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zubeneschamaliTitle: Slavyanka
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zubeneschamali
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 5,207
Summary: On their first case after Dean's return from Purgatory, Sam and Dean respond to a request from someone Bobby helped out years ago. When they find themselves in California wine country, they also find that grapes aren't the only crop growing in the Russian River valley.
A/N: I wrote this for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spn_summergen last year for tesserae_ and never got around to posting it! So it's completely out of compliance with S8 canon, but that might be a feature rather than a bug, yes? Big thanks to morganoconner for the beta reading.
Apparently Purgatory was more discerning than either Heaven or Hell, because it knew what to do with beings that didn't belong in its environs.
Sam hadn't even finished freaking out about how he was going to get Dean back when the air in the lab shimmered opaquely, and then Dean was just there, knife in one hand, poised in a defensive half-crouch with eyes wide and alert.
A second later, Castiel appeared behind him, brow furrowed and lips pursed. He took one look around at the black-spattered walls and said, "The bees will know." Then he was gone.
Sam stared at Dean, who was slowly straightening up but still looking around as if his head was on a swivel. "Dude, you okay?"
Dean blinked. "How long was I gone?"
"Couple of minutes?" Then Sam's stomach dropped as if an elevator cable had snapped. "Why, how long were you—"
"The same." Dean blinked again, and then the tight line of his shoulders loosened a notch. "Can't say I've ever been so happy to be rejected before."
Sam would have made a joke about it, but Crowley's gleeful taunt about being all alone was still ringing in his ears, and so he strode over and wrapped Dean up in a hug, black spatters of goo and all. He could almost hear Dean making a face over his shoulder, but there was no hesitation in Dean's arms as he returned the embrace.
Thank God, the Impala was still drivable, because Dean was bitching enough about her condition as they limped away from SucroCorp. It was like music to Sam's ears, given what their odds of success had been going in. The music got a little worn by the time they hit the state line, but Sam grinned and bore it. He wasn't surprised when he recognized Dean's favorite backroads route to Rapids City. Bobby and his house might be gone, but his junkyard and workshop lived on, and Sam was sure there was nowhere else Dean wanted to restore his baby the second time around.
Dean worked on the car, Sam checked in with Jody, and they all ate vegetables and grains for the next three weeks until the testing equipment Sam had nicked from the lab showed the meat from the local supermarket to be clean. They were just sitting down to steaks cooked on the grill when Sam's phone rang.
Puzzled, he opened it to hear a mechanical voice saying, "Your call is being forwarded. Please wait." There were two clicks, and then a man said, "Hello?"
"Hello?" Sam replied.
"Is this Bobby Singer?"
Sam felt a pang. "No, I'm sorry, it's not."
"Are you a friend of his? Or do you work with him?"
"Who wants to know?" Across the table, Sam saw Dean putting down his knife and fork, and even Jody had stopped dishing out the tossed salad.
"Um." There was a pause. "My name's Todd Deveron. Mr. Singer helped me out with some…trouble a few years ago, and he told me to give him a call if anything else happened."
Sam gave a slow nod. "Anything else meaning…unusual? Hard to explain?"
"Yes, exactly." Deveron sounded relieved. "Can you help?"
He nodded at Dean to continue eating, and Dean picked up his knife without hesitation. "Can you tell me more details?"
"It would be easier to show you." Deveron hurried on, "I'll pay for your travel and put you up while you're here. I can even pay you for your time."
Sam raised his eyebrows. That didn't happen too often, and they sure could use the cash. Once again, saving the world had come without monetary compensation. "Where are you?"
"Sonoma County, California. A place called Green Hill Winery."
Oh, Dean was going to love this.
"Tell me again why I agreed to drive halfway across the country for some winemaking douche?"
Sam sighed, watching out the window as the golden hills studded with deep green oaks rolled by. "Because otherwise you'd be driving all the way across the country just to be in this car again."
"Like you didn't miss her too, Sammy." The pointed look Dean gave him was brief but knowing.
"That's not the point. The point is, this guy knows that the supernatural exists, he asked Bobby for help, and Bobby apparently managed to forward his calls to me before he…you know. And we're getting paid for it."
"Whatever 'it' is," Dean muttered. "If he tries to pay us in chardonnay, I will be so pissed."
"I know, you're more a cab kind of guy," Sam teased. At Dean's blank look, he went on, "Cabernet Sauvignon? The California wine?"
"If I did drink wine, it sure as hell wouldn't be from California," Dean muttered.
Sam grimaced. "Yeah, maybe not."
"I'm surprised you wanted to take this job, Sam." At Sam's quick look, Dean went on, "I mean, it's not exactly like California's been good to you."
"It's not like any place has really been good to me," Sam retorted. Then he reached out and patted the dash. "Nowhere with a zip code, at least."
When he realized the compliment Sam had given his baby, Dean beamed as brightly as the California sunshine.
They turned onto a narrow two-lane road sandwiched between a short embankment and trees that might have been redwoods. Beyond the trees, rows of espaliered vines marched along the sloping hillsides. As they rounded a curve, Sam pointed at the small sign advertising the Green Hill Winery. "There."
"At least he's discreet about it," Dean muttered. "Not like all of the other ginormous signs we passed on the way here."
Sam couldn't help but grin at the thought that winemaking was something to carry out in private. "Maybe he doesn't rely on tourism like some of the other wineries we passed."
"Maybe." Dean pulled to a stop in front of a white farmhouse with green trim, rows of grapes growing practically up to the front door. There was a long, low outbuilding behind the house, white-walled and clean. Both buildings looked new, although the farmhouse was clearly imitating a turn-of-the-century style. The driveway turned into a dirt track that wound up the hill past the house, and Sam thought he saw the glimmer of glass or metal in the trees where the road led.
The front door opened, and a man with salt-and-pepper hair came out, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and pressed khakis. "Whaddya want to bet those are Dockers?" Dean asked derisively before climbing out of the car.
Sam hastened to follow suit, taking advantage of his long legs to outpace Dean to the front steps. "Mr. Deveron?" he asked politely.
"Todd, please," he said, extending a hand. "You must be Bobby's boys."
