The Lightning Strike

It was damp out in the parking lot, I could see the damp glisten on the concrete as I leaned my back against the Torino, my sleeve wrapped around my hand as I clutched a frosty beer in the other. Nisha was asleep in our motel room. It was quiet too, not even the hoot of an owl, I‘d noticed, just the occasional spitting of rain that pattered against the wind shield of the car.

In my silence I felt a strange spiralling sensation. You know what I mean? Like sand slipping through an hour glass, disintegrating beneath my feet with a mercilessness about it, it made me powerless. The lack of control, the lack of say in whatever destiny this was supposed to be, made me feel sick to my stomach. I felt knots in my gut like I’d never felt before, a strange twinge like butterflies rising to the diaphragm but it was nothing as benign as fluttering, colourful wings. It was a sickness. A worried sickness and part of me hated myself for feeling it, because part of me saw that as weakness, but the other part of me? The other part of me made me confused, because it felt exhilarated. Like a small, nagging part of me had been saying the whole time: ‘Misha, you’re still human,’ even when I truly doubted it, but that nagging feeling was right. I was, these sensations confirmed that I still felt. That this life hadn’t killed my soul. I was still human, and I still felt something. The something I felt in that battered soul of mine was just, unfortunately, painful.

Why? I glanced up through the murky darkness of the night to the motel room stationed next to mine and Nisha’s. The blinds flat against the window obscured a clear view, but the silhouette pasted against them, toing and froing, lit by the low light of the table lamp, was unmistakably Dean’s. I could see the curve of his jaw, and the way his lips were moving as he stopped by the window, behind the blinds. He was probably ranting to Sam about the mysterious demon girl, Ruby, who seemed to be appearing now and again to help save Sam and the rest of us. The point was, he was the reason I felt that dull ache in my chest. It was supposed to just stay fun between us, right? I’d nodded my head to every word Dean had said about making the most of what we had left, about how he didn’t want to tie me down with seriousness, about how he wanted to just be thrilled for one more year. I nodded right along with it all, and, you know, I think I even convinced myself that I believed it too for a while. I told myself that I didn’t love and that I didn’t want to be serious either, that he would be dead within a year and that would be it. I even tried to pretend I wouldn’t care too much when it happened. That I’d feel the obligatory sadness I should feel because of Sam and Nisha, and because Dean was a companion but that I wouldn’t really be that sad.

I was wrong though.

My insides contorted and my heart started thrusting against my rib cage the more that I imagined his grey skin and dead eyes a year from now. About how much it hurt to even let that slip into my imagination for a second. He had done this thing to me. That bastard. I don’t even know when it happened. I had been so careless not to notice that I even cared for him at all. I recalled San Francisco all that time ago now, how he had almost kissed me but never got to that night. How much I’d suddenly wanted him to. Then the following case in Hollywood, just as we’d been leaving there had been a moment. I’d assumed it all to be forgotten, that we were just feeling the moonlight and the occasion, but no. Just as we’d been about to leave, just as he’d gotten into the Impala and just as I’d been about to join Nisha in my own car, I heard the door creak open again and he stepped out of the car.

A broad, roguish smile made me raise an eyebrow as he’d stepped towards me in the evening sun. It wasn’t even that great a kiss, because I’d been so surprised and he’d grabbed me so fiercely (That was something about Dean by the way, sometimes he didn’t do tenderness very well. Everything was fiery and passionate) by the shoulders and kissed me with such fervour that I really thought I was going to fall back flat on my ass. Then he let go, winked and got back into the car without a word and we’d left and that’s where all of this begin. Whatever ‘this’ was between us. I don’t even know.

In those moments, until just now, I hadn’t done the math. I hadn’t realized what was going on. This wasn’t just a little fun, this had been developing over time, but I sucked so much with people skills that I hadn’t seen it.

I loved him.

Just as I acknowledged that to myself, right that second, alone in the parking lot of the motel, I pressed the cold glass rim of the beer bottle to my lips and took a desperate swig. I loved him and he would be dead in a year. I had fallen in love, with a man as good as dead, which just had all the pieces of an enormous cosmic joke. I felt my chest tighten for the millionth time, a thud of my heart as it thumped against bone. Dean Winchester, the complete prick I had loathed for months was now the man that I loved and just as I’d realized that…it was too late. Just as we’d both realized that (and yes, we both had, he was lying too. I could see it in his eyes that he felt these weird knots in his stomach just like I did) it was too late. The two of us would never admit that though, we seemed to be much happier playing whatever game we were playing at the moment, blissful denial.

