Title: Lost and Found
Chapter: 33
~~~~~~~~~~~
Gwen was cooking, making dinner for both of them, and Sam liked to watch her. She never made cookies or anything like that that Jess had done, but the domestic scene she presented still managed to make him feel peaceful and a little nostalgic in a good way. He felt a calm settle over him as he watched her chop vegetables and stir ingredients together. She had the radio on and was dancing a little as she worked, hips swaying to the music.
“Sam?”
He turned from the kitchen doorway to face Jo as she came towards him. “Yeah, Jo?”
She proffered a few files held together with a rubber band. “Here. I ran across these while helping mom go through a box. They’re in that range of years you said to look for.”
“Oh. Okay, thanks.” Setting it on the table, he removed the rubber band and opened the first folder. It was on a suspected vampire attack. The second was on a Wendigo. The third however…. It was a clipping from a 1989 newspaper, detailing the abduction and murder of a newborn. The baby had been burned alive on an altar. Sam skimmed the rest of the details and glanced at Jo. “Did you read this?”
One hand rested on her stomach. During the three weeks he and Dean had been gone on jobs, Jo had become visibly pregnant. He found it amusing that she’d gone from not needing maternity clothes to all of a sudden needing them. Dean had been ecstatic over that, pointing at her stomach and asking anyone who looked at them, ‘See what I did?’, to which Jo rolled her eyes and replied, ’Yeah, it was all his doing. I wasn’t even there.’
She patted her belly. He wondered if she realized she was doing that. “Yeah, I read it. Newborn. Human sacrifice. People are sick.”
“If you see any more like that, grab them out for me?”
“Sure. You think the Campbell’s saved Gwen from being sacrificed?”
“Not sure. It fits, I think. Patricia talked about witches most of Gwen’s life, warned her repeatedly about them. Human sacrifice is something witches do to accomplish their plans. Whatever the Campbells were working on when they unofficially adopted Gwen involved witches. They found hex bags, suspected a coven…. I’m grasping at anything right now just to try to find information for her.”
Reaching out, she picked up the clipping. “You’ll have to interview, find out what exactly this symbol looked like -- if the detective even remembers. Describing it as a ‘symbol of devil worship’ isn’t specific enough. There are hundreds of symbols that could have been used and not all are for demons. It could be for a pagan god, too. The symbol could give us a better way to search. Mom has a friend who investigates ritualistic murders. He’s not FBI, but he has friends, too. He also has access to databases we don’t. Find a picture of it or something and we can bump it over to him for identification. Once we have it identified, we can search for cases where it was displayed. He can help with that, too. Depending on how prevalent the symbol has been, he might have a list already made of dates and places.”
“Wait, you have a source?” He put a hand on her arm. “Jo, I could kiss you.”
“But you won’t, because she’s my wife,” Dean said, coming down the stairs. “And Gwen might hurt you.” He stopped beside Jo and took the clipping from her, looking at it as he asked, “What are you wanting to kiss her over?”
He released her arm. “She and Ellen have a source I can use to identify a symbol without bothering Bobby over it.”
He read through the article, making a disgusted face. “Bet that scene smelled delightful. Maybe we won’t hit the barbecue place after all.”
Gwen stepped into the doorway, wiping her hands on a towel. “Are you staying, because I didn’t make enough food for four.”
“I’m taking Jo out anyway.” He handed Sam the clipping. “Sounds maybe interesting, but a little too old. ‘89, Sam? I don’t mind cold cases, but anything older that involves rituals like that is usually unsolvable and unfixable. That’s over twenty years. Whatever they were trying to raise is probably raised. You know that.”
“Almost twenty-four and it’s just a side project,” Sam told him. “If it becomes current, I’ll bring it up for discussion.”
“Sounds good.”
As they walked out, he heard Jo ask to go somewhere that served mozzarella sticks. She had a craving for them.
Gwen dished up the food. “Grab some silverware?”
Once they were seated, she reached for the folder. He got to it first, slapping a hand on it and sliding it away. “Nope. We’re going to have a nice dinner with no talk of a cold case.”
“I heard something about witches when you and Jo were talking.”
“You did.” He picked up a napkin. “I’m checking all possible angles for leads on your parents.”
“How is a case from twenty-four years ago related to them? Wouldn’t it need to be thirty-two years ago, as in the year I was born?”
