Transmission from the Trickster

Chapter 36

It's about a week later when Sam and Dean go off on a hunt, just the two of them, for old time's sake. It doesn't seem very monster-y, but the fact that no one could identify any of the three victims in what appears to be a mass stabbing is a bit suspicious.

The place they were found is weird, too. Supposedly, it's an old, long-abandoned hotel that's prone to kids sneaking in late at night on dares — how the bodies were found, coincidently — but from the pictures they've seen, it looks good as new. Working lights, clean walls, no dust to be seen; it seems too well kept to have been abandoned decades ago.

"So," Dean says as they roll into town. "Where to first? Check with the cops, see the bodies?"

"Sounds like a plan," Sam agrees. "Then we can check the crime scene, see if there's any EMF, sulfur, anything to point at the supernatural."

"And if there's not?" Dean asks. "Do we stick around, talk to the kids that found the body? Or just assume it's not our type of case?"

"I don't know," Sam says. "I guess we'll see when we get there."

~~

"And you're saying no one knows who they are?" Dean repeats, look at the coroner — Woody, he introduced himself — incredulously. "In a town of, like, two hundred, no one's seen them before?"

"Well, we haven't called the whole town in to look, if that's what you're thinking," he says. "But no, so far, no one's seen them before. We're thinking out-of-towners."

"And they just happened to stumble on an abandoned hotel and get stabbed to death," Sam surmises. "That's a great theory."

Woody pauses just before he opens the door to the coroner's office and looks at that suspiciously. "I'm sorry, what are the feds doing with a stabbing, again?"

Dean shrugs. "Just going where they send us. Can we see the bodies, or do I have to call our supervisor?"

Woody nods once and pushes the door open, letting them inside. They find three tables, each with a sheet over the top to cover a body. The coroner slides the sheet down on the first body. He's a larger man, balding but with s bit of facial hair. There's a large stab wound in his chest, right through his heart, impossible to ignore.

"Horrible, right?" Woody says, a sympathetic frown on his face.

"Yeah, sure," Dean deadpans, flipping down the sheet on the next body.

He's yet another white male, a much younger-looking face with a thick head of hair that Sam can't help but compare to Justin Bieber.

"Also stabbed in the heart," Sam observes, glancing at Dean for confirmation of what they're both thinking — you don't get a lot of stabs to the heart if it wasn't supposed to be the heart, which sounds an awful lot like how you kill a lot of monsters.

"Yeah, all three of them were," Woody tells them.

"Well, let's take a look at the third guy," Dean says.

"Sure thing." Woody lifts the sheet off of the last body, dropping it at the victim's waist.

Sam slaps a hand over his mouth, eyes wide. No way. No freaking way.

Dean glances at his brother. "Is that..."

Sam just nods.

Gabriel.