Aphrodite's Warrior

Chapter Two

Dean bolted upright as Sam set a coffee down on the table. "What time is it?"

"Almost 11am. I already went to the coroner's office." Sam sat across from Dean, wearing a suit and sipping his own coffee. "As it turns out, the report is wrong. Coroner said the heart was crushed as if it were in a vice, but the man suffered no external wounds, not a scratch or bruise. Nothing. Just a crushed heart. They had no way to explain it so they wrote it off as a heart attack."

"Right. Well, looking into the date of when she appeared in the woods..." Dean pushed aside papers, sliding the laptop over to Sam. "Prior to her being there it turns out that the woods had a strange number of campers that went missing. Went on for months apparently. Then she wakes up in those woods and magically there's no more disappearances. And the scratch she had..." Dean slid over the photo the AJ had taken after the event. "Kind of looks like a wendigo scratch."

"Oh!" Dean held up a finger, bringing up a different article. "Pretty sure this dead guy was also a werewolf. His fiance said he had begun acting weird, going out once a month and not returning for a few days. She never tracked it, but he was reported missing just after a full moon and his body was found. Time of death was during the full moon."

Sam nodded, "I think you're onto something here. The coroner was a bit forthcoming and very superstitious. He shared with me that police found plenty of occult books, artifacts and various other things. I think the CEO was a witch... or warlock, whatever."

"So AJ is playing vigilante in her sleep."

"Yeah, but how? Why only during a full moon? And how does she do it if she's in a zombie state?"

"That's what we've gotta figure out. First I'm taking a shower!" Dean got up, stripping off his shirt as he headed towards the bathroom.

*****

The brothers met AJ outside the club after her performance, researching up until the last minute. More accurately, Sam researched while Dean took a nap. They went straight to her apartment where Dean made himself right home as he went straight to the fridge and grabbed himself a beer, another two in his other hand. Sam sat on the sofa while AJ was curled in a chair listening to everything they had found out along with their erratic theories.

She was strangely quiet, having no questions and only excusing herself to take a shower, giving the brothers time to talk.

"She seem quiet to you?" Dean asked his brother.

Sam shrugged, "AJ was always the quiet type. Never the type to openly discuss her feelings. But she usually tends to ask a lot of questions. I'm surprised she didn't bombard us with questions."

"Yeah. I was totally prepared for that! 'Witches are real? What the hell is Wendigo?' I mean, she didn't even ask one question! Should we be worried about that?"

Sam's eyes were glued to the closed bathroom door, his sad puppy eyes activated with the extreme weight of sincerity. "I found her journal once. She had gone to retrieve a book from her locker... and it was just sitting there. Curiosity got the best of me and I looked inside." The sad eyes turned toward Dean, "Her dad literally beat her. Her mom let it happen. He even went into her room at night..."

Dean half shrugged, "You think this sleepwalking is because she was abused?"

"No. I'm just saying that AJ is a complicated person with a rather dark past. She doesn't deserve whatever this is that's happening to her."

"Yeah, well... we don't always get to choose the shit that life deals us. We just play the best hand we can and that's all we can do." Dean draped his jacket over his chest like a blanket, getting comfortable on his half of the sofa.