TWO

Two minutes in, and Dean was gone.

Preferring a more cautious approach, Sam took in their surroundings. The setting sun leached all color from the graffiti decorating the drab and cracked walls of the abandoned three-story factory that dominated this particular city block of urban decay. A poured concrete foundation supported a ground floor of bleached cinderblock beneath two additional stories of faded and crumbling red brick. The hundreds of upper level windowpanes, perhaps intended to provide visual relief from the oppressive monotony of brick, had been transformed into endless daggers of glass, which caught the fading light in a golden glow and seemed to set the condemned structure ablaze. Whatever dark secrets the building held, they were hidden from the street view.

At some point after the factory closure, most likely after the majority of the graffiti artists tagged the then-fresh urban canvas, the building owners had erected a cyclone fence topped with loops of barbed wire around the perimeter, in case the metal No TRESPASSING – PRIVATE PROPERTY sign—now tagged as well—affixed to the padlocked gate provided insufficient deterrent.

Rather than scale the fence and navigate the barbed wire, Dean had removed a pair of bolt cutters from the trunk of the Impala and made short work of the padlock. Then, exchanging the bolt cutters for a long-handled ax, Dean slipped through the gate, told Sam to take the front, and sprinted toward the rear of the forgotten factory.

“Dean!” Sam whispered, too late for his brother to hear, and shook his head in resignation. Not that they needed a big discussion or an elaborate plan, but he doubted their quarry had any intention of slipping out the back and fleeing. And it might have been wise to stick together for this final assault.

After a week of brutal assaults perpetrated by what several terrified eyewitnesses described as strange, mutated beasts, the Winchesters had determined the abominations had somehow been created by the mythological Chimera, a creature described in lore as a lion with the head of a goat rising from its back and a snake’s head for a tail. While the Chimera itself had remained in the shadows during the attacks, a couple of witnesses caught glimpses of its telltale features, but they also had the impression of a massive, lumbering presence, indicating something larger and more fearsome than the sum of the Chimera’s supposed parts. Unfortunately, as the frequency and ferocity of the assaults escalated, the Chimera had become more elusive. The brothers speculated that it had retreated to some kind of lair, a place secluded enough to avoid chance discovery while orchestrating its expanding reign of terror. In order to find it, the Winchesters needed to wait for one of its minions to “escape” a battle long enough to report back to the lair and secretly follow it to its master.

Sam assumed once Dean and he located the lair, they would plan and coordinate their attack together. But one of the consequences of Dean’s bearing the Mark of Cain was a penchant for expediency, straight line thinking. In a way, Sam supposed Dean had made a concession by not barging in through the front door, figurative guns blazing. Sam suspected Dean merely wanted to wade into the battle without discussion or delay and the quickest way to accomplish that was to forge ahead on his own, whether Sam had his back or not.

While Dean insisted he remained in control of the Mark, and to all appearances he hadn’t succumbed to the unreasoning bloodlust it induced in its owner, this particular hunt might prove too much for Dean to handle alone. Hell, if the creature was as massive as those early reports suggested, Sam worried both of them together didn’t stand a chance. They’d witnessed firsthand the deadly nature of the Chimera’s creations, which the Winchesters discovered were actually supernaturally fused combinations of one or more animals with a human victim in the mix. Not that the word “nature” applied to these bizarre hybrids. At best, they were short-term weapons, animate grenades.

The last one had practically ripped a police officer’s spine out of her back before hurling her from an overpass into the path of an oncoming semi. The resulting twenty-three-car rush-hour pileup would occupy police and emergency services throughout the night. But the Winchesters had managed to track the Chimera’s minion back to this gutted factory. Unless they ganked the source of the hybrids, the reign of terror would continue unabated.