That’s why I felt the aching in my chest. Why I wanted to scream at whatever gods were sitting in heaven laughing. It was just so…unfair.

“I don’t care, Sam. She’s a demon…you don’t chat with demons. You send them packing.”

I looked up, hearing his voice as he and Sam exited the motel room. Nisha, clearly woken by the row, followed in suit from our motel room. I could see her giving me a quizzical look, seeing me by myself by the car in the darkness and the light rain fall but I said nothing. Sam got in the Impala and Nisha in the Torino, and Dean? Well, he was walking towards me in a strut that suggested he was on a mission or something. I had to raise an eyebrow at that.

“You ready to hit the road?” he asked and I just nodded.

There was a brief pause. A brief glance, but nothing was said. Neither of us would say anything.

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As usual we’d spent a considerable amount of time driving at night. I was feeling a little sluggish, if I was to be completely honest and I knew Nisha could tell. That was evident by the way she kept side glancing at me suspiciously every time I yawned even a little. I just couldn’t sleep very well lately. I tried to, you know? I tried to get a few hours but, I just couldn’t. There was too much shit hitting the fan right now for me to be able to sleep at all. So I just pushed on.

At some point in the journey, Nisha’s phone had rang. She’d answered it and naturally it was Sam. I glanced at her for a moment, she seemed a lot happier since she’d finally been able to confess to Sam how she felt about him. They were together now, finally, like it should have been months ago. Sam was alive, and that made me feel that weird twinge in my chest again. Sam was alive, don’t get me wrong, that was beyond amazing but what had it cost? It had cost Dean’s life, a year from now, and a selfish part of me resented that. As you can probably tell, I don’t get close to people easily, I don’t actually love very easily, so the one time I finally do and the guy concerned is going to die? Yeah, kind of a kick in the ass, right? Still that was how life seemed to work for us these days.

Anyway, back to the phone call. Sam had explained that they’d gotten a phone call through John’s old cell phone. Dean apparently kept it around in case any old hunting acquaintances needed them for whatever reason. It turned out, that the phone call had been to inform them that a storage unit John had in Buffalo had been broken into. So of course…that’s where our next stop was. To investigate what had been stolen and get some clues as to who had done it.

After driving most of the night, we’d showed up in Buffalo around mid morning some time. I noted the green terrain and the sun in a clear, blue sky. Not a cloud anywhere. It made me frown a little, it reminded me of the day when Nisha and I had lost our families. The weather had been similarly ironic that day too.

As it happened, we got out of the sun pretty quickly. I was staring up at a tall, white building with thick, square windows. The kind you saw on old dock warehouses. Inside it was musty and fairly dank. I swear I heard the scurrying of a rat or something too as we passed through a concrete corridor towards and old elevator. It was more or less a metal cage, not anything fancy. The four of us piled into it, and I blew a strand of blonde hair from my line of vision as an awkward silence fell on the air. The elevator creaked in protest but eventually it began to descend towards the basement level.

Dean snorted a little, like he’d just remembered some kind of inside joke from ages ago. I rose an eyebrow and so did Sam.

“Something funny about elevators, Dean?” Nisha piped up, folding her arms as she eyed him curiously.

Dean shot her back a mild glare and then answered, “No. It’s just dad.”

“What about him?” Sam asked.

“Him and his secrets. I spent all my time with the guy and it’s like I don’t even know him” he smiled a little and shook his head.

Finally the elevator ground to a halt as we hit the basement floor and Sam tugged up the cage door to let us all out.

“Well, we’re about to find out something” he added.

We descended a small stair case, I could hear the drip of some leaky pipe. The walls were coated with mildew and it was fairly dark, with a thick dust lingering on the air. I couldn’t quite see where we were going, but I just followed Dean’s figure in front of me. We arrived at one of the storage units, Dean twisted in the key in the padlock to release it and then swung the sliding metal door to one side so we could get inside. It was pitch black, smelled kind of off in there too, but the boys had flash lights. Nisha stuck with Sam and I walked next to Dean. On the floor there was a demon trap, and bloody foot prints. John had clearly set a trap in case anyone tried to break in. Whoever had gotten injured from the trap kept walking though, the foot prints clearly showed that. We searched the unit, and in the dark and dust Sam and Dean found some nostalgic items. Nisha giggled as Sam found a soccer trophy he’d won as a kid and I just rose an eyebrow as Dean geeked out about some gun he’d made back in 6th grade. He locked the barrel into place with a satisfied grin and carried the gun off with him as we continued our search.

