But with the beast inside;

[174]

It's not easy to track because it seems to know when it's being tracked. There's no mistaking the signs: A series of bodies strewn (cleverly, at least) across a few states, hearts removed, bodies mauled. Nobody's made a connection because there's not much connection to make, other than the similarities in their deaths.

'Animal attack,' he's heard more often than he's heard anything else, and it's starting to become a lot more difficult to contain his eye rolls.

It's different, not hunting with his brother. It's different not having that connection, that supreme and faultless backup that he knows will be behind him if he's in trouble, that he knows will come if he calls his name. Hunting on your own requires much more self-reliance than Sam's had in a long time, a keen awareness that he's had to learn because it doesn't come as innate to him as it does for Dean. Maybe it was all the years off. Maybe he's just not as good of a hunter. He really ought to be sticking to his books, sometimes.

California leads to Washington leads all the way to Minnesota leads to Connecticut, and it's there that he finally (finally) picks up a trail that's something other than a dead body. It must have a nest, somewhere in the area. Even monsters need their beauty rest.

It turns out to be some ramshackle house out in the more rural areas, up where the hills are high and the air is thin, woods aplenty for it to prowl throughout and just enough people nearby to have its pick of prey. Sam is armed, both with a pistol and a silver knife, but there's a sense of foreboding when he slips his way in through one of the broken windows. Like he's not going to make it out of this fight alive. Paranoia's getting to him. He's been on this case too long.