Riding the Fence (A Supernatural FanFic)

Part Ten

The main room of the museum erupted into a cacophone of sound; glass breaking, shouts and screams, bellows and roars, and multiple gun shots echoed repeatedly around the cold, dark room. The salt rounds, while slowing it down, did not buy Dean enough time to both fend off the phantom beast and locate and deal with whatever artifact it may be attached to. He pulled and pushed the fore-end of his rifle, fired and then dove up and over a stack of crates, crashing in a tangle of limbs.

"Nice of you to join me," Mira quipped, helping him up off his back. She had her hair pulled up in a messy knot to keep it out of her face and in her hand, she wielded a threatening looking crowbar that she was using to pry open the crates around her.

Somewhere in the vast stack of boxes and crates were all the artifacts yet to be put out for the Buffalo Hunters display. She wasn't entirely sure what she was looking for-it was a pretty bloody time in history as far as the Bison were concerned-and the ghost could be attached to any number of items, which made Mira's search that much more difficult.

"Any luck?" Dean panted. He reached into his jeans pocket, pulled out a handful of salt rounds and loaded them into the magazine, then chambered the first cartridge and peeked up over the crates.

"No. I've got it narrowed down, but I don't even know what it is that I'm looking for. What is this thing?"

"Vengeful spirit, damn vengeful. It's gotta be attached to something in there. Can't we just salt and burn it all?" He raised the rifle up over the top crate, leveling it and taking aim on the charging spirit.

"What?!" Mira shouted over the ear-splitting blast of the gun. "No! These are museum pieces. You can't just burn them all!"

"What did you think was gonna happen?" Dean asked, giving her an incredulous look. When she turned away from him and went back to the crates, he snatched a hold of her wrist, pulling her back around to face him. "No, really. What did you think I was gonna do, strap a pack on my back and shoot it with laser beams? This ain't the movies, ya know. I'm not Dan Aykroyd."

"I know that. You're nowhere near as funny," she snapped back. "Here."

Mira thrust the crowbar into his hands, relieving him of the shotgun and hip-bumping him out of the way and on to his ass.

"You look," she commanded, "I'll hold the fort."

From his place on the floor, he gazed, completely in awe of the young woman in front of him. Mira climbed up on the crates, one foot higher than the other, allowing her to lean her weight into that leg and balance herself on the uneven crates. The rifle was raised to chest height and ready, she had one finger on the trigger, her other hand on the fore-end and her eyes scanned the room in a steady, confident gaze. In one breathtaking moment, little tendrils of golden curls that were falling down around her face were caught in a non-existent breeze and her silhouette lit up theatrically. With a shot gun in her hands, Mira looked, to him, like Joan of Arc in blue jeans and inwardly Dean's libido growled approvingly, but the resonating boom of the shotgun firing brought him quickly back into a presence of mind.

He climbed up off of the floor and using the crowbar, began tearing into the yet unopened crates, tossing items haphazardly when they didn't meet his predetermined criteria. A deafening roar and subsequent gunshot sped up Dean's search.

"Is it me," Mira shouted over her shoulder while she ejected the spent cartridge, "or is this thing gaining strength?"

"Do you blame it?" Dean asked dryly.

"What does that mean?"

When she didn't get an answer, she turned only to find him head first inside a tall crate, his rear end posted high in the air, feet scrambling up the side, trying to find purchase.