I paused, seeing Sam and Nisha head towards the back of the storage unit. I motioned for Dean to follow and we happened upon a further part of the unit. It was caged, but the padlock and chain keeping it locked up had been broken and the door was opened easily. Inside there was nothing short of an arsenal. John had land mines, guns, grenades. You name it, he had it, but, his private arsenal was untouched.

“Hey” Sam called us over. “Check this out,” he pointed to some boxes on shelves that had strange symbols on the front of them. “See those symbols? That’s binding magic. These are curse boxes.”

“Curse boxes?” Dean piped up. “They’re built to keep the bad mojo in, right? Like a Pandora’s box deal?”

Sam nodded. “They’re built to contain the power of whatever is inside them.”

I frowned, squeezing between Sam and Dean, because I’d noticed something odd on the shelf. On the shelf, that was saturated in a thick layer of grey dust there was a single rectangular patch that was untouched by the dust. Like the base of a box in fact. Oh. This was bad.

“Hey Sam? One of the boxes is missing.”

Then we left.

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I have to say. I was pretty impressed. After we’d left the basement, Dean had a brainwave. If I kept a diary, I’d have noted that moment down. We went to the warehouse security room to get our hands on some of the security camera tapes from recently. We found the day that the storage unit had been broken into and for some reason, the thieves thought it had been a good idea to park right in front of the security camera. Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful, it had made our job of finding them ridiculously easy. We got a look at the plates on the car and Sam had done some wizardry on his laptop to find where the car was now. It couldn’t have worked out better for us, but it did make me wonder about the IQ of these guys. Seriously? Not smart.

The Impala up ahead had stopped just outside a pretty rundown looking apartment block. I parked the Torino just behind it and Nisha and I climbed out to approach the boys who were also getting out of their car. Dean nodded his head towards the car parked outside the building. It was definitely the one we’d seen on the security tape. Bingo.

The four of us stealthily headed into the apartment block, climbing a graffiti covered stair well, with guns drawn. There was a vague smell of a latrine, like people had taken a leak several times in the stair well. Not pleasant. I looked up ahead where one of the apartment doors came into view. Dean motioned with his hands for us all to gather outside the door before we made our move. We lingered there for a moment, Dean listened in to the voices inside and then nodded his head and with one swift and fluid motion, the four of us poured into the room with guns drawn and aimed at the culprits.

“FREEZE. NOBODY MOVE,” Dean yelled.

“Stay right there, just stop,” Sam added.

I glanced ahead of them at the little gathering. I was right. They looked like dumb asses. One of them had gotten a scarlet, smeared stain against his shoulder where he’d been shot. That was evidence enough. Clearly these were the two idiots we’d been looking for who had made it their business to break into John’s storage unit.

“Dean?” I said, eyeing a black box on the coffee table that’s lid was ominously open.

“DAMMIT,” Dean hissed. “Please tell me they didn’t?”

“Oh, they did” Nisha replied with a sigh. “Dumb asses.”

“They opened the box!?” Sam snapped, glaring across at the bewildered looking men.

What happened next was just bizarre. It all happened so fast that I had trouble making sense of it. In a whir of motion, Sam was tackled to the ground and began to be choked by one of the lunatic thieves. Nisha yelped and ran over, she launched herself at the thief with sprightly motion. In fact she full on jumped onto his back and began trying to claw him off of Sam. Since they’d gotten together she had no problem with displaying just how protective she was of him. It didn’t seem to matter that Sam was a man mountain and rarely needed help, it was kind of cute in fact. Yet, even with Nisha’s determination, weirdly, the thief continued to try and choke Sam like Nisha wasn’t even there.

Meanwhile, Dean had been about to advance forwards to try and help Sam when the other of the duo rose his gun and just so happened to smack Dean in the face with it, which caused him to fall back onto the floor. I cringed. Metal to the face. Not good. It was weird how coincidental this fight was though, I didn’t get it. Still, I figured I better help Dean before he got shot, or worse. I stepped out onto the floor only to stand directly on a magazine that was situated just perfectly in my path, I skidded and screamed in surprise as I shot across the floor and landed flat on my back with an unpleasant thud.

Dean got up and walked over to me, he gripped me by the wrist and helped me to my feet. Which was just in time for me to see Sam grasp the rabbits foot. Nisha let go of the thief, and stood to one side, seeing Sam manage to free himself of the guy’s grip around his throat and not only that, he thrust him across the room with a powerful kick.

