Exael Diamondback
Fandom: Supernatural
Category: H/C
Rating: FRA for language, violence, sensitive subject matter
Warnings: rape
Disclaimer: Supernatural and the Winchester brothers are property of Eric Kripke and Warner Brothers Television, Inc. in association with Wonderland Sound. The material herein is for entertainment only and in no way affiliated with the above. No money is made from the presentation of this material.
Notes: Takes place after Home and leads toward Asylum.
Description: Dean is forced to deal with a deeply buried trauma.Save me for now, save me forever
Hold me so close, I can't bear to go
There's darkness around me or is it within me
You're living forever, I'm dying so slow
“Angels Have Fallen”, Kansas – 1979
“Ah, come on, Dean, I’m getting hungry.”
Dean blinked tired, burning eyes. Was that an actual whine that just came out of his little brother?
Sam was rarely the first to suggest they stop for a bite to eat, but it was late, it had been a very long day, and Dean realized they hadn’t had anything since breakfast. Hard to think about food when all their leads were withering before them and three children were still missing.
“All right.” Dean shifted his attention slightly from the road ahead and glanced at fast food signs along the route back to their motel. “Mickey-D’s or Bojangle’s?” His tone must have been particularly dull as Sam looked at him with that deep curiosity in his dark eyes. . . that look that said he was wondering what Dean was really thinking, but Dean wasn’t exactly feeling charitable with his emotions right now—okay, so he never felt charitable with his emotions—and he wasn’t about to let that look from baby brother chip at his defenses. “Mickey-D’s”, he decided for them and veered the Impala over a lane to take a right under the Golden Arches.
Pink Floyd’s Learning to Fly was droning gently on the radio as Dean pulled up to the drive through speaker. He barked out an order for two Big Macs, fries, and two Cokes, all super-sized. What he didn’t eat tonight would be breakfast tomorrow before setting out, and as for the Cokes, well, he didn’t expect to get much sleep tonight anyway. Too much to think about, too much worry nagging at him and it wouldn’t do any good to keep sharing it with Sam—who had enough weight to carry already—when they needed to stay focused.
Moments later he eased the rumbling car into a parking place and they made a picnic in the front seat. Amid the scatter of napkins, sandwich wrappers and ketchup packets, a few news articles from the Eddington Gazette peered up at them. Some of the articles had highlighter marks on them or red pen where Sam had taken notes. Three boys missing. All four years old. . . Dean’s age when he’d lost his mother.
The problem was that nothing about these disappearances suggested anything particularly supernatural. Not on the surface anyway. They just looked like tragic kidnappings that had this pothole-in-the-side-of-the-road town on edge and the local authorities coming out enforce. Dean had promised Sam he’d be careful not to get arrested this time throwing around his fake credentials and punking the police. For once Dean was more than willing to stay out of trouble’s way. It had him incredibly frazzled, and for good reason:
The thing that had brought them here had been his dreams. . . well, nightmares, if they required a more specific definition. . .
They had started a month ago, just after the events in Lawrence, and at the time he had thought them simple nightmares. But weeks later he knew better when he looked at the articles that now served as a picnic blanket. He’d already seen the young faces in the pictures, smiling out from the newsprint like those poor souls on the sides of milk cartons. To his knowledge he had never had psychic visions; he’d had spirit-induced hallucinations, nearly been a snack for a wendigo, and seen anything and everything else that belonged stuffed down in a nice deep dark hell hole, but never had he dreamed of a case before it came along. That was Sam’s department, so Dean hadn’t quite known what to think when he was scouring news articles online and first came upon the face of one Jamie Anderson. The kid’s parents had supplied a good clear picture: a round faced child, huge blue eyes, black hair. . . a baby Clark Kent no doubt destined to become a heart breaker when he grew up. If he got the chance to grow up. Then followed the faces of Terry Jones and Robby Zimmerman. All of them had gone missing on the same day.
At that point, Dean had to suppress a minor freak out. It had been hard enough accepting that Sam had the shining. But this. . . How could he be the one to foresee these same faces? All three of them, huddled in a murky corner, dirty cheeks tear streaked while some disembodied voice chuckled at their fear. In the dream he could only stare at them, like nothing more than an invisible floating eyeball, able to observe but to do nothing to help them. He felt their fear. . . smelled it on them like warm piss. . . tried to talk to them, calm them, tell them everything would be all right, but they didn’t seem to hear him, and when he drifted closer. . . and felt like he was going to puke from nightmare vertigo. . . they cringed back deeper into their hiding corner and sobbed louder.
