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

scowling. He had taken one pull from his flask before settling in for the long ride.
    Finally, Sam asked, “Wanna talk about it?”
    “No.”
    “About last night. The harpies.”
    “Still no.”
    “If something’s bothering you …”
    “It’s a job, alright,” Dean said. “Do the job. Get out. Don’t need to sit around toasting marshmallows and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”
    “No. I get it, Dean.”
    Dean was right. It wasn’t like they celebrated a monster kill. Mostly it was a relief. Do the job, because it’s what they did as hunters. No glory, no after-parties. But Sam couldn’t shake the sense that something deeper was troubling his brother. He decided to let it rest.
    Then Dean surprised him.
    “I’m not like you,” he said. “Not anymore.”
    Sam considered that statement before responding. “How so?”
    “Even with a bat in your belfry, you’re okay with everything,” Dean said. “Wrap up one job, turn the page, move on to the next.”
    “Look, Dean,” Sam said, “I know there’s a cost. I give a damn, okay? It’s just … This is what I have. Here. Now. This keeps me … focused.”
    “Right.”
    Sam glanced at his brother again. “Dean, we’re hiding from the Leviathan. We have no idea what their game plan is, no clue how to kill them, but we know they want us off the board. They killed all those people while wearing our faces to neutralize us.”
    “You think maybe I forgot?”
    “So, what? You want to quit?”
    Dean heaved a sigh. “No,” he said softly. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
    “Then what?”
    “That guy on the tree branch,” Dean said. “Broken back, guts ripped out, bleeding.” He shook his head bitterly. “Thepoor son of a bitch never had a chance, Sam.”
    “No.”
    “If we’d got there an hour sooner,” Dean said, slapping his palm down on his knee angrily, “half hour, maybe…”
    They’d had this discussion before. The cruel facts of hunter life: you couldn’t save everyone, you didn’t always arrive in the nick of time, but you took solace in the lives you had saved.
    “We stopped them, Dean,” Sam said. “There won’t be another vic.”
    “Wrong, Sam,” Dean said grimly. “There’s always another one. No matter what we do…”

Four

    On foot again, miles from the multi-car pile-up, Tora strolled along Parry Lane, a suburban street in Laurel Hill. As he walked along the tree-shaded lane, his iron-tipped cane tapped a steady rhythm on the sidewalk, interrupted only when he sensed a human presence inside a house. By opening his third eye, he could see into those homes, like peering through a floating keyhole. Extending his awareness and influence, he sought any opportunity to wield his power. For in exercising his ability, he honed it, made it more responsive to his whims.
    Pausing in front of a two-story Tudor-style home, he stretched his brow, opened his third eyelid the merest slit, and peeked inside.
    The images came to him in short bursts, like excited breaths.
    A harried housewife filled a canvas hamper with clothes for laundering. Instead of making two sensible trips to the washing machine, she piled up soiled clothing from several bedrooms until the hamper overflowed. She carried her burden along the upstairs hallway, her view obstructed by the mound of clothes. Her sneakered foot missed the action figures stacked near the doorway of a child’s bedroom. A sock fell from the pile, unnoticed, and her feet fell on either side of it. Then she turned to the stairwell and failed to notice the cat lying on the second step from the top. The domesticated beast assumed its owner saw him and continued to sprawl on the step.
    The woman’s foot came down on the cat’s tail.
    The cat yowled in pain and bolted.
    Startled, the woman cursed and jerked her foot away. She missed the step and pitched forward. The burden in her arms prevented her from reflexively grabbing the nearest railing. By the time the hamper flew from her hands, her head