Supernatural: One Year Gone by Rebecca Dessertine Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t sure if he was able.
    Thirty minutes went by before he could roll off his back and sit up. All around him the grass was scorched black and flattened by the epic fight between the two powerful angels. Everything was super bright, his eyes burned.
    A car drove past on the nearest road, the sound startling him. He realized his ears were still ringing. He had no clue how long he had been gone. Or how he’d got out.
    He pulled his shirt off his shoulder—but there wasn’t a hand-mark on him like Dean had had when he was brought back by Castiel. He didn’t have a bruise or a scratch on him. How had this happened? The last thing he remembered was jumping into the pit, and then a soul-searing pain. That was it.
    He stumbled out of Stull Cemetery disoriented and alone. He headed north and hit Route 70. A big rig had picked him up and offered him a ride down the road to Topeka. Once in Topeka he had realized he wanted to check on one thing.
    Sam caught the date on a flat-screen TV in a coffee shop and realized he hadn’t been gone for very long at all.
    Though not much time had passed, there was a profound difference in the way Sam felt. Namely—great. He felt like his legs had a strange sense of purpose, like they were more self-assured. He held his body differently, he felt stronger, broader, more vital. Yes, there was definitely a difference in Sam.
    He quickly realized the potential of his situation; he could be anyone, do anything. No one was waiting for him any longer; there was no one to tell him he was messing everything up—again. No one to tell him that he couldn’t do something or that he wasn’t living up to what was expected of him.
    Like Dean.
    For the first time in a long time, Sam felt free. But he needed to check and make sure. For that reason, he went to Lisa Braeden’s house and confirmed that Dean had shown up. He saw Dean, glass of Scotch in hand, sitting at the dinner table and Sam knew this was how it should be. Dean should be in there, and he should be outside. In the world. A new person.
    It took him two days to get new credit cards and pick up a new Dodge Charger courtesy of some falsified loan documents. Sam didn’t want to go to any of their old haunts so he found a different black market, a small brick warehouse on the south side of Chicago, where he purchased a couple of unregistered guns. Sam knew what he had been brought back for. He was here to hunt. There was an ache inside him and he knew exactly what food to feed it: pure, unadulterated hate.
    Sam holed up in a crappy motel with a new computer, he guessed Dean had kept his old one, and started combing the local news.
    He stayed up all night, meticulously looking at each picayune site. And then he found an interesting little titbit. A whole spate of cow mutilations in a small town in North Dakota. Every animal was found drained of blood, the throat ripped out, but there weren’t any signs of tire tracks or animal prints. Could be a werewolf, or something cryptozoological. Whatever, it was a case.
    Sam started his investigation by examining the dozens of comments on the news site. Just about all of them complained that the new sheriff, Sheriff Littlefoot, wasn’t doing anything to help the local ranchers. They blamed his inaction on him being an out-of-towner who didn’t understand the town’s need for answers.
    Sam roared into town in his Charger, sussed out which ranchers had been victimized and swiftly interviewed them. Not that it told him much. The hard-working, hard-living ranchers were fed up with guys in offices not doing anything for them. They needed answers.
    Posing as a park ranger, Sam rented a four-wheeler and went out to the site of the mutilations. The sky was big and the plains were wide. Even as he stood knee-deep in cow intestines, for the first time in a long time Sam felt he was enjoying his life.
    That night Sam kept vigil on a barstool in the local saloon. He had been eyeing the cute waitress in the