Sam crept along the interior of the fence, taking note of the shadows gathered near the building’s front entrance and along the walls, wondering what type of madness they might contain. In passing, he spotted a few sections where the chain-link fence had been snipped in a vertical line to allow furtive passage onto the factory grounds. Of course, the Chimera and its creations—at least those which couldn’t fly—would need a way in and out of the building. With the padlocked gate undisturbed, the area would appear secure to the occasional patrol car sweep.

Finally, Sam stepped forward, toward the front door and the impermeable shadows, hefting the meat cleaver he’d taken from the Impala’s trunk. Let Dean have the long-handled ax. Sam had a feeling the night would involve a lot of close combat. They’d already discovered guns and knives weren’t up to the task of dispatching the strange creatures.

From the rear of the factory, Sam heard a clang of metal on metal. Dean? Knocking? Doesn’t get much more direct than that, he thought, with another shake of his head.

Distracted, Sam almost missed the growing shadow—or rather something dark rising from within the shadows. With a loud, brutish snort, the creature lumbered toward him, gathering momentum. In the fading light, Sam glimpsed the black bear’s head, and the fur pelt covering the shoulders in an uneven line above a man’s torso, with human arms terminating in clawed bear paws. Eerily the eyes and ears appeared to be human, the right one milky, as if it hadn’t adapted well to hybridization. The same creature that had tossed the police officer off the overpass, now on guard duty.

Assuming—and hoping—the bear–human hybrid was blind in its right eye, Sam darted to his left. While the hybrid was fast, it relied on one bear leg and one human leg for movement and its gait included a lot of dipping and swaying, especially on turns. Sam imagined he could hear the mismatched bones in its legs and spine grinding together with each ungainly step.

He moved beyond its blind spot to its rear and drove his right foot into the creature’s lower back, shoving it toward the fence and letting its own momentum work against it. With a grunt, the hybrid reached up with both arms to catch itself against the fencing, bear claws scraping against metal, seeking purchase. Approaching from the creature’s blind side, Sam raised the cleaver and brought it down in a two-handed grip. The blow jarred him momentarily before the blade severed the creature’s forearm above the bear portion of the limb. The key was to attack the unnatural joins. The fresher the hybridization, the weaker the connections between one species and the other.

Briefly, the severed forearm dangled from the fence, claws snared in the gaps, before slipping free. The creature’s stump dripped blood, much less than expected for such a grievous wound. Which helped explain why bullet and knife wounds were ineffective. Whatever preternatural energy allowed the hybrids to live in the first place, it kept them ticking even after they suffered what should have been mortal wounds. A dozen Detroit cops had learned that lesson the hard way. Their instincts and logic had failed them. And yet, the key to destroying the hybrids was logical after all. The trick to their undoing was to, literally, undo the hybridization itself. In layman’s terms—or rather, hunter’s terms—that meant strategic dismemberment.

Seemingly unperturbed by the loss of its right arm, the hybrid spun around and swiped at Sam’s face with its remaining bear paw. Sam ducked beneath the formidable set of claws, but the bear limb passed so close to his head that ursine musk filled his nostrils.

Before the hybrid could recover its balance from the missed blow, Sam propped himself on his left palm and drove his right foot into the kneecap of the creature’s human right leg. The joint buckled the wrong way and, with an animal roar, the man-bear fell on its left side, mangled right leg high and dangling unnaturally—even for a hybrid.

But the shattered right leg was not Sam’s target. He planted his foot just below the human elbow of the left arm and hacked off the bear paw, the tip of the cleaver sparking as it struck the busted concrete below.

Undeterred, the man-bear curled its body upward, attempting to lash out with the claws on its one bear leg. With a backhand blow, Sam drove the butt of the cleaver’s handle into the temple of the bear head, just above and in front of a human ear. The one functioning eye rolled upward. The deep-throated bear growl turned into a groggy grumble of pain and confusion. Long enough for Sam to remove the head of the creature. Although the body continued to twitch with preternatural life and the bear’s jaws worked as if attempting human speech, Sam hacked the bear leg free of the human torso. Seconds later, the disparate pieces of flesh sagged and decayed eerily fast as the unnatural energy that had kept the hybrid alive dissipated.

