CHAPTER FIVE

Sam and Dean waited in the doorway of the small hospital room. The girls they had saved from the gowrow laid in separate cots, each one with an IV line running out of her hand. Mr. and Mrs. Roads sat in blue plastic chairs between them, watching their sleeping forms. The younger girl, Lynn, had yet to regain consciousness at all since her rescue. Mrs. Roads held Lynn's tiny hand in her own, gently rubbing it in small circles, while faint traces of tears shone on her cheeks.

Mr. Roads looked up at the brothers, though he didn't make a move to rise from his seat by his daughters' sides. "I don't know how we can thank you enough. If I hadn't met you yesterday..." He closed his eyes, as though that would block the mental image of his daughters never being found.

"I'm just glad we could help," Dean said. He shifted uncomfortably by the door. The emotional reunion between the girls and their parents was slightly discomforting to him.

There was a small rustle of sheets. "Mom?" croaked a raspy voice. "Where...mom, where am I, what's going on..."

Mrs. Roads' attention quickly shifted to her older daughter. "Mel, shh, it's okay, I'm here, Dad's here...you were missing for a few days, and now you're back in the hospital. Do you remember that?"

The girl's eyes widened slightly. "Mom...there was a monster, it was going to eat us...it's coming back!"

"No...Mel, you're just a little confused. It's all okay, you're safe now..." Mrs. Roads stroked her daughter's hair soothingly. After a mumbled contradiction, Melody's eyelids slipped shut and she fell asleep again. Mrs. Roads heaved a tired sigh and slumped back against her chair heavily.

Sam gave Dean's shoulder a slight shake to turn him away from the scene. "We should probably get going. We've got...things to take care of, you know." Sam shot him a pointed look.

"Um...oh. Yeah. That thing." Dean gave the family another glance. "I hope, uh, everything works out for you guys."

Mr. Roads briefly quirked his lips at them, though his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Thank you so much for your help, gentlemen. If there's anything we could ever do to repay you..."

"That won't be necessary. So, uh, good luck with everything." Sam gestured out the door. "Come on Dean, let's go," he said in a lower tone of voice.

The Winchesters quickly left the grieving family behind and got out of the hospital as fast as possible. At the Impala, Sam paused to look across the hood at Dean. "So we have two options: one, leave town forever and hope that gowrow just decides to leave people alone from now on. Two, we head back to the Devil's hole and try to kill the bastard, even though we still don't really know what we can even do against it." Sam leaned against the car door. "Bullets to the eye seem to be working, but beyond that I don't think there's much we can do."

Dean propped his elbows on the car. There were a few seconds of silence as he thought. "Well," he said. "We can't exactly just leave the thing to kill more people. Guess it's option two, then." He ran his hand through his hair. "What did they do back in the eighteen hundreds to kill it off? They didn't have handguns like we did."

"They still had guns back then, Dean." Sam rubbed his head, trying to remember what his scant research had turned up on gowrows. "I think there was something about getting a sword between the thing's scales, though. And then, you know, into its lungs."

"We don't have a sword."

"I know that!" Sam said exasperatedly. "But we've got plenty of knives. And those are...sort of like swords."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, and Star Wars is sort of like Star Trek. Doesn't mean you should ever mix those two up." Sam started to protest, but Dean interrupted him. "Yes, I know, I don't have any better ideas and it's the best we've got to deal with." Dean rubbed his face in frustration. "If we die, I swear I'll kill you." With that, they simultaneously opened the car doors and slid inside.

The bumpy drive back to the Devil's Hole jostled both the Impala's shocks and the boy's nerves. "So the plan is to wait until dark when the thing's most active, and then go at it with the Taurus and the hunting knives," Dean said, for the third time.

"And you're taking the Taurus while I'm taking the knives," Sam added.

"And how do we lure it out of its hole?"

"By throwing stuff down it or yelling or something. I still think it's going to be in the lake though. Most of the websites said it hunted there during the night."

Dean sighed. "So we might end up fighting it under water? Freakin' fantastic..."

Sam quickly reached out and jerked the wheel as an animal jumped across the road. "Careful, Dean!"

Dean swerved as whatever it was scampered away. He switched on his headlights. "It's darker up here already," he noticed. "We might not have to wait very long to go after this thing." Another animal, some sort of opossum, ran across the road that Dean narrowly avoided. "What the hell? Where are all these animals coming from?" he grumbled.

