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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍
𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳
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Delaney walked across the college campus the three siblings had stopped at for a case Dean thought they had. The boys wanted to sit out on the questioning with the professor so Delaney went in alone, not like she minded. What she did mind was the fact the professor gave her nothing to go off and her theory that nothing was even here became more clear in her mind. She would kill Dean for not listening to her.
Dean hung up the phone as Delaney approached and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He stood up along with Sam and stuffed the donut he had been eating into his mouth. "So?"
"So, the professor knew crap," Delaney huffed, crossing her arms across her chest. "I told you this was a bust, Dean."
"Shocking. Pack your panties, Della. We're hitting the road."
"What?" Delaney questioned, stopping Dean and Sam from walking back towards the Impala. "What's going on?"
"That was Bobby. Some banker guy blew him his head off in Ohio and he thinks there's a spirit involved."
Delaney furrowed her eyebrows, confused on why Dean had talked to Bobby on another case while they were already on one. "So you were talking a case?"
"No, we were actually talking about our feelings and then our favorite boy bands," Dean quipped and slapped his hands to his sides. "Yes, Della, we were talking a case."
"So, a spirit - what?" Sam chimed in before Delaney could remark back at Dean. If there was a case they needed to go on, he couldn't let Delaney and Dean get into it with each other.
"Yeah, well, banker was complaining about some electrical problems at his pad for, like, a week - phones going haywire, computers flipping on and off. Huh?"
Delaney slowly nodded at the supposed case they had, but still was confused on why Dean had spoken to Bobby about another one. Dean had less than two months left to live and Dean's case was a lot more important at the moment. There were other hunters that could have done it for them while Delaney, Sam and Dean focused on getting Dean out of his deal before it was too late.
Dean eyed Delaney and noticed her apprehension to the whole thing, tilting his head. "What? This not ringing your bell?"
"Well, sure, yeah, but we're on a case," Delaney reminded her brothers.
"Whose?"
"Yours?"
Dean snorted and turned away from Delaney, beginning to walk back to the Impala. "Right, well, you coulda fooled me."
Delaney rolled her eyes and stopped both boys from walking again. "What the hell else have we been doing lately other than trying to break your deal?"
"Chasing our tails, that's what," Dean snapped, spinning around to face to Delaney again. "Della, we've talked to every professor, witch, soothsayer and two-bit carny act in the lower forty-eight. Nobody knows squat. We can't find Bela. We can't find the Colt. So until we actually find something, I'd like to do my job."
"Well... there's one thing we haven't tried yet.
"NO, Delaney, No," Sam denied instantly, shaking his head as he already knew what Delaney wanted to do.
"We should summon Randy," Delaney suggested anyway, figuring she might as well try to fight for her option. Randy was their best bet at this point and it was frustrating how the boys kept shooting it down. Sure, he was a demon and they probably shouldn't trust him, but he hasn't given them a reason not to yet.
"I'm not gonna have this argument with you, Delaney," Dean said, waving Delaney off.
"He said he knows how to save you!"
"Well, he can't!"
Delaney scoffed and glared at Dean, annoyed he wasn't even giving Randy a shot. "Oh, really? You know that for sure?"
"I do because he told me, okay?" Dean admitted, shoulders slumping at the sight of Delaney's heart broken expression. "He told me and Sammy... flat out that he could not save me - nobody can."
"And you just somehow magically neglected to mention this to me?"
"Well, I don't really care what that dick thinks and neither should you, so..."
"So what - now you boys are keeping secrets from me?"
Sam rose an eyebrow and a look flashed across his face that Delaney rarely saw on him. It was the same look Dean always gave to her when he was about two seconds away from giving her a lecture. The type that you would give a bad child when chastising them. It was a rarity for Sam to give her that look and it usually meant Delaney really screwed up. "You really want to talk about who's keeping secrets from who?"
Delaney stared at both of her brothers for a long moment. She knew that she should have told the boys Lilith wanted her head on a stick because Lilith thought Delaney was competition. Not like Delaney wanted to lead the army in the apocalypse in the first place. Lilith could gladly have her job without a fight. Though, in Delaney's defense she didn't know Lilith was the one that wanted her dead. Just that a demon didn't like her very much - much like every demon, really - and had a bounty out for her head. She just didn't want to worry her brothers over something she didn't fully know about.
"Now where you goin?" Dean asked when Delaney began to walk away from Sam and Dean.
Delaney turned around and continued to walk backwards with her hands out to her sides. "Guess I'm going to Ohio."
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"I found him... there," Mrs. Waters, the dead banker's wife, explained to the three siblings as she lead the into his study.
