And of Things That Will Bite (2/2)

[ratherastory]

Part 1

*~*

"So I think it might be a mara," Sam says abruptly, looking up from where he's been reading through one of the numerous articles he photocopied at the library after it was obvious staying there wasn't going to work in the long-term. Researching in the comfort of the motel room was always preferable anyway, and he'd managed to hook them up with some slightly unreliable but free wireless. In light of that, he thought it would probably be a little hypocritical to reproach Dean for fiddling with the photocopier so that they wouldn't have to pay for the copies.

"A mara?" Dean is sitting cross-legged on the other bed, mirroring Sam's own pose, except that he's got what looks like half their guns spread out on an oil cloth, cleaning each one methodically. He looks a bit odd, gun in hand, dressed only in his boxers and sleep t-shirt, feet still clad in warm grey socks against the slight chill in the air, but it was either that or stay in the uncomfortable cheap suits they had re-donned in order to go visit Katie and her grandmother.

All in all, it was a productive visit. The elderly lady insisted that she would talk only to Sam, which Dean was all too happy to accommodate, since it meant that he got the attractive nurse all to himself. Of course, now Sam has a raging headache from trying to piece together a story that's well over sixty years old.

"What Mrs. Kowalczyk was describing," he clarifies. “She had a lot to say on the subject, actually.”

“So, you got lucky with your special lady-friend,” Dean leers, and Sam feels the pain spike behind his eyes.

“Bite me,” he mutters, without much heat behind the words, massaging his eyes with the tips of his thumb and index finger. Since Dean is waiting on him, though, he holds up the blurry picture of a late nineteenth-century painting depicting a young woman dressed in white, swooning on a bed while a malevolent-looking little gnome-like thing sits on her chest, its malicious little hands pulled into its chest. Its eyes look like they might be glowing, but it's hard to tell in the reproduction. "Mrs. Kowalczyk said that it attacked in the night, while people slept, remember?"

"She said a lot of things," Dean points out, his tone not entirely approving.

"Yeah, she's getting on a bit, but her mind is sharp," Sam says reasonably, and Dean lifts one shoulder in a gesture that he takes as acquiescence.

Another problem of the job is that, more often than not, the witnesses with the most accurate information are also the ones who are the most unreliable: children, drunks, the elderly and the mentally unstable. They tend to believe what's in front of their eyes, to recount it with the most accuracy, because it doesn't occur to them that what they're seeing isn't mean to be real. Most normal adults rationalize it away: it's not a werewolf, it's a guy on some sort of drugs. It's not a Black Dog, it's just some stray that's gone feral. Not a ghost, just a trick of the light. And so on, ad nauseam. Sam has heard every rationalization in the book, and it never ceases to amaze him just how much and how deeply people can delude themselves about what's really out there.

“She was just a little girl in the camps.” Sam has been trying not to think too hard about that, but the revulsion must show on his face, because Dean shakes his head.

“People, man,” he says, “They're screwed in the head.” Sam can only nod in agreement.

“Anyway, she remembers this creature, right? She said that no one saw it, but that people started dying for no reason. They could hear screaming even from the officers' quarters at night, and people started having nightmares that had nothing to do with what was happening to them every day. And then, one night, she started having nightmares too. She says it's the same thing as back then.”

“She survived?” Dean sounds surprised.

“Yeah, she says they killed it. Or they thought they did. It was the end of the war, right? In '45, after Germany had surrendered, but before all the camps were liberated. Everything was in disarray, and she was young and starving and traumatized, so her memories aren't exactly reliable. She says she and a group of survivors and one Nazi soldier banded together and killed the thing.”

“And you're sure it's this mara thing?”

"Pretty sure. From what I've been able to piece together," Sam continues, "the pattern is right. There isn't much useful lore on these things that I've been able to find around here. The library wasn't all that forthcoming. The internet was more useful, but again, it's a lot of bare bones stuff. It looks like the myth is Scandinavian and German in origin, and the creature is sometimes said to ride a horse, which is where the word 'nightmare' comes from. Given the myth's origins and the location of the camp in which Mrs. Kovalzcyk was kept imprisoned, I'd say that's what we're looking at."

"Great. Now we can totally win at Trivial Pursuit next time we play. How do we kill it?"

"It doesn't say," Sam admits. "In fact, I'm pretty sure that none of these illustrations are even representative of the creature. What little I got online is that it's a supernatural explanation for sleep paralysis, which is a medical condition―"

"Spare me the lecture, please. I know what sleep paralysis is, and this isn't it, so can we move on before I die of boredom?" Dean fits an ammunition clip back into the handgun he's been cleaning with a decisive click.

"Wow, and you wonder why I didn't miss hunting with you," Sam rolls his eyes. Dean stiffens, and Sam immediately regrets the unnecessarily nasty words. But it's too late, the damage is done. "Dean, I didn't mean―"

"Save it," Dean snaps his fingers in Sam's general direction. "I want to know how we kill this thing. What did the old lady tell you they did?"

