Tears trickled down her cheeks as she regarded the dead man. Blood had already stopped pulsing from the arrow wound in his leg. The skin of his face and hands was red and chafed, as if he'd been caught in a blizzard.
"I don't... really know what to say, Dean. I mean... thank you sounds so lame. So insufficient."
"Thank him," Dean said. "This is what I do. He's the one who volunteered."
The flames inside the grave had died to a steady crackle. Black smoke rose from the box, where the day's gentle breeze—a natural breeze—caught and dispersed it. Dean reached in with the shovel and flipped the coffin shut, then started tossing dirt down onto it. "Help me bury her again?" he asked. "I need to get back out to the road. My brother'll have no idea where the hell we are."
"Our position was being overrun," Jim Beckett explained. "Some of those with guns had us pinned down from the woods, but then more of them came at us from the flanks, with arrows and spears and swords and clubs and what have you. We were shooting so fast we could hardly touch our guns to reload, they were so hot. I thought we were done for."
"And then they vanished?" Sam asked. He knew the answer before he spoke.
He and Dean were sitting at a corner table in the Wagon Wheel Café with Beckett and Juliet Monroe. The Winchester brothers would hit the road in the morning—there seemed to be something strange going on in the Northwest, and they wanted to check it out—but the lawman wanted to buy them a meal before they left. Juliet had taken a room at the motel since she didn't want to spend the night in her house, so Dean had invited her along.
The restaurant was almost empty. It seemed most people in Cedar Wells were sticking pretty close to home, even though the threat had passed.
Maybe, Sam thought, because the threat has passed. They're just glad to be safe with their families.
The same went for him.
"That's right," Beckett answered, "they vanished. One second we were surrounded, and I was thinking how much it would stink to die in such a freaky way. The next, they were gone, and we were pointing our guns at empty air."
"What about you, Sam?" Juliet asked. "Where were you?"
"I had just knocked on Carla Krug's door to tell her and the mayor that the coast was clear. Mayor Milner was starting to open the door when one of them fired my own shotgun at me. Of course, it was just rock salt." He shared a conspiratorial grin. "Milner screamed like a girl when it hit the door, though. I told them that she couldn't kill us with my gun—she had to kill the way she'd been killed, which was strangulation. But he locked the door again and wouldn't come out. I didn't want to have to strangle her, especially since I knew the rock salt would sting like hell, and could really hurt me at close range, but I was headed for her when she disappeared."
"Milner wouldn't open the door until I told him it was okay," Beckett added. "Even though Carla was begging him to by then."
"Did you come up with some kind of story to tell the people at the mall?" Dean asked.
"Donald and I worked one up," Beckett said. "But by the time we got out to tell it, there was already a story going around. Armed robbers, trying to get the mall's opening day take."
"That doesn't make sense on so many levels," Sam said. He cut into his steak. Medium rare, still the slightest bit of pink in the middle. "But I guess it doesn't need to."
"People had convinced themselves of it," Beckett said. "They were explaining it to me, like I'm not the sheriff or something. Like I wasn't in the middle of it."
"Better than them knowing the truth," Dean said. "Even though it'd be nice if we could tell them about Baird's sacrifice."
"You said he didn't even really like the town," Juliet said. "Maybe he'd be just as happy without them turning him into some kind of hero."
"Maybe." Dean lifted his bottle of beer off the table, held it up. "To Harmon Baird, anyway."
Sam tipped his bottle against Dean's. Beckett raised his iced tea, Juliet her white wine, and they all clinked together. "To Harmon Baird."
Sam wasn't surprised that Dean would let Baird have all the credit. Baird and Juliet, really—he had stressed her role, and her almost impossible courage, from the beginning. Dean was an amazing guy, Sam knew, with skills and abilities most people would never even imagine, and smarts Dean himself wouldn't credit, even though he relied on them all the time. And yet, at times like this, he was so humble, so unassuming, that he seemed almost unaware of the importance of his own contributions.