“I’m working on a theory, okay? Give me time to put it together. If I’m right, we could uncover real information and find them, or find her, rather, since Patricia wrote that A., who was probably Aaron your dad, was dead.”
“You have no theory,” she accused with a little amused smile.
“Of course I do.”
Gwen’s smile widened. “No you don’t. You’re giving me a line of b.s.. I can see it on your face, Sam. I know you’re lying, just like I did back in Vegas with the diary.”
“I have a theory,” he insisted, cutting his chicken into pieces.
“Spit it out.”
He laughed. “Okay, it’s more of a vague idea than a theory. The years listed had four years between them. It’s a pattern. Patricia even mentioned something to that effect. The Campbells were working on something involving witches and since Patricia wrote those years in her diary within the entries concerning you, I’m guessing that their case had something to do with that pattern, meaning you and your parents have something to do with it. Now, what if the pattern, for some reason,” sitting back, he spread his arms wide, “continued?” Sam dropped his hands to his lap. “What do witches do?”
“A lot of skuzzy, evil things.”
“One of which is human sacrifice to meet their goals. I’m looking for any case or article in those range of years right to the present that has to do with witches or human sacrifice. Might be a connection, which could lead to why you were targeted and if we find whoever is responsible, we could maybe get closure on the issue of Mia Carys.”
She stared at him a long moment. “No, you were right. That’s a theory. But how do you know I was going to be sacrificed? Maybe whoever they rescued me from was just trying to nab a kid to raise it.”
He quirked a brow at her. “With witches involved?”
“Right. It’s still an assumption, Sam.”
He nodded in agreement. “It is, but I don’t have anything else to go on. If you do, I’d love to hear it.”
Gwen held up her hands in a gesture of defeat. “No theory, no nothing. You have fun trying to hunt that down.”
The conversation ended her interest in the folder and he slipped it into his laptop bag in between helping clean up after dinner. With luck, he’d find something solid and soon.
~~~~~~~~~~
May passed in a blur of activity and long periods of Dean missing Jo while he and Sam were out on jobs. He popped open a beer and turned on the tv, half listening to Sam talking to Gwen on the phone. While they’d be back in a few days, Sam thought she needed a boost since she’d been volunteering to stay behind with Jo. She didn’t have to stay. Dean had made that clear. She didn’t have to, but he appreciated her keeping Jo company. He’d expected her to take a few solo jobs, yet she appeared to have settled back into the sort of routine Sam said she’d had at the Campbell compound -- heavy on research and mundane tasks instead of field work.
In the morning, they had an appointment with a woman named Denise Atwater. She’d been vague on the phone, but her distress was real enough. She’d been given their names by the friend of a friend of a contact of their dad’s and had the money to buy the help she needed: them. Neither he nor Sam had told her they would have done it for free. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? She was proposing to give them half of a sum to start investigating and the other half whenever they finished their investigation with real answers.
It was a rare paying job and they couldn’t pass it up. Watching their cash flow was going to be far more of an ongoing process than it had been. Babies and bases cost money.
Sam concluded his call and grabbed a beer from the cooler. “Gwen said Jo’s making everyone feel her stomach to feel the baby kick. Bobby decided to run errands in town rather than go through that again.”
Dean grinned. Jo had felt the baby move for the first time the night before he and Sam had left. She’d woken him from a sound sleep and they’d waited for over an hour for it to happen again. He’d peered at her stomach so hard he’d given himself a headache, but it had been completely worth it to feel their baby push against his palm. “Middle of the night, she wakes me up by jerking my hand over and putting it on her stomach. Freakiest thing in the world, Sammy. Like something out of ‘Alien’. She says it feels like a fluttering sensation.”
“Yeah, she made me feel her stomach before we left. It was…interesting.”
“I think we’ve got a soccer star in there.” Of course, he knew it might not be feet. It could be hands or, as Ellen said, it could be the kid’s butt sticking out. It hadn’t even been much of a kick -- yet. Dean actually couldn’t wait to really see a hand or foot pressing out. He’d been doing some reading, glancing through the books Jo had gotten from the library. From what he’d read, childbirth was gross, but no more so than any of the gross things he’d witnessed as hunter. Being in the delivery room with her was going to be a piece of cake. Surely it wasn’t any ickier than a shape shifter’s skin?