Off to the right of the road, the trees rustled, and out of nowhere the gowrow itself burst in front of the car in hot pursuit of another opossum. Dean and Sam both shouted in surprise, and Dean barely managed to spin the wheel sharply and skid to a stop right before hitting the massive lizard. Without a moment's hesitation, Sam and Dean leapt out of the car, weapons in hand. The gowrow turned from its smaller prey to investigate the brothers. Dean didn't wait to fire off three shots, two of which reflected off the scaly armor and nearly buried themselves in Dean's arm. The third found its way in between two plates and pried them open.

Sam dove forward, one knife raised threateningly while the other was sheathed in his belt loop. He tried to drive the blade into the chink in the gowrow's scales but missed by a few inches. The gowrow twisted to face the new attacker. Its long tusks nearly took off Sam's head.

"Sam, get back!" Dean shouted. But neither his brother nor the gowrow paid him any attention. The gowrow kept its bloodied eyes trained on Sam and snapped menacingly at him. Sam swiped at the gowrow again, but it countered the strike with its pointed tail.

"I've got an idea, Dean," Sam called. "But you're not gonna like it."

Dean shot the gowrow in the eye again, which only succeeded in angering it more. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Just follow my lead!" Sam ducked beneath the swinging tail and then jumped up onto the gowrow's back. The gowrow barked out in surprise, and pitched forward to try and buck Sam off. Sam jammed the hunting knife deep between two scales close to him and cut down into the muscle beneath. The gowrow wailed and writhed, but Sam clung to the handle of the knife and managed to hang on. Enraged, the gowrow barreled into the thicket away from the road with Sam still desperately clutching the knife in its back.

Dean took off behind the gowrow, doing his best to keep up with the impossibly fast monster. The gowrow slithered gracefully between the tree trunks, as though it was swimming underwater. It was only through stubborn will-power that Sam was able to stay on its back for the entire ride. The gowrow raced into the clearing where Sam and Dean had fought it before and promptly dove into the deep lake, taking Sam down with him before Dean could catch up.

Skidding to a halt at the water's edge, Dean frantically looked for any sign of his brother. "Sam!" he called out, but silence was his only answer.

Under the water, Sam maintained his iron grip on the knife handle while he fought against the sudden blast of frigid water. The beast struggled to shake him loose. They barreled towards the sandy bottom of the lake, where the gowrow flipped onto its back and nearly crushed Sam against the silt. Sam narrowly avoided death by shifting his position to be hanging on practically underneath the gowrow. He drew his other knife and was about to stab into the softer underbelly of the monster when the gowrow flung up its tail in a parry against the blade. Sam blinked in surprise and nearly released his grip on the first knife. The gowrow snarled silently and tried to cut Sam open with its sharpened tail. Sam blocked the attack and sliced at the gowrow's tail. There was an odd screeching noise as the metallic objects collided with each other. Sam once again countered a strike to his neck and barely slipped beneath a swipe from the gowrow's claws. A lucky cut took off one of the gowrow's fingers, causing it to scream and momentarily take its focus off of Sam. Taking advantage of the monster's distraction, Sam plunged the knife up through the belly scales and straight into the creature's heart.

There was a second of stillness as blood started to pour out of the cavity in the gowrow's chest. Then, with an unearthly shriek that pierced Sam's ears painfully, the gowrow began to twitch and convulse. Sam ripped the knife out of the gowrow, causing even more blood to cloud the water in front of him. The death throes of the howling gowrow rippled through the water as the dying lizard tried to take a final swipe at Sam's head but missed.

Sam's lungs were burning for oxygen. He released his grip on the knife in the gowrow's back and pushed off from the shuddering carcass. He swam as fast as he could for the surface of the icy water. Black dots began to swim in his vision and the freezing water made his muscles lethargic, but he pushed on as quickly as possible.

Dean paced along the edge of the lake, trying to stem the rising tide of worry inside himself. At the sound of a splash from the middle of the water, he raised his gun to firing position, expecting to see a furious gowrow. Instead, a powerful wave of relief washed over him when he saw it was Sam, minus the angry gowrow. He rushed into the water to help Sam drag himself out of the lake.

"What were you thinking, Sam? Riding a gowrow into a lake?" Dean said, trying to mask his concern with disapproval. Sam just smiled at him, seeing through the angry facade. Dean slapped him on the back and helped pull him to his feet. "So it's dead then? No more gowrow issues?"

"No more gowrow issues," Sam confirmed.

"Awesome. What do you say we get the hell out of Dodge?"

Sam put the knife back into its sheath in his belt, not caring about the blood stains that were sure to follow. "Sounds good to me. I'm done with Arkansas for a long time."

Dean clapped him on the shoulder and they set off for the Impala waiting for them back at the road. "Me too, Sam. Me too."

THE END