Sam rushed the front door of the factory to join Dean inside.

* * *

The oversized hybrid guarding the rear door charged, determined to keep Dean out—for good. If Dean had to name the creature barreling toward him out of the shadows, he would have said Minotaur. Horned bull’s head on a man’s body: check. Murderous attitude: check. One slight problem with the Minotaur comparison—well, two actually: a pair of problems in the shape of oversized lobster claws for hands.

Dean stood his ground, swinging the long-handled ax behind his right shoulder then bringing it forward in a powerful two-handed grip a moment before the Minotaur’s horns would have gored him. The wedge-shaped blade of the ax drove through the center of the bull’s skull, three inches deep into bone and brain matter. Keeping his grip on the wooden handle kept the twin horns at a safe distance, but the jumbo lobster claws were another matter.

As the Minotaur’s charge continued unabated, lifting Dean clear off the ground and carrying him backward, one claw snapped at Dean’s face. Twisting away, Dean avoided that claw but left himself open to attack from the other. On a sudden impulse, Dean released the ax handle and switched his grip to the base of the horns, one in each hand, his face now close enough to the bull’s head to feel the hot snort of moist air from its flared nostrils. Grabbed the bull by the horns, Dean thought. Now what?

He pulled downward, using the creature’s own momentum against it and, as they both fell, Dean drove his feet into the human torso the same instant he released the horns. If the creature had the full body and mass of a bull, the throw wouldn’t have worked and Dean would have been summarily trampled. Instead, the hybrid slammed into a nearby overflowing dumpster with an impressive thud and fell on its side, dislodging the ax from its skull.

Dean scrambled to his feet and retrieved the weapon.

Groggy, the Minotaur shook its head, seemingly oblivious to the ooze of blood ferrying dislodged bits of gray matter down its broad face. Lobster claws scraped against cracked concrete as the hybrid attempted to rise. Dean had no intention of giving it a second chance to make Winchester kabob with its horns.

He raised the ax overhead. “Party’s over, Surf and Turf.”

The hybrid raised one lobster-claw arm to shield itself from the blow.

Dean took it off at the elbow, the ax blade slicing through flesh and bone at the seam and rebounding off the side of the dumpster with a metallic clang loud enough to wake the dead—or rouse the recently vivisected. If the Winchesters had expected to benefit from the slightest element of surprise, that hope was dashed.

No time to waste.

The Minotaur reached for its severed appendage with the stump of its right arm and the bloody end of the lost claw twitched, like a piece of metal the instant before it surrenders to the pull of a nearby magnet. Once before, Dean had watched in amazement as a dismembered hybrid reassembled itself. As long as the head was attached…

Despite the gruesome head wound, the Minotaur remained a threat. Taking a moment to kick the dismembered claw away, Dean swung the ax overhead, again driving the blade into the split skull. This time the blade bit much deeper, sinking down the back of the skull and spine. Enough damage to subdue the creature, but Dean wouldn’t be fooled again. Changing the angle of attack, he chopped through the thick neck until the head rolled away from the torso. Quick work to remove the other limbs.

With the Minotaur dismemberment complete, Dean loped toward the back door, which hung askew on rusted hinges, and kicked it in. The base of the door scraped the floor as it whipped inward before striking something partially human that emitted a startled squeal-growl. One of many similar creatures, waiting to pounce on Dean as he entered the gutted factory.

Before they circled him, he had a moment to assess the factory’s interior: An expansive and gloomy rectangular space nearly three stories high, exposed girders, banks of window panes, many broken, floor space littered with wooden and metallic debris. A second-story walkway, its safety railing in disrepair, bisected the factory and housed several cramped offices in a single row. Currently dark, the glass-enclosed rooms would have given supervisors a clear view of the factory floor. Across the dark factory—moonlight filtering through the banks of windows and irregular gaps in the ceiling provided the only illumination—Dean caught a glimpse of Sam near the front door, facing a few mismatched problems of his own.