"Why don't you tell us everything you saw, Mrs. Waters?" Dean asked, stuffing his hands into his suit pant pockets.
"You mean besides my dead husband?" Mrs. Waters remarked.
Delaney forced the annoyed look that wanted to show on her face away. She shouldn't take this woman's sassiness to heart since her husband did die from a supposed suicide. "How about you tell us everything else? Please."
"There was, uh, blood... everywhere. The phone was ripped from the wall, his favorite scotch on the desk. What else could you possibly want to know?"
"Why was the phone ripped from the wall?" Sam asked, sounding just as confused as Delaney felt.
"I don't know."
"You mind if I take a look?" Delaney spoke up next, gesturing to the study they stood in.
Mrs. Waters nodded in response and Delaney smiled politely at her, brushing past the woman to take a look around for anything that could help. She picked up the phone that had been plugged back in and scrolled through the recent calls to find the most recent one. The most recent number was SHA33 at 11:04 PM with UNKNOWN NAME where the caller ID should be.
"Um, Mrs. Waters, what time did your husband die?" Delaney asked, glancing up at the woman from the phone.
"Sometime after eleven."
Delaney's eyes flickered over to her brothers and when Sam looked over, she tapped the phone to indicate something was on the phone around the time of his death.
Sam cleared his throat and turned to Mrs. Waters with a sheepish smile. "What about any odd phone calls? Receive any of those lately - weird interference, static, anything like that?"
"No," Mrs. Waters responded and furrowed her eyebrows when Sam just stared at her. "No."
"Mrs. Waters, withholding information from the police is a capital offense," Dean warned the woman.
Delaney obnoxiously cleared her throat and Dean glanced over at her. She gave him an unamused glare to stop being so rude and sarcastic to Mrs. Waters.
"In some parts of the world, I'm sure."
Mrs. Waters sighed heavily and dropped her arms to her sides, clearly hiding something from the three siblings. "A couple of weeks ago, um, there was this..."
"This what?" Delaney prompted when Mrs. Waters trailed off.
"I woke up one morning, I heard Ben in his study. I thought he was talking to a woman."
"What made you think that?" Sam asked.
"He kept calling her Linda. The thing is... I picked up the other line, and... nobody was there. Ben was talking to nobody. There was nothing. Just static."
Delaney exchanged a look with her brothers because this was definitely odd and odd was usually up their alley. Maybe Bobby was right when he said there was a spirit here. "Did you ever speak to Ben about this call?"
"I should have, but... no."
"Did he ever say who Linda was?"
"What difference does it make?! There was no one on the other end!"
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"Linda's a babe, or... was," Dean announced from his spot at the table in the motel room while Delaney and Sam sat on the beds across from it. "Linda Bateman. She and Ben Waters were high school sweethearts. Drunk driver hit 'em head-on. Ben walked away."
"So, what, then - dead flame calls to chat?" Sam questioned, trying to make sense of the whole thing.
"You would think, but Linda was cremated. So why is she still floating around?"
Delaney scoffed and leant back on her hands as Dean walked over to her and Sam, standing in front of the two beds they sat on. "You got me."
"What about that, uh, called ID?"
"Turns out it's a phone number," Delaney informed.
"It's no phone number I've ever seen," Dean mumbled, running a hand over his face.
"Yeah, because it's about a century old from back when phones had cranks."
"So, why use that number to reach out and touch someone?" Sam chimed in.
Delaney shook her head and her eyes bounced between her two brothers. "Got me, but either way, we should run a trace on it."
Dean gave Delaney an odd look when her eyes met his. "Well, how the hell are we gonna trace a number that's over a hundred years old?"
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"We don't get many folks from HQ down here," the agent told the siblings as he lead them down to the basement of the agency.
"Yeah, well, the main office mentioned there would be a lunch."
Delaney and Sam both punched Dean in the arm when the agent wasn't looking, earning them a glare from the eldest Winchester. They made it a few more feet down the hall when Delaney whacked away a fly that had landed in her hair.
"Sorry about that," the agent said, noticing what had happened over his shoulder. "Bit of a hygiene problem down here, if you ask me." He lead the siblings into the office where a tan man with greasy black hair and a beard sat at a desk that was littered with junk food. Multiple flies flew around the desk over the old and disgusting fast food. "Stewie? What did I tell you about keeping this place clean?"
Stewie jumped at their presence and he quickly began to click away multiple items on his screen and it was all porn sites that Delaney had noticed before Stewie clicked them away.