“This is just getting fucking weird” I said bluntly, glancing across to Dean with a raised eyebrow.

The other thief that seemed incredibly determined to win this odd fight had his gun held directly to Sam’s chest. By some miracle the trigger jammed and the gun wouldn’t fire, a desperate clicking sounded as the guy tried to shoot, but nothing happened. Sam knocked him down. A crash in the corner of the room caused us all to glance to see a disintegrating book shelf that landed on top of the other guy, and apparently in a rebellion against the laws of physics, the gun he’d been holding flung through the air, only to land directly in Sam’s grasp. It all looked kind of wild west to me.

Nisha came forward at that, and took Sam’s other hand that had been clutching the contents, she lifted it to inspect what he was holding and I frowned, focussing on the object too. It was a rabbit’s foot? Well, today couldn’t have gotten any stranger.

“Sam…are you holding a rabbit’s foot?” Nisha asked.

Sam rose his hand to eye level and looked at the furry grey foot in his grasp.

“I…think it is.”

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Apparently this rabbit’s foot wasn’t just superstitious. Apparently it really did seem lucky. It was the only way we could explain those thieves taking out themselves and also the fact that Dean’s gun had jammed just as one of them had tried to shoot Sam. There was no way it was coincidental, and given the kinds of things the four of us had dealt with before, a real lucky rabbit’s foot didn’t seem that far fetched.

We parked outside a mini mart, Sam was leaning against the Impala and I was sitting on the hood of Torino, sighing with boredom. I glanced up to an over cast sky, the occasional rumble above seemed to hint at rain. We were waiting for Dean. Once he’d found out the rabbit’s foot was lucky, and in fact, that Sam was in command of the luck as it were, he’d full on flipped out with excitement and insisted we find a mini mart. So we did and here we were. He’d been in there for around ten minutes, and I was starting to get irritated. He’d insisted on keeping his little ‘mission’ a secret and so the four of us were just left outside, bewildered.

“Misha. I demand that you go in there and get that idiot back out here right now. We have a JOB to do” Nisha huffed, folding her arms.

I rolled my eyes.

“Like he’d listen to me.”

She huffed again but dropped it. She knew I was right. Dean was going to do what Dean wanted to, regardless of everyone else. Nisha went back to the Impala beside Sam and leaned against his chest, he put his arm around her shoulders and held her close with something of a content smile decorating his face. I watched them for a moment quietly, before looking elsewhere.

“Alright Sammy, it’s game time!” Dean’s voice finally called as he seemed to practically skip out of the mini-mart with a brown bag in his hand.

I hopped off the car at that, as Dean brandished a little collection of ‘Scratch and Win’ cards. He grinned broadly and handed one of them to Sam. After some resistance from Sam, Dean convinced him to scratch the card and it revealed that he’d won 1200 dollars. Dean snatched the card from him and handed him another to scratch before turning to me and in his excitement he grabbed my waist and lifted me in the air. The shock of it kind of made me wave my arms around a little in panic, and I clung to his shoulders in case I slipped and he dropped me.

“We’re going to Vegas baby!” Dean declared. I couldn’t repress a laugh, as we bobbed around, him waving the 1200 dollar card in the air.

Finally Dean put me down and the sound of Sam’s cell phone ringing made us all glance to him. Sam answered it and it was Bobby on the other end of the line. Sam winced as Bobby yelled at Sam for touching the rabbit’s foot.

“We didn’t know Bobby! Dad never told us about this thing,” Sam whined in response.

As it happened, the rabbit’s foot was apparently over a hundred years old. Bobby called it ‘real hoodoo’. It had been made by some witch and it had consequences with it. It would seem that the good luck only lasted as long as the person who had touched it continued to own the rabbit’s foot. The second they lost the foot, they got luck so bad that they’d be dead inside a week. That made Nisha go pretty pale. I glanced back at Dean at that point, who was distracted by the line up of ‘Scratch and Win’ cards he’d had Sam scratch with a coin. I frowned at him.

“Dude, we’re up fifteen grand!” Dean declared with glee, waving the cards at us. I rolled my eyes.

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Soon enough, night fell and Dean’s excitement at the cards had been replaced with his need for food. Which meant we were probably going to end up in some sleazy diner that only ever sold really greasy burgers or other shit like that, that made me heave.

“Look, don’t worry, Bobby will figure this out. Until then we just lay low,” Dean said as we waked through the door of aforementioned diner. “Until then I’m still going with my Vegas plan. We’ll do a little Rain Man,” he patted Sam on the chest. “You can be Rain Man.”

