Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage Read Free

illegally imported birds.”
    Sam and Dean had spent a week investigating multiple disappearances in the Adirondacks. The victims had been young and old; several solitary joggers, a night shift worker on a smoking break, a woman walking her Pomeranian, a camper who wandered off to answer a call of nature, an insomniac who stepped out on his balcony for some fresh air, and a hiker who had left his group for a more challenging ascent. All the victims had been out alone after dark. Otherwise, no similarities, no pattern an FBI profiler would ever unravel. Families received no ransom calls or notes. No bodies were found. There were no witnesses. No fresh tire tracks or suspicious vehicles lurking in the area of the disappearances. It was as if the victims had vanished off the face of the earth.
    That had the Winchesters—who often found answers outside the box—wondering if someone or, more likely, something had, literally, lifted them off the earth. Sam had made the suggestion first. Dean wondered if they were dealing with dragon abductions again, but fellow hunter Bobby Singer noticed a dark, grimy feather on the side of the road near where the police had found the cowering Pomeranian. Return trips to several of the crime scenes turned up a few more feathers.
    After reviewing the timeline, they determined that the first disappearance—a jogger—occurred shortly after the arrival in town of three odd women, the Yerakidis sisters. Their behavior bordered on reclusive, but on rare occasions they would appear in town for supplies, always together, wearing bulky, hooded cloaks, no matter the weather. They talked to one another, heads bobbing together in brief intimate exchanges, but rarely spoke to anyone else. According to clerks in stores they patronized, they seemed to lack social skills, resisting attempts by anyone to engage them in casual conversation.
    “Go! Away!” the shrill voice repeated.
    Sam shrugged, unsurprised by the hostile reception.
    Dean raised his fist to knock on the door, but paused when it was yanked open.
    The hooded head of a woman with a pinched face darted forward through the foot-wide gap in the doorway, as if she meant to bite Dean. She had black marble eyes over a hooked nose and a wide, almost lipless mouth.
    “Last warning,” she squawked, her words punctuated with a blast of foul breath.
    Before Dean could utter a reply, she slammed the door in his face.
    They heard the deadbolt click, followed by an eerie silence.
    Dean nodded and took a step back. “On my count,” he said to Sam, who moved beside him. “One, two … three!”
    The combined force of their kicks smashed the deadbolt free of the weathered doorjamb and the door burst open, rattling on rusty hinges. Pulling their automatics, they entered the house, backs to each other as they sighted along the muzzles of their pistols.
    A mixed bag of threadbare and damaged furniture cluttered the first floor. Boxes lined the walls, stacked high enough in places to block several windows and cast the rooms into unnatural gloom. Everything looked as if it hadbeen abandoned by the prior tenants.
    A sudden movement caught Dean’s attention.
    A cloaked figure pitched toward him.
    He held his fire at the last moment, recognizing an empty cloak draped over a coat rack. But who had —
    Behind him, Sam’s gun roared.
    There was another blur of movement as something swooped toward him from the stairwell landing. His own shot missed as it crashed into him, knocking him over the back of a grimy sofa onto an oval coffee table that collapsed under his weight, taking Dean’s breath away.
    In the fall, Dean had lost his gun. Expecting an immediate follow-up attack, he rolled to the side and grabbed a detached table leg to wield as a makeshift club. Instead, the wooden leg became a crude shield as one of the sisters hurled a crumbling cardboard box filled with hardbound books at him.
    Across the room, Sam ducked and leaned away from a flurry of claw