Sam sighs. It's hard enough finding his footing on his own these days without having to worry about Dean on top of it all. He'll make it up to his brother later, he promises himself. "It boils down, basically, to consecrated iron, near as I can tell. One of the prisoners of the camp ―Mrs. Kowalczyk thinks it might have been a priest but she's sort of fuzzy on that― uttered some sort of blessing over one of the Nazi officers' guns, and they filled the creature full of bullets. Then they burned the thing's corpse, and that was the end of it."

"Only it wasn't," Dean starts putting the weapons away, but his expression is thoughtful. "I mean, what are the odds that this is a different creature stalking the same old woman? You think she might have brought it with her?"

Sam screws up his face, the thought an unpleasant one. "Could be. It might have followed her, latched onto her or something, if she was its last victim but escaped. It means that whatever they did, though, it wasn't enough."

"So we're back to square one. We think we know what it is, but we don't know how to kill it permanently."

"I guess killing it temporarily is better than nothing," Sam offers, but he gets a derisive snort instead.

"I want this thing to be supernatural toast when we're finished with it. So consecrated iron, salt and burn, it's not enough. Has it got any other weaknesses?"

Sam leafs through his papers, going back to the parts he highlighted. "It's all pretty allegorical. Stories of stalwart young heroes going into the dream world, or whatever, and defeating the mara on its own ground. They usually run her through with a blessed sword or other blade."

"Her?"

"The actual stories describe it as a beautiful woman ―sometimes a good-looking man or youth, depending. So I'm guessing it's actually human in shape, rather than like these hobgoblin-type illustrations."

"So... basically we're dealing with some kind of spirit?"

Sam shrugs. "Your guess is as good as mine. It would make sense, though. The mara could be just a spirit that lives off life energy. It's found a way into people's dreams, and siphons off their life force that way. Kind of like that striga, except with a different M.O."

"Shit," Dean wipes a hand across his mouth and chin. "I hate those things. So these heroes, or whatever, they actually go face the thing down on its own turf?"

"Yup. I mean, it's a classic storytelling device, right? It's the hero's journey: he dies, goes into the underworld, is tested, and comes out the other side victorious."

Dean tucks the weapons back into his duffel bag and sprawls back out on his bed after checking the salt line near the door and dingy window. "Where the hell do you come up with this stuff, anyway?"

"It's Joseph Campbell. I had to read it for freshman English, okay?"

"Whatever. So we have to go get this thing on its own ground, where it's obviously going to have the home field advantage, and then kill it with some sort of sword?"

"If it's any consolation, I think any sort of consecrated blade will do, and we have a few knives that'll do the trick."

Dean laces his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling. "Yeah, but that still doesn't solve the problem of actually getting to the thing first. I mean, short of, I don't know, figuring out a way to make it target one of us and drag us into a coma ―which, needless to say, even I know is a really stupid plan."

Sam scrubs at his face with both hands. “I know. I have a couple of ideas, but I'd have to look into it some more. I remember talking to Pastor Jim about dream worlds a long time ago, so I can always give him a call soon if we haven't found anything. This thing already has Katie in its sights, so we can't afford to delay much. The longer we wait, the more likely other people are going to die.”

“Okay, then.” Dean is already burrowing contentedly under his bedclothes, pulls the thin motel comforter up over his shoulders and tucks it under his chin, eyes closing. “We can't do anything about it right this instant, anyway. So I strongly suggest,” he cracks an eye at Sam, “that you get some sleep.” He reaches out and switches off the light by his bed. “G'night.”

“Yeah. Night, Dean.”

Sam sighs, gathers up his books and papers and drops them on the floor next to the bed rather than put them away. Normally doing that would drive him nuts, but he's exhausted, and even the thought of getting up to put them away seems daunting. He lets himself fall back onto his pillows, and, for the first time in months, his eyes close of their own volition, and he sinks almost immediately into sleep.

~*~

Sam finds himself standing on a strange length of road, one he's sure he's never been on before, but which nonetheless feels familiar. He's dreaming, he's quite sure of that too. The whole place has the odd, not-quite-real feel of a dream, the disconnected sensation of unnamed dread that he's come to associate with every time he allows his eyes to drift shut these days. It's strange, he thinks, because while he's no stranger to recurring nightmares, the dreams these last few times have been completely different from the regular ones. He keeps half-expecting to find himself back in his old apartment at Stanford, with Jess' blood dripping onto his face, to see her explode in flames before his eyes, expression accusing, voice echoing forever in his head. He allows himself to indulge in the thought for a moment, before the mind-numbing dread from before returns, and he feels the same icy-cold presence as before, somewhere just behind him.

He turns and runs, going as fast as he can this time, even as he's flooded with the knowledge that trying to escape is entirely useless. The thing isn't gaining on him so much as it's simply toying with him, letting him think he can get away. He keeps running, letting the pack slung over his shoulder fall to the ground, slip-sliding on the icy pavement until finally one foot slides out entirely from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground. He lands hard on one shoulder, rolls over in time to catch sight of a white shape above him, reaching for his throat with long, bony-looking fingers.

He comes awake with a jolt, so abruptly that it feels as though electricity is coursing through every single nerve ending in his body. Dean is sitting on the edge of his bed, hair mussed, eyes still crusted over with sleep. For a moment Sam can't move, can't catch his breath, feels his mouth and throat working in a desperate bid for air. Dean puts a hand comfortingly in the center of his chest, rubbing with his thumb.