Just nightmares. . . right? he had thought back then. After the events with the shapeshifter in St. Louis, he had almost forgotten them completely and then he happened upon the articles by sheer, dumb luck.
At first he only declared that there was something here worth checking out. Sam argued against it. Nothing in the articles sounded like it fit their area, and in that case, best to stay out of it and out of the way of the police. After a debate that threatened to plummet into brotherly violence, Dean finally fessed up.
Sam blinked at him, gave a brief but thoughtful frown, and then nodded. Well, of course, this was nothing new to him.
A week later here they were in Bum-Fuck-Egypt Eddington, Kentucky and they’d come up with exactly squat. Dean was beginning to question whether the dreams had been as clear as he had thought they were. Maybe his imagination had worked a job on him. Maybe he’d been hunting too damned long without a break. Lucky little shit Sammy had had a break. . . a nice four-year-long one. . . no wonder he was a bit rusty in fighting skill.
No, Dean stopped himself from thinking in that negative direction as he glanced at his brother. He was just tired and cantankerous and prone to dredge up bullshit. Sam’s college experience had shaped him into an efficient researcher as well, but now he had more motivation to hunt after losing Jessica. What angst he felt over her murder slept several layers below the surface right now while he focused on this case, nibbling at a French fry over one of his article notes, with his eyes cast down and only one bite taken from his burger.
“So. . . can you think of any details in your visions, anything at all?”
“I’ll say it again. . . no.” Dean extracted a limp slice of pickle from his burger and dropped it back into the wrapper. “Not a damned thing.” Great, and now he really wasn’t hungry. “I just know wherever they are, those kids gotta be running out of time, Sammy.”
Sam nodded vacantly, cocked his head for a moment and narrowed his eyes in deep consideration. “There might be a way to find out.” His gaze lifted up from the article and bore into Dean with deadly seriousness. Ah hell, Dean hated it when Sam got that look. The last time he’d seen that look, Sam talked him into getting on an airplane.
“Uh. . . what’s that?”
“Hypnosis,” Sam finished. “Dad used it for dream and memory recall before.”
“Not on me he didn’t.” The thought of subjecting himself to trance, and therefore suggestion of any kind, even if it came from his well-meaning little brother, did not bode well with Dean.
“Deano,” Sam’s voice dropped to the warning level. “If these are the kids in your dreams, someone’s trying to tell you something.”
Yeah, Dean thought, I’m just afraid of what that something is.
“What’s that?” Sam asked.
Dean cringed. Sam’s abilities were developing right along, including mind reading.
“Nothin’.” He stared straight ahead into the darkness beyond the windscreen. They were facing the road out of town back toward their motel. Tempting to just get back on the highway and keep driving, pretend none of this was happening. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t in his nature. One of his worst habits was that he never could let up on a case until it had been absolutely seen through. “All right, say we try this thing. . .”
Sam folded the article and sat up. “I can walk you through it, help you focus on the details.” When Dean took a little too long to answer, Sam adjusted in the seat with a creak of old leather and propped forward, leaning in such a way that Dean didn’t quite know how to translate the body language; he just knew Sam was trying to take him somewhere he didn’t want to go. Maybe Sam understood it and had learned a few new things from Missouri Mosley, but Dean had never even remotely entertained the idea of diving into that side of the paranormal himself. “You know, Dean, we’ve dealt with this kind of thing so long on the outside, it was only a matter of time before some aspect of it started rubbing off.”
“You mean like having premonitions? You were born with it, Sammy. I’m just average Joe Blow.”
Sam gave a curt shrug. “Doesn’t mean that can’t change, Dean. You touch the strange, it touches back. . .”
“Yeah-yeah, and you look into the void long enough it begins to look back at you.” Dean scratched at the scruff on his chin, making a sound like rustling sand paper. “You don’t think—“ he started and took a deep breath. His throat tightened on him but he tried to regulate his voice and sound normal. “You don’t think Mom’s spirit has something to do with this?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know—“ He left it open ended, and Dean thought he saw an emotional glimmer in his little brother’s eyes.