Sam sat on the other bed and stretched out, pillows behind his back. “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”
“Go see Denise Atwater, find out the details, start our sleuthing.”
They got an early start the next day and found her already up and waiting.
“Find out who did this.” Denise twisted a tissue in her hands. Her hotel was on par with the one Dean and Jo had stayed at in Las Vegas -- fancy and, in Dean’s opinion, overpriced.
Dean looked over the details of the papers she had for them. “It was your house they found the body at?”
“My summer house, or rather my family’s summer house. We hadn’t been up in years, not since I was a kid, and I just inherited everything recently. Thought it’d be a good time to check the place out, maybe have it cleaned and repaired and bring my kids up for the summer.” She grimaced. “And it wasn’t just a body, Mr. Winchester. It was a baby. Burned on some sort of weird altar, with this symbol painted on the floor around it.”
“Can you draw what it looked like,” Sam asked, eagerness in his voice.
Wow, Dean thought. He’s raring to go this morning.
“Sure.” She drew it with quick strokes on hotel stationary. “No way I’m forgetting what it looked like. Christ, I’m going to have nightmares for years.”
“Anything else you can tell us, Mrs. Atwater? Initial impressions when you first arrived? Anything at all?” Sam leaned a little closer.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I thought it was a plastic baby doll at first when I looked through the door, but then I opened it and there was still this…smell. Like barbecue almost only rancid, greasy. After all the time that passed, it still stank in there and the room had this feeling. Evil. It felt like evil was there watching me. I had to go outside and even in the sun, I felt it. There.” She swallowed hard, grimacing. “It’s a good thing I didn’t bring my youngest with me. I thought about it. She’s only five though and my mother-in-law wanted to spend time with her.” Her gaze flitted back and forth between them. “Do you have kids? Either of you?”
“My wife’s expecting our first,” Dean said and it seemed to calm her a little. “She’s about five months along.”
“That’s great. That’s really great. Kids are wonderful and babies….” Her chin trembled, tears forming in the corners of her eyes and slipping free. She dabbed at them with a tissue. “I keep thinking about the poor parents who never got that with this baby girl --”
“Mrs. Atwater…Denise,” Sam touched her hand. “What can you tell us about the caretaker? Did you have one?”
“Um…. We did. I remember dad writing out checks to pay him every month and moaning about the cost. He was let go before ‘09, which is when they’re saying it happened. You think he was involved?”
“‘09?” Sam’s brows raised.
“Sam?” Dean saw a flicker of insight in Sam’s eyes and knew he’d made a connection to something.
“You’re sure it was then?”
“Yes, why? They ran an investigation as to where my family was to rule us out.”
“Did they say when in ‘09?”
“Summer. June, July. One of the two.”
Excitement added to that insight. “Do you mind if we look at the place?”
“Please do. Police say they’ve gotten all they can from the scene. Let me give you the keys. If anyone bothers you, tell them to call me. The police are getting nowhere and right now, I don’t care how I get answers, I want them and I want the people who did this taken care of. Use whatever means you choose.” She reached for another tissue. “I don’t care how or when. Solve this. I won’t feel safe bringing my family up here until I know that whoever did this is either behind bars or…no longer in a position to cause trouble.”
They left with cash and the keys, going directly to the summer home.
Denise had been right about the smell and the feel of the house. Something evil had been accessed and if not released, brought one step closer to being released. The room had the feel of something waiting right on the other side of the fabric between their world and hell. Dean supposed the smell had remained because the house had been shut up after the sacrifice. There was a blackened section of ceiling in the center of the living room. The altar had been below it on the wood floor of the long wide living room. It was gone now, but the symbol remained. It wasn’t one he recognized.
Sam snapped a picture of it. “Glad she brought us in before she called someone to clean the room. I’d expected the symbol to be gone. I’m going to send this to Jo, have her get Ellen’s source on it.”
Dean stared at the symbol. He thought he could actually feel his blood pressure rising when he thought about what had been done here. He could hear Sam talking, but wasn’t paying attention to a single word. “A baby, Sam,” he interrupted. “A newborn. A freakin’ newborn. Sick bastards.” He shook his head.
“Dean.” Sam put a hand on his shoulder.
“What?”
“You need to distance yourself from this. Why don’t you go back to the motel and let me finish up here?”
“You think I’m too emotional?”
“Uh…yeah, a little. You’re balling your hands into fists so hard your knuckles are white.”