“Easy, Sammy. It's a nightmare. You're okay, it was just a dream, okay?”

He manages a nod, feels tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and blinks them away, embarrassed at his own weakness, finally manages to struggled to a sitting position and buries his face in shaking hands, breathing hard. Dean moves his hand to the small of Sam's back, rubs in small circles while Sam fights to get himself under control.

“You okay now?”

Sam blows out an unsteady breath. “Yeah. Sorry. What time is it?”

“Just before eight. It's past time to get up anyway.”

“Why didn't you wake me?” Sam wishes his voice wouldn't give him away.

“You looked like you could use the sleep.” Dean hesitates, clearly debating something in his mind, then plunges ahead, his voice soft. “Was it Jess again?”

He shakes his head. “I'm going to take a shower.”

“Sam...”

He doesn't look up, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Seriously, can we not?”

For a guy who claims not to want any chick-flick moments, his brother's been pushing awfully hard for Sam to talk, but Sam isn't exactly in the mood to talk about anything, let alone what he's been dreaming about. He slides out of his bed, away from Dean, and locks himself in the bathroom, where he steps under the shower, turning the hot water on full. He stands there for as long as he can stand it, letting the steam and the water ease the stiffness in his muscles and rinse away the remnants of the nightmares. By the time he's brushed his teeth and combed his hair into submission, his hands have stopped shaking enough that he can shave without slicing his face to ribbons.

Dean is waiting for him, cell phone in hand, when he steps back out wrapped in a towel and feeling considerably more human than before. One look at his brother's face, though, tells Sam that things have gone south. “What happened?”

His brother scrubs at his chin with his free hand. “It's Katie,” he says. “She's in the hospital. Her grandmother found her early this morning.”

“Coma?”

Dean nods, his face grey, guilt-ridden. “Like the others.”

“God. Okay,” Sam pulls himself together. “So we need to move fast on this. Find the mara, kill it, before anyone else dies. If it's got Katie, the odds are good that someone else is about to die.”

Dean's already pulling on his clothes, forgoing his morning shower. “So what are we doing? Head to the hospital?”

“No,” Sam rifles through his papers, dropping to one knee on the floor and keeping his towel closed with his other hand. “I think we can forgo that. I have to talk to Pastor Jim, make sure I remember this right, and then we need to pick up a few things. Unless you want to see her?”

Dean shakes his head. “I'll see her after she's awake again. What are you thinking? We don't have a way of getting into the mara's territory. If we just kill it in the real world, it'll come back, God knows when.”

Sam looks up with a smile. For the first time since this case started, he's beginning to feel as though they might have a handle on it after all. “Yeah, actually, I have an idea about that.”

~*~

“You seriously dragged me to a hunting cabin in the middle of a field so we could do this?” Dean hunches over unhappily, his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket.

Sam doesn't look up from where he's gathering supplies from the trunk of the Impala. “Dean, we're about to perform a ritual that involves drawing large arcane symbols on the ground, burning a bunch of really fragrant herbs, and lighting more candles than a midnight mass. So, yeah, I dragged you to the middle of nowhere so we won't attract attention.”

“You sure this is going to work?” Dean pulls his hands out of his pockets and grabs the duffel full of weapons from the trunk, jogging Sam's elbow as he does so. “Sorry.”

“I'm not sure, no,” Sam leads the way up the path, “but I think it's our best shot, and Pastor Jim agrees.”

It's a matter of thirty seconds or so to pick the lock on the door ―hunting cabins are never exactly secure even at the best of times― and they're in. He pulls out a piece of chalk and a piece of paper on which he's copied all the symbols they'll need, and begins carefully tracing them onto the dusty floor.

“You want to explain what you're doing to the rest of the class, maybe?”

Dean is helping by lighting candles, but Sam can tell from his tone of voice that he's not entirely happy about the proceedings. There are so many things he's forgotten about working with his brother, including Dean's tendency to take everything that happens to the victims to heart. He looks up at where Dean is lighting a match, staring into the tiny flame as though it might hold all the answers they've been looking for all their lives. Lord knows they've been dogged by enough questions for the last twenty-two years.

“Uh,” he tries to marshal his thoughts while still drawing a straight line. “I don't exactly understand it all myself, but basically the mara isn't entering people's dreams so much as it's forcing them to enter its own dream. It's kind of a mirror of our own reality.”

“Like an evil holodeck?”

Sam tilts his head, the corners of his mouth pulling down as he tries to wrap his mind around the thought. “Huh,” he says finally. “Yeah, that's a pretty good way to put it. So, it's like a holodeck. What we're doing is basically building a bridge to the mara's world, or, in your terms, building the arch in the holodeck.”

“And then we step through, and we're in this other reality?”

“Pretty much, except that, if I understood the ritual right, whatever we carry with us will also be there. Too bad there aren't any holodeck safeties to rely on. It'd kind of be nice to have a guarantee we're not going to die.”

“They always turn them off in the holodeck anyway, which makes me wonder why they bother to have them at all, or why they allow ships to have holodecks with safeties that can be disabled. You'd think space travel was dangerous enough,” Dean grumbles.

