetery. Or it could be some kind of group ghost, a whole pack of doggie spirits, and I should’ve blasted it with rock salt after all.”

Sam fought another yawn. “It still could be a Frankenmutt, only one created by magic instead of science. I’ll see what I can dig up about spells that are supposed to... fuse body parts... together.” This time he couldn’t fight the yawn, and he fell back onto the bed without bothering to get under the covers. “After I take a nap.”

“Hey, Sam, are you o–”

That’s the last he heard before a warm, wonderful darkness gathered him up and swept him away.

* * *

In the parking lot outside the Winchesters’ room, a figure stood. There was no one around, but even if there had been, they wouldn’t have seen him. Not unless he wished it. A gentle breeze was blowing, but even though it caressed his skin, he didn’t feel it.

Even from here, he could sense the injury that had been done to Sam Winchester, both the physical component and the spiritual. Of the two, the latter was far more serious.

This isn’t good,
he thought.
Not good at all.
But all he could do was stand here and continue to watch.

For the moment, at least.

* * *

Catherine Luss tossed the
Broadsider
onto the kitchen counter. It was yesterday’s edition, but she’d been so busy working that she’d had no chance to look at it before. The headline screamed off the front page in large black letters:

TWO MORE FOUND DEAD IN

MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES!

She’d only gotten partway through the lead story before she hadn’t been able to read any further. She hadn’t known either Ted Boykin or Joyce Nagrosky. Both had retired before Bekah started high school, and neither had been among her patients. She also hadn’t known the two previous victims—a gas station attendant named Randy Neff and a teenage girl named Angela Bales. She thought Bekah might’ve known Angela, or at least been aware of her, as they’d been close in age, but she didn’t know, and it wasn’t as if she could ask her daughter. Not anymore.

She’d poured herself a cup of coffee with half-and-half and artificial sweetener before sitting down at the counter for what she’d hoped would be a relaxing—and badly needed—break from work. The time readout on the microwave said it was 5:12, but until she’d looked out the window, she hadn’t known whether that was a.m. or p.m. She wondered how long she’d been down in the lab this time, and was surprised to discover she didn’t know. Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? Did it even matter?

What did matter was that headline, or rather the four lost lives behind it. The story was short on facts and long on hysteria-fueled supposition, speculating that the deaths were caused by anything from a previously unknown super bug to toxic waste or radiation—despite the fact that Brennan had no industry that could have produced either of the latter. She was surprised the reporter hadn’t blamed the deaths on UFOs while he’d been at it. But she knew exactly who was ultimately responsible for those poor people’s deaths.

She was.

The temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop several degrees. Catherine was wearing a white lab coat over a gray pullover sweater with a thick collar, but she still shivered. She felt the cold as much inside as out.

“It’s not your fault.”

The voice was soft, little more than a whisper, really, with a slight accent that she thought might be German, although she wasn’t sure. A subtle odor drifted to her on the air, a musty smell like a just-opened cedar chest that had been closed for a very long time. She took a sip of her coffee and half turned on the stool to face Conrad.

Even though she’d been working with him for the past few months, she still had to struggle to keep an expression of distaste from showing every time she looked at him. It wasn’t that he was hideous. He was rather pleasant-looking, actually, if on the plain side. A thin man in his early sixties, he stood no more than five-foot-five and had a large nose contrasted by small, almost feminine lips and a narrow chin. His hairline had receded well past his forehead, but the hair that remained to him was brown and thick, without a hint of gray. His most striking feature, however, was his large penetrating eyes. They rested beneath thick black eyebrows, and their color was indeterminate, seeming to change depending on the light. Sometimes they were dark blue, sometimes charcoal gray, and other times almost black. As always, he wore a suit, this one brown with an ivory shirt and gold tie—stylish and retro at the same time. It wasn’t his appearance that Catherine found distasteful, nor was it the way he tended to remain statue-still until he decided to move. What bothered her was something more indefinable, his... presence, she supposed you could call it. He exuded an aura that she found repellent in the same way that magnets of opposite charge pushed against each other. Whenever he approached, she felt an urge to back away, to keep as much distance between them as possible. He did nothing overt to intimidate her, but she had to fight to hold her ground whenever they were in the same room together—which these days they often were.