Taking a deep breath, and trying to ignore the smell of the place, he relaxed his hands, forcing himself to calm down. “I’m fine. Tell me about that Einstein moment you had back there. What was that all about?”
“I’ve got a few things to check, but it fits a pattern I’ve run across.”
“Run across where? In the Campbell files?”
Sam made a noncommittal noise. “Go back to the motel, Dean. Call Jo and check in with her. Have a good long talk.”
“She’s fine. I don’t need --”
He turned from studying the symbol on the floor. “Yes, you do. You need to reassure yourself that she’s safe at home. I understand and, really, there’s nothing here that needs both of us.”
The case was just as cold as Dean had thought it’d be, with no leads aside from the symbol and whatever they could get from it. Within a couple days of poking, they were regretfully informing Denise Atwater that there was nothing more they could do at present, but that they’d keep looking. They packed up and while Sam was loading the car, Dean’s phone rang.
The area code was familiar, the number wasn’t. He knew the state the call was coming from even if he wasn’t entirely sure who was calling. Dean rejected the call and deleted the voicemail that had been left. Fifteen calls and fifteen messages and he didn’t want to answer and find out who it was.
Tension dragged a heavy hand along his back. It could be a legit job from someone he didn’t know or…. He took a deep breath. Or it was his past trying to screw-up his present and he wasn’t about to chance that happening. He had a good life with Jo. It was working and it was working well. There was no reason to go backwards.
“Who was that,” Sam asked, stepping inside.
“Wrong number.”
Sam reached for the last bag and stood up tall. “Awful lot of those the past couple days,” he observed with a concerned tilt to his brow.
“Yeah.” He slid the phone into his pocket. “Guy won’t believe he can’t reach who he wants at this number.”
He nodded. “I had a woman do that once. Insisted I was keeping her man from talking to her.”
Maybe it was time for a new phone and new number. He should have done that the day he’d decided to pursue Jo to begin with. He’d thought he’d been starting with a clean slate. Dean suspected he’d been wrong.
~~~~~~~~~~
While Sam’s idea was possible, Gwen had been wondering more and more if Arlene had solid information. After all, the way she’d talked to Gwen about the files, like there was something there that would tell Gwen everything….
Gwen glanced through the papers on the table in front of her. “I hate cursed objects.”
Jo didn’t look up from the computer screen. “You don’t have to keep staying to help me, Gwen.”
Jo was deep in the early stages of a case. She’d chosen a locket as her first search and was busy enough that Gwen thought she could slip away to see Arlene and Jo wouldn’t even notice. “Hey, would you mind if I took off for a few days?”
She glanced up. “Nope. Just don’t let on to Dean that you shirked your guard duties.”
“Jo!”
“It’s true. He wants someone to guard me and make sure I behave myself instead of running off on a case.” She looked over her shoulder towards the kitchen. Ellen was in there making lunch for the three of them. “Mom’s here most days when she isn’t at Bobby’s working on the database, so really, there’s no reason you can’t go work a case or two.”
“I don’t have a case, but I might have a lead on my birth mother.”
“Then what are you waiting for? Go.” She made a shooing motion with one hand.
“Okay. I thought I’d fly out to the coast and either drive or fly back. If I flew back, I’ll probably get back before Dean and Sam. I don’t think it’ll take long to talk to my possible source.”
“Where’s the source?”
“Maine.”
“Have fun.” Her attention returned to the computer screen.
Gwen caught a late afternoon flight out.
~~~~~~~~~~
Sam watched Dean as they drove. Something was wrong. He was rejecting the calls that came in and getting moodier as the day went on. Sam was almost afraid to consider what that might mean. Dean had only moped in the past couple years for one reason: Lisa Braeden.
Dean’s phone buzzed with a text, his lips thinning into a tight, irritated line as he drew it back out. His expression shifted into one of confusion. “Sam, do we know a Cheryl Campbell?”
He thought a moment. “Yeah, she’s another relative, more distant than the others. She’s a teenager, about fifteen…. No, she’d be seventeen by now. Her last name isn’t actually Campbell though. It’s Breckridge. Why?”
“Did I meet her?”
“I don’t think so. I only remember meeting her twice in over a year. She mostly stayed with her parents in Texas.”
“Then can you think of a reason why she would be texting me?”
“Maybe because between you, me, and Gwen, you’re the only one still has your original number? What’s it say?”
