An accompanying fic to frostmarris' (tumblr) amazing art!

::

"Don't go into the spooky mansion, Sam said," Dean groaned as he picked himself up from the shattered remains of the fancy wardrobe he'd been chucked into. "There's nothing up with that family, Sam said. It's probably all that sleep you're not get—shit!"

He ducked as a vase soared over his head and shattered against the wall in a rain of white and gold shards. Cold water splashed against the back of his neck and a flower bud brushed against his cheek and he dove to the side through the doorway from the kitchen to the living room.

The ghoul grinned at him with blood on its teeth and looking like the trust fund baby it most definitely gobbled up a few days ago. He didn't know what the hell it'd been thinking though, going after people worth a million bucks. Like, did it not know that the rich ones were always at the top of the cop priority lists?!

Dean fumbled for the iron poker at the corner of the fireplace and brandished it like a baseball bat.

"You talk too much," the ghoul taunted.

"And I really hate that you freaks've been upgrading from compost to freshly picked," he growled.

"What? We can't have a meal then pawn off all the diamond rings and pearl necklaces that just so happen to end up in our pockets when we jump towns for Sunday brunch?" It scoffed and tossed long brown hair over its shoulder. It was even wearing cashmere. "Money is money, and it's hard to hold down a job when all your coworkers smell good enough for dinner. We have to make a living somehow and, well, it's worked for years, hasn't it?"

"Sure, theft and eating people." Dean grimaced as it licked a stripe of blood off the back of its hand. "Sorry to say, but your little spring break pow-wow ends here."

He paused.

"Wait, what do you mean 'we'?"

::

The first thought that came to mind when he pried his eyelids open and tried to focus on the blurry world around him was, Damn, I really gotta get that weird stain off my boots.

The second was, I'm gonna kill that sonuvabitch.

Dean dragged up his chin from his chest and concentrated, his head thumping softly against the pillar he was tied against. It looked like one of those white roman column things you'd find in one of those bougie art museums and, why wouldn't it be in a place that already had an indoor tennis court, a bedroom for each one of their dogs, and a jacuzzi bathtub in each bathroom? His wrists and ankles were bound with rope, and the pillar was wide enough that he couldn't catch a glimpse behind him.

To his right was a set of wide stairs, and to his left a set of ginormous double doors. The space he was in was open and practically empty except for a bunch of odd boxes; ballroom, maybe. Because of course there was also a ballroom in this mansion.

Great. Now how was he going to tell Sam that he was wrong?

"I thought you would be knocked out for a little while longer," a voice admitted from somewhere in his blind spot. Female, adult, a small lilt of a Japanese accent, kind of optimistic if he was being honest. "When she dragged you down the stairs, you looked like you got, ah, mugged by a gorilla."

"Heh, funny that the chances of being jumped by a spook are higher than getting caught up in a zoo escape."

"Right? When I heard your kerfuffle upstairs—"

"Kerfuffle."

"—it sounded like you were only after her. You didn't know that it was a shroud of three ghouls?"

"I mean..." Dean definitely didn't pout. "I mean now I do."

The stranger snorted.

"Laugh at me all you want, but it sounds to me like I wasn't the only one trapped in this hopped up mansion. You tied to one of these Julius Caesar columns too, or...?"

"Yes. I got here, hm, maybe an hour before you did? Another hunter called me about some strange deaths in the area." There was a ruffle of some clothes followed by a wet squeak of rubber soles on the marble floor. "I was impressed when I found out the shroud was picking their victims by how rich and at throats the family was, so the murders could be pinned on anyone who shared the same surname. They get their fresh meat, sell what they steal for extra cash, then they live through a few graves until they pick out their next meal."

He scrunched his brow. "The ghoul upstairs, the one I ran into, it said they've been at this for years."

"At least six as far as the records go," she said, ignoring the angry shit! that spat from his mouth. "They would have had a longer career if they hadn't made mistakes on these recent bodies."

"Teenagers, you know."

Dean craned his head toward the spiraling staircase where the brown-haired ghoul made its way down to them. Blood splattered its jeans and thousand dollar shoes, and dried red stuck to its lips and cheeks and underneath manicured fingernails.

"My sweetheart's still learning the trade and prone to fits when she gets too hungry," it sighed as it strode up to him. He grit his teeth and glared. "But she's getting better. And yes, we slipped up in this town, but in a few weeks in a different state preying on a different family? We'll be in the wind, and you hunters are just going to have to deal with the loss."