Once again, Dean’s mind tried to make sense of the hybrids. This time, the task remained relatively simple as he faced five identical half-human creatures. All had wiry human torsos, replete with an assortment of tattoos, but grafted hyena heads, arms and legs. At one time, Dean imagined, they had been human teenagers, possibly gang members, captured and hybridized together to form an internal security force for the Chimera. And they operated as a pack, human individuality absent as their hyena heads circled him warily, each one seeking an opening, after which the others would move in a concerted attack to bring him down.

Rather than delay the inevitable, Dean feigned a vulnerability, stepping deeper into the factory and away from the doorway. As expected, one of the hyena-teens slipped behind him, no doubt intending to tear into an Achilles tendon to bring him down. At the first sound of scrabbling claws, Dean swiveled and drilled the butt of the ax handle into the head of the attacking hybrid. With a pained squeal, the hyena-teen stumbled, fell and scrambled away, shaking its head.

Bringing the weapon forward, Dean slapped the flat of the blade across the muzzle of a leaping hybrid, knocking it aside. An overhead swing lopped off the head of a third attacker. He’d need to chop off the limbs to finish the disassembly, but he’d bought himself some time to deal with the others. The hybrids were slowest to recover if they lost their heads. Lop off an arm or a leg and they’d continue to fight, though less effectively. Remove the head, and all the preternatural energy in the hybrid turned to self-repair.

From across the factory, Dean heard simian screeches and howls, but he needed to dispatch the hyena-teen gang circling him before he could help his brother. Besides, Sam could take care of himself. And, unlike Dean, he didn’t have to worry about giving in to the Mark of Cain and letting the unreasoning rage take over and consume him until it burned itself out in a river of blood.

No, Dean had to stay focused on killing monsters without becoming one in the process.

* * *

Sam barely had time to think before the creatures attacked. Swinging from exposed steel girders in the ruined shell of the factory, they moved with simian grace, though something was off about them. What initially seemed an illusion of motion resolved into a grotesque multiplicity of limbs.

Two hybrids dropped to the floor on either side of him while a third, larger than the others, sprouted oversized bat wings as it descended, touching down silently. The confusion of limbs became clear, though no less disconcerting. Each hybrid had a human torso and human arms, with a pair of large simian arms above those, for a total of four upper limbs. The hybrids flanking Sam had orangutan arms and legs, judging by the orange-reddish coloring, while the bat-winged leader had the arms and lower body of a gorilla. All three had incongruously smaller chimpanzee heads, filled with a mismatched assortment of crocodile teeth, which became apparent when they screeched in unison, a moment before attacking.

Sam swung the cleaver at the face of the gorilla hybrid, knocking the leader off balance, while jamming his elbow into the face of the orangutan hybrid on his left and narrowly avoiding the reaching hands of the one on his right. Human and simian hands pawed at him, scraping and clutching, determined to get a hold. Technically, he was outnumbered three to one, but the odds felt much steeper with twelve hands and fists pitted against his two. As the number and weight of his assailants threatened to overwhelm him, Dean chose that moment to kick in the rear door, which struck a hybrid on the far side of the factory judging by its yelp of pain.

Startled, the simian hybrids paused, looking toward the source of the disturbance. Sam allowed himself an almost involuntary glance Dean’s way, long enough to see a pack of four-legged hybrids circling his brother, without relinquishing the advantage of the momentary distraction. A fierce swing of the cleaver hacked off the face and front of the skull of the orangutan hybrid on his right, then a second quick chop sunk deep into the neck of the gorilla hybrid. Both staggered and fell away, the first blinded, the second clamping both human hands to an apparently severed artery. For such a grievous injury, the blood seeped out in a steady flow, no spurting or gushing. With hands compressing the wound, the hybrid could probably heal itself in minutes without the threat of bleeding out.