“Comp. W.O.S.S.O.S. Please come. Gwe.”
“Gwe,” he repeated with raised brows.
“That’s what it says.” Dean spelled it out. “Like she was trying to type ‘Gwen’ and couldn’t finish. I’m gonna text her back.”
Cheryl didn’t reply.
Sam thought about the text. “Comp could mean compound. It’s around the time I met her the first time. She could be visiting. We’re not too far away from the compound. Maybe three or four hours. We could go check it out. The SOS part is clear enough.”
“She impress you as the kind of kid who’d text something like that as a joke?”
“No. She impressed me as the kind of kid who’d sound the alarm on trouble if she could.”
“So the S.O.S. could be real. Or it could be a trap.”
“Why would Samuel trap us?”
Dean shrugged. “Well, we both have threatened his life and ruined his plans to raise mom. To be honest, I think old Samuel is a little unhinged.” He tapped his phone on his thigh several times. “I am intrigued though. Hang on.” He dialed. “Jo…. No, it didn’t pan out…. Half pay, more if we end up solving it someday…. How did you know it was a baby sacrifice?….” His glance slid to Sam. “Right. I’ll tell you about it when we get back, but we’re taking a short detour. Got a weird text from someone we think is at the Campbell compound, so we’re…. Uh-huh…. Hey, is Gwen okay?…. No, Sam wanted to make sure…. Yes, I’ll be careful….Love you, too.” He hung up. “You told her about the baby?”
“Dean, she asked if the symbol was the same one matching the clipping she found from ‘89. You remember, the one about a newborn being sacrificed? Then she asked if this was a newborn, too. Was I not supposed to answer her? We hiding case details from her now?”
“Is it the same symbol?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m still waiting on a callback from a detective that was on the case back then. He’s on vacation and won’t be back for another few days.”
“If it’s the same, then your side project --”
“Could be current. Or relatively so. If I see a connection in the symbols, I’ll bring everything to you and we can look at it together.”
“Good. I’m not asking you to hide things from Jo, just…. Let me tell her about the cases like this, okay?”
“She can handle it. Jo’s a big girl, Dean. She’s not as delicate as you think.”
“I know she can handle it, but I don’t want her getting upset. If she gets upset, it could affect the baby. We need to have a healthy baby and a stress-free pregnancy and birth.”
Sam nodded. “Okay, okay. I get it. I do. First pregnancy, first baby, first time parents. You’re both a little cautious, but Dean, women have been giving birth for centuries in emotional and physical conditions far more harsh than what Jo has. Relax. I don’t think hearing about a few human sacrifices, baby or adult, is going to send her or the baby into distress. She’s been looking at cases like this for years.”
“When you have a wife and she’s pregnant, we’ll revisit this discussion. Then you can tell me to relax.”
He sighed. “Fine. I’ll leave it to you to tell Jo anything about our cases.”
“Fine. Pull over. I’m driving.”
They made it to the compound in record time thanks to Dean’s lead foot.
Dean stopped the Impala at the gate. It was open, with no sign of the guard normally ever-present. The light above was off. “That gate isn’t ever not guarded. This look like a good development to you?”
“No.” Sam rolled down the window and peered up at the light, squinting. “I think the bulb is broken. Back up a little.” When Dean had done so, Sam got out of the car and stepped slowly to the fixture, scanning the ground. Sure enough, there was glass on the ground. He looked around the drive. Aside from the car engine, the area was quiet. He returned to the car. “No activity that I can hear. Cut the engine.”
They left the car there and went in slow, guns drawn, finding nothing in the outbuildings. There were two vehicles parked by the door of the main building, tires slashed. The door was busted open, the frame around it splintered. The overhead lights flickered, the building as gloomy as it had ever been in Sam’s memory. He smelled gun oil, dust, cooking odors, burned coffee, and beneath it all, the rank stench of blood, death, and a whiff of sulfur.
He heard a soft curse from Dean as they stepped into the main room. Bodies lay sprawled on the floor, adults and children both. It looked like they’d been gathered together in one area, some tortured, and other simply killed. Eleven in all. Sam went from body to body, studying them, noting that some appeared to have been dead longer than others. He also noticed something peculiar. None of them except Cheryl, the girl who’d texted Dean, appeared to have struggled even during what had to have been excruciating torture.