"Stewie Meyers. Mr. Campbell, Mr. Raimi and Ms. Malek," the agent introduced the three to Stewie as he turned around in his chair to face the four behind him. "They're from headquarters so you best give them what they want."
"Thank you," Delaney politely said to the agent before she turned to Stewie in front of her, ignoring the way he eyed her as if he had never seen a woman in person before.
"Is that, uh, bustyasianbeauties.com?" Dean smirked at Stewie who tried to cover it up and hide it, but high pitched moans came from the computer. "A word to the wise - platinum membership. Worth every penny."
Delaney elbowed Dean in the ribs as she stepped forward and handed Stewie the number they needed checked. "We need you to check this number for us. I know it hasn't been used in a while."
Stewie took the paper from Delaney and barked out a laugh when he saw what it was. "A while? It's prehistoric. Trust me, nobody uses this number anymore."
"Sure. Could you run it away?" Delaney asked, growing annoyed with Stewie more and more by the second.
"Sure," Stewie snarkily replied and leant back in his chair. "How about I rearrange my life first?"
Dean chuckled humorlessly and stepped closer to Stewie, bending down so they were eye level with each other. "Listen, uh, Stewie. You got like six kinds of employee code violations down here. Not to mention the sickening porn that is clogging up your hard drive. Now when my partner says to run the number, you run the damn number!"
Stewie scrambled to spin his chair around and quickly run the number for the siblings as Dean stood back and flashed his siblings a grin. Multiple numbers had suddenly popped up on Stewie's computer screen and he printed them out. "I can't tell you where it originated, but I can tell where it's going."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked, glancing over Stewie's shoulder to the printed out sheet in his hand.
"Ten different houses in the past two weeks all got calls from the same number."
Delaney rose an eyebrow and took the sheet from Stewie who brushed between the three siblings to go back to his computer. They didn't get to find out an origin, but at least they knew the other apparent victims and that could help them find out what it was.
"So... are we done here?" Stewie asked, swinging his chair back around to face Delaney and the boys. "I was sort of busy."
"Right."
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Delaney pulled up in front of a yellow painted house and turned off the car. The boys had rented her a car for the day so they could split up and go through the list of numbers quicker. They took five numbers and Delaney took five numbers. So far Delaney had come up with nothing the past two houses and she hoped this house would give her something.
A middle-aged man opened up the door when Delaney rang the doorbell with a little boy at his side. "May I help you?"
"Hi, sir. I'm with the phone company."
"Oh, we didn't call the phone company," the man said, catching the ball the little boy had bounced to stop him from doing it again.
Delaney smiled politely and shook her head. "Oh, no, sir. No, see, we're calling you. We've had a lot of complaints from the neighborhood lately. Dropped calls, static, maybe even strange voices on the other end of the line?"
"No, we haven't had any of that here," the man informed.
"Nothing at all?"
"No."
"Oh, great! Just thought we would check, thanks," Delaney said and her eyes glanced over the man's shoulder to the teenage girl behind him, looking scared at Delaney's company. She eyed the girl for a long moment until the father shut the door after they said goodbyes. Sighing, Delaney walked back to the car and mentally crossed off this number just like the previous two.
"You don't work for the phone company."
Delaney jumped slightly at the sudden voice and looked over the roof of the car to see the girl stood on the passenger side of the car. "Sure, I do."
"Since when does a phone girl drive a rental or wear a cheap suit?" the girl sassed, crossing her arms across her chest.
Delaney chuckled softly, finding the girl quite amusing and impressed she had called Delaney out so quickly. "Yeah? Well, maybe we're both keeping secrets."
"Why'd you ask my dad if he heard strange voices on the phone?"
"Why? Did you hear something?" Delaney countered and shrugged when the girl shook her head. "My mistake. Thought maybe you did."
"Well, I didn't, okay?"
"Okay. Sorry to bother you," Delaney said and smiled when she noticed the girl shift awkwardly, seemingly lost in thought. "You know... if you did, then I would have told that I've been right where you're standing right now. Hearing things, even seeing things that can't be explained. Maybe I would have been able to help out a little bit. Anyway..."
The girl's eyes widened when Delaney went to get back in her rental and shouted for Delaney to wait. "Maybe... maybe I've been talking on the phone... with my mom."
Delaney scrunched up her nose at the girl's confession and leaned her arms on the roof of the car. "Well, that's not so strange."
"She's dead... like three years now."
"How often does she call you?"
"A few times. It started a week ago," the girl answered and shook her head, laughing to herself. "I thought I was going crazy."
"Well, I can tell you one thing for sure, and you're gonna have to go with me on this, okay? You're not crazy."