Sam could almost feel Dean stiffen behind him. "I guess so, yeah." He shook Todd's hand, surprised at the calluses he could feel. "I'm Sam, and this is my brother Dean. We do the same kind of work that Bobby did."
"Did?" Todd asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Yeah," Dean replied, giving Todd's hand a brusque shake. "He passed away recently."
"I'm sorry to hear that." He looked genuinely sorry, his chocolate-brown eyes softening behind gold-rimmed glasses. "Was it…a hazard of the job?"
"How did you say you know Bobby again?" Dean asked sharply.
Todd took off his glasses, folding them and putting them in the front pocket of his shirt. "He helped me out with a problem a few years ago. I used to live in San Francisco, in a loft that had been a canning factory. There were these noises at night, things moving around when I wasn't there. And then one of my neighbors was murdered in his locked bedroom, and—" He waved a hand around. "I came home one day to find this guy in a trucker cap knocking a hole in my wall, or at least trying to. Before I could ask him what the hell he was doing, he went flying across the room. Scared the hell out of me, I can tell you."
"I can imagine," Sam said in his best interview voice.
"He had this little bag in his hand," Todd went on, "and he said he had to get it inside the wall. There was stuff flying around the room, books and papers and some of the kitchen utensils, and so I grabbed the bag and shoved it in this hole in the wall where a brick had fallen out that I hadn't gotten fixed. Everything went crashing to the ground, and there was this shriek, and then silence."
"Sounds like a poltergeist," Dean said.
"Yeah, that's what Bobby said." Todd ran a hand through his hair in what looked like a familiar move. "I promised I wouldn't call the cops if he explained what had happened, and he did. Said I took it really well, but after what I'd just seen…" He shook his head. "He told me to call if anything else like that ever happened, but I moved out of there as fast as I could. It was just too weird, you know? Besides, it was the late 90s, and I could tell the writing was on the wall. I cashed out my dot-com chips, bought this place, and went from writing code to growing grapes. Bobby stopped by once or twice when he was in the area, but I can't believe I still had his number after all these years."
"So the same thing is happening again?" Sam asked, already running through his mental encyclopedia of spirits and shades to find something that could have resurfaced over a decade later.
"Not exactly." Todd shifted his feet, work boots that were incongruous with his khakis kicking up small puffs of dust. "Bobby told me what was in that little bag, and I made four of them and put them in the walls, but it hasn't made a difference. I think it made things worse, actually."
"In here?" Sam asked, gesturing at the farmhouse.
"No, not in there." Todd drew in a deep breath. "Look, I know you guys were close with Bobby. He used to talk about you, and he didn't really talk about people, you know? But I need to know that you will keep completely confidential anything that you see on my property."
"Don't worry, we know that the wine industry is highly competitive," Dean said with an impressively straight face.
Todd grimaced. "That's not it."
Sam exchanged a quick glance with Dean. "We're always discreet," he said. "If you trusted Bobby, you can trust us."
"All right." Todd drew in a breath. "It's up the hill in the trees."
They followed him up the dirt track, the sun beating down on their backs. Sam was sweating under his grey t-shirt, but it felt good to be outside, walking around. The vineyard was certainly picturesque, and the higher they climbed, the better the view was of the green-and-gold patchwork around them. In the distance, he saw the curve of trees that indicated the Russian River, tumbling down towards the Pacific.
They rounded a curve in the track and crossed a small stream running down the hillside, sheltered by spreading oak trees. Next to the stream was a narrow but long shack, the foundation looking much older than the building itself. The walls looked like plywood, and as they got closer, Sam could see that the door was ajar, a pale glow emitting from within as if from fluorescent lights. The low hum of a gasoline generator came from the far side of the shack.
"It's in there," Todd said, not looking at either one of them. "The trouble. Things moving around, strange noises at night, almost like laughter."
"Is this part of your winemaking operation?" Sam asked, his brow furrowed.
Dean chuckled and clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Not exactly, Sammy boy." He started forward before Sam could object.
It took about three seconds in the shack and one inhaled breath for him to realize what Dean meant. There weren't grapevines in here under rows of fluorescent tubes. They were five-pointed leaves, and the sweet scent filling the greenhouse was familiar from Sam's college days.
Dean inhaled deeply, a grin spreading over his face. "Now this is a vintage I can get behind."
Sam whirled to look at Todd, who was hovering in the doorway. "You're growing pot in your vineyard?"
Todd shrugged sheepishly. "I was doing fine with grocery and internet sales of my wines until the recession hit. I was going to lose my vineyard if I didn't come up with some way to pay the bills. I've never been big on having tourists stop by, so it didn't seem like that much of a risk. I put it up a couple of months ago, and the first crop is almost ready."
"How do you know it's not just kids trying to get a freebie who are moving things around in here?" Dean asked, fingering a leaf almost absentmindedly.
"Because it's happened while I've been in here." Todd pointed to a stack of small paper bags on a long table next to a jumble of empty pots, half-empty potting soil bags, and spare light bulbs. "Those moved across the room when I turned my back. And these little muddy footprints appeared near the doorway while I was watching. And then last week, the mailman said he saw me on the front porch when I was up here at the time."
Sam looked at Dean, the same question clearly on both of their minds. Before they could ask it, Todd huffed, "And no, I was not sampling my product at the time. It's like in my loft in San Francisco. Something weird is going on."
Sam nodded. They were being paid by this guy; at least they could take him seriously to start with. "I'll need to know the history of this place," he said, sweeping one arm around. "The farmhouse, the vineyard, this building, all of it."
"I built this building a few months ago," Todd shrugged. "I built the house and the shed when I moved here. As for the rest, I can show you the deed, but I don't know much more than that."
"Looks like it's library time for you, Sam," Dean said. He settled down on a stool in front of the long table and surveyed the rows of plants, a gleam in his eye. "I think I'll keep an eye on things here."
Thankfully, the drive back down to Santa Rosa took only a few minutes. The county recorder was as helpful as county recorders usually were in Sam's experience, thrilled to have someone come by who was genuinely interested in their job and their expertise. After an hour of local history lessons on top of the hour it took to find the paperwork in the first place, Sam was more than ready to call it a day. He grabbed In-n-Out burgers before heading back to Green Hills, leaving only a handful of fries for Dean to make a point.
