Supernatural: One Year Gone (15 page)

“I already told you, I don’t know,” Sukie said. “And I’m always here.” She gestured at the store.

“So where else could someone get this stuff around here?”

“Nowhere, we’re the only place. But I swear I didn’t sell any of that stuff to anyone. I open and close this place every day of the week.”

Sukie seemed to be telling the truth.

“Okay, so you’re just Bush. Who’s your Karl Rove?” Dean pressed. “Is there anyone else who could take this stuff and you wouldn’t know?”

“No... I mean the only other people who have access are Connie and her girls.”

“What are we talking, here? A witch brothel? Let me guess, everyone wears a lot of black lace, Fleetwood Mac-style?” Dean smirked.

“No, she just has girls that work for her.”

“Are they all witches?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know. How many times do I have to tell you? Do you mind if I clean up now? This stuff smells.” Sukie gestured at the dust, bones, and crap before her. “If you want to know something, go ask Connie yourself.”

“One more thing. What do you need for a marking spell?” Dean asked.

“Like what?”

“Something that marks a witch, a bad witch. Clearly not a witch-lite, like you,” he said.

“I don’t know. Do you have a spell?”

Dean took out Nathaniel Campbell’s journal and pointed to the spell written in the margin of one of the pages.

“This looks old. What’d you do? Filch this from the Peabody?”

“Something like that. Just tell me what I need.”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean I can only guess. I can’t tell you exactly. I’ve never seen this spell,” Sukie said hesitantly.

“Guess then,” Dean said.

“Well, I’d put a little Valerian root, some dragon’s blood and I guess a little sulfur. Might work. I’m not making any guarantees.” She moved round the store, gathering the stuff. She then wrapped it in a linen gris-gris bag. “You can try this.”

“Thanks,” Dean said.

“Hey, just so you know, I would never be involved with anyone that killed people. Connie is a Mean Girl, you know? I’m not like that.”

Dean nodded and left the store.

It took all his self-control not to head straight to Connie’s, crash through her front gates and rip her limb from limb. It seemed he was playing with a powerful witch, and he realized how close he had come to losing Lisa. Maybe he should call Lisa and check in, just in case...

This time he wasn’t going to get caught without something to hold over Connie. He was sure that she had something to do with the dead bodies, but he had no solid evidence. He could bring her to hunter justice—bind her up and smoke her like a Virginian ham—or turn her in to the authorities. He was going to have to get proof.

Back in his car, Dean opened the police file. He decided some old-fashioned shoe leather was called for.

From their van parked down the street, Sam and Samuel spotted Dean walk out of the store.

“You wanna follow him?” Samuel asked.

“Nah, let’s go talk to the little bitch inside,” Sam proposed.

“I thought you said she didn’t know anything,” his grandfather said skeptically.

“Well, let’s just see if she’s changed her mind.”

Samuel and Sam barged through the front door of the store to find it completely empty. The girl was gone.

Samuel gestured for Sam to go to the back while he would look upstairs. Sam headed behind the counter into the dark storage room. The back door had been fixed and it was so dark in the windowless room, he could barely see his hand in front of his face.

A floorboard creaked behind him. Sam spun around and came face to face with a strange woman with harsh features.

“I’m sorry, no returns,” she said, her voice sharp and grating. She flicked her wrist and Sam was thrown up against the opposite wall. “And no, I don’t care if you’re a Campbell.”

He tried to fight the power that held him there, but the woman was too strong. He felt an unseen weight press against his chest. The women inched her hand up higher and Sam felt himself thrown up against the ceiling, he struggled to breathe as the invisible weight continued to press down on him.

“Especially without a receipt,” she said.

“Some customer service!” Samuel growled, appearing in the doorway armed with a baseball bat. He swung high toward the woman.

“Please, you’re going to use an instrument used in a game on me?” she sneered.

“No, I’m going to use this.” Samuel pulled a salt-filled sawed-off from his hip and shot just shy of the woman’s left shoulder.

“Salt? Really? You think I’m a demon?” She smirked, then stepped up to Samuel and took a large sniff. “You’ve been dead, old man.” She pushed out her hand and Samuel started to gag. “You remember not being able to breathe? That’s right, you do. And you were dead a while. So interesting... You and I will have to have a talk some time. Right now, however, I’m going to have a little—what do you call it?—barbecue.”

With another wave of her hand, a fire started on the storeroom floor in the corner. The woman stepped to the doorway and spread a powder along the floor and the doorjamb.

“It was time I cleared out my inventory anyway.”

And with that, she disappeared through the door.

Samuel struggled to move but seemed to be held fast in place in the doorway. Sam was still pinned to the ceiling, fighting for breath. The flames spread, catching on the boxes of merchandise and reaching higher.

“How is she keeping us here?” Sam choked.

“Look for a spot of blood. She got some on you somehow. Wash it off!” Samuel managed.

Sam struggled to move at all, much less look for a spot of blood. After a few seconds he managed to prise his left arm off the ceiling and found a dot of dark-red blood on the inside of his wrist.

“How am I supposed to get it off?” he called.

The fire had climbed the tower of boxes and now reached the ceiling. The flames were creeping toward his toes.

“Spit!” Samuel shouted.

Sam tried to muster saliva from his dry mouth. He spat on his wrist, and felt the invisible restraints loosen a little bit. Fighting to get his arm down by his side, he managed to wipe his wrist against his pants. He promptly fell face-first to the floor.

Without flinching, Sam sprang back onto his feet, and stamping on the spreading flames, he moved to his grandfather’s side. He grasped his left wrist and wiped off the blood he found there.

Both free they staggered into the store, which was already filled with a thick acrid smoke.

On the floor by the front window they found the girl. Her neck lay at an unnatural angle. Sam bent over and checked her pulse anyway. She was dead.

