Fire trucks and sirens could be heard approaching from afar.
Dean and Sam settled the girls somewhere safe, left an anonymous tip for the police, then quickly withdrew.
They did not return to the motel. Instead, they circled around to the back of the factory. As the saying went, a cunning rabbit had three burrows; when Sam had been captured, he had noticed an underground entrance there.
Sure enough, a concealed maintenance door stood half-open, leading into a deeper underground space.
It was not a sewer, but an extension of a natural cave, transformed by the dragonkin into a true nest.
This place was even more unsettling than the workshop above.
Shriveled "trophies" hung from the walls. Besides jewelry, there were tapestries woven from hair, wind chimes strung with fingernails, and dozens of portraits painted in blood—all depicting the faces of young women.
There were several cages deeper in the cave, all of them empty.
But in the cage at the farthest corner, they saw a familiar figure.
It was the snake monster woman who had attacked them before.
She still had the slender form of a human woman, her blonde hair disheveled and her white shirt stained with grime.
When she saw Dean and Sam, she was curled up in the corner of the cage, hugging her knees, her shoulders trembling.
Hearing the movement, she raised her head.
"Please!" Her voice was thick with tears. "Let me out. That monster captured me too."
Dean stopped two meters from the cage, one hand resting on the hilt of his broken sword.
Sam stood to the side, his shotgun already loaded.
"Where's your venom?" Dean asked. "That black tattoo-like fluid."
The snake monster raised her arm, exposing her skin. The black patterns on it were dim and lifeless, like dried ink.