He was half expecting to find Dean smoking a joint when he got back, but what he saw almost had him reaching for his silver knife. Dean and Todd were sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse, each with a glass of straw-yellow wine in their hands.
Sam climbed the steps and tossed the burger bag in Dean's lap. "I hope you saved some of that for me," he snarked, nodding at the wine.
"There's more in the fridge," Todd said, standing up. "Let me get you a glass."
Once he was inside, Dean rolled his eyes and tipped his glass over the edge of the porch, watering the begonias with his wine. "He's paying us," he muttered. "I gotta at least pretend to be into to the stuff."
Sam snickered. "Right. Listen, I think I might have something."
"Indian burial ground?" Dean asked. "That was my first guess."
"No sign of one. There've been a few failed attempts at vineyards before, but I don't think that's it. If there is a restless spirit, it's probably Russian."
Dean squinted up at him. "Russian?"
"Russian?" Todd came out the front door and handed a wine glass to Sam.
Sam accepted the glass, almost feeling Dean's smirk on him. "Yeah. They settled on the coast here. You ever heard of Fort Ross?"
"Yeah, it's a state park just up the coast on the 1," Todd said. "What about it?"
"It's really Fort Rus," Sam explained. "It was the farthest south the Russians got in North America. That's why the Russian River runs through here, although they called it the Slavyanka. They tried to make a go of it for a few years but weren't successful enough to stick around. The tsar called them back home only a couple of years before gold was discovered."
Dean whistled. "Now there's an alternate history for you."
Nodding, Sam went on, "There were a few settlements inland, but they've never been accurately located. I think your land has one of them, Todd."
Todd pointed up towards the hill. "You mean that old foundation?"
"It's on a creek with access to the sea, and there's no record of anyone else settling here. Even the people you bought the land from lived in Sebastopol, not on the property."
"So do we know who lived here?" Dean asked. "Or more importantly, who died here?"
Sam shook his head. "The lady in the recorder's office said I'd have to check the historical society. But if any Russian settlers died here, they were probably buried at Fort Ross, because there was Orthodox consecrated ground there."
"Let's hope the state park service marks its graves well," Dean muttered.
The night passed quietly enough, with each of the Winchesters in a guest room upstairs in the farmhouse. Sam found it strange to be alone in the room when he woke up, no second bed next to him with Dean lightly snoring or only rumpled sheets to indicate that he'd slept at some point. Dean's sleep patterns didn't seem to have changed after his brief trip to Purgatory, whether because it really was too short to make an impression or because he was sleeping like crap anyway. Sam had noticed that he hadn't replaced Bobby's flask, though, which was one positive sign.
Sam showered and dressed before going downstairs, poking his head into the other guest room to see Dean still sound asleep. When he went downstairs, Todd was nowhere to be seen, but given that the sun had been up for a few hours, Sam wasn't surprised. Even if his winery wasn't as successful as he'd like, there was surely still a lot of work to do, and then there was the matter of his other business.
Figuring the grow house was the best place to start, at least to see if anything else had happened overnight, Sam climbed the hill towards the shack. As he gained altitude, he could see wisps of fog in the valleys towards the coast, but where they were, it was sunny and bright.
The door of the shack was open when he reached it, which gave him pause. Todd seemed more cautious than that. Once Sam saw the small, muddy footsteps on the threshold, he drew his silver knife and started moving more cautiously.
Peering inside, he saw that the place was a shambles. The sharply sweet scent of marijuana was stronger than it had been yesterday, probably because one section of lights had become detached and was crushing a row of plants. The sinking feeling that had started when he noticed the open door turned into full-on dread when he saw a work boot sticking out from a khaki-covered leg against the far wall.
Todd Deveron was lying quiet and still on the rough wooden floor of the shack, looking like he was asleep, at least until Sam noticed the blue tinge to his lips. A check of his pulse confirmed that sleep wasn't the case—the man was dead. Sam sighed and sat back on his heels. Whatever this spirit was, it had escalated.
"Sam!"
He whipped his head up to see Dean bursting through the doorway. "What's wrong?" Sam asked, bounding to his feet.
Dean drew in a deep breath. "I got up and no one was there. But you're here, so…" He gestured and then dropped his hand to his side. "Why are you here?"
Sam could read on his brother's face a flash of the same panic that he'd felt when Crowley had left him in the SucraCorp lab, that momentary terror at being completely alone. It was already fading behind Dean's usual stoicism, so instead of commenting on it, he said, "Looking for Todd." He gestured down to the body.
Dean grimaced. "Shit."
They decided to split up, Dean dropping Sam off at Santa Rosa College to comb the library for anything that might help them identify their spirit, while Dean headed out to Fort Ross to do the same. By the time they met up again, Sam had a headache from the microfiche reader, but at least he knew what they were up against.
"I got nothin'," Dean said as soon as Sam got into the car. "The interpretive guide at the fort said they don't have complete records of all of the Russians who ever settled here, thanks to the 1906 earthquake. And there's a couple hundred graves over there, so unless we have some way to narrow it down, that's too much digging to do without being noticed."
"Good thing we won't have to dig," Sam replied. Dean was pulling back onto the street, so he only grunted to indicate, Go on. "I think it's a domovoi."
Dean paused, scrunched his eyebrows, and then shook his head. "I don't know that one."
"It's a Russian house spirit. Not just Russian, it's in a lot of Slavic cultures, but what's important here is the Russian, right?" At Dean's impatient gesture, he went on, "They're protective spirits of the house, kind of like guardians. They look like little men with long, tangled hair, or sometimes they appear as the owner of the house to someone from outside the family, like Todd said happened with the mailman. As long as you take care of them, they do things for the family and protect their house and crops and livestock."
"Let me guess, if you don't give them everything they ask for, they aren't so protective?" Dean asked.
"Kind of. It's not so much about giving the spirit what it wants for itself, it's about taking care of the house. If the owners are neglectful of their property or don't maintain the house and the yard, the domovoi starts playing tricks on them. Moving things around, making noises, things like that. That's why they're said to be related to poltergeists."
"And if the neglect is bad enough, they kill the homeowner?" Dean gave a short shake of his head. "That doesn't seem like a good way to get the house taken care of."