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Delaney drove down the highway to get back to the motel to meet up with the boys when her phone went off in the cupholder next to her. She grabbed her phone and picked it up without having to look at the caller ID. "Dean, what's up?"
"Della, stiffs are calling people all over town. Sammy and I just talked to an eighty-four year old grandmother who's having phone sex with her husband who died in Korea."
"I'm scarred for life," Sam groaned faintly in the background.
"Ugh, gross."
"It redefined my understanding of the word necrophilia," Dean mused.
Delaney opened her mouth to tell Dean how disgusting he was, but decided against it. "What the hell is going on here, Dean?"
"Beats me, but we better find out soon. This place is turning into spook central."
"Yeah, alright. I'll call you and Sammy later."
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"Dad? You really think it was Dad?" Delaney asked, watching Dean pace back and forth in the motel room.
The boys had returned just a few minutes ago and Dean had lost all color in his face and Sam had to explain how after Delaney hung up with Dean, he got a call from John. Sam, of course, didn't really hear the other end so he was just as lost as Delaney was at the moment.
"I don't know, maybe."
"Well, what did he sound like?" Sam cut in, sitting down on the bed next to Delaney while Dean continued to burn a hole into the ground with his pacing.
"Like Oprah," Dean quipped and stopped his pacing to face Delaney and Sam, an annoyed expression on his face. "It was Dad! He sounded like Dad, what do you think?"
"What did he say?" Delaney questioned.
"Just my name. The call dropped out."
Delaney exhaled heavily and rubbed her hands over her face in exasperation. "Why would he even call in the first place?"
"I don't know, Della! Why are ghosts calling anybody in this town? I mean, other people are hearing from their loved ones so why can't we? It's a possibility, right? What do I even say if he calls back?"
"Hello."
"That's all you come back with? Hello!" Dean snapped, clearly wanting an actual response that Delaney nor Sam could give to him.
Delaney lamely shrugged in response and frowned when Dean stormed out of the motel room with his jacket in hand. She felt awful that she couldn't help Dean out with this, but she had no idea what was even going on in the first place. Who knew if they could even trust that it was actually John or any of these people's loved ones on the other end? None of it made sense.
For the next three hours, Delaney and Sam scoured all over the internet and lore books for anything that could help them find out what could have happened to make this town a spook fest. However, as their luck would have it, nothing had come up to help them in any way. If anything, it left the two younger Winchesters even more confused than they were before.
"You guys find anything?" Dean asked, walking back into the motel room.
"After three hours, I have found no reason why anything supernatural would be going on here," Delaney huffed and shut Sam's closed.
"Wow, you know, you'd think with a Stanford education would produce better results than that," Dean remarked.
Delaney flashed Dean a sarcastic smile and flipped him off. "Hilarious."
"Well, you're just looking in the wrong places."
"And what do you suggest are the right places, Dean?" Sam quipped, coming to Delaney's aid. Not her fault, or his, that they couldn't find anything. It was just one of the many things that came with the territory. Sometimes you hit dead ends and had to find your way back around.
Dean tossed a pamphlet onto the coffee table that Sam and Delaney sat in front of on the couch. "Motel pamphlet pack. Milan, Ohio - birthplace of Thomas Edison."
Delaney picked up the pamphlet with Thomas Edison's face on it and skimmed the text on the front. "Yeah, so what?"
"Keep reading."
Delaney opened up the pamphlet and read whatever it was Dean wanted her to and when she realized what Dean hinted at, she glanced up at him with raised eyebrows. "You're kidding."
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"And we're walking. Here we have one of the museum's most unique and treasured possessions - Thomas Edison's Spirit Phone. Did you know that Mr. Edison, while being one of America's most beloved inventors, was also a devout occultist?" the tour guide informed, air quoting the word occultist.
Dean turned to his siblings and gave them both odd looks. "Why the quote-y fingers?"
"He spent years working on his, his final invention, which he was convinced could be used to communicate with the dead. Pretty spooky, huh?" the tour guide checked her watch and twirled her fingers in the air. "We are walking."
Delaney pretended to follow after the group before she froze next to the spirit phone that kind of looked like the end of a tuba, just thinner. She whipped out her EMF reader and ran it along the spirit phone, coming up with nothing. "I got nothing."
"What do you think?" Dean asked.
"Honestly? It kind looks like an old pile of junk to me," Delaney said, stuffing the EMF reader into her pocket. "It's not even plugged in."
"Maybe it doesn't work like that," Sam suggested.
Dean nodded and ran a hand over his mouth in deep thought. "Okay, maybe it's like a radio tower, you know? Broadcasting the dead all over town.