“Are you seriously expecting to have that conversation now?” Sam is incredulous. He shakes his head, and before Dean can answer he's pulled a length of sturdy cord from his pack and sets about binding each of their wrists in a series of knots.

“Sam, you kinky thing...”

He can't help but let out an exasperated huff. Dean just brings it out in him. “It's to make sure we can't get separated in the dream-world, you ass. Unless you want us to get lost in a world that's directly under the control of a supernatural creature that's trying to eat us?”

Dean nudges his shoulder with his free hand. “No sense of humour, Sammy.”

He cuts the cord between their wrists. “None,” he can't be bothered to argue. “Now all we have to do is cut the cords when we want to come back. Theoretically, at least.”

“Why am I not reassured?”

They work in silence after that, until, after about twenty minutes, everything is set up. The incantation itself is short, deceptively simple, and for a moment after Sam has burned every herb in the small bronze bowl he brought with him, nothing happens. Dean shifts on the floor where he's sitting cross-legged, consecrated knife cradled in his lap.

“So how fast is this supposed to work?”

Dean's voice is fading, is the last thing Sam has time to notice before everything goes dark.


NOW

"So where are we going?"

Sam looks terrible, Dean thinks, looking over at him in the passenger seat. He's pale, the circles under his eyes even more pronounced than before, bruised-looking and slightly puffy. He's still shivering under the blanket, trying to keep his teeth from chattering too loudly. Dean keeps the car running, the heater on full blast, but it doesn't appear to be doing much good for now.

"Right now? Nowhere, and fast, near as I can tell."

Sam rubs at his eyes. "I'm pretty sure I've been here before."

"What?" Dean twists in his seat. "How come you didn't say anything?"

"It's not like there's been that many opportunities to tell you. It just looks really familiar, is all I'm saying. The fields, that weird tree, the broken fence. And..." he trails off uncertainly, and stares through the window of the car at the fields.

"And what?"

A shrug. "I don't know. Don't you feel it?"

"Feel what?" But even as the words leave his mouth, Dean feels the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle, as though someone is blowing a cool breath down his collar, and he shudders slightly.

"There's something out there," Sam says softly. "And I think it's hunting us."

Dean pulls the car out of neutral, and hits the gas.

~*~

The road seems to go on forever. Dean has never seen a road do that before, but there's no mistaking the fact that, after driving for what seems like an endless stretch of time, they don't get anywhere. The fields look exactly the same, and after a moment he recognizes the self-same tree under which he found Sam. He stops the car, switches off the engine.

"Shit." He breaks the silence that's begun weighing increasingly heavily on them. “This whole situation is jacked.”

Sam nods. "I don't think we can get away from it."

Dean taps his hands on the steering wheel, anger simmering below the calm he's trying to project. "Hell, who says we should even be trying to get away? We're the hunters, here, damn it. Why the hell aren't we hunting this thing, whatever it is?"

Sam has his face screwed up, as though he's in pain, but when he speaks his voice is clear enough. "Maybe we are."

"What do you mean?" Dean feels an excited flutter in his stomach for no reason he can name.

"Think about it. Why are we here, together, in this place? What's the last thing you remember from before?"

He stops, letting the car idle, since Sam is still huddled in on himself against the cold, and tries to remember. "We were looking into those weird deaths. The coma victims."

"Right."

The memories come flooding back so quickly he has to close his eyes, suddenly dizzy. The hospital, the coma victims, Katie. He gets a sudden, vivid impression of her, lying still and pale on a bed, prisoner of the mara's dream-world. "Jesus, how the hell could I forget that? That freaky old Polish lady, the ritual... what the hell happened? How did we forget all of that?"

Sam is rubbing at his temples, as though his head is aching, and Dean guesses he's experiencing the same disorienting rush of memories. "My guess? We're on the mara's turf, and it's been making us see and think exactly what it wants. Or trying to, anyway, but the ritual is giving us a chance to, uh, I don't know, stay grounded, or however you want to put it. We need to get off this road, regroup somewhere that's not as much in the open as this. It's toying with us," Sam sounds angry, Dean notes to his surprise, lips pressed together so tightly they form a thin, pale line in his face.

"Okay, so how do we do that? No matter how much we've driven, we've always ended up on the same road. How do we get off?"

"Kill the engine," Sam says decisively, and after a split-second's hesitation Dean complies. Sam has always had these freaky intuitions about cases, and Dean figures that he'd probably be dead about half a dozen times over if it hadn't been for these moments of brilliance his little brother is prone to. A moment later, though, Sam climbs out of the car, leaving his blanket behind, and Dean begins to wonder if he hasn't entirely lost his mind.

"Have you lost your mind?" he scrambles out after Sam. Dean has never been one to keep his thoughts to himself. "We're lost and close to freezing and you want to walk out of here?"

Sam shakes his head. "No, that's not it. We're definitely not walking out of here, if that's any consolation."

"It's not."

Sam grins at him, expression suddenly smug, like when he's finally figured out those last few clues that let him put together a really difficult crossword puzzle. It's one of those small joys that Dean has never understood, but kind of likes to witness anyway. "It's a dream, Dean. You ever tried lucid dreaming?"