"It's not typical, no. I figure this one has been neglected for so long that when Todd built the shack over the foundation and then made it a grow house instead of a people house, the domovoi really got pissed off." Sam shrugged. "They were said to threaten to smother the master of the house in his bed if things went on long enough."
"Might not have been in his bed, but that does look like what happened." They turned into the driveway of the vineyard. "Okay, so how do we get rid of it? Same way as a poltergeist?"
"Todd said he tried that already."
Dean snorted. "Some dot-com dude who watched Bobby try to put a hole in his trendy loft might not have known exactly what he was doing. I say we start with that and then come up with Plan B."
"Sounds good." Sam held up his backpack. "I stopped in town and got the supplies we'd need for that anyway."
"Good thinking." Dean glanced at the bag. "Todd didn't strike me as the type to have a full container of salt around the house, and we're running low."
"I'm not sure it would work anyway," Sam replied. "One of the ways to attract a domovoi was to put out salted bread for it."
"Seriously?" Dean groaned and shifted the car into park. "What kind of spirit wants salt with their bread?"
They assembled the little bags and climbed the hill to the grow house, where they faced a new problem. "There aren't any walls," Sam said as they stared at the sheets of plywood that formed the sides of the shack. "Not thick enough to stick these into."
Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Maybe in the foundation, then? Since that's what's kept the thing there all these years? "
They warily poked around the stone foundations until they found loose stones to secret the bags behind, all the time keeping their eyes peeled for anything suddenly flying around the room. When Sam put the final bag into the foundation, they simultaneously let out a sigh and then looked at each other sheepishly. "That was too easy," Dean said. "Especially since this place is a bigger mess than it used to be and the thing's probably even more ticked off."
"And no sign that it made a difference," Sam said. "Guess we're coming up with Plan B."
Dean had plucked a leaf off one of the plants and was rolling it between his fingers. "You know, Sam, it would be a shame for all of this to go to waste."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Can we wait until after the job is done?"
"Yeah, of course." Then Dean narrowed his eyes. "You didn't say no."
"You don't need my permission, Dean. And it's not like telling you no would stop you, anyway."
"True," Dean agreed cheerfully. "Okay, so what's our Plan B?"
There was a creaking noise from the doorway, and when they turned to look, they saw small, muddy footprints forming on the wooden floorboards. "I don't know, but we better think of it quick," Sam said, eyeing the footprints as they slowly advanced towards him.
"Hey, little ugly!" Dean called, but the footprints didn't turn their path.
Sam drew the silver knife from his jacket and dropped into a crouch, wondering when he was going to see the thing advancing on him. He thought he saw a shadow at about knee height, and he started moving sideways, hoping to circle around towards the door and either get out or at least lure the thing into the sunlight.
The footsteps slowly followed, and Sam crossed his fingers as he stared backing out of the shack. The domovoi had to be tied to the foundation, but it was probably also able to move around what had been the yard associated with the house, so he wasn't sure how far he had to go. Dean was watching closely, looking at the space above where the footprints were forming, but Sam could tell that he couldn't see the spirit either.
Then there was a rush of air, and Sam was flat on his back, knife skittering out over the hard-packed dirt. He only had time to draw a breath before something was covering his mouth and nose, blocking his air. He couldn't see it, and it only took a second to realize that his arms were pinned down, too.
"Sam!" Dean shouted. He slid to his knees on the ground next to Sam and delivered a solid punch to the air over his face that hit something, given the way Dean rebounded back onto his ass.
The pressure eased for a second, and Sam grabbed a gulp of air and tried to roll away. Something pushed him farther, so that he was face-down in the dirt, breathing blocked again and chest heaving to no avail.
"Damn it!" Dimly, Sam heard Dean scrambling to his feet, boots scraping on the ground as he raced back towards the shack. He really hoped Dean had a plan in mind, because the world was starting to go grey at the edges, his limited view of dirt and rocks fading as the domovoi continued to smother him.
There was the sound of liquid pouring onto the ground, but Sam was having trouble hearing anything but the pounding of his own heartbeat, faster and more frantic as his body struggled to find air. The grey in his vision was turning to black, and he felt the strength leaving his limbs.
FWOOMP!
The unmistakable sound of a fire catching shot through Sam's foggy mind, and a second later, he felt the heat on his legs. There was a screech, and the pressure on his face suddenly let up. Heaving in gulps of air, Sam crawled up onto his hands and knees, head hanging down.
"Sam!" Dean was crouching beside him, one careful hand on his back. "You okay?"
He lifted one hand long enough to give Dean a thumbs up and then returned to the important task of breathing. Dean's hand stayed on his back until his breathing returned to almost normal. God, his chest hurt.
The heat from the fire was what made him finally stagger to his feet, and he turned to see the shack in flames. There was a small, dark figure writhing in the doorway, and as they watched, it emitted a piercing shriek and exploded in a burst brighter than the fire itself.
"Good thing there was a spare gasoline can next to the generator," Dean finally said.
"Yeah." Sam took in a slow, deep breath, enjoying the feeling. "Thanks."
"Anytime." Dean clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Say, we're not in a hurry to get out of here, are we?"
Sam looked around. They were near the top of the hill, and although they were within a clump of oaks, the smoke from the burning shack would be visible soon over the treetops. "This area's pretty dry," he said. "The fire department probably keeps a careful watch around here."
"Damn." Dean gestured at the burning building. "'Cause that is like the world's biggest blunt right there."
As Sam drew in another breath, he slowly realized that maybe it wasn't just the pleasure of breathing freely again that he was feeling, and that it wasn't just the lingering effects of his near-asphyxiation that made his head feel hazy. "But it's not as concentrated as in a cigarette," he argued. He waved a hand at the shack. "Even if it is a shitload of leaves."
It wasn't until he felt Dean's hand gripping his arm that he realized he was swaying where he stood. "And you just inhaled how much of it as fast as you could?" Dean asked wryly. "C'mon, stoner boy, let's get out of here before the red trucks show up."
"'M not stoned," Sam muttered, obediently turning to follow Dean down the hillside. "'M breathing."
"Yeah, you are," Dean said softly, one hand on his shoulder. "Which means I'm good."
