Dani
Webster’s phone buzzed angrily with what had to be the fifteenth text that
night. She sighed in exasperation and
dropped the tub of dirty dishes she’d just cleared off a table onto one of the
counters with a loud clatter of silverware.
She jerked her phone out of her apron pocket. As she’d expected, it was Raul again. With one thumb she jabbed in the reply Give me 15 minutes. Before she could slide her phone back in her
pocket it vibrated again. Make it 10. She rolled her eyes and shoved it into her
pocket, then grabbed one of the plates from her tub and started scraping
uneaten French fries into the trash.
“Lorna, is somebody bothering you?” called the
middle-aged woman from behind the restaurant’s grill.
“No Ms. Lori,” Dani assured her, shaking her head and
stepping aside to make room for one of the other servers. “Everything’s fine.”
“Huh,” Lori grunted, not seeming convinced, but she left
it at that.
Dani hurried to get the rest of the dishes ready for Paul
to wash and then grabbed up the disinfectant and a rag to go wipe down the
table. Ten minutes it is, she thought.
“All right, I’m leaving,” she called once she’d
finished. “Y’all have a good
night.” She untied her apron and threw
it in the bin, then slipped out the back door into the cool night air. She leaned against the door and took a
breath, allowing herself a minute to clear her head from the hectic
evening. Some people just couldn’t seem
to get that it wasn’t the wait staffs fault if the restaurant ran out of the
sausage link special.
Then she pushed off the wall and rounded the corner,
where she found Raul waiting for her.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
He was in his early twenties, a few inches taller than Dani, around five
nine, and had mischievous brown eyes.
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for an hour.”
“I had to work,” Dani defended herself. “I told you we’d have to do it after I got
off.” She let her hair down out of her
pony tail and shook it out. “What’s the
big hurry anyway? I thought we weren’t
going to do this until Wednesday.”
“Yeah, well they called and said we had to move it up,”
he answered. “Somethings going on on
their end, I don’t know how much longer they’re going to have stuff for us. So
we’re going big tonight. Tanner’s going
to meet us there to help.”
“Well then what are you standing around for?” Dani asked,
starting to walk off. “I thought you
were in a hurry?”
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her wrist. “You look nice tonight.”
She turned, forcing herself not to smile. She wasn’t done
being mad at him for bugging her at work yet.
But then he did the eyebrow thing that got her every time. She smiled and laughed under her breath, then
leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.
“Come on,” she said, turning again. He let her arm slide out of his hand. “Let’s do this thing.”
.
. .
Dani, Raul, and Tanner stood around the entrance of an
old storage building. Tanner started
humming the Pina Colada song for probably the twentieth time.
“You know that song is barely tolerable the first time,”
Dani said.
Tanner shrugged.
“It’s stuck in my head.”
Raul sighed and bounced up on his toes.
“You’re sure he said tonight?” Tanner asked.
“Yes,” Raul insisted. “I don’t know where he is.”
Dani was about to say something else when they all turned
toward the sound of footsteps coming toward them.
“Apparently right here,” Tanner said.
“You’re late.” Raul crossed his arms as the scrub clad
pharmacy technician Ben walked up to them.
“Sorry,” Ben mumbled.
“Long day.”
They all moved a little farther into the storage
building, out of sight of anyone who might pass by.
“Look, they’re starting to notice,” Ben said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.”
“We can lay off for a little while if we have to,” Raul
said. “You got it all this time didn’t
you?”
Ben nodded and pulled a plastic bag out of his back pack
and handing it to Raul. “Six hundred
tablets of Eliquis.”
Raul handed the bag to Dani and she and Tanner knelt on
the floor, beginning to count them. Ben
cleared his throat and shifted his feet.
“So like I said, it’s getting harder to get the stuff out so, so I’m
going to need a little more next time.”
Dani raised her eyebrows, looking up from the pill
packets in her hands. “What happened to charity?”