There was an insult he hadn't quite formed yet on the tip of his tongue, and he was half deciding whether or not he should threaten the damn thing or spit in its face, but the stranger he had yet to even see beat him to the punch.

"Not a hunter."

The ghoul hummed and disappeared out of Dean's view. He muttered a curse and tugged at his wrists, but all it did was dig the rope deeper into his skin.

"If you're not a hunter," the ghoul mused somewhere from behind, "then what are you? Why put your nose in our business? Why end up as dessert?"

"I'm a research professor," she replied, and if he had to guess, he was pretty sure she's got a smile on. "And this was a favor."

Snap.

The enraged screech that started out from deep within the ghoul's throat abruptly cut off with a squelch and breaking bone before a thump and THUMP followed, like a bunch of meaty weights dropping to the floor. Another ghoul in a fake male meat suit appeared at the top of the staircase and practically soared down it, but before it could even make it off the last step a friggin' knife flew and nailed the thing right between the eyes, sending it stumbling further into Dean's view.

The stranger ran out from behind his column and leapt at the monster, black combat boots locking around its waist as she yanked back the knife and plunged it into the side of its neck and sliced, separating head from body almost effortlessly.

Dean blinked. And blinked a few more times.

"Maa," she sighed as she flicked blood off her blade. He took in what he could of her; she had on a dark red satin letterman with dusty rose sleeves, and embroidered on her back was a peach-colored fox with nine tails that snoozed under a cherry blossom tree. It was probably a kitsune, or at least the more traditional depictions of one, since real kitsunes were more humanoid than fox and... and was her hair really— "I don't normally deal with ghoul cases, but I can't blame Cuevas if he didn't have the time to go through all of everything."

"Uh." Dean knocked around his head for something, anything, to say to the chick that downed two ghouls in two minutes. "Cu-Cuevas?"

She turned around and—oh.

Most of her pink hair was tied up in a messy bun, and the loose strands were gritty and damp with sweat. Her heart-shaped face was cut from cheekbone to jaw, bruises already starting to form under her eye and along her forehead. There were rips in her jeans and smudge of dried blood on her chin, but her bright green eyes were unconcerned as she met his.

Her split lip quirked. "The hunter who called me." She twirled the knife before walking over and crouching to cut the rope at his ankles. Its hilt was bright orange and there was a picture of... ramen? Engraved at the base of the blade. "He was in the area, couldn't flip the heads or the tails of the situation, so he left it to me."

"Then I guess I got lucky that we bumped into each other down here in ol' Mississippi."

She shrugged and moved up to his wrists. "I work in Missouri. It wasn't long of a drive."

"Missouri, nice. I'm a Kansas man myself."

"Nice to meet you, Kansas." Dean breathed out a sigh as he pushed himself off the pillar and rubbed at his wrists. She pressed a few fingers next to the clawed gash on his torso. "I'm Dr. Sakura Haruno, research professor at WashU in St. Louis. And, uh," she chuckled, "it was less us bumping into each other and more of me saving your ass, correct?"

"Hey now, hold on—"

She squinted at his wounds. "The family's guardian dog got you, huh? Not infected, stopped bleeding, manageable." She pat his uninjured side. "I have a first aid kit in my trunk that will work for this just fine."

Sakura took a step back and smiled at his slow, dumbfounded blink.

"I..." Dean cleared his throat and unconsciously straightened as he rolled back his shoulders and offered his hand. "Dean Winchester. And last time I checked, me and you had our hands tied."

"Winchester? Like, the demon-killing, apocalypse-bringing, world-saving Winchesters?"

"Oh, you've heard of us?" He flashed a cheeky grin. She cocked a brow and gripped his outstretched hand in a firm shake. Calluses caught against calluses and the image of a candy-haired researcher elbow-deep in a pile of occult books melted away into something that made more sense. She might have said that she wasn't a hunter, but these were hands meant to hold blades and shoot guns and draw blood. Looking down at the leather of her fingerless gloves, he noted the wear and tear of the black hide; well-loved, well-fought. Small scars nicked in the skin beside some of her calluses, and he wondered what her palms looked like in comparison.

"All bad things, I promise," she nodded, matching his grin with her own just as cheeky, and drew back her hand to push a few flyaway hairs back. "Come on, Kansas. We should find the third ghoul before it jumps on you too."