"Uh, no. Except that one time in senior year, and the guy promised it would be really cool, but it was kind of a bad trip, man."

Sam snorts and pretends he didn't notice Dean deliberately misinterpret his words. "Okay, so I've never actually managed it myself, but since we came here on purpose, I figure that gives us an edge to work with. In lucid dreams, you basically get to control your own environment, right? You're in charge of the dream. So if I want to provide us with shelter, well, all I have to do is picture it. Like, right there."

He points to a spot a few dozen yards away in a field, and suddenly there's a cabin there that wasn't a few moments before. Dean tries not to gawk, because he'll never hear the end of Sam's smug I-can-totally-control-the-dreamworld talk after this. The cabin looks run-down, the single window they can see from where they are broken and crudely boarded up, the small porch sagging under the weight of years of neglect. For something Sam pulled out of his... um, brain, it's pretty dilapidated.

"You couldn't have conjured up a strip club instead?"

Sam snorts, but he's frowning a bit at the cabin. "It's not quite how I pictured it."

"What, you wanted a gingerbread house?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "No. I just didn't picture a cabin. Come on, let's go check it out."

"Woah there," Dean catches him by the sleeve before he can go tearing off up the newly-created path to the cabin. "Let's not go off half-cocked, okay? And God, why am I being the voice of reason today?" He jerks his head back toward the Impala. "Weapons first, and flashlights. Then we'll go check out the creepy cabin you conjured up out of that freaky subconscious of yours."

Sam nods, but he looks back wistfully at the cabin for a moment before following Dean around the car and watching as he pops the trunk. "I don't understand why it didn't work the way I thought it would."

"Maybe because the world isn't supposed to cater to your every whim, genius."

Sam swats his shoulder. "Jerk."

"Ow! Bitch. Don't hit me until after we've killed the supernatural fugly, how about? And stay put!" He reaches out and hooks a hand into the collar of Sam's jacket as his brother takes a few steps back toward the cabin. "What the hell, Sam? Since when can you not stand still for five minutes while we get our gear together?"

"Sorry," Sam shakes himself. "I just... I don't know, it's like I'm drawn to it or something."

Dean pauses in the middle of handing a sawn-off shotgun to him. "Sam, are you sure the cabin thing was all your idea?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean just that. We might be aware of all that's happening, but we're still inside the mara's world. What if whatever you're creating isn't entirely under your control? Could be we're playing right into its hands. Claws. Talons. Whatever it has that serves for hands."

Sam shrugs. "I don't know. We still have to go look, though."

Dean sighs, picks up another shotgun. “All right, then, lead the way.”

And with that, he follows his little brother up the path and toward the cabin.

~*~

It's dark in the cabin, and musty. Dean brushes past a veil of cobwebs, spitting a bit as they tangle in his hair, stick to his face and lips. Sam is just a step or two ahead, sawed-off shotgun held level with a flashlight, the sickly yellow beam doing little to penetrate the darkness. Dean can hear his own and Sam's breathing, harsh in the unnatural stillness, then becomes aware of a third sound, a quiet, breathless moan. He taps Sam on the shoulder, motions to him to stay quiet, and steps forward, finally pinpointing the origin in the far corner of the cabin.

"Who's there?" the voice is soft, but in the quiet it seems so loud that it makes both of them jump. "Please, please don't hurt me..."

"Katie?" he takes another few steps in her direction, heedless of Sam's whispered warnings to be careful. He finds her huddled on the floor, shivering, eyes wide in a face drained of colour, and drops to a crouch. "Katie, it's me."

"Mr. Kilmister?"

He shakes his head, and manages to wink and grin at her. "You can call me Dean, sweetheart. I think we're past being on a last-name basis, don't you think? Come on," he holds out his hand slowly, trying not to spook her. "You can't stay here, it's not safe."

She's shaking, teeth chattering, and even in the darkness he's pretty sure that her face looks as though she's been crying, but she's being pretty damned brave right now. "There's something out there," she moans, wedging herself further into the corner. "It tried to, to..."

"I know it did," he risks placing his hand on her knee. "I know, but we're not going to let it hurt you, okay? I need for you to take my hand, and we're going to go back to my car, all right? Me and Sam, we're going to keep you safe, don't you worry."

She shakes her head. "Nowhere is safe. Nowhere. Babcia said it would come for all of us, and I didn't believe her... oh God. What if it has her too?"

He can hear Sam moving about slowly behind him in the cabin, moving what little furniture there is, taking stock of their surroundings. If Katie is in here with them, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't Sam who conjured this cabin just with the power of his mind. The mara has to be around here somewhere, not too far, lurking in the shadows.

"It doesn't have your grandmother," he promises her. "If it did, she'd be here too. Come on, Katie, I need you to pull yourself together a bit, help me out here, okay?"

She draws in a shaky breath, then nods. "Yeah, okay. Sorry. I just..."

"It's okay. Come on, up you come," he grabs her arms, hauls her to her feet and lets her cling to him, still shaking. "Jesus, you're freezing! We'll get you a blanket from the car, get you warmed up again. Were you outside?"