Ben sighed, his breath fogging in front of him.
That’s weird, Dani thought. It’s not that cold. She shivered.
The temperature had definitely dropped in here.
“Do you guys smell that?” Tanner asked. “Like a gas leak or something?”
A piercing shriek ripped through the stillness of the
evening. Dani started and clapped her
hands over her ears. Raul took a step
toward her and Tanner, reaching for the knife in his pocket.
The shriek came again and they coward together. Dani’s breath caught in her throat as
something shot up from the floor. Ben
screamed and bolted for the door, the others close behind him. Before they could reach it, it slammed shut.
Raul grabbed the handle, shaking it. “Come on.”
“What is that thing?” Tanner asked, eyes locked on the
apparition.
It was a man, or at least it was shaped like that
one. It was grey and pale, torn and
dirty clothes hanging loosely from its skeletal form. It glitched and then suddenly it was right in
front of them.
They all screamed and threw themselves at the door. It opened under their combined weight and
they stumbled forward, starting to run. Tanner screamed and Dani turned to see
the thing clutching Tanner by the arm.
It glitched again and disappeared, taking Tanner with it.
“Tanner!” Dani yelled.
Before she could do anything, the thing appeared again in the middle of
the room. There was something sharp in
its hand, and it raised it above its head.
“Run!” Tanner yelled at them.
The thing grabbed Tanner’s hair, jerking his head to the
side and plunging the sharp object into his neck. Then it disappeared and Tanner fell to the
ground.
Dani covered her mouth, staring at Tanner’s motionless
body.
“Dios mio,”
Raul panted, eyes wide. “Vamos, Dani.” He took her arm, tugging
at her. “Tenemos que irnos.”
Dani nodded, still
looking at Tanner, then turned and they ran.
.
. .
Sam and Dean stood over the body on the morgue
table. There were burns on its arms and
one side of his face that almost looked like hand prints.
“You said you think these are frost bite?” Dean asked,
looking at the ME.
“Yeah.” The man
nodded. “Which doesn’t make a lot of
sense, it hasn’t been under sixty degrees in weeks.” He stepped over to the table against the
wall. “They might have been caused by
this chemical that I found on the body.” He held up a petri dish with black goo
in it. “None of the tests have
identified what it is yet.”
Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Ectoplasm.
“Thank you,” Sam said, nodding at the ME as they left the
room.
“You said there were witnesses?” Dean asked the officer
waiting outside.
“Yes,” the officer nodded. “The two kids who called
911. Weren’t a lot of help. We couldn’t
even get a good description from them.”
“Well, we’re going to need to talk to them anyway.”
.
. .
Dani smiled at the two men walking into the restaurant.
“Afternoon. What can I do for you?”
“Lorna Dane?” the shorter one asked.
“Yes,” she said, her smile faltering.
They both reached into their inner jacket packets,
pulling out badges and holding them up to her.
“I’m Agent Jones this is
Agent Solo with the FBI. We need to ask you a few questions about what
happened the other night.”
Dani took a small step back. FBI? Had they found out about the pills? “I
already talked to the police,” she said.
“We’re conducting our own investigation.”
“What were you doing there that night?”
Dani shrugged.
“Hanging out.”
“Doing what? Smoking weed?”
“No,” Dani insisted.
“I don’t do that. And I passed
the drug test, the police can tell you that.”
“We’re not accusing anyone of anything,” the one with
longer hair assured her, giving the other a look. “We’re just trying to figure out what
happened.”
Dani sighed, not meeting their gazes. “I don’t know. We were hanging out and this man came out of nowhere. We ran but he must have grabbed Tanner. When we realized he wasn’t with us we called 911. That’s all I know. Can I go back to work now?”
Dani sighed, not meeting their gazes. “I don’t know. We were hanging out and this man came out of nowhere. We ran but he must have grabbed Tanner. When we realized he wasn’t with us we called 911. That’s all I know. Can I go back to work now?”