We’d just walked to the counter to ask for a table for the four of us when the guy behind it got really excited. It didn’t help that he was a little chubby and that red waist coat he was wearing was way too small for him. He kinda jiggled when he bounced and I had to take a step back when he leered over the counter at us. He was like…I dunno, the best likeness I can think of is Stephen King’s “It.”

“Congratulations!” he yelled excitedly.

“Jesus, what is with this guy? We just want a goddamn table,” I hissed and Nisha smirked back at me.

All of a sudden, a group of the waiters and waitresses handed Sam and Dean an enormous check that entitled us to free food for like a week or something. There was a spray of colourful balloons that floated all about us, and I’m pretty sure someone let off gold streamers that got stuck in my hair. I was not impressed.

“You’re our ONE MILLIONTH GUESTS!”

All of a sudden they were taking pictures of us, and I was blinded by several luminous flashes of the digital camera one of the waitresses was holding. The picture must have looked horrendous. Sam was cringing on it because he was blinded by the camera flash. Nisha just looked flat out horrified and dizzied by all the lights. Dean was grinning really cheesily, and I was looking at Dean with a raised eyebrow and a look of incredulousness.

After all that though, we did finally get a table by one of the windows and we did get free food. Not a total loss I guess.
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The next day we went back to the SAME restaurant. Dean insisted, because they gave him a giant cheque and apparently that was good enough for him. Oh, that and the free food for a week. That was a tidy bonus. It was pretty early, I was tired, Sam was researching on the computer and Nisha was staring at Dean stuffing a banana split in disbelief. He could eat really fast.

Sam glanced up, raising an eyebrow at Dean for a moment before turning to me and Nisha who were more willing to take this seriously.

“Bobby’s right. This lore goes way back…pure hoodoo. It can’t be any rabbit either. Has to be under a full moon, in a cemetery on a Friday the 13th.”

Dean leaned forwards.

“I say, that from now on. We only go to places owned by Biggerson’s.”

Yes, Biggerson’s was the name of the restaurant. No prizes for whoever can guess why he wanted to go there all of the time now.

“Nice, Dean. Nice,” I said flatly, rolling my eyes.

He glared back at me for a moment before grabbing his forehead and wincing, closing his eyes tightly. Ah, brain freeze. I felt a distinct satisfaction that the banana split had come to take revenge. That served him right for trying to consume so much food in such a short period of time.

“This is serious,” Nisha hissed at him. “Sam could die, so stop stuffing your stupid face and get your shit together. We have to figure out how to break this curse.”

It was at that moment that the waitress came over. She had a short black bob and something about her was a little off. That was probably because she kept grinning at Sam and Nisha was silently fuming to his right as the waitress poured Sam some more coffee. Not only did she have a death wish and was about to be brutally murdered by my short but fiery companion, but apparently she was also clumsy. She managed to spill coffee across the table.

“Oh, I’m so sorry” she said. Nisha’s jaw tightened. I didn’t have to look at her to know it had. This was such blatant flirtation and Sam was doing his best to seem polite, but as usual, it came across incredibly awkwardly.

“It’s alright, I got it,” Sam replied.

The waitress mopped up the coffee and smiled again. “It’s no trouble. Sorry about that.”

Finally though, she went away and Nisha’s seething seemed to cool down a little. Only, at that moment I suddenly felt a sinking feeling in my gut. Sam grasped the squat white mug filled with the dark, steaming coffee in his hand and somehow it slipped through his fingers and rolled onto it’s side, spilling the hot liquid all over the table and onto Sam’s pants in a very awkward location. He jolted from the seat at the table, trying to brush the coffee from his crotch when he staggered and turned around to collide directly with a waiter who’s tray went sky high and landed on the ground with a roaring crash. Sam apologized about eleven times and then spun back around to look at the three of us who were all sitting there staring back at him stiffly.

“How…can that be good?” Dean asked.

“Sam, check your pocket!” Nisha demanded, standing up from her seat too.
Sam pulled both of his pockets inside out. The rabbit’s foot was gone. I knew that waitress was being way too friendly, I knew there was something off about her smile. I rolled my eyes realizing that we’d just been robbed.

The four of us left the diner swiftly, and I looked left and right as we stood outside in a desperate attempt to find the waitress. Dean motioned for us to follow him, we’d have to get to the cars and drive. She could have been anywhere by now. Just as we ran forwards, I heard a thud behind me. I ground to a halt and glanced over my shoulder. Sam had fallen on the floor. Nisha was crouched beside him trying to help him up.