They broke through the front door and out into the street. Still coughing, eyes streaming with the effects of the smoke, they dived into their van. Sam pulled away just as the fire trucks turned the corner.

“That was some powerful witchcraft. I’ve never seen a binding spell like that before,” Sam observed.

“She must be the witch we want,” Samuel said. “It needs someone that powerful to create something purely evil. She’s strong, and I bet she’s looking to get stronger.”

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“Witches act like a magnet; the more witches that are around, the more power they have collectively. Someone who can cast that spell, and keep us there for that long, she’s not playing around.”

“What was the blood-binding spell? I’ve seen binding spells but never one where the person could leave the room and it still stayed in place. The only thing I know that can do that is a devil’s trap,” Sam said.

“Yeah, you probably don’t want to see that spell again either,” Samuel stated dryly.

“Why? What is it?” Sam asked.

“Witch menstrual blood,” Samuel replied with just a hint of a smile.

“Agent McBrain,” Dean introduced himself, leaning over the grimy desk of the county coroner. “I need to see all the bodies that have shown up in the past two weeks. You know, the ones killed by the same Salem serial killer that everyone here seems to want to ignore.” He took back his badge and waved his hand toward the back of the basement office. “And I need to see them now.”

The elderly white-haired man behind the desk scooted out of his chair without a word and led the way to the refrigerated section of the laboratory.

“Not very chatty, are ya?” Dean observed.

“Not much to say,” the old man responded as he pulled out one of the body-sized stainless steel draws in the wall. “She was the first brought in. No identification on ’em ’cept a couple of tattoos.”

Job done the old dude shuffled back to his chair.

Dean examined the first young girl. A slit ran from one side of her neck to the other: it was clean, not too deep, and brutally precise. He looked for any signs of witchcraft on the body. There were no charcoal smudges or flakes of herbs, and it didn’t seem like she had been anointed for a sacrifice. But Dean noted she had defensive wounds on her hands and arms, as if she had tried to fend off her attacker.

This wasn’t a clean ritual, this kid had put up a fight.

Dean bent down slightly to get a closer look at the neck wound. As he carefully adjusted the tilt of her head, he noticed something very weird. Not only had her throat been cut—her neck was completely broken.

“This wasn’t in her report?” Dean called to the old man. The old grouch looked up, then came shuffling back toward Dean.

“What?” he asked.

“Her neck is broken. It wasn’t in your report,” Dean said. “You don’t think that’s an important thing to include? She looks like a Raggedy Ann doll!”

The old man shrugged.

Looking back at the body, Dean noticed something on the girl’s collarbone. It was a small “I Heart NYC” tattoo. Chief Wiggum was right about one thing—she was a transient. But what was she doing in Salem?

Dean checked all the other bodies. Every one of them had a broken neck. Dean sighed. Something rotten was in Salem. He had a bonafide case on his hands and that was the last thing he needed right now. All he wanted was a
Necronomicon
and a witch and to get his brother back—was that too much to ask? Now he had ten dead bodies, and—His cell phone rang. Lisa’s number flashed insistently at him on the tiny screen—one pissed-off girlfriend.

Dean answered, “Hi babe!”

“Hey Dean. Where have you been? Is everything okay?” Lisa’s voice sounded worried.

“I’ve been, um, just around. Everything’s fine—no need to stress,” Dean said sheepishly. He really needed to come up with some good excuses for this sort of thing in advance. “How was the sightseeing?”

“It was great! I love hanging around with my pre-teen son and a girl who is coming on waaay too strong.”

“So it’s been good?” Dean said.

“No, not exactly. Are you done yet, I thought we were meeting back at the inn for lunch?”

“Okay, I just have one stop to make first,” Dean said.

“Dean—what’s this all about? Are you working a case?”

“Um, no. I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t mean to what?” Lisa’s voice was worryingly calm.

“Nothing. Nothing,” Dean retracted quickly, sensing this was not something to get into over the phone. Especially standing in a morgue surrounded by brutally murdered young women. “I’m coming back,” he finished.

“Can you come back straight away, no stops,” Lisa said. “Ben and I are waiting for you. He wants to see the clipper ships. Today.”

“Great. Clipper ships!” Dean tried to infuse his voice with enthusiasm. “I’m on my way!” He clicked off his phone and with a last glance at the dead girls, headed for the exit. As he marched past, he noted the old coroner was paging through a Lands’ End catalog.

“Hope ya find the people that are doing this. Last time they didn’t catch anyone,” the man observed, attention still apparently on the fleece jackets in front of him.

Dean stopped in his tracks.

“What do you mean ‘last time’?”

“March of eighty-three, five dead girls. Was quite the hubbub.” The old man looked up, meeting Dean’s stare.

“March of eighty-three?” Dean repeated. Maybe it was only coincidental, but that was the same month and year that Sam was born.

Dean stepped out into the hot, hazy afternoon air. The atmosphere felt thick around him. He tried to put one foot in front of the other, but felt woozy. Both his knees failed to bend and he half-fell onto the hot cement steps. His cell phone rang again. Fumbling, Dean pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen read: SAM.

That couldn’t be. Dean stared at the number and the flashing phone sign. He hit the answer button.

“Hey Dean, it’s me, Sam. Remember? Your brother,” a voice on the other end of the line came through. Dean knew he was hallucinating. He must be hallucinating.

He opened his mouth to speak but the phone kept ringing. Dean pulled the phone away and stared intently at the screen. It now read: LISA. He took a deep breath and accepted the call.

“You’re on your way, right?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah, be there in a few.” He hung up. That was weird. He’d had dreams, but never hallucinations. He stumbled to his car, got in, and drove off.

Across the street, Sam watched Dean pull away.