Dean began to drop that train of thought a little at a time. No, couldn’t have been that last encounter with their mother’s ghost. Having relayed a silent, soft goodbye, Mary Winchester had destroyed herself to save her sons. The important thing had been that for a brief moment, Sam had, for the first time in his life, been able to feel a mother’s love and understand why his brother and father had been so adamant about going after her killer. There was no reason for that case at the old Winchester house to tie into this one.
They weren’t finding anything in hard evidence, so it did look like all they had to fall back on were the dreams. He didn’t like it one bit, but the sooner he could comprehend it and gain a foothold, the better he would feel. His dinner forgotten on the seat beside him, he cranked up the car and found comfort in the low deep purr of the engine. “All right,” he said as he started to put it in reverse. “But if I start going somewhere really dark, you pull me out of it.”
Sam frowned as if offended by the suggestion that he would do anything less. “Of course.” He shoved the leftovers back into the bag and tucked it away.
Ten minutes later the Impala roared into the motel parking lot and Dean veered it around and pulled it backwards into the space. Sam got out and headed into the room to make some preparations while Dean locked up the car and pulled out his pack from the trunk, dug into one of the side pockets. He produced a sleek amethyst pendulum on a silver chain, which he primarily used as a makeshift dowsing device and for minor spirit communication, but it would serve their purpose tonight, and he couldn’t think of a better focus object. The amethyst was a soothing stone both to feel and look at.
Inside the room, Sam had pulled up the tattered desk chair next to Dean’s bed and arranged several pillows against the headboard. “Have a seat.”
Dean shrugged off his jacket, tossed it across the foot of the bed and made sure the door was locked, the chain latch in place. He took a deep breath, pried his feet out of his shoes, and walked past Sam, slipping the pendulum into his brother’s hand as he went, and then he stretched out on the bed, eased his head back.
“Relax,” Sam said dryly.
“I am.”
”No, you’re not, your head isn’t even making a dent in that pillow.”
Oh. Dean realized his spine was straight as a stick and he seriously had not lain back all the way. He took another breath, let his muscles slip, and. . . poof. . . the pillow conformed to the back of his head.
Sam pulled the chair closer. “Start working on the breathing.”
Dean had seen their father perform hypnosis before, so none of this procedure was new, but it was kind of funny how Sam liked to give instructions. Dumb-ass college boy. Dean focused on concentrating his breath, and then leveled it out and found himself beginning to truly relax. Sam raised the pendulum and dangled it on the chain in front of Dean’s face. The dim light in the room cast a sleek little reflection down the length of the crystal to the point.
Gently Sam began to swing it back and forth. “Just let your eyes get heavy watching.”
Dean did so, focused primarily on that very precise reflection on the tip. Like a tiny star it floated before him, back and forth, blurring gradually as he timed each breath with each swing. When his eye lids drooped to half mast, that was Sam’s cue to speak again.
“Now count backwards from ten, Dean. Slow and steady, and by the time you reach one, you’re going to be deeply asleep and dreaming about the place where you’ve seen those children, and when you wake up, you’re going to remember everything you saw.”
Already Dean felt himself detaching and drifting away, and speaking was an effort that only plunged him deeper. “Ten. . . nine. . . eight. . .” His lids sank and bobbed up again. “. . . seven. . .” Now his voice was a hollow echo to his own ears. “. . . six. . . five. . .”
He never reached one. Warm, comforting darkness descended on him and he felt himself drift through a corridor, hearing Sam’s voice from somewhere, as if muffled through layers of walls, still giving directions. . . guiding him.
He obeyed.
Dean wandered out of the corridor and looked down, found dirty cold concrete beneath him. Old concrete, worn smooth by so much foot traffic. His vision shifted up and to his left he found a series of pipes and valves. He could smell the old metal and dankness. Could be anywhere. A power plant, maybe?
He heard sobbing from up ahead. . . and a flame light flickered as from a torch or lantern. To his right, something grated and groaned and he turned to find the iron door on a huge furnace swinging on its own. The furnace was cold and empty, a great gaping mouth into nothingness.