“Wow, you suck,” Dean declared and I hit him in the chest.

Sam was stood up, his knees were all grazed and bleeding a little. His hands too. Nisha helped dust him off, and helped him stand upright before sighing deeply.

“Thanks for that Dean,” she shot him a glare. “I guess now Sam’s luck turns bad. We need to find that foot.”

Our next stop? Back to the idiots’ place. We wanted to know what they knew about this thief waitress.

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We arrived back in the dingy apartment in time to see only one of the dumb and dumber brothers sitting on a chair in the middle of the room with a bottle of whiskey to himself. He glanced up at us and the colour drained from his face as he sighed exasperatedly.

“What do you want?”

“We heard about your friend,” Dean replied.

“Piss off,” he replied.

“We know that you were hired by someone. A woman.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she just stole it back from us.”

He only laughed in reply.

“Listen man, this is-”

There was a loud crash behind us, and the lamp to the right went out as Sam fell into it, along with a CD player and some books. I winced, and Nisha went over to him to try and help him up yet again.

“Sam? You ok?” Dean asked without turning around.

“Yeah….I think so,” came the muffled reply.

Suddenly Dean got really intense. I rose an eyebrow at him. One thing about Dean Winchester was that although he was usually a terrible liar? He was very good at guilt tripping people, and this was yet another example of him in the act.

“It wasn’t a fluke accident that killed your partner. It was the rabbit’s foot. You saw what happened, all those flukes, the luck. It did that. When you lose the foot, the luck goes sour, and that’s what killed your partner. Now, you’re going to tell us the name of the woman who hired you, or all the deaths that follow because of this foot? They’re going to be on your head. I can read people, I get it, you’re a thief and a scum bag, that’s fine…but you’re not a killer. Are you?”

He looked down sullenly and then shook his head. Dean was a master at bullshit.

With that we left the apartment block. On the way out, Dean’s cell phone rang. It was Bobby again, thank god. I felt such a wave of relief. Apparently Bobby had found a cleansing ritual that would get rid of the rabbit foot’s curse, but it was a little late for that since we’d already lost the foot. Dean told Bobby what we’d found out. That the name of woman was something like Lugosi. Bobby gave us a name. Bela Talbot. Apparently Bobby knew people who would know where we could find Bela and we could set to work on kicking the absolute shit out of her for this. As much as I was also worried about Sam, his accidents were getting to be a little…tiresome. You know? Dean clasped his cell phone shut, and glanced back at me, and I glanced back at Sam.

“What now?” I sighed.

“I…I lost my shoe,” Sam replied with a defeated pout.

We headed back to the hotel at that. It was damp, it was dark and I was so exhausted with this rabbit’s foot crap. The neon sign for the hotel glowed and cast a glittered reflection on the damp parking lot. During the drive over there, Bobby called again. I swear he was like a magician, because he’d apparently found out where Bela lived. Hopefully we could get this over with and move on to the real task here. Saving Dean. It hadn’t left my mind at all, it was there, in the distance, nagging at me constantly. I just felt that this was an inconvenience and it was making us waste valuable time.

“Apparently Bela lives in Queens. So it’ll take me two hours to get there,” Dean explained. “Sam, my brother, you’re staying here. Don’t touch anything, don’t even move. Nisha, stay with him.”

Nisha nodded and I rose an eyebrow.

“I take it I’m coming to Queens?” I asked.

Dean just grinned and nodded as Sam and Nisha got out of the car and headed into the hotel, with Nisha holding onto Sam tightly.

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Dean and I arrived in Queens just as the sun was coming up the next morning. We took the Impala, because, frankly, I was not in any kind of mood to argue with him. We had parked the car in a back alley that sat just behind a tall stretch of an apartment block. It looked new…kind of artsy. Typical, I thought. Dean ran over the plan with me in the alleyway as we were preparing our weaponry. He told me we’d sneaked through the corridors, I’d pick the lock and then I’d wait in the wings for the right moment to strike. I could see where he was coming from. Clearly this Bela girl thought a lot of herself, so leading her into a false sense of security was probably our safest bet.

The plan transpired just as he’d said. We snuck through a pretty clinical looking corridor, perfect, stainless beige carpet and plain white walls. The door was all white too, and the lock was much easier to pick than I thought it was going to be. Dean pressed some buttons on the house alarm as I waited in one of the bedrooms. I was behind the door, with my gun raised and I could see Bela coming down the hallway to take a look at the alarm that was buzzing. She saw a Post-it note Dean had left on the alarm and turned around swiftly only to be met with him aiming a gun at her face. He smirked.