From behind Sam, four arms wrapped around his chest and abdomen, squeezing with inhuman ferocity. A moment before he expected his ribs to crack, Sam slammed his head backward into the chimpanzee head, no doubt preempting an intended crocodile-teeth bite. The grip around his torso slackened and with his arms free, Sam took the cleaver in a two-handed grip and swung the blade wildly behind his head. He felt it bite into flesh and bone. Finally, he broke free of the four-armed hold, spun on his heel, and hoisted the cleaver at the neck join. Another chop beheaded the orangutan hybrid. Headless, it stood there, swaying slightly, as if confused how to proceed. The moment it fell, all four hands would reach for the missing head and begin the reassembly, so Sam left it standing there and went to work on the other two.

The faceless one cocked its head, orienting itself by sound. The gorilla hybrid crouched, its bat wings snapped outward and it was aloft, but Sam anticipated the move and jumped, timing his leap to catch the top of its right wing with his left hand, then swiping down with the cleaver in his right to sever the wing from the hybrid’s back. The blow was beyond the join, not a true dismemberment at the seam, but effective nonetheless. With only one functioning wing, the gorilla hybrid spun out of control, turning in midair, exposing the back of his neck to Sam and his cleaver. A vicious blow to the right side of the neck from behind, combined with the early deep wound on the left front of its throat, was enough to complete the decapitation.

Sam sprang back as the gorilla hybrid crashed to the ground and kicked the head clear of its frantically searching limbs, long enough for him to hack them off. And so his own battle continued, long and bloody work. At some point, he heard the repeated clang of an ax from across the factory: Dean completing a similar chore on the pack of four-legged hybrids that had ambushed him.

Down on one knee and drenched in sweat, head bowed as he completed his grisly task, Sam froze at the sound of serpentine hissing combined with light, almost delicate footfalls crunching on bits of debris strewn across the factory floor.

“Sam!”

As Sam rose to his feet, Dean pointed upward with the dripping blade of his ax, indicating the second floor offices. A long undulating shape—or series of shapes—darker than the darkness it inhabited roiled behind the glass, slouching and rolling, as if rousing itself from a dormant state. Sam had the impression of vast size, and somehow knew that whatever it was, it had destroyed the walls between offices to accommodate its girth.

The factory itself seemed to rumble.

Metal creaked, bolts popped and the entire walkway trembled, shedding dust and rust in equal measure. A billowing haze rolled outward and descended around them. A moment later a strained window cracked, followed by others; a short series of distinct breaks, then an overwhelming explosion of sound as the offices erupted, blasting a hailstorm of broken glass in all directions. Only the Winchesters’ distance from the central walkway saved them from serious harm. Sam shielded his face with his right forearm and flinched as a piece of glass nicked his ear, a larger piece glanced off his thigh, and another pinged off the blade of the cleaver.

The large, misshapen mass of the Chimera, hidden until now within the dark offices, brushed aside the damaged safety railing and launched itself off the walkway, a confusion of multiple heads, limbs and tentacles swirling around the central mass. Until the wide dragon-wings snapped open, Sam couldn’t even guess which way it had been facing. But that word lost meaning when something had multiple faces all over its sprawling body.

Movement directly in front of Sam commanded his attention.

In the confusion, he’d only registered the serpentine nature of the hybrid approaching him. Now he saw a scaled woman’s face, seemingly emerging from the thick, tubular body of a python, as if she’d been consumed whole and was somehow able to push her human essence through snake flesh. Bipedal, she had scaled human legs and feet with a mostly serpentine torso and cobra-hooded neck supporting a mostly human but hairless head, with ear holes and a flattened nose. She had two snakes—complete with heads—in place of human arms and hands. When she spoke, he noted her long fangs and forked tongue.

“Please”—she said plaintively, with a slight lisp—“kill me!”

Before Sam could react or respond to her plea, her long snake-headed arms darted toward him and she attacked.