.
. .
Sam and Dean stepped out of the restaurant. “She is definitely hiding something,” Dean
said.
“Yeah.” Sam nodded.
“In the 911 call they said that they saw the man kill Tanner. Now it sounds like she’s saying she didn’t.”
“Also, Lorna Dane is an X-Man,” Dean added. “There’s something else going on here. Want to check her place out?”
Dean opened the nightstand drawer in the girl’s small
bedroom. “Bingo,” he said, pulling out a
plastic bag full of individually packaged pills. “Sam, look at this.”
“So that’s what they were doing in the storage building,”
Sam said. “And you were right about the name.
I found this ID.” He handed Dean
a driver’s license with the same girl’s picture, but under the name Daniella
Webster.
Keys scrapped in the lock and Lorna/Daniella opened the
door. She started when she saw them
inside. She hesitated, then turned and
ran.
“Hey, hey,” Dean called as they both started after her.
Sam
took hold of her arm before she’d gotten half way across the parking lot and
led her back inside. “We just want to
talk.”
“So,
Daniella,” Dean started. “What’s with
the fake name?”
“Dani,”
she corrected softly. “I started using it after I ran away from my foster home
a couple years ago. I don’t really need
it anymore, but that’s how people knew me.”
“Ok
then, Dani, what are… Eliquis?” Dean asked, peering into the plastic bag.
“A
blood thinner,” she answered.
“A
what?” That was not what they were expecting.
“People
with atrial fibrillation are at a high risk for blood clots, which puts them at
a high risk for stroke. So they take blood thinner to keep that from
happening. But those pills cost over
$400 a month, most people can’t afford that.
Especially if they’re also taking at least three other medications for
blood pressure or whatever which most of them are. We buy these from a guy who works at a
pharmacy and then sell them to people at a price they can afford.”
“Just
eliquis?” Sam asked.
“No,”
Dani admitted. “Other things too
sometimes, but they’re all antihypertensives, insulin. We don’t do opioids or benzos or anything
like that.”
“And
you were meeting this dude from the pharmacy that night?”
She
nodded.
“What
happened to Tanner?”
Dani
looked at the floor. “I told you already.”
“Look
Dani,” Dean said. “We’re not really
FBI. My name’s Dean Winchester, this is
my brother Sam, and we hunt monsters.
Like the one we thing killed your friend. So you can tell us just about
anything and we’ll believe you. What happened?”
“I’m
not sure,” she said. “That thing…It came
out of the floor, like through the floor.
One second it was across the room and then it was in front of us. It screamed like, like I don’t even know
what. We tried to run but it grabbed
Tanner and, and it stabbed him in the neck.
Then it was gone.”
“Has
anything strange happened to you in that building before?” Sam asked.
Dani
shook her head. “We used different
places, we hadn’t been there in months.
What was that thing?”
“A
ghost,” Dean said.
“A
ghost?”
“Yeah,
and an angry on apparently.”
“What
are you going to do?”
Dean
grinned. “We’re going to kill it.”
.
. .
“Here
we go,” Sam said, looking up from his computer.
“Joe Torrence, od’d in that building three months ago. Besides the actual cocaine they found traces
of rat poison in his system, indicated that the drugs he bought had been
diluted with other chemicals.”
“And
the rat poison is what killed him?”
“Yep.”
“And
now he’s pissed,” Dean said. “So we’re
grave digging tonight.”
“No,”
Sam pushed back from the desk. “Cremated.”
“So
we’re digging around a storage building looking for a cursed object tonight,”
Dean corrected himself. “I’m not sure that’s better.”
“Nothing,”
Dean said, kicking at the ground. “There’s
EMF all over the place but nothing that could have belonged to that Joe guy. And
we’ve been poking around in here for an hour, where is he?”
“I
don’t know.” Sam shook his head. “Let’s
head back to the room and see if we missed something in the Joe Torrence case.”
.
. .