“You left without your tip.”

I rolled my eyes. Always with the lines.

“You’d be surprised what people are willing to pay for a thing like a rabbit’s foot. It’s a very lucrative market,” Bela said with a smirk. Oh so she was a smarmy British bitch. This just got better and better.

“So you know, what’s really going on out there, and this is what you decide to do with it? Become a thief?” Dean replied.

“No…a great thief.”

“My brother is going to die, unless we get that foot back.”

“Oh..” she looked guilty for a second but then smirked again. “You can have the foot…for 1.5 million.”

“Nice. I’ll just call my banker” Dean replied. “It’s all about you, huh Bela?”

“Oh and hunter’s are so much better? A bunch of revenge driven sociopaths trying to save a world that can’t be saved? We’re all going to hell Dean, might as well enjoy the ride.”

At that, Dean looked up at me, I was peering around the corner of the door. I nodded. That was the signal I was waiting for. I snuck up silently behind Bela, grippe her wrist, pointed her hand to the ceiling and took out her elbow with one sharp jab. She dropped the gun and I twisted her arm behind her back, shoving my foot into the back of her shins to force her to the ground.

She grunted and glanced to one side, just about catching me in her line of vision. “Misha, I presume?”

“I’d be flattered that you took the time to find that out, but you’re a crooked bitch. So let’s just go with this, shall we?”

She looked confused for a second but she didn’t get much chance to say anything else because I struck her across the back of the head with the base of the pistol in my hand. Her head snapped to one side and she fell to the floor in a heap, unconscious. I was glad I’d managed to knock her out. Her voice was beginning to get on my nerves. She really liked to hear herself talk.

“Damn,” Dean whistled. “You really laid into her.”

“She’s annoying as shit. Now did you get the foot?” I asked.

He grinned and held it up by the chain. Part of me was relieved he now had it, but the other part of me wanted to punch him for touching it. He was now in the same boat as Sam, and we could only hope that he didn’t lose the foot too.

“Let’s go” he added.

With that, the two of us left Bela’s apartment and headed back to the car.

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“This is destiny.”

Those were the words I heard as Dean and I arrived back in the motel room. The scene was nothing short of disconcerting I have to say. Sam was bound to a chair, and he had a bruise smeared across his left cheek, as well as blood dripping from his nose and lip. On the bed, Nisha was handcuffed to the headboard, and she looked nothing short of pissed. She’d been gagged too, because let’s face it, Nisha could swear the leg off an iron pot if need be. These two creeps who had tied them both up had obviously found that out the hard way. They were hunters. I could tell that much. The two of them had that lust for revenge in their eyes that only hunters had. Why the hell one of them was pointing a gun at Sam in that case, I don’t know.

“Nope, not destiny. Just a rabbit’s foot” Dean added casually, aiming his own gun at the guy who had Sam at gun point.

I had my gun on the other one.

“Put the gun down son, or you’re gonna’ be scraping your brain off the wall,” he replied.

“What? This thing?” Dean asked, waving the pistol.

“Yeah…that thing.”

“Okay,” Dean replied, putting the pistol down as he picked up a pen on the table top. “But you see, there’s something about me that you don’t know. This…is my lucky day.”

With that, he flung the pen across the room and it jammed in the mouth of the gun. The other of the two of them lunged for Dean who just side stepped them, and consequently missing Dean, the guy ran straight into the wall and knocked himself out.

“I’m amazing.”

I rolled my eyes at him. He was so incredibly egotistical. At that moment, Dean lifted a remote control from the table top and flung it straight at the other guy’s head. The corner of it caught him straight in the forehead and with a loud thud, he fell to the ground unconscious.

Dean smirked broadly. “I’m Batman.”

I barged passed him to go and help untie Nisha. “You’re Robin at best, now free your brother.”

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Finally, the moment I’d been waiting for. We were all free and we were FINALLY, in the cemetery about to perform the ritual we’d gotten from Bobby. We could burn this stupid rabbit’s foot and get on with the real hunt. Sam was hunched over a glowing fire he’d formed over coals, with various herbs that we needed to complete the ritual. We were alone, as far as I knew in the midst of the darkness with only the small, orange glow of the fire for company.

“Dean, would you stop that?” Sam asked, exasperated.

Dean was still scratching those damn scratch and win things, he looked up at Sam and glared a little.

“Back off jinx, I’m bringing home the bacon.”

