Read Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage for Free Online Page A

registering the details long ago, cleared their plates, Bobby left the booth to settle their check atthe register. With his stomach full and his cup topped off, Dean felt about as content as he ever did between hunting jobs these days. Sam, on the other hand, had already turned his attention to his shiny new laptop—courtesy of Frank Devereaux’s Paranoia Emporium—and flipped through some paper printouts he’d assembled earlier, a clear threat to Dean’s admittedly brief “between jobs” contentment.
    “Dude, did you sleepwalk to a Kinko’s?”
    “Might be onto something …”
    At that moment, Bobby returned from the cashier’s counter with a late edition of the county paper and dropped it on the table in front of them. “Above the fold,” he said. “‘Cannibal Woodsman?’”
    Dean reached for the paper and spun it around, skimming the text for details. “‘Anonymous call leads police to grisly killing grounds … half-eaten … stripped bones… shallow graves… no suspects.’” He pushed the paper back to Bobby and spoke softly. “Got the ‘grisly’ right. But they’ll waste months looking for Jeremiah Johnson with a dog-eared copy of To Serve Man .”
    “You want ’em to find super-sized bird nests?” Bobby asked after checking for any potential eavesdroppers. “Hell, the victims’ families will get closure. Least as much as they’ll ever get.”
    “You’re right. Nobody needs to know Uncle Ed or Cousin Jimmy was a Harpy Happy Meal.”
    “Guys,” Sam said. “I think I have something here.”
    “No rest for the wicked,” Bobby commented.
    “Laurel Hill, New Jersey,” Sam said, looking at theprintouts. “Three roofers fell off the second story of a house yesterday, one after the other. Two broken necks. The third split his skull open. Also broke his neck. The homeowner says they all fell within minutes of one another.”
    “Weird,” Bobby said, frowning, “but not outside the neighborhood of weird coincidence. Laurel Hill?”
    “Why?” Dean asked. “You got something?”
    “It’ll keep,” Bobby said. Then to Sam, “Go on, son.”
    “Few blocks away, couple minutes later, guy on a ladder trimming a tree with a chainsaw falls, slices open his femoral artery and dies on his lawn.”
    “Weird enough for you?” Dean asked Bobby.
    “It gets weirder,” Sam continued, turning his attention from the printouts to the screen. “This morning a mass transit bus driver has a heart attack and drives his bus right through the front window of a fitness center. Guy on a treadmill and a woman on the elliptical machine next to him were killed instantly—”
    Dean leveled an index finger at his brother. “Sammy, don’t ever mock my health choices again.”
    On a roll, Sam let that pass. “Few minutes later, less than a mile away, seventeen car pile-up. Multiple explosions and fatalities.”
    Bobby shook his head. “Sounds like the bad luck fairy ripped Laurel Hill a new one.”
    “I’m game,” Dean said. “Bobby, you in? Or you wanna head back?”
    Bobby scratched his beard at the jaw line, his gaze thoughtful under his trucker’s cap.
    “Something about Laurel Hill?” Sam prompted.
    “Know somebody there might help,” Bobby said. “Emphasis on the ‘might.’”
    “A hunter?” Dean asked.
    “Yes and no.”
    “I’m not even sure I know what that means,” Dean said.
    “Problem in a nutshell,” Bobby said. “I’ll call. He agrees not to slam the door in our faces, we’ll have a basecamp.”
    “If not?”
    Bobby shrugged. “Fleabag or abandoned rat-trap. Pick your poison.”
    Sam drove the Plymouth south on I-87. Bobby followed in his Chevelle, on the phone again with his Laurel Hill contact. The first call, in the diner’s parking lot, had been short, ending with an emphatic hang-up on the other end. But Bobby wasn’t giving up … yet.
    After about fifty miles of silence, Sam glanced at Dean sprawled in the passenger seat, ostensibly relaxed but definitely