"Could be," Sam agreed.
"Well, you know, the caller ID's a hundred years old, right? Right around the time this thing was built," Dean noted, gesturing to the device on the table.
"Yeah, but why would it all of a sudden start working now?" Delaney inquired, staring down at the thing as if it would suddenly announce its powers to her through its speaker.
"I don't know, but as along as all the moldy are calling the freshies around here, it's the best reason we got," Dean replied, a flash of uneasiness crossing his face. "Maybe it really is Dad."
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"Lanie, I'll be there in a few minutes, okay? Just... don't move," Delaney assured the girl from yesterday before she hung up, stepping back into the motel room to see Dean and Sam now sat on the couch with the laptop opened. "The girl Lanie - her mom's ghost spooked her out pretty bad last night."
"That sucks."
"Yeah, it does," Delaney agreed and noticed all the papers spread out on the table along with the laptop. "What are you guys even doing?"
Dean sighed and glanced up from the papers, bags under his eyes showing how little sleep he had gotten the night before. While Delaney and Sam were asleep last night, John had called Dean again and told him the demon with Dean's contract was there with them. He had even given Dean an exorcism that could kill the demon for good. However, Delaney had a bad feeling about the whole thing if she were honest. How did they even know if they could trust whatever John said? They barely even knew if it was actually him.
"I think Dad's right. I think the demon is here. Check it out," Dean handed Delaney a stack of papers which she took.
"What is this - weather reports?"
"Omens - demonic omens - electrical storms everywhere we've been for the past two weeks," Sam explained and Delaney was momentarily shocked that Sam had sided with Dean on this one. Usually he was more logical and wanted some more answers before he dived head first into anything.
"I - I don't remember any lightning storms."
Dean rolled his eyes and pushed himself up from the couch to walk over to his duffle. "Well, I remember you studying to be a lawyer not a meteorologist, Delaney. I'm telling you - that bastard's been tailing me, wearing some poor dude's meat."
Delaney continued to flip through all the news reports and shook her head. "Okay, and he would be following you because...?"
"I guess I'm big game, you know? My ass is too sweet to let out of sight."
"Yeah, sure."
Dean dropped the duffle back onto the floor next to the bed where it had been originally and scoffed at his sister, walking over and snatching the papers from her hand. "Don't get too excited, Della, you might pull something."
Delaney slapped her hands to her sides and glanced to Sam for assistance, but he merely rolled his lips into his mouth. Obviously, this was a rare two older brothers against the baby sister argument. "I just... Dean, I want to believe this. I really do."
"Then believe it! I mean, if we get this sucker, it's Miller Time."
"Yeah, that's another thing," Delaney said, narrowing her eyes at Dean. "Dad rattles off an exorcism that can kill a demon - I mean, not just send it back to Hell, but kill it?"
"We checked it out, actually," Sam spoke up and pulled up the research he and Dean had done that morning. "It's heavy duty dark ages - fifteenth century."
Delaney chewed on her lower lip and stared down at the research on the screen because little did either of them know that she actually did some herself. "Yeah, I checked on it, too, boys. So did Bobby."
"You called Bobby?" Sam questioned.
"Well, I wanted another opinion on it," Delaney explained and shrugged, not seeing the big deal in including Bobby. "I actually thought about asking Randy first, but thought Bobby would be better in making sure you both listened no matter what. It definitely is an exorcism, but there's no evidence that it can kill a demon."
"No evidence it can't," Dean argued, dropping the weather reports back onto the coffee table. "Hey, as far as I know, the only one of us that's actually been to Hell is Dad. Maybe he picked up a couple of tricks down there, like which exorcisms work?"
"Maybe it does, okay? Look, I hope it does, too, but we just got to be sure."
"Why aren't we sure?"
Delaney groaned and threw her head back, feeling like she was being tossed onto the chopping block for arguing this. She wanted this thing to work more than anything because then Dean would be saved and things could go back to how they were before Dean sold his soul to save her life. However, she also wasn't going to just dive head first into this thing just because a supposed ghost of her father told Dean over the phone.
"Maybe because I don't know what's going on around here! I mean, some guy blows his brains out, a little girl is scared out of her wits."
"Delly, a couple of civilians being spooked by ghosts are normal. It's kind of a normal reaction," Sam reminded his sister and Delaney felt annoyance flood through her that even Sam wasn't listening to her. When did the world shift and put a line between her and her brothers?
"Okay, big shot, did Dad tell Dean where to find the demon?"
Dean waved his phone around in Delaney's face. "Waiting for the call!"
