Losing Lives / Book Six / The Life Series / Supernatural

The Slice Girls

Dean and I had stayed in a motel room last night, already awake and ready to go.

Sam knocked before walking in. "Morning."

"Hey," I told him, taking Dad's flask out of my jacket, shaking it, unscrewing the lid."

"Is that Bobby's?" Sam asked. I took a drink. "I didn't know you kept that."

"Yeah, mine sprung a leak," I told them.

"You know, most people would just carry a—a photo or something for a memento," Sam told me.

"You remember that my dad's house burned down, and so did our apartment, with everything and whoever inside, right?" I asked. "I don't have a picture."

Sam nodded, sympathetic. "Right. Sorry."

"What do you got?" Dean asked.

"Four guys murdered in two weeks, hands and feet cut off," Sam told us.

"Yeah, well, some guy with a foot fetish run amuck," Dean told us.

"Grown men thrown so hard they went through walls," Sam told us. "Anyway, what else do we have to go on? Dick Roman's a dead end for now. We might as well--"

"Stay busy," I finished.

"Exactly," Sam told us.

Dean nodded. "Yeah."

~~~~~~

Dean and I went to the morgue to see the newest body.

The coroner named Eddie wheeled the man out of the locker. "The latest, but probably not the last. You guys always work this late?"

"Ugh, hours suck," Dean told him. "But, uh, great benefits package."

"Oh, yeah?" Eddie asked.

Dean nodded. "Yeah. 10% co-pay on all drugs."

"Seriously?" Eddie asked. Dean smiled, nodding. "Oh, but just generic, right?"

"No, no," Dean told him. "Name brands are cool."

"Oh," Eddie said.

"Yeah," Dean said.

I cleared my throat. "So. What's our boy here weigh?"

"Uh, a buck 90," Eddie answered. "Thrown against a wall so hard it buckled. Based on the blood flow at the crime scene, the hands and feet were cut off while he was still alive, just like the others. The killer wanted him to suffer."

"And all vics are male, right?" I asked. "With the same kind of, uh, artwork as this?"

I gestured to the symbol that was carved into his chest.

"Yeah," Eddie answered. "Identical."

I took a picture of the design carved in the man's chest on his phone. "So, uh, DNA left at any of the scenes?"

"All of them," Eddie answered. "One before this, the guy bit the attacker. Still had a chunk of flesh in his teeth when he came in. That's about as good as it gets."

"Right," I said.

"So, we have a match?" Dean asked.

"We do not," Eddie answered, hitting a button on a computer keyboard and a window that said 'Sample Rejected. No Known Genetic Markers' popped up on the screen. "The samples were rejected. The genetic markers don't match anything we've ever seen."

"Didn't match any person in the database?" Dean asked.

"No, I mean they don't match anything human," Eddie explained.