She shakes her head. "Not for long. There was a road, and I ran until I found this place. I've been freezing since I woke up here. I don't know, it feels like I've been here for days, but it can't have been that long, can it?"

Sam comes up behind them, his face glowing strangely in the beam of his flashlight. "I'm pretty sure time moves differently here than it does in the outside world."

"What do you mean?" Katie sounds even more frightened all of a sudden.

"It's a dream-world," Sam explains gently. "We're trapped inside a nightmare. But don't worry, Dean and I will get you out, I promise."

"What?"

"Way to sugar-coat it, Sam." Dean glares at his brother. "It's okay," he tries for a reassuring tone. "Think of it like... a lucid dream, right? Sam and me, we broke into your nightmare so that we can get you out again. By the way, Sam I hate to break it to you, but you didn't make the cabin," he says wryly.

"Yeah, I figured once we stepped inside," Sam's shoulders are still hunched against the cold, his lips turning bluish. "It's like what I was telling you before, remember? This world is a sort of mirror-image of the one we live in. So if we were in a hunting cabin, the mara creates a cabin in its own world too."

"So not an accurate representation, I take it?"

Sam snorts. "It's supposed to be a nightmare, Dean. Not Better Homes and Gardens."

Katie shifts closer to Dean, as though seeking out warmth there. "I don't understand. If this is my nightmare, how are you here?"

"That's not really important," Sam says dismissively, which Dean thinks is a hell of a feat, given how hard his teeth are chattering. "What's important now is that we get you to safety. Listen, have you seen anything unusual while you were here? Like, shadows moving when they weren't supposed to? Heard any sounds that didn't seem right?"

She nods, eyes wide. "There was a... I don't know. A shape. It was all in white. I thought it was a woman, at first, but it wasn't like any human I'd seen before. It was on the road before, too, it was trying to catch me," she swallows a sob. "What does it want?"

"Your life energy, basically," Sam tells her. "It sucks its victims dry by trapping them in a dream and making them afraid. The longer you stay, the more energy it drains, until your body dies in the real world."

She shivers again. "Is that why I'm so cold?"

"Probably."

A niggling doubt begins to form in Dean's mind as they're talking. Sam's been shivering and complaining of the cold since they first got here. "Sam... what were you dreaming about?"

His brother looks at him, startled. "What?"

"Your nightmares," he insists. "The ones from this week. Were they about Jess?"

Sam stops, his expression suddenly worried. "No. No, they weren't. I was... I... they were... shit," he glances around, as though expecting something to leap out at him from the shadows at any moment. "I was here. Well, not here, here," he amends. "But I was on the road, where you found me. It felt like I was being watched, stalked by something. I kept trying to run away, but it would catch up with me easily."

"It toyed with me," Katie breaks in softly. "Like a cat with a mouse. No matter how fast or how far I ran, I knew it was right behind me, and it was just letting me run myself into the ground. It could have caught me at any time."

"Dean, if you're right..."

"Then that means it's been affecting you too, and almost from the start. Shit," Dean has to stop himself from reaching out and just pulling Sam into his arms. "How could I have missed that? Damn it!"

"You couldn't have known."

"Oh, come on! We're hunting something that causes nightmares and disrupted sleep patterns, and I've been listening to you scream yourself awake for days now! What part of that shouldn't have been a clue?" he could kick himself. Repeatedly.

"Dean, I've been having nightmares for months. How could you know these were different?"

"I should've asked. Should've made you tell me."

Sam huffs an exasperated sigh. "Okay, fine. How about we save the recriminations for later? We still haven't found the mara, and we need to get Katie back."

"How do we do that?"

Sam looks at the nurse, who's folded her arms protectively around her chest, trying visibly to hold herself together in the face of the unknown. He places a large hand on her shoulder, and she flinches but doesn't move away. "Katie, do you think you can try waking yourself up? Have you ever done that in a dream before?"

She shakes her head. "I can try, though. What should I do?"

"Try just picturing yourself waking up, wherever you are. You just remind yourself that everything you're seeing isn't real, it's just a dream, and you wake yourself up."

"Pretty lame, Sam," Dean mutters under his breath. Then, aloud he adds, "How about we try this out by the car, then? At least we'll be out of this creepy-ass cabin. I don' t know about you, but it gives me the willies."

He's rewarded with a weak smile from Katie and an eyeroll from Sam, but he'll take what he can get. He hooks Katie's arm around his elbow, starts leading her away from the corner and toward the door, her legs trembling with the strain. Whatever the mara is doing to her, she seems pretty far gone, if luckily still mostly lucid.

She's wringing her hands anxiously, looking around, starting at every shadow they cast on the walls.

"Why didn't it catch me this time?" she asks. "It always did before. Where is it?"

"I don't know." He wonders where all the creature's other victims are, for that matter, and if they're even still alive. Sometimes, with supernatural things like this, he ends up coming out of a hunt understanding less about what he's hunting than when he went in. He hates that. He's about to pull open the door when Sam lets out a startled yell.

"Dean, behind you!"

Before he can so much as turn his head, a white shape materializes out of the shadows and hurtles toward them with a feral snarl.