"I told Lanie I'd stop by. Make sure she's okay," Delaney said, deciding that this argument wouldn't be going anywhere and she might as well go make sure the poor girl was okay.
"Yeah, meanwhile, I'll be here with Sammy as we get ready to save my life."
Delaney waved Dean off and turned to walk towards the door, grabbing the rental car keys on the way.
"You are unbelievable, you know that?" Dean yelled at Delaney, causing her to freeze in front of the door. "I mean, for months you've been up my ass about trying to get me out of this deal. Now Dad's about to give us the freakin' address and you can't accept it!? The man is dead and you're still butting heads with the guy!"
"Dean..."
Delaney whirled around, cutting off whatever Sam was about to say to defend Delaney. She didn't want him to stick up for her if he couldn't even listen to her. "That is not what this is about."
"Then what is it?!"
"The fact is, we got no hard proof here. After everything, you're still just going on blind faith!"
"Yeah, well, maybe! You know, maybe that's all I got, okay?!"
Delaney deflated at the fact Dean had practically just admitted he had no other options and it worried him. He was desperate to find something, anything, to get him out and this was the best thing they had. Though, Delaney still just couldn't go against her better judgement, not with her brother's life on the line. She wouldn't. "Please, Dee. Just please don't go anywhere until I get back. I'm literally begging here, okay?"
"I'll keep him here, Delly," Sam promised after a long, tense moment of silence. "Promise."
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"Have you told your father about any of this?"
"And bother him at work? No. He wouldn't believe me anyway. He'd just check me into therapy," Lanie replied, crossing her arms.
"So what did your mother say?"
Lanie rolled her lips into her mouth and she was quiet for a long moment, the fear evident in her face. "That she wanted to see me. So, at first, I thought I was supposed to go to the cemetery. Nothing happened, but then she started asking me to do other things."
Delaney furrowed her eyebrows, this all being new to her. The other victims, as far as her and the boys knew, just got weird phone calls and then were dead within the week. "What sort of things?"
"Bad things," Lanie answered and turned away, squeezing her eyes shut as the sobs took over.
Delaney stepped forward and placed a comforting hand on Lanie's shoulder. "Lanie, please. Tell me what happened. It's important."
"Mom told me to go to Dad's medicine cabinet," Lanie cried and turned back around to face a still shocked and confused Delaney. "Take his sleeping pills. Take all his sleeping pills!"
"She... wanted you to kill yourself?" Delaney whispered, the whole theory of this spirit not being John only becoming more prominent. She knew that her and the boys shouldn't listen to whatever was on the other end of that phone.
"Why would my mom want me to do that? I mean, just so I could come to her?"
Delaney froze and her eyes snapped over to a sobbing Lanie. "What did you say?"
"She wanted me to come to her."
"No, no, no, no. How exactly did she say it?"
"Come to me - like a million time."
Delaney felt the familiar chill go down her spine when something dark was nearby and now she was definitely sure that whoever Dean spoke to, and whoever Lanie and the others spoke to, that wasn't them. It was something darker.
"Lanie, that's not your mother. You have to promise me you won't answer the phone or speak to anyone until I say." Delaney lead Lanie out of her room and towards the stairs, pausing when Lanie stopped next to a bedroom door. "What is it?"
"Where's Simon?"
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Delaney had wound up saving Lanie's brother, Simon, from getting hit by an oncoming truck. Simon had walked as if he were in some kind of trance and if Delaney hadn't been as quick as she was, Simon would have been a pancake on the pavement. She had delivered the little boy back to his sister and got to work on researching whatever it was.
"Boys, it's not Dad," Delaney said when Dean finally answered her call after the third try.
"Then what is it?"
"A Crocotta."
"Is that a sandwich?"
Delaney slapped a hand to her forehead, trying desperately not to crash her rental car as she sped it down the empty roads. "Some kind of scavenger - mimics loved ones, whispers come to me, and lures you into the dark and swallows your soul."
"Crocotta - right, that makes sense."
Delaney frowned at the saddened tone to Dean's voice. She knew that Dean really wanted it to actually be John communicating somehow from the basement and Delaney had just crushed his dreams of that. "Dean, I'm sorry."
"Wait, Della, don't these things live in filth? You know... like the phone company basement...?"
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Later that night, Delaney walked along the alleyway on the side of the phone company building and peered into the gated window that looked into the office Stewie was in where he sat at the computer. Delaney was momentarily disturbed by a banging sound and when she glanced back through the window, Stewie was gone. She cursed quietly to herself and crept back around to the building's parking lot, hiding behind a car when Stewie walked out.