Dean scoffed. "It's not gonna get the jump on me. Again."

::

It got the jump on him. Again.

To be fair, he was 90% sure a concussion was the cause of why he hadn't noticed the arms coming for him until it was too late.

Him and Sakura had been creeping through the halls, her with her bright ass bowie knife and him with the iron poker he snatched when they backtracked to the living room. For the first ten minutes there was no sign of the third ghoul and by then, he was half-convinced that it took off and ran when it saw that the rest of its shroud got ganked.

"No, they would be angry," she'd murmured. "A big mansion means a big rat labyrinth, and a big rat labyrinth means—"

"—that we're the rats," Dean finished. He ran his tongue against his teeth and rolled one shoulder. "Great. Love being in a horror movie."

It was after they'd passed the movie room, the indoor pool, and the bowling alley—seriously, a bowling alley—that they'd looped around to the north end of the mansion. Sakura suddenly stopped, then so did Dean, and she tilted her head as her fingers flexed over the hilt of her blade.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered.

Then, the jump.

A fist careened into the side of Dean's head, slamming and cracking the hallway wall when he dodged and swung the poker behind him. It caught the thing in the arm, spurting blood. The ghoul bared its teeth and grabbed the lapels of his jacket and threw him down the hall from where they came. He tried to slow his slide but didn't get a chance until his back smacked against the far, far wall. The poker clattered, though his grip kept tight.

One single step was all the ghoul takes—and its first foot forward didn't even get the chance to hit marble when Sakura's arms snaked under the ghoul's armpits from behind to lock her hands behind its neck and holy—

"SHANNARO!"

—she bridged her back to LIFT the damn thing over her and released mid-arch, slamming down the bastard shoulders and neck first. While it was still dazed, Sakura spun around, slammed a knee into its gut, and used both hands to drag the knife through its neck. She stood and kicked the head away from the body.

"Did you just..."

She wiped the blade against the ghoul's jacket. "That was the second time I saved your ass, Kansas."

"You just release-dragon-suplexed that mother," he gaped. "You full on Top Notch Wrestled a ghoul! A whole ass ghoul! That you full-nelsoned, bridged, and suplexed!"

"Yes?"

He stared at the body, the trail of blood, the decapitated head, and then finally to Sakura who stood there with her arms crossed loosely over her chest. Sweat shone on her skin and a little more hair slipped out of her bun to fall in sticky, matted waves.

Dean huffed out a short laugh and smiled, a bit dazed, a bit dazzled. "Awesome."

::

Sakura inspected the Impala's hidden trunk as Dean stuffed the iron poker with the rest of his melee weapons—a souvenir from Barbie's dream house—and peered closely at the dreamcatcher that hung on the right hand side.

"Rowan tree wood, beads most likely made from ibis bone soaked in lamb's blood. This looks like one made specifically to repel witches, fairies, and djinn." She hummed. "Maybe not a dreamwalker, and definitely not a baku. If you were worried about those ones."

"Two seconds lookin' at an old dreamcatcher and you say you're not a hunter?" Dean shut the trunk and walked over to the driver's side to pull open the door. Sakura followed suit and slipped into the passenger's seat.

"Well, if that's how you say it, I'm more a passive than an active." She wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and wrinkled her nose at the bloody sweat that smeared off. "I moved to America almost a year ago, and before, in Japan, I didn't actively seek out the supernatural." Some exasperation leaked into her tone. "I deal with the threats as they come, and seek and provide knowledge for myself and to those who ask."

'Kinda like Bobby,' Dean thought. After that close shave with the Leviathans those handful of years ago that was obscenely close for anything near comfortable, Bobby tended to hang back a little more and keep his nose buried in all the books in both his personal library and the bunker's.

As he slotted the key in the ignition, Sakura patted her pants pockets, moved to her jacket pockets, and finally fished out a small black square in the inner lining. He cast a faintly suspicious look at her hands and at her nails all filed down to the nub. The polish was chipped and red, except for the black that was painted on both her middle fingers.

Ha! Nothing better than flipping people off with style.

Dean jerked his chin at the device. "What's that for?"

"For all the ghouls we put in the dancing room. You should also start to drive."

"Wait, in the ballroom? Why?"

Her thumb pushed a button.

