Read Supernatural Fresh Meat for Free Online Page B

“We were there.”
    Dean felt a punch to his gut at the mention of that day. He always did. He’d gone over it a thousand times, wondering what could have been done differently, how they all could have walked out of that town alive. But they hadn’t.
    Jason’s eyes narrowed. “You sons of bitches. You’re the ones who left them to die?”
    Boom. Punch two to the gut.
    Dean shook his head, horrified. “We didn’t call in the Hellhounds.” He remembered the horror of seeing Jo mortally wounded, of the impossible decision to leave her there so she could take out as many Hellhounds as possible, thus buying them time and their lives. Her mother staying by her side. Jo was all she had left.
    When Jason continued to look angry and dubious, Bobby added, “You think all three of us wouldn’t have traded places with them if we could have?”
    Dean felt an unwelcome constriction in his throat and swigged down another gulp of beer. Bobby was right. He usually was.
    Jason frowned, relenting. “I guess so. They were good people, the Harvelles.” He looked up, studying all of them. “You hunters?”
    “Born and raised,” Sam told him. He held out his hand. “Sam Winchester.”
    Jason shook it, lighting up. “Well, hell! I’ve heard of you! The Winchesters! You must be Dean.” He shook Dean’s hand with exuberance. “I’ll be damned.” He turned to Bobby. “And you?”
    Dean watched the skinny bar hand as he wiped tables closer to them. He was clearly eavesdropping.
    “Bobby Singer.”
    Suddenly, the skinny guy dropped his cloth. “No friggin’ way! I thought I recognized you all! Three regular legends in my bar.” He grabbed Bobby’s hand and shook it so hard Bobby slopped some of his beer on the table. Then he shook Sam and Dean’s hands.
    The bartender strolled over. “It ain’t your bar, Jimmy, you lowlife. You can barely scrub the floors right.”
    Jimmy grinned good-naturedly. “This here’s Darla,” he said.
    She nodded at them in greeting.
    Jimmy leaned in conspiratorially. “She killed that vamp nest over in Carson City last month—you know, the ones who were preying on drunk customers leaving the casino over there?”
    Dean lifted his beer and nodded it toward her. “Nice.”
    “Nasty things.”
    Jimmy drew closer, getting uncomfortably in Bobby’s space. “You here huntin’ somethin’?”
    “Now Jimmy,” Darla said, “go back to cleaning the tables.”
    He looked chagrined and said, barely audibly, “Okay.”
    As he turned away, Darla said quietly, “Best to ignore Jimmy. He’s a little excitable.” She glanced around the bar. “Can’t remember that not everyone in here might want to hear what we talk about.”
    “He means well, though,” Jason said in his defense.
    “So, are you a hunter, too?” Dean asked Jason.
    “Jason’s been in the biz for a long time,” Darla said. “Long as I can remember.”
    The hunter looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, but his face was so weather-beaten it was hard to tell. Dean wondered if he’d been raised in the life, too.
    “My mom,” Jason said.
    “Huh?”
    “You were wondering if by ‘long time’ she meant my family had been in the business.”
    Dean nodded. “Hard life for a kid.”
    “That it was.” He took a sip of his beer. “That it was.” He looked at Dean and Sam, appraising them. “I knew your dad, actually.”
    Sam turned his attention away from Darla. “You did?”
    “Well, in passing, when he’d come into the roadhouse. I was green as hell back then. A teenager. The stories he’d tell used to scare the hell out of me.” He laughed. “He was an intense son of a bitch.”
    Bobby lifted his second shot of whisky. “That he was.” He downed it in one gulp.
    Dean felt a small pang of jealousy. So this guy had helped his dad out while, what, Dean was on another case? Had his dad sent him on some research errand while this guy was actually hunting with him in person? Not for the first time, Dean