Author:
zubeneschamaliRating: PG-13
Word count: 5,207
Summary: On their first case after Dean's return from Purgatory, Sam and Dean respond to a request from someone Bobby helped out years ago. When they find themselves in California wine country, they also find that grapes aren't the only crop growing in the Russian River valley.
A/N: I wrote this for
spn_summergen last year for tesserae_ and never got around to posting it! So it's completely out of compliance with S8 canon, but that might be a feature rather than a bug, yes? Big thanks to morganoconner for the beta reading.Apparently Purgatory was more discerning than either Heaven or Hell, because it knew what to do with beings that didn't belong in its environs.
Sam hadn't even finished freaking out about how he was going to get Dean back when the air in the lab shimmered opaquely, and then Dean was just there, knife in one hand, poised in a defensive half-crouch with eyes wide and alert.
A second later, Castiel appeared behind him, brow furrowed and lips pursed. He took one look around at the black-spattered walls and said, "The bees will know." Then he was gone.
Sam stared at Dean, who was slowly straightening up but still looking around as if his head was on a swivel. "Dude, you okay?"
Dean blinked. "How long was I gone?"
"Couple of minutes?" Then Sam's stomach dropped as if an elevator cable had snapped. "Why, how long were you—"
"The same." Dean blinked again, and then the tight line of his shoulders loosened a notch. "Can't say I've ever been so happy to be rejected before."
Sam would have made a joke about it, but Crowley's gleeful taunt about being all alone was still ringing in his ears, and so he strode over and wrapped Dean up in a hug, black spatters of goo and all. He could almost hear Dean making a face over his shoulder, but there was no hesitation in Dean's arms as he returned the embrace.
Thank God, the Impala was still drivable, because Dean was bitching enough about her condition as they limped away from SucroCorp. It was like music to Sam's ears, given what their odds of success had been going in. The music got a little worn by the time they hit the state line, but Sam grinned and bore it. He wasn't surprised when he recognized Dean's favorite backroads route to Rapids City. Bobby and his house might be gone, but his junkyard and workshop lived on, and Sam was sure there was nowhere else Dean wanted to restore his baby the second time around.
Dean worked on the car, Sam checked in with Jody, and they all ate vegetables and grains for the next three weeks until the testing equipment Sam had nicked from the lab showed the meat from the local supermarket to be clean. They were just sitting down to steaks cooked on the grill when Sam's phone rang.
Puzzled, he opened it to hear a mechanical voice saying, "Your call is being forwarded. Please wait." There were two clicks, and then a man said, "Hello?"
"Hello?" Sam replied.
"Is this Bobby Singer?"
Sam felt a pang. "No, I'm sorry, it's not."
"Are you a friend of his? Or do you work with him?"
"Who wants to know?" Across the table, Sam saw Dean putting down his knife and fork, and even Jody had stopped dishing out the tossed salad.
"Um." There was a pause. "My name's Todd Deveron. Mr. Singer helped me out with some…trouble a few years ago, and he told me to give him a call if anything else happened."
Sam gave a slow nod. "Anything else meaning…unusual? Hard to explain?"
"Yes, exactly." Deveron sounded relieved. "Can you help?"
He nodded at Dean to continue eating, and Dean picked up his knife without hesitation. "Can you tell me more details?"
"It would be easier to show you." Deveron hurried on, "I'll pay for your travel and put you up while you're here. I can even pay you for your time."
Sam raised his eyebrows. That didn't happen too often, and they sure could use the cash. Once again, saving the world had come without monetary compensation. "Where are you?"
"Sonoma County, California. A place called Green Hill Winery."
Oh, Dean was going to love this.
"Tell me again why I agreed to drive halfway across the country for some winemaking douche?"
Sam sighed, watching out the window as the golden hills studded with deep green oaks rolled by. "Because otherwise you'd be driving all the way across the country just to be in this car again."
"Like you didn't miss her too, Sammy." The pointed look Dean gave him was brief but knowing.
"That's not the point. The point is, this guy knows that the supernatural exists, he asked Bobby for help, and Bobby apparently managed to forward his calls to me before he…you know. And we're getting paid for it."
"Whatever 'it' is," Dean muttered. "If he tries to pay us in chardonnay, I will be so pissed."
"I know, you're more a cab kind of guy," Sam teased. At Dean's blank look, he went on, "Cabernet Sauvignon? The California wine?"
"If I did drink wine, it sure as hell wouldn't be from California," Dean muttered.
Sam grimaced. "Yeah, maybe not."
"I'm surprised you wanted to take this job, Sam." At Sam's quick look, Dean went on, "I mean, it's not exactly like California's been good to you."
"It's not like any place has really been good to me," Sam retorted. Then he reached out and patted the dash. "Nowhere with a zip code, at least."
When he realized the compliment Sam had given his baby, Dean beamed as brightly as the California sunshine.
They turned onto a narrow two-lane road sandwiched between a short embankment and trees that might have been redwoods. Beyond the trees, rows of espaliered vines marched along the sloping hillsides. As they rounded a curve, Sam pointed at the small sign advertising the Green Hill Winery. "There."
"At least he's discreet about it," Dean muttered. "Not like all of the other ginormous signs we passed on the way here."
Sam couldn't help but grin at the thought that winemaking was something to carry out in private. "Maybe he doesn't rely on tourism like some of the other wineries we passed."
"Maybe." Dean pulled to a stop in front of a white farmhouse with green trim, rows of grapes growing practically up to the front door. There was a long, low outbuilding behind the house, white-walled and clean. Both buildings looked new, although the farmhouse was clearly imitating a turn-of-the-century style. The driveway turned into a dirt track that wound up the hill past the house, and Sam thought he saw the glimmer of glass or metal in the trees where the road led.
The front door opened, and a man with salt-and-pepper hair came out, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and pressed khakis. "Whaddya want to bet those are Dockers?" Dean asked derisively before climbing out of the car.
Sam hastened to follow suit, taking advantage of his long legs to outpace Dean to the front steps. "Mr. Deveron?" he asked politely.
"Todd, please," he said, extending a hand. "You must be Bobby's boys."
Sam could almost feel Dean stiffen behind him. "I guess so, yeah." He shook Todd's hand, surprised at the calluses he could feel. "I'm Sam, and this is my brother Dean. We do the same kind of work that Bobby did."