At other times, of course, that humility vanished. Knowing and accepting both Deans, he guessed, was what being brothers was all about. Maybe I wouldn't want to be Dean, he thought. But I'm sure glad I have him around.
"What about you, Juliet?" he asked, largely to take his mind off his big brother before he choked himself up. That would be embarrassing as hell, he knew, and Dean would never let me forget it. "You going to tell prospective buyers there's a witch buried on your property?"
Juliet took a swallow of wine and put the glass down. "Forget about prospective buyers," she said, chuckling. "I fought for that place. I'll never sell it now."
"You're staying in town?" Beckett asked.
"If the town will have me. I don't think I want to be quite as isolated as Elizabeth Marbrough was, but—"
"I know the town would be happy to have you around, ma'am," Beckett said. "As would I."
Sam caught Dean's eye. Dean's shrug was barely noticeable: a slight shifting of the shoulders, a minute pressing together of the lips. His eyes lit up with a secret smile.
Dean had been thinking about asking Juliet out, Sam knew. He'd been around his brother long enough to read those signs loud and clear. They only had the one night left in town, but Dean could work fast when he had to. And her motel room was only three doors down from theirs, after all.
With the shrug, Dean told him that it didn't matter. There would be other women, maybe even other beautiful young widows. Let the sheriff have this one, Dean's smile had said.
"We should... call it a night," Sam said, scooting his chair back.
Dean caught his meaning and nodded his agreement. "Yeah, that's right. We've got to get an early start in the morning."
"We can get the tab," Sam offered. Just to be polite; Sheriff Beckett had already told them it was his treat. That was just as well, since he didn't really want to commit credit card fraud while buying a meal for an officer of the law.
"No, it's mine," Beckett said. He and Juliet both rose from the table, but without giving any indication that they planned to leave yet.
"If you're sure," Dean said.
"Absolutely. I'll expense it, anyway, and Donald Milner won't dare say a damn thing about it."
Sam and Dean took turns shaking the sheriff's hand and hugging Juliet, then they headed out the front door, into the chill night air. The Impala was parked right in front. When Sam had first told Dean about the firefight in the parking lot, Dean was afraid that his precious car had been caught in the middle.
"She's really pretty," Sam said as he climbed in the passenger seat. "You sure you don't mind letting the sheriff take a crack at her?"
"Everything you said, he's a brave man," Dean replied. "He'll need every bit of courage he can find. That one's a handful, I can tell you that. In the best possible way. She's full of life, and honestly, I think she might be a little too much for me."
Sam regarded his brother. In the dark he was harder to read, but then he leaned forward, cranked the engine and burst into laughter. A Bad Company tape blared. "Anyway," Dean said when he could speak again, "we're leaving town, and I didn't want to break her heart." He pulled into the street and started toward the motel. "Seemed like the right thing to do."
Acknowledgments
Without Eric Kripke, of course, all of the pages after this one would be blank.
Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, and the rest of the massively talented cast and crew make the series one of the most entertaining on TV, and I'm honored to have been invited into their sandbox.
&nbs
p; Great thanks go out to my family, to John Morgan and John Nee, to Howard Morhaim and Katie Menick, and to Cindy Chapman.
About the Author
Jeff Mariotte has written more than thirty novels, including the supernatural thriller Missing White Girl (as Jeffrey J. Mariotte), the original horror epic The Slab, and the Stoker Award–nominated teen horror series Witch Season, as well as books set in the universes of Las Vegas, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Conan, 30 Days of Night, Charmed, Star Trek, and Andromeda. Two of his tie-in novels were nominated for the first annual Scribe Awards presented by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers. He is also the author of many comic books, including the original western/horror series Desperadoes, some of which have been nominated for Stoker and International Horror Guild awards. With his wife, Maryelizabeth Hart, and partner Terry Gilman, he co-owns Mysterious Galaxy, a bookstore specializing in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror. He lives with his family and pets on the Flying M Ranch in the American Southwest, a place filled with books, music, toys, and other products of American pop culture. More information than you would ever want to know about him is at www.jeffmariotte.com.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Witch's Canyon Page 25