Delaney dialed Dean's number, but it immediately went to voice mail. "Dean, I'm in the parking lot and he's here. Hurry." She glanced around the car she hid behind to see Stewie distracted by his car and she used it to her advantage, pushing him up against the car with the metal spike gripped in her hand.
"Whoa, what the hell?!"
"I know what you are," Delaney threatened, pushing Stewie more into the side of his car. "And I know how to kill you."
"Okay, wait, wait. If we're overcharging you for the call-waiting or something, I - I can fix that. I'm your friend. Just - just don't kill me! Don't kill me please!"
Delaney was momentarily shocked by Stewie's begging for his life. She was on a hunch that Stewie wasn't the Crocotta, but if he wasn't the Crocotta... then who was? Though, Delaney didn't have much time to figure out when a bat came down over head and thrusting her into darkness.
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Delaney woke up with a groan and a pounding headache and to find herself tied up. Seriously, what was with these supernatural creatures and tying up people? Did they all share a common kink? Stewie, who was tied in a swivel chair across from her, cried as the boss - Clark as Delaney learned from Stewie sobbing it over and over - slowly circled his chair.
"Clark, Clark, I'm sorry for whatever it is I did to you."
"Wait! Wait," Delaney yelled and earned the attention of both Stewie and Clark. "Don't do it."
"You're awake," Clark said as if it wasn't the most obvious in the world right now. He wrapped an arm around Stewie's shoulder and hovered the knife in his hand right by Stewie's heart.
"You're not a killer, Clark.. No! There's a - there's a good man inside of you. I know it."
Clark's eyes flickered over to Delaney and a dark smirk appeared on his face, sending a chill down Delaney's spine. "What do you think, Laney? Am I a good man?"
Delaney shook her head and practically begged, "Please, just let him go."
"I would. I really would. If only I'd had more than a salad for lunch. See..." Clark trailed off and stood back to his full height, the knife glinting in the light. "I'm starving." He plunged the knife into Stewie's chest and Delaney whimpered as the light left Stewie's eyes, his chin dropping onto his chest. His mouth opened, revealing a blood red interior and razor sharp spikes. He crouched slightly, holding Stewie by both shoulders and unhinged his jaw. Placing his mouth close to Stewie's face he sucks in his energy.
Delaney gagged and shuddered, turning her head away from the sight until she was sure Clark was done. She slowly turned her back to where Clark now stood to his full height again and his mouth was back to a human one and not one from her nightmares. As she watched, Clark spin Stewie's chair around like it was a toy, a sudden realization dawned on her. "My last call with Dean - that was you. You led me here."
Clark cracked his neck and stopped spinning Stewie's chair, facing Delaney fully. "Some calls I make, some calls I take. You have to admit, I had you fooled for a while. All that Edison phone crap..." he trailed off, chuckling to himself as he backed up. "Oh, well."
Delaney furrowed her eyebrows as Clark stopped next to a telephone exchange cabinet, pressing his hands to it and moaning as if he had the best sex of his life. "Wh-what are you doing?"
"I'm killing your brothers... or maybe I'm killing another guy. We'll just have to see how it goes."
Clark had used the machine to ring a man and pretend to be his little girl, telling him that a man was hidden in his house waiting to kill him like he had killed her. When he tried the machine again, Dean picked up this time and he used John's voice to inform Dean of the house that the demon would be at. The same house of the man that Clark had rang first.
Delaney glared at Clark as he pushed back from the machine and walked over to Stewie to rip the knife out of his chest. "You know, mimicking Dean is one thing, but my dad? That's a hell of a trick."
"Well, once I made you and your brothers as hunters, it was easy," Clark said, pushing Stewie's chair so it rolled to the other side of the room where it bumped against the wall and out of the way. "Found Dean's number, then your's and Sam's, then your father's numbers. Then to e-mails, voice mails - everything. You see, people think that that stuff just gets erased. It doesn't. You'd be surprised at how much of yourself is just floating out there, waiting to be plucked."
Delaney subtly tried to get out of the wires that tied her hands together, but it was a challenge since they barely even budged. "Dean and Sam aren't gonna fall for this. They aren't gonna kill that guy."
"Then the guy kills them," Clark smirked and tucked a piece of Delaney's hair behind her ear with the knife in his hand. "Technology... makes life so much easier. It used to be I'd - I'd hide in the woods for days, weeks, whispering to people, trying to draw them out into the night. They had community and they looked out for each other. I'd be lucky to eat maybe one, two souls a year. Now when I'm hungry, I simply make a call. You're all so connected... but you've never been so alone."