"Did?" Todd asked, his eyes narrowing.
"Yeah," Dean replied, giving Todd's hand a brusque shake. "He passed away recently."
"I'm sorry to hear that." He looked genuinely sorry, his chocolate-brown eyes softening behind gold-rimmed glasses. "Was it…a hazard of the job?"
"How did you say you know Bobby again?" Dean asked sharply.
Todd took off his glasses, folding them and putting them in the front pocket of his shirt. "He helped me out with a problem a few years ago. I used to live in San Francisco, in a loft that had been a canning factory. There were these noises at night, things moving around when I wasn't there. And then one of my neighbors was murdered in his locked bedroom, and—" He waved a hand around. "I came home one day to find this guy in a trucker cap knocking a hole in my wall, or at least trying to. Before I could ask him what the hell he was doing, he went flying across the room. Scared the hell out of me, I can tell you."
"I can imagine," Sam said in his best interview voice.
"He had this little bag in his hand," Todd went on, "and he said he had to get it inside the wall. There was stuff flying around the room, books and papers and some of the kitchen utensils, and so I grabbed the bag and shoved it in this hole in the wall where a brick had fallen out that I hadn't gotten fixed. Everything went crashing to the ground, and there was this shriek, and then silence."
"Sounds like a poltergeist," Dean said.
"Yeah, that's what Bobby said." Todd ran a hand through his hair in what looked like a familiar move. "I promised I wouldn't call the cops if he explained what had happened, and he did. Said I took it really well, but after what I'd just seen…" He shook his head. "He told me to call if anything else like that ever happened, but I moved out of there as fast as I could. It was just too weird, you know? Besides, it was the late 90s, and I could tell the writing was on the wall. I cashed out my dot-com chips, bought this place, and went from writing code to growing grapes. Bobby stopped by once or twice when he was in the area, but I can't believe I still had his number after all these years."
"So the same thing is happening again?" Sam asked, already running through his mental encyclopedia of spirits and shades to find something that could have resurfaced over a decade later.
"Not exactly." Todd shifted his feet, work boots that were incongruous with his khakis kicking up small puffs of dust. "Bobby told me what was in that little bag, and I made four of them and put them in the walls, but it hasn't made a difference. I think it made things worse, actually."
"In here?" Sam asked, gesturing at the farmhouse.
"No, not in there." Todd drew in a deep breath. "Look, I know you guys were close with Bobby. He used to talk about you, and he didn't really talk about people, you know? But I need to know that you will keep completely confidential anything that you see on my property."
"Don't worry, we know that the wine industry is highly competitive," Dean said with an impressively straight face.
Todd grimaced. "That's not it."
Sam exchanged a quick glance with Dean. "We're always discreet," he said. "If you trusted Bobby, you can trust us."
"All right." Todd drew in a breath. "It's up the hill in the trees."
They followed him up the dirt track, the sun beating down on their backs. Sam was sweating under his grey t-shirt, but it felt good to be outside, walking around. The vineyard was certainly picturesque, and the higher they climbed, the better the view was of the green-and-gold patchwork around them. In the distance, he saw the curve of trees that indicated the Russian River, tumbling down towards the Pacific.
They rounded a curve in the track and crossed a small stream running down the hillside, sheltered by spreading oak trees. Next to the stream was a narrow but long shack, the foundation looking much older than the building itself. The walls looked like plywood, and as they got closer, Sam could see that the door was ajar, a pale glow emitting from within as if from fluorescent lights. The low hum of a gasoline generator came from the far side of the shack.
"It's in there," Todd said, not looking at either one of them. "The trouble. Things moving around, strange noises at night, almost like laughter."
"Is this part of your winemaking operation?" Sam asked, his brow furrowed.
Dean chuckled and clapped a hand to his shoulder. "Not exactly, Sammy boy." He started forward before Sam could object.
It took about three seconds in the shack and one inhaled breath for him to realize what Dean meant. There weren't grapevines in here under rows of fluorescent tubes. They were five-pointed leaves, and the sweet scent filling the greenhouse was familiar from Sam's college days.
Dean inhaled deeply, a grin spreading over his face. "Now this is a vintage I can get behind."
Sam whirled to look at Todd, who was hovering in the doorway. "You're growing pot in your vineyard?"
Todd shrugged sheepishly. "I was doing fine with grocery and internet sales of my wines until the recession hit. I was going to lose my vineyard if I didn't come up with some way to pay the bills. I've never been big on having tourists stop by, so it didn't seem like that much of a risk. I put it up a couple of months ago, and the first crop is almost ready."
"How do you know it's not just kids trying to get a freebie who are moving things around in here?" Dean asked, fingering a leaf almost absentmindedly.
"Because it's happened while I've been in here." Todd pointed to a stack of small paper bags on a long table next to a jumble of empty pots, half-empty potting soil bags, and spare light bulbs. "Those moved across the room when I turned my back. And these little muddy footprints appeared near the doorway while I was watching. And then last week, the mailman said he saw me on the front porch when I was up here at the time."
Sam looked at Dean, the same question clearly on both of their minds. Before they could ask it, Todd huffed, "And no, I was not sampling my product at the time. It's like in my loft in San Francisco. Something weird is going on."
Sam nodded. They were being paid by this guy; at least they could take him seriously to start with. "I'll need to know the history of this place," he said, sweeping one arm around. "The farmhouse, the vineyard, this building, all of it."
"I built this building a few months ago," Todd shrugged. "I built the house and the shed when I moved here. As for the rest, I can show you the deed, but I don't know much more than that."
"Looks like it's library time for you, Sam," Dean said. He settled down on a stool in front of the long table and surveyed the rows of plants, a gleam in his eye. "I think I'll keep an eye on things here."
Thankfully, the drive back down to Santa Rosa took only a few minutes. The county recorder was as helpful as county recorders usually were in Sam's experience, thrilled to have someone come by who was genuinely interested in their job and their expertise. After an hour of local history lessons on top of the hour it took to find the paperwork in the first place, Sam was more than ready to call it a day. He grabbed In-n-Out burgers before heading back to Green Hills, leaving only a handful of fries for Dean to make a point.