The
next day, someone knocked on their motel door.
Dean stood cautiously, pulling his gun out of his waist band. He opened the door and found Dani Webster outside.
“Did
you kill it?” she asked.
“How
did you find us?”
“There’s
only three motel in town and that’s the car you drove to my place,” she
said. “So did you kill it?”
“No,”
Dean said, “we didn’t see it. But we’ll
go back to night and try again.”
“Let
me come with you,” Dani said.
“No.”
Dean shook his head. “You’ve seen what that thing can do, we’re not brining amateurs.”
“A
ghost killed my friend. I want to help,”
Dani insisted. “You just said you didn’t
see it, but we did. Maybe it will show
up again if I go with you.”
“That
actually might work,” Sam said. “Joe’s
angry because somebody sold him bad drugs. He saw them doing a deal and didn’t
know they weren’t illicit and-“
“And
then he tried to kill us,” Dani finished.
“And
you want to go back and hope he tried to do it again?” Dean asked.
“If
it means you guys can do, whatever it is that you do, then yes.”
Sam
and Dean exchanged a look. “Ok,” Dean
said, “but if you come you are going to do exactly what we tell you to.”
“Ok.”
.
. .
Dean
pulled the “ghost kit” out of the back of the impala.
“Salt?”
Dani asked.
“Yeah,
ghosts hate it. So we’re going to make a
circle of salt on the floor and you’re going to stand in that circle, no matter
what happens, understand? It can’t hurt you if you’re in the circle.”
Dani
nodded and waited outside while Dean shook out a salt circle on the floor. Then she quickly got in the middle of the
ring and pointed to the corner. “It came
from over there,” she said, seeing her breath fog in front of her. She jumped
as the shrieking rang out. “That’s it,”
she said, covering her ears, her heart hammering.
Sam
and Dean stepped toward the corner, salt loaded shot guns at the ready. The ghost flashed into appearance, haggard
eyes blazing. It screamed again and Sam
and Dean both fired at it. It glitched
out of sight and the salt rounds buried into the wall.
The
ghost appeared in front of Dani, brandishing a hypodermic syringe in one hand.
“It
is holding the cursed object,” Sam said.
“That’s
just not fair.”
The
ghost lunged at Dani with the syringe, its hand bouncing back against some
invisible force before it got to her.
She stifled a scream and took a step back. Everything in her wanted to
run, but she had to stay. She had to do
this for Tanner.
The
ghost drew back his hand to lunge again and disappear with a half realized
scream as a salt round slammed into it.
The syringe clattered to the floor.
Dean
hurried forward to grab the syringe, but the ghost appeared in front of him,
knocking him and Sam into the wall with a sweep of his hand. The ghost leered over Dean, reaching out for
him as he scrambled toward the shot gun.
“Hey!”
Dani yelled from across the room, holding up they syringe to the ghost.
It
glitched out of view and Dani tossed the syringe away toward Sam just before
the ghost appeared in from of her again, throwing itself against the salt
barrier. Sam clicked the lighter on and
held it against the syringe. As it
started to melt the ghost screamed and writhed, flames licking up and around
his body. The fire engulfed the ghost
and it disintegrated.
Sam,
Dean, and Dani paused for a moment, panting.
“Is
that it?” Dani asked. “Is it finished?”
“Yeah.”
Sam nodded. “It’s dead for good now.”
Dean
got to his feet. “You stayed in the
circle.”
“That’s
what you told me to do.”
“Yeah,
I just think you’re the first person who actually did it.”
.
. .
Dani
got out of the impala outside her apartment.
“You
did good by Tanner tonight,” Sam told her.
“Thank
you,” Dani said. “And thank you guys for
taking care of that.”
“It’s
what we do,” Dean said. “You going to be
ok?”
“Yeah. Thanks again.” Dani smiled, then turned and
went inside.
Sam
and Dean started to get back in the car when a scream rang out from Dani’s
apartment.
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