“Dean, this is fresh.” He touched his fingers to Cheryl’s neck. Her skin was still warm and the blood beneath her body hadn’t begun to dry. A cell phone was beneath the table beside her and he reached for it. An iphone. He opened it. Her contact list was open to Dean’s name. He shut the screen down and pocketed the phone to look at later. “I think whoever did this just left.”
“Not all are fresh,” he replied. “They were here awhile.” Dean looked over the bodies. “Where’s Samuel?”
They’d cleared the building coming in except for Samuel’s office. It had been locked. They headed there next, Sam forcing the door.
Samuel was on the floor behind the desk, his chest and stomach ripped open, one hand nearly touching a picture of Mary. There were droplets of blood across the picture.
“Well, I guess Gwen doesn’t need to worry about Samuel finding her anymore,” Dean said with a sigh.
“Guess not.”
“You think he went up or down?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, but with all he was into his second time around, I suspect it was down.”
Dean’s lips curled. “Good.” He stepped from the office and into the hall. “Sam, how many more of our relatives are there? I mean left in the states.”
“That I know of? Cheryl’s parents and Arlene, and for all I know, Cheryl’s parents are one of the couples out there on the floor. I never met them.”
“Think about this. Someone came in and wiped out the Campbell branch. Twelve people, the adults trained from childhood. They took on a well-organized family of hunters and came out on top. You see any signs of a struggle except from the girl? No gunfire, no nothing, like those people stood there and just accepted they were going to die.”
“It’s a little disturbing.”
Dean nodded. “Look for hex bags. You start at one end, I’ll start at the other. They got the drop on the Campbells somehow. No way it wasn’t witchy.”
They found three hex bags.
“Dean, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“You and me both. Let’s get these bodies taken care of, call Gwen out here to help, and clear out what we can. Have Gwen bring a moving truck, one of the big ones. We’ll take what we can, leave the rest.” He looked at the office door. “If we’re the last, this is all ours, right? That makes sense to you?”
“Ours and Gwen’s,” he agreed. He doubted there was anyone to really contest if they took everything in the building and around it.
“Somehow I don’t see her wanting to move back here. You call her, I’ll get started with the bodies.”
Sam looked at the hex bags, neutralized now and no longer a threat to anyone. He wondered if this was connected to something Samuel had been working on or if the past had caught up to the Campbell family regarding that case Patricia and Neal had been working on when they’d saved Gwen. He suspected either or both together. Samuel had wanted Gwen for something and the last part of Cheryl’s text had included most of Gwen’s name. There was a reason for that, but what?
~~~~~~~~~~
Gwen spent the night in a motel close to Arlene’s mother’s house. She woke late and had a leisured lunch before heading to the house. She parked her rental car on the street rather than in the drive and ended up pounding on the front door a good five minutes before Arlene would even open it to look at her.
“Arlene, please talk to me. What has you so spooked?”
Arlene reached out and took Gwen’s arm, tugging her inside the house, her glance straying to the high fence that shielded the street from view before she closed the door. Gwen recognized a serious case of paranoia brewing in Arlene. The way she looked at the street. The way she hugged herself. Something had her on edge. “Fine. But after this, forget I exist. I don’t want them coming here after me and mama.”
“I understand.”
Arlene sighed. “Okay, you know I’m good at finding people? Well, Samuel asked me to find someone and when I did, I got curious why he wanted to find a witch, when it was obvious he wasn’t hunting. He was wanting a meeting, wanted to have a good start on where the witch was before he really needed the information. We don’t ally ourselves with witches, we hunt them like we do everything else. It didn’t make sense. The clues he gave me…. I picked the lock on his office and looked through some of the boxes he’d taken from my house.” She shook her head. “I stole a couple things that I could fit in my jacket, things I thought you might be interested in, and shoved them in boxes at home, then brought the whole mess to you, minus the boxes in his office.”
“There are still boxes there?”
“Several.”
“Who did he want you to find?”
“He’s involved with a coven, Gwen. Think about it. The secrecy. The demon deal. Witches. I think it’s all part of a very real, very dangerous coven. The man is insane! He thinks he’s going to raise his daughter from the dead. I think…. I think he was going to give you to them, to the coven, to somehow broker that deal.”
“Why me?”
“You’re not who you think you are.”
“I know I’m not a Campbell. I know my real parents were Aaron and Mia Carys. What else can you tell me?”