~*~

Katie shrieks as Dean whirls to face the threat. He's forced to let go of her arm, fumbles with his shotgun and manages to send it reeling backward with a well-placed blast of rock salt. Sam has thrown himself full-force into the melee as well, and the creature howls with rage as he empties his own shotgun into its midsection. Sam was right, Dean finds himself thinking in that odd, detached way he has whenever they're in the middle of a life-or-death struggle: the mara doesn't look anything like the nasty little critter from the painting. If anything, he's reminded of Constance Welch, although the mara's features are anything but human. It looks human only in the vaguest of ways, with a long, distorted body and skeletal limbs that are reaching greedily toward his brother.

Sam cries out and goes down to one knee as the creature's hands brush against his neck, seeking purchase there, and without pausing to think Dean throws himself at it, yanking the knife from his belt and trying his level best to bury it to the hilt in its back. With a last snarl, though, it twists free and vanishes, leaving him lying on the floor in a tangled heap with his brother, breathing hard. Katie is a few feet away, huddled against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, her eyes wide with fear.

"Damn it, where'd it go?" Sam coughs, scrambling to get purchase on the cabin floor.

"I don't know," Dean pushes himself to his feet, then puts out a hand to pull Sam up after him, tucking his knife back into its sheath. "Regrouping, would be my guess. I think it wasn't expecting two of us. Why the hell did it go after you just now? It's like it changed its mind halfway through its attack."

Sam coughs some more, rubbing at his neck. "I don't know. Maybe it's got a stronger link to me because of the nightmares? Katie, you okay?"

She shakes her head, and Dean can see that she's shivering even harder than before, her lips dark blue. "I'm so cold..." she manages, teeth chattering so loudly he can barely make out her words. "I'm so cold..." she repeats, and he feels his stomach flip as she suddenly flickers, the way he's accustomed to seeing ghosts do on their hunts.

"What the hell?"

"It's the mara," Sam says with a certainty Dean only wishes he could feel. "It must be attacking in the real world at the same time, feeding off the victims so it can fight off the―" abruptly he stops mid-sentence, and Dean has to lunge to catch him before his legs give way.

"Woah! Sam!"

His brother manages to regain his balance after a moment, but his face is grey and drawn, pinched with pain. "We have to move fast," he gasps, pressing a hand to his sternum. "It's figured out what we're doing, trying eliminate the threat. One of us has to go back, deal with it in the real world. Give me your hand. The left one. I'll cut the string, send you back."

Dean shakes his head. "No way. You're going back. No, it's not negotiable. You're vulnerable in here, and I'm not. Well, I'm less vulnerable. You know I'm right. You go back out there, gank the bitch, and I'll stay here, do the same, and bring Katie out when I'm done. Sound good?"

Sam just shakes his head. "It's a lousy plan, but it's the only one we've got. Fine," he pulls his knife, and cuts neatly through the cord tied to his wrist.

Nothing happens.

Dean swears. "What happened?"

Sam's already trembling again. "Pretty sure that that's a clear signal I'm not getting out of here without outside help," he says ruefully. "Looks like you're going to have to go out there without me. Same plan as before, only you gank the bitch on the outside."

"Sam, you can't―" but Sam has already grabbed his wrist and sliced through the cord there. "Son of a bitch!"

~*~

Before he knows it, Dean finds himself back in the cabin where they first performed the ritual, the cord lying in a tangle at his feet. Sam is lying next to him, in the same position as when they finished the ritual, face pale, lips blue. Dean can see the whites of his eyes showing just under his eyelids, and almost despite himself he finds himself reaching out to check that he still has a pulse, that he's still breathing, and blows out a relieved breath when he feels his brother's pulse flutter under his fingertips. He shakes his brother, trying to rouse him, to no avail, and curses under his breath. Whatever the mara has done to Sam, it's binding. He's just going to have to kill the ugly bitch, he resolves. He gets to his feet, looking for the creature, and stops short.

Sam, or his mirror-image, anyway, is standing off to the side, his back turned, and Dean feels a flood of emotions he can't name when he catches sight of him, upright and conscious and visibly not dead.

"Sam!"

His brother turns, then, then starts visibly, as though he hadn't expected to find Dean behind him. Dean can see his lips moving, but the cabin remains eerily silent. It's like watching one of those old movies, he thinks distractedly. He reaches out to grab Sam's arm, and nearly overbalances when his hand passes right through him, as though he's nothing more than a ghost. Dean looks back at Sam's body, still lying prone and far too still on the ground, and that's when he gets it: Sam's spirit is still in the mara's world. It doesn't explain how he can still see Sam, but he'll take what he can get.

“I can't hear you,” he says, and sees his words mirrored back at him on Sam's lips, just as a white shape lunges at his brother's back.

Dean is about to shout a warning when he feels his own feet lose contact with the ground and he finds himself being hurled through the air. He collides heavily with the far wall, lands in a heap on the floor, and before he can find his feet again the mara is on him, shrieking and snarling, enveloping him in its icy-cold breath, bony fingers digging painfully into the flesh of his shoulders as it tries to get its hands around his neck. He kicks at it, twisting on himself, manages to wrap his fingers around the hilt of his knife and tug it out of its sheath. The thing snarls again, but it's weaker in this reality, and he uses all of his weight to force it up and off him, and they go tumbling across the floor of the cabin in a tangle of limbs and tattered white cloth. With a last, desperate lunge he lands on top of it, and has a last impression of glittering eyes and jagged teeth before he buries the knife up to the hilt in its chest. The mara shrieks, its back arching, and he keeps a tight grip on the knife as the creature thrashes in its death throes, holding on long after it's gone still and the light has faded from its eyes. He scrambles to his feet.