Clark opened his mouth and began to unhinge his jaw while he raised his knife, much like he had with Stewie. Little to Clark's knowledge, Delaney had managed to finally escape her ties and she leapt out of the chair. She tackled Clark to the ground and he lost his knife in the crash. Delaney had gotten to her feet first and was close to getting the knife when Clark grabbed the back of her leather jacket and swung her around into a metal grate. Clark picked up the knife, running at Delaney with it raised high in the air.
Delaney grabbed Clark's wrist before he could plunge it into her chest and she fought against him, pushing him into the wall behind them. Behind Clark's head, she noticed a metal spike behind his head and pushed against him harder. Clark was strong and he put up a good fight, even almost putting the knife into Delaney's chest. However, Delaney stepped back and shoved Clark's head back, plunging it into the spike and finally killing him.
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Delaney arrived back at the motel to see the Impala parked in the parking lot. She groaned as she rubbed the back of her head that was still sore and walked into the motel room, shutting the door behind her. She noticed the bathroom light on and stepped inside to see both Dean and Sam by the sink, cleaning off the matching cuts on their foreheads. Both boys had black and blues littered across their faces and Dean's nose looked a little off, making Delaney assumed Sam had to snap it back into place.
"I see they improved your faces," Dean mused, glancing in the mirror to Delaney's just as beaten up face as the bit of blood caked to the back of Delaney's head. She definitely needed one of the boys to stitch her up.
Delaney chuckled softly to herself and nodded. "Yeah, you two never looked better."
"So, Crocotta, huh?" Sam asked, brushing past Delaney with Dean as they all took on seat on the two beds. On the way back to the motel, Delaney had called up the boys to inform them of what happened the past few hours and why the man they were with thought they killed his daughter.
"Yep," Delaney sighed and winced when she moved a certain way, rubbing the sore spot on her side.
"It would explain the flies," Dean quipped.
Delaney leant her elbows on her knees and allowed Sam to clean the blood off her hair with the damp rag he took from the bathroom. "Hey, Dee?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"I'm really sorry it wasn't Dad."
Dean scoffed softly and flashed Delaney a small smile. "I did give you a hell of a time on this one. You were right."
"Forget about it."
"No, I can't. I wanted to believe so badly that there was a way out of this," Dean admitted and that earned both of his siblings full attention. It wasn't every day Dean knocked down his wall and let them in on everything he felt. "I mean, I'm staring down the barrel at this thing... you know, hell... for real, forever, and I'm just... I'm scared, guys. I'm really scared."
Delaney's eyes welled with tears as she took in the raw terror that she could see in Dean's eyes. She moved from her bed to Dean's and wrapped her arms around her brother's torso while Sam walked over to sit on Dean's other side. She placed her head on Dean's shoulders and didn't mind how hard Dean had squeezed his arms around her. It was obvious he needed it right now. "I know. Me too, Dean."
Dean leant his head on Delaney's head while Sam placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, sighing heavily. "I guess I was willing to believe anything - you know, last act of a desperate man."
"There's nothing wrong with having hope, you know," Sam reminded Dean and smiled softly. "Hell, I think Delaney had the most hope out of all three of us the past year."
"Hope doesn't get you jack squat. I can't expect Dad to show up with some miracle at the last minute. I can't expect anybody to, you know? The only person that can get me out of this thing is me."
"And me and Sammy," Delaney added, pulling away from Dean and smiled up at him earnestly. She wouldn't stop until the last second to get Dean out of his deal. Even if it killed her.
"And me and Sammy?" Dean repeated. "Deep revelation, having a real moment here, and you come back with and me and Sammy?"
Delaney let out a breathy, incredulous laugh at Dean's remark and rose an eyebrow at him. "I'm sorry. Did you want me to write you a fucking poem, Dean?"
"Moment's gone. You're unbelievable."
Delaney smirked and leant back on her hands. "Tell me something I haven't heard before."
It took Dean a second to realize Delaney's joke and he scrunched his face up in disgust. "Delaney Elizabeth!" He yelled and pushed her off the bed, earning a laugh from both of his siblings. "I don't want to know a single thing that happened in the dark!"
Delaney wiggled her eyebrows at Dean who continued to glare at her as she got up and walked over to the motel room's mini fridge, grabbing a beer for her and her brothers. They didn't have much time left, but Delaney was going to enjoy at least one peaceful night with her brothers like it was the good old days.
AUTHORS NOTE
Hi hey hello
WE ARE DOWN TO JUST TWO (2) CHAPTERS FOR THIS BOOK! I am so not ready, but I am at the same time. Prepare for the final chapter, y'all, because even I'm not ready for that ending oof