Arlene blinked. Her face seemed to pale even further. “You found your birth certificate.”
“I did. You knew it was there?”
“I knew it was in one of those boxes. There should be three with pictures and things from when you were a kid.”
Gwen nodded. “We found one. Why do you think Samuel was going to give me to them?”
“Because it’s a pattern, Gwen. Your birth day and time. The people Samuel is involved in have waited a very long time to free their god. They’ll do anything, kill anyone. You need to stay as far away from Samuel and anything remotely looking like ritual murders for the rest of this year if you want to stay alive. Once they get a bead on you, that’s it. They’ll get at you. I think you were supposed to be the sacrifice they needed and he thought he could cut a deal to get his daughter back by offering you.”
“Why are you so afraid if you think I’m the sacrifice?”
She glanced at the door. “Because I think they saw me. I didn’t cover my own tracks as well as I should have. I think….” She licked her lips. “I think they’ve been following me the past couple weeks and Samuel knows I know something. I’ve changed my cell number, but it’s only a matter of time.”
“Take your mother and move.”
“No. I won’t be run out of my house. My mother’s house.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “You need to leave, Gwen. You need to leave now. If they come for me, I don’t want you here to be caught by them. I don’t want your blood on my hands.”
There was no changing Arlene’s mind or making her talk. Whatever details she knew, she wasn’t about to let them slip from her lips. Gwen sat in the car for awhile, trying to think of a way to make Arlene tell her what else she knew. She decided to get dinner and think about a new strategy.
It was late, twilight passed, before Gwen returned to the house and when she reached it, she sat stunned, a little knot of sick dread in her belly. Slowly, she got out of the car and stood like the others on the street, watching. Her hands held on to the driver’s door.
The house was on fire, men working to put out the blaze, but even Gwen’s untrained eye could see it was too late to try to save anyone. They were making an effort for people that were already dead, a hunch confirmed when two people near her started talking. When the fire trucks had arrived, there’d been the sound of screaming from inside the house.
The water only seemed to make the flames burn higher. The roof collapsed in a whoosh of spark and flame and Gwen gasped, hand covering her mouth. Her legs trembled and she sank back into the car, closing the door.
No way Arlene had gotten out. She wouldn’t have left her mother.
Her phone began to ring and she reached for it. “Sam.” She was grateful to hear his voice right them, calm if a bit insistent.
“Gwen, Dean and I need you to come to the Campbell compound. Bring one of those big moving trucks.”
She choked on a sudden rush of tears. “Sam, I can’t --”
“What’s wrong?”
She wiped at her eyes with a hand. “Arlene’s dead. I just saw her a few hours ago and she’s dead. I’m sitting in my rental car and that house is on fire. Her mom’s house. She and her mom both. They’re dead.”
“Wait, what do you mean you saw her? Where are you?” She could hear the concern in his voice and it made her tear up even more.
“Maine. I flew out last night.”
She heard him take a deep breath. “Okay, does anyone know you’re there?”
“Jo and Ellen --”
“No,” he interrupted. “I mean…has anyone identified you as having been there earlier?” Urgency colored his words.
“I don’t --” She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Get away from the house and the fire. Last thing you need is someone asking questions. I realize you liked Arlene, but if she’s dead, the only thing you can do is make sure you don’t end up that way too.”
“Sam?”
“Please, Gwen,” his voice dropped to a near whisper, “honey.”
The endearment, a thing he’d never said before, knocked a bit of the shock from her. Had Sam really just called her that? She’d heard Dean call Jo all sorts of endearments, but Sam had never done that with her. Why do it now? She sat up a little straighter, paying closer attention to his words.
“Drive straight to the compound. Look for anyone who might be following you. Be careful.”
She pressed the lock on the car doors and glanced around the scene. There was one person watching her, staring at her like she knew Gwen somehow. A chill gripped her and she shivered. “Sam, what’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”
“Let’s just say Samuel can’t possibly hurt you anymore, but I’m not so sure you’re any safer with him gone. Get here as soon as you can. Stop and call me every hour.”
Every hour? What was going on?
Sam wouldn’t tell her. Gwen ran by the motel, grabbed her bag and checked out. Within an hour of leaving the scene of the fire, she was on the road, heading towards the compound. When she’d left, she’d never thought she’d step foot inside that fence again, yet here she was going right to it.