"In the hour I had been at the mansion before your arrival, I found multiple elements that would suggest that those in the house would be linked to being something other than human. The boxes in that, ah, ballroom, were filled with—"

B O O M

"—evidence of all the other families they pretended to be." Dean jerked in his seat and swiveled toward the sound. The windows on the first floor of the mansion exploded outwards in a storm of shards and smoke, and almost on instinct he punched the gas and peeled down the street. Sakura carried on, unconcerned, and dropped the remote back into her pocket. "Pictures, jewelry they kept, some cursed objects. I only planted enough C4 to rid of the bodies and their belongings, but not to damage the structural integrity."

He kept his grip on his steering wheel. Jesus Christ.

"So you just—you suplex ghouls and blow shit up in your free time?" He glanced at her, at the crinkles at the corner of her eyes and the crescent moon and angel wing patches on the sleeve of her left bicep.

"It's very good for stress relief," she grinned. "Better than being a member of a gym."

"You too good for treadmills?"

"I'm not allowed to throw knives at treadmills."

Dean barked out a laugh and zipped out of the neighborhood before any of the residents could so much as catch Baby's model.

::

He reverse parked at a Shell gas station about a mile from the community, right next to a Cherry Red 2005 Ford Mustang. It was a bit of a busted up joint from the dingy pumps to the way the 'S' in the logo in the canopy had its light completely shut off. At three in the morning it was a wasteland. Deserted. Some underpaid attendant was scrolling through his phone in the mart and stickers littered the windows around neon signs for Camels and a functioning ATM.

Dean didn't know much about what the trends were these days, but he guessed there was a concert or event in town sometime this week judging by the bulbs strung up around the glass in some promotional light show that bathed the sidewalk red. While Sakura popped the trunk of the Mustang, he swung into the mart to nab a coke and a slushie—

"So, can I buy you and your bowie a drink?"

"It's the middle of the night and there's blood in my hair. The only 'drink' I will accept is from one of those colorful ice machines at the gas station where I left my car."

—and when he came back out and the attendant was back on his phone, Sakura had her hands on a water bottle and some bandages. Her gloves were tossed next to a can of antiseptic spray, and her sleeves were pushed up mid forearm.

"A blue raspberry ICEE for the badass lady." He grandly proffered the cup she took with an amused smile. "What's the diagnosis, doc?"

"Nothing you haven't dealt with before; cuts that need cleaning, bruises that need cold compresses, a head that needs ibuprofen." Sakura pinched her straw and took a sip, and he took note of her heavily scarred left palm. Probably from drawing blood for rituals and sigils. "I will make sure you are all taken care of before taking my leave."

"Back to your hotel?"

"Back to St. Louis."

He frowned. "That's like, a seven hour drive from here. You can't tell me that after taking down three spooks you're gonna drive all morning back home?"

"It will take six hours if I am stepping. Five if I really mean it." She shrugged and kept sipping. "I have a class to teach at noon and would prefer to make time for a shower and a late breakfast before then. But you," she pointed at him, "will sleep for a few hours minimum before continuing on your way."

"That so?"

"Even a legendary Winchester can look worse for the wear."

"You know, if you stay a while, I can show you how this Winchester's legendary a few other ways," Dean said as he tucked his free hand into his jean pockets. Half the time a line like that would get him some interest and the other half would roll their eyes and stalk away, but Sakura only leaned against a graffitied concrete post and laughed.

"Cute, Kansas. But I believe I'm good."

She patched him up with clinical precision in record time, something Sam could only ever dream of doing, and simply sprayed her own with antiseptic before tossing everything back into her trunk.

Dean rested his arms on the roof of the Impala. "I guess I'll be seeing you around?"

"Maybe." She gave him one last smile, her tongue and part of her bottom lip a bright blue. "If you have any trouble that you cannot crack, stop by the WashU School of Medicine. I might be able to help."

He watched Sakura pull out of the lot and away from the station, twin red tail lights like shining eyes as they grew smaller and smaller in the distance. Dean whistled low and tapped his hood with one hand.

"Damn."

Bzz. Bzz.

Sammy: was it a bust? [4:02 am]

me: im gonna learn how to suplex a ghoul [4:03 am]

Sammy: what??? What does that mean?? [4:03 am]

Sammy: are you serious??? [4:08 am]

Sammy: dean [4:10 am]

Sammy: DEAN [4:11 am]