He was half expecting to find Dean smoking a joint when he got back, but what he saw almost had him reaching for his silver knife. Dean and Todd were sitting on the front porch of the farmhouse, each with a glass of straw-yellow wine in their hands.
Sam climbed the steps and tossed the burger bag in Dean's lap. "I hope you saved some of that for me," he snarked, nodding at the wine.
"There's more in the fridge," Todd said, standing up. "Let me get you a glass."
Once he was inside, Dean rolled his eyes and tipped his glass over the edge of the porch, watering the begonias with his wine. "He's paying us," he muttered. "I gotta at least pretend to be into to the stuff."
Sam snickered. "Right. Listen, I think I might have something."
"Indian burial ground?" Dean asked. "That was my first guess."
"No sign of one. There've been a few failed attempts at vineyards before, but I don't think that's it. If there is a restless spirit, it's probably Russian."
Dean squinted up at him. "Russian?"
"Russian?" Todd came out the front door and handed a wine glass to Sam.
Sam accepted the glass, almost feeling Dean's smirk on him. "Yeah. They settled on the coast here. You ever heard of Fort Ross?"
"Yeah, it's a state park just up the coast on the 1," Todd said. "What about it?"
"It's really Fort Rus," Sam explained. "It was the farthest south the Russians got in North America. That's why the Russian River runs through here, although they called it the Slavyanka. They tried to make a go of it for a few years but weren't successful enough to stick around. The tsar called them back home only a couple of years before gold was discovered."
Dean whistled. "Now there's an alternate history for you."
Nodding, Sam went on, "There were a few settlements inland, but they've never been accurately located. I think your land has one of them, Todd."
Todd pointed up towards the hill. "You mean that old foundation?"
"It's on a creek with access to the sea, and there's no record of anyone else settling here. Even the people you bought the land from lived in Sebastopol, not on the property."
"So do we know who lived here?" Dean asked. "Or more importantly, who died here?"
Sam shook his head. "The lady in the recorder's office said I'd have to check the historical society. But if any Russian settlers died here, they were probably buried at Fort Ross, because there was Orthodox consecrated ground there."
"Let's hope the state park service marks its graves well," Dean muttered.
The night passed quietly enough, with each of the Winchesters in a guest room upstairs in the farmhouse. Sam found it strange to be alone in the room when he woke up, no second bed next to him with Dean lightly snoring or only rumpled sheets to indicate that he'd slept at some point. Dean's sleep patterns didn't seem to have changed after his brief trip to Purgatory, whether because it really was too short to make an impression or because he was sleeping like crap anyway. Sam had noticed that he hadn't replaced Bobby's flask, though, which was one positive sign.
Sam showered and dressed before going downstairs, poking his head into the other guest room to see Dean still sound asleep. When he went downstairs, Todd was nowhere to be seen, but given that the sun had been up for a few hours, Sam wasn't surprised. Even if his winery wasn't as successful as he'd like, there was surely still a lot of work to do, and then there was the matter of his other business.
Figuring the grow house was the best place to start, at least to see if anything else had happened overnight, Sam climbed the hill towards the shack. As he gained altitude, he could see wisps of fog in the valleys towards the coast, but where they were, it was sunny and bright.
The door of the shack was open when he reached it, which gave him pause. Todd seemed more cautious than that. Once Sam saw the small, muddy footsteps on the threshold, he drew his silver knife and started moving more cautiously.
Peering inside, he saw that the place was a shambles. The sharply sweet scent of marijuana was stronger than it had been yesterday, probably because one section of lights had become detached and was crushing a row of plants. The sinking feeling that had started when he noticed the open door turned into full-on dread when he saw a work boot sticking out from a khaki-covered leg against the far wall.
Todd Deveron was lying quiet and still on the rough wooden floor of the shack, looking like he was asleep, at least until Sam noticed the blue tinge to his lips. A check of his pulse confirmed that sleep wasn't the case—the man was dead. Sam sighed and sat back on his heels. Whatever this spirit was, it had escalated.
"Sam!"
He whipped his head up to see Dean bursting through the doorway. "What's wrong?" Sam asked, bounding to his feet.
Dean drew in a deep breath. "I got up and no one was there. But you're here, so…" He gestured and then dropped his hand to his side. "Why are you here?"
Sam could read on his brother's face a flash of the same panic that he'd felt when Crowley had left him in the SucraCorp lab, that momentary terror at being completely alone. It was already fading behind Dean's usual stoicism, so instead of commenting on it, he said, "Looking for Todd." He gestured down to the body.
Dean grimaced. "Shit."
They decided to split up, Dean dropping Sam off at Santa Rosa College to comb the library for anything that might help them identify their spirit, while Dean headed out to Fort Ross to do the same. By the time they met up again, Sam had a headache from the microfiche reader, but at least he knew what they were up against.
"I got nothin'," Dean said as soon as Sam got into the car. "The interpretive guide at the fort said they don't have complete records of all of the Russians who ever settled here, thanks to the 1906 earthquake. And there's a couple hundred graves over there, so unless we have some way to narrow it down, that's too much digging to do without being noticed."
"Good thing we won't have to dig," Sam replied. Dean was pulling back onto the street, so he only grunted to indicate, Go on. "I think it's a domovoi."
Dean paused, scrunched his eyebrows, and then shook his head. "I don't know that one."
"It's a Russian house spirit. Not just Russian, it's in a lot of Slavic cultures, but what's important here is the Russian, right?" At Dean's impatient gesture, he went on, "They're protective spirits of the house, kind of like guardians. They look like little men with long, tangled hair, or sometimes they appear as the owner of the house to someone from outside the family, like Todd said happened with the mailman. As long as you take care of them, they do things for the family and protect their house and crops and livestock."
"Let me guess, if you don't give them everything they ask for, they aren't so protective?" Dean asked.
"Kind of. It's not so much about giving the spirit what it wants for itself, it's about taking care of the house. If the owners are neglectful of their property or don't maintain the house and the yard, the domovoi starts playing tricks on them. Moving things around, making noises, things like that. That's why they're said to be related to poltergeists."
"And if the neglect is bad enough, they kill the homeowner?" Dean gave a short shake of his head. "That doesn't seem like a good way to get the house taken care of."