“Sam!”

It's no use. Not only can Sam not hear him, but he's well beyond shouted orders anyway. He's spread-eagled on his back on the ground, and Dean catches sight of the mara's dream-form straddling him, hands around his neck. Sam's eyes have rolled back in his head, hands limp at his sides, and Dean fancies he can almost see the life draining from his body as the creature steadily applies pressure. It's futile, but he still lunges forward, takes a stab at the creature's back with his knife. Unsurprisingly, it passes right through, and right through into Sam's chest as well, making him recoil in horror, even though he knows it can't have had an effect. Sam's eyelids flutter, though, and Dean can see he's still trying, still struggling.

“Come on, Sam!” he's on his knees next to his brother's head. “Come on, fight it! You going to let some ugly-ass nightmare kick your ass? Get up!”

He turns his head, catches sight of Katie pressed up against the wall, just as he left her. She's staring at the mara, her face a mask of pure fear, but she doesn't seem to be in danger of dying or fading away like before, and he guesses the mara is concentrating on eliminating the threat to its existence first. He gets up, runs to her.

“Katie!” she doesn't answer, but she looks up at him, brow furrowing in confusion. “Katie I know you can't hear me but you have to help. Look,” he points at Sam. “Do something! Distract the thing so Sam can kill it. Come on, Katie, it'll kill him if you don't!”

He can't tell if she's understood, but the next thing he knows she's pushing herself determinedly to her feet. It's like watching a death-echo, he thinks distractedly as she stumbles forward into the room: it's happening right in front of him, but he can't do a damned thing about it. He clenches his fists, shaking with impotent rage, wanting nothing more than to slice the thing that's trying to kill his brother into tiny ribbons, then feels his face break into a grin as Katie grabs hold of the broken remains of a chair and brings them down with all her strength across the mara's back. He can't hear what's happening, but the creature's back arches, its hands coming away from Sam's neck, and he sees Sam's eyes open, his throat work as he sucks in a desperate breath. Sam twists under the mara's loosening grip, mouth working, and Katie scrambles away, obviously looking for something. Dean spots it before she does: Sam's knife, lying a few feet away on the floor.

“It's over here!” He waves, trying to attract her attention.

She flashes him a triumphant grin, all but throws herself at it before sending it sliding across the floor to Sam, who snatches it up and plunges it into the mara's chest. Dean watches, fascinated, as the creature dies silently in Sam's grip. His brother gets unsteadily to his feet, and his lips move as he says something to Katie. Whatever it is, she steps toward him, and he takes her hand in his, holding it tightly. She closes her eyes, and a moment later fades entirely from sight. Then Sam turns back toward Dean, flashes him a smile, and vanishes.

*~*

“What the hell?” Dean lets out a breath, and is surprised to hear Sam laugh, somewhere behind him. “Sam!” he starts forward, reaches out tentatively, only to find himself with an armful of more than six feet of baby brother, breathless and laughing.

“Jesus, Dean it is good to hear your voice!” he's hoarse, but otherwise he's sounding better than he has in days.

Dean laughs, claps Sam on the back. “I could say the same thing, Sammy. You did it!”

Sam pulls back finally. “Yeah. You and Katie helped, though. I saw you, even if I couldn't hear what you were saying.”

“What the hell was that, anyway? And where's Katie?”

“At the hospital, I'm guessing,” Sam answers his second question first. “That's where her body was, after all. Her spirit was just trapped in the nightmare with us. Same with the other victims, I'll bet. We just didn't see them. God only knows where the mara was keeping them in that world. As for being able to see each other?” he shrugs. “No idea. Maybe it was the ritual binding, keeping us together the way it was supposed to.”

Dean is busily checking Sam over for injuries, finds he doesn't actually care about the whole ritual thing, so long as Sam is safe. “You sure you're okay?”

Sam rubs gingerly at his throat. “Yeah. Throat hurts like a bitch. Whatever that thing did, looks like it carried back over here, but it'll pass.”

He blows out a breath, feeling relief down to his toes. “All right, let's blow this popsicle stand.”

He all but drags Sam outside, not bothering to clean up any of the ritual paraphernalia. Whoever owns the hunting cabin will just have to report a break-in by a satanic cult, he thinks. It'll make their year and give them a party story for life. He settles Sam in the passenger-side seat, ignoring his brother's protests that he's fine and to stop hovering. He does, however, grin unrepentantly as Sam gives him a flat look upon seeing his choice of music.

“Enter Sandman, Dean? Really?”

“Come on, Sammy, how could I resist?”

Sam huffs and slides down in his seat, but Dean can see a smile hovering on his lips as he cranks the music up as loud as it'll go. He grins wider, sings along with James Hetfield at the top of his lungs as he steers the Impala back onto the open road.

~END~