Dean pocketed the scratch cards, and lifted the rabbit foot from the bag on the floor that was next to the coal fire. He looked at it, dangling it by it’s chain.

“Say goodbye, wascaly wabbit.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Cute, Dean, now put it on the damn fire.”

Just as he’d been about to drop it into the flames, we heard the click of a gun from behind us. I rolled my eyes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who that could have been. Bela. I turned around and sure enough, she was standing there, with that dumb ass smirk on her face, her gun pointed at Dean with precision.

“I think you’ll find that belongs to me,” she said at last, her aim not drooping.

“I think you’ll find we don’t give a shit,” Nisha snapped back, but Sam gripped her by the wrist to stop her going over and trying to beat Bela up herself or something.

Bela glared at Nisha but looked back at Dean. “Put the foot down, honey.”

Honey? Oh, she was asking for another ass kicking. Just as I’d been about to step forward she pointed the gun at me and I froze, my jaw tightening. That bitch.

“No. See. I happen to be able to read people,” Dean began.

I gaped, looking over at him. He was trying THIS routine with Bela?

“You’re a thief, fine, but you’re not-”

Bang. Before he could even finish his sentence, Bela had put a slug in Sam’s shoulder. Nisha cried out as Sam went down on the floor, clutching his shoulder. She crouched on the ground with him, inspecting the wound and helping him sit up a little.

“Back off tiger. Back off,” Bela hissed back as Dean spun around to face her again.

“You’ve got all the luck, Dean. You I can’t hit…but your brother? Him I can’t miss.”

“What the hell is wrong with?” Dean snapped, waving his arms around. “You don’t just go around shooting people like that?”

I blinked. “What part of, she’s a psychotic bitch do you not get?”

He glared at me and Bela remarked that she’d only hit Sam in the shoulder, and that he’d be alright so long as she got what she wanted. The rabbit’s foot, of course. She demanded that Dean put the rabbit’s foot on the ground, and he began to slowly crouch to do so. Just before he did put it on the ground though, he tossed it at Bela and she caught it. Bingo. She was done. Now she was just as much of a victim of the curse as Sam and Dean were.

“Damn,” she said through clenched teeth.

It was then that we finally got to throw the rabbit’s foot on the fire. Bela cast it into the coals and the rabbit foot burnt up like a firework. It cast golden sparkles everywhere as the magic fizzed out and disappeared into nothing. All in all a success. Well, a part from the fact that Bela had apparently stolen all of Dean’s scratch cards. Oh well. It was over with, and finally we left to go find a motel for the night and get some sleep before we hit the road again the next morning.

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Nisha and I were back in the Torino, which pulled up behind the Impala in the parking lot of yet another dingy motel. We’d moved on a couple of towns in case those crazy hunters decided to come after us again. We discovered from Sam that they’d been sent by Gordon. Now everything made sense. Gordon really just needed to die off already, that son of a bitch was such a pain in the ass. A dangerous pain in the ass.

I parked the Torino outside the motel and climbed out, catching up to Sam and Dean. Nisha was beside Sam in a flash and they’d just been about to disappear into their motel room before I grabbed Dean’s sleeve and gave him a particular look.

“Hey, you guys go ahead. We’ll be in, in a minute,” Dean told Nisha and Sam who just nodded and headed off into the motel room hand in hand.

I moved to the porch of the motel. It was raining again, pretty heavily, and there was a rumble of thunder overhead in the bruised, purple night sky. Not a cloud to be seen tonight, I’d noticed. A shame really. I was kind of hoping the weather would be more sympathetic and not make this any gloomier than it had to be. No such luck.

“What is it?” Dean asked, leaning one shoulder against the white wooden post, one of many that was holding the porch of the motel up.

“We need to talk,” I replied hesitantly. I was going to tell him. Confess everything, I had to.

He looked at me and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment like he’d already figured out what I was going to say.

“We’re not having this conversation.” His reply was flat, and kind of threw me off balance, I wasn’t sure what to reply with.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

He opened his eyes at that, and looked back at me, something about his gaze was stern and determined.

“Yes I do, Misha. We’re not having this conversation. I won’t let it happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too damn cruel. That’s why. I’ve got a year. We agreed to keep this fun, to keep this uncomplicated. You agreed with me on that, remember?”

I was at a loss, I felt…I don’t what I felt, but I was getting that weird anxious flutter in my gut again and my ribs felt tighter against my lungs. He came towards me and put his hand against the nape of my neck, a brief kiss and then nothing. He walked passed me and headed inside. Not another word, not another glance, he just left me alone in the dark and the rain.