"It's not typical, no. I figure this one has been neglected for so long that when Todd built the shack over the foundation and then made it a grow house instead of a people house, the domovoi really got pissed off." Sam shrugged. "They were said to threaten to smother the master of the house in his bed if things went on long enough."
"Might not have been in his bed, but that does look like what happened." They turned into the driveway of the vineyard. "Okay, so how do we get rid of it? Same way as a poltergeist?"
"Todd said he tried that already."
Dean snorted. "Some dot-com dude who watched Bobby try to put a hole in his trendy loft might not have known exactly what he was doing. I say we start with that and then come up with Plan B."
"Sounds good." Sam held up his backpack. "I stopped in town and got the supplies we'd need for that anyway."
"Good thinking." Dean glanced at the bag. "Todd didn't strike me as the type to have a full container of salt around the house, and we're running low."
"I'm not sure it would work anyway," Sam replied. "One of the ways to attract a domovoi was to put out salted bread for it."
"Seriously?" Dean groaned and shifted the car into park. "What kind of spirit wants salt with their bread?"
They assembled the little bags and climbed the hill to the grow house, where they faced a new problem. "There aren't any walls," Sam said as they stared at the sheets of plywood that formed the sides of the shack. "Not thick enough to stick these into."
Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth. "Maybe in the foundation, then? Since that's what's kept the thing there all these years? "
They warily poked around the stone foundations until they found loose stones to secret the bags behind, all the time keeping their eyes peeled for anything suddenly flying around the room. When Sam put the final bag into the foundation, they simultaneously let out a sigh and then looked at each other sheepishly. "That was too easy," Dean said. "Especially since this place is a bigger mess than it used to be and the thing's probably even more ticked off."
"And no sign that it made a difference," Sam said. "Guess we're coming up with Plan B."
Dean had plucked a leaf off one of the plants and was rolling it between his fingers. "You know, Sam, it would be a shame for all of this to go to waste."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Can we wait until after the job is done?"
"Yeah, of course." Then Dean narrowed his eyes. "You didn't say no."
"You don't need my permission, Dean. And it's not like telling you no would stop you, anyway."
"True," Dean agreed cheerfully. "Okay, so what's our Plan B?"
There was a creaking noise from the doorway, and when they turned to look, they saw small, muddy footprints forming on the wooden floorboards. "I don't know, but we better think of it quick," Sam said, eyeing the footprints as they slowly advanced towards him.
"Hey, little ugly!" Dean called, but the footprints didn't turn their path.
Sam drew the silver knife from his jacket and dropped into a crouch, wondering when he was going to see the thing advancing on him. He thought he saw a shadow at about knee height, and he started moving sideways, hoping to circle around towards the door and either get out or at least lure the thing into the sunlight.
The footsteps slowly followed, and Sam crossed his fingers as he stared backing out of the shack. The domovoi had to be tied to the foundation, but it was probably also able to move around what had been the yard associated with the house, so he wasn't sure how far he had to go. Dean was watching closely, looking at the space above where the footprints were forming, but Sam could tell that he couldn't see the spirit either.
Then there was a rush of air, and Sam was flat on his back, knife skittering out over the hard-packed dirt. He only had time to draw a breath before something was covering his mouth and nose, blocking his air. He couldn't see it, and it only took a second to realize that his arms were pinned down, too.
"Sam!" Dean shouted. He slid to his knees on the ground next to Sam and delivered a solid punch to the air over his face that hit something, given the way Dean rebounded back onto his ass.
The pressure eased for a second, and Sam grabbed a gulp of air and tried to roll away. Something pushed him farther, so that he was face-down in the dirt, breathing blocked again and chest heaving to no avail.
"Damn it!" Dimly, Sam heard Dean scrambling to his feet, boots scraping on the ground as he raced back towards the shack. He really hoped Dean had a plan in mind, because the world was starting to go grey at the edges, his limited view of dirt and rocks fading as the domovoi continued to smother him.
There was the sound of liquid pouring onto the ground, but Sam was having trouble hearing anything but the pounding of his own heartbeat, faster and more frantic as his body struggled to find air. The grey in his vision was turning to black, and he felt the strength leaving his limbs.
FWOOMP!
The unmistakable sound of a fire catching shot through Sam's foggy mind, and a second later, he felt the heat on his legs. There was a screech, and the pressure on his face suddenly let up. Heaving in gulps of air, Sam crawled up onto his hands and knees, head hanging down.
"Sam!" Dean was crouching beside him, one careful hand on his back. "You okay?"
He lifted one hand long enough to give Dean a thumbs up and then returned to the important task of breathing. Dean's hand stayed on his back until his breathing returned to almost normal. God, his chest hurt.
The heat from the fire was what made him finally stagger to his feet, and he turned to see the shack in flames. There was a small, dark figure writhing in the doorway, and as they watched, it emitted a piercing shriek and exploded in a burst brighter than the fire itself.
"Good thing there was a spare gasoline can next to the generator," Dean finally said.
"Yeah." Sam took in a slow, deep breath, enjoying the feeling. "Thanks."
"Anytime." Dean clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Say, we're not in a hurry to get out of here, are we?"
Sam looked around. They were near the top of the hill, and although they were within a clump of oaks, the smoke from the burning shack would be visible soon over the treetops. "This area's pretty dry," he said. "The fire department probably keeps a careful watch around here."
"Damn." Dean gestured at the burning building. "'Cause that is like the world's biggest blunt right there."
As Sam drew in another breath, he slowly realized that maybe it wasn't just the pleasure of breathing freely again that he was feeling, and that it wasn't just the lingering effects of his near-asphyxiation that made his head feel hazy. "But it's not as concentrated as in a cigarette," he argued. He waved a hand at the shack. "Even if it is a shitload of leaves."
It wasn't until he felt Dean's hand gripping his arm that he realized he was swaying where he stood. "And you just inhaled how much of it as fast as you could?" Dean asked wryly. "C'mon, stoner boy, let's get out of here before the red trucks show up."
"'M not stoned," Sam muttered, obediently turning to follow Dean down the hillside. "'M breathing."
"Yeah, you are," Dean said softly, one hand on his shoulder. "Which means I'm good."