Dean slipped past it, guided by the little murmurs and sobs as he rounded a corner and found the room where the three little boys were tucked tight into a corner. Their wrists, too small for cuffs, had been chained together with heavy padlocks to fasten them. The flame glow came from here as well, emitted by a single kerosene lantern set on an old wooden crate with some ancient faded logo on the side.
“Hey,” Dean rasped to the kids, trying not to distress them any more than they already were. “I’m going to help you, okay?”
Consistent with the dream’s previous performances, they didn’t seem to see or hear him. Something had their attention to Dean’s right, just off behind his shoulder. He turned, glimpsing something dark, but always it moved out of his line of vision, until he’d made a complete three-sixty and was facing the boys again. His spine tingled up to the nape of his neck.
“I think some. . . thing. . . is here with me.”
“Details. . .” Sam’s distant voice reminded him.
Dean nodded vacantly and tore his gaze away from the kids. He looked around the room. The walls were covered in dark water stains and something loomed in the deeper shadows. Dean moved closer, allowed his vision to adjust. The dirty-gold light danced over a large cylindrical vat that reached toward the ceiling where more old and defunct pipes fed into it. Most of the outer shell had rusted through, leaving patches of holes that revealed a layer of some sort of insulation material beneath. But just underneath the rust, the remnants of a logo, just like the one on the box, shone through.
“I see a sign,” Dean reported and tried to touch the rusty surface, but as before he was only an observer here. His hand passed right through, and he withdrew it quickly.
“What does it say?” Sam’s voice prompted him.
Dean blinked, studied the paint flecks and an impression that had been stamped into the metal. “Eddington Paper Inc.. . .”
He turned back into the room, looked at the kids, reminding himself again that these weren’t the real McCoy, only dream elements. Again the black shape moved just out of his line of vision. “What the fuck is that?” he said under his breath.
“What do you see?” Sam sounded more persistent.
“I’m not sure, I. . .”
He was just turning, trying again to follow the shadow, when his gaze fell upon another wall, this one more filthy than the others, covered in slime and grime and. . .
Blood? Dean’s heart—or the sensation thereof—leapt into his throat as he read the words painted on the wall in dripping, gleaming crimson:
HELLO, LITTLE BOY
“Sammy!” Dean bolted awake, sitting straight up in the bed and coming face to face with Sam’s wide eyes. Sweat had broken out across his brow and trickled down, stung his eyes.
“Dean, hey, it’s all right!” Sam leaned forward, grabbing him by the shoulders. “You came out of it on your own.” He cupped Dean’s face, gave a small, tart smack to one cheek to be sure he’d secured his brother’s attention. “Deep breaths, that’s it. . .”
“I know. . .” Dean tried eagerly to blurt it all out. “I think I know where they are. . .”
“An old paper mill,” Sam said. “Yeah, you relayed that.”
Dean coughed and closed his eyes a moment, calming as he felt Sam’s slender but strong hands stroking back little spikes of wet hair from his forehead. So comforting. . . his little brother. In that moment he couldn’t be more glad that Sam was with him on the road, and at the same time he suddenly wanted to send Sam back home. Not that Sam would listen, at this point, but Dean had a feeling. . . he knew what was behind this. He had met it before, fought it, and. . .
. . . and suddenly Sam’s touch made him cringe. Little sensations of hot pain gripped his core and ramified down into his groin. Dean threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood, wavered with dizziness and shook off the last clinging fingers of the trance.
Sam watched after him, frowning at the abrupt movement. “We haven’t seen a paper mill around here. We’ll have to check into it.”
Dean wiped drops of sweat from around his mouth, tasted their salty tang, and nodded as he looked at the bedside clock: 1:34 a.m.
Too late to openly ask anyone about the paper mill, and as usual they weren’t exactly staying in a place that offered free broadband; the cheap bastards had a phone line rigged to charge a dollar a minute dialing anywhere. They would have to wait for the town’s single internet café to open in a few hours to take the laptop online.
He felt as if he’d brought a layer of grime back from his dream walk. It clung to him like a film, filthy and persistent, clogging every pore. “I’m. . .” he said, his voice thick with fatigue. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Sam nodded to that, while his eyes cast downward in thought. “You said there was something in there with you?”
Dean’s brow creased as he briefly took in that naturally innocent look that somehow defined Sam. It was deceptive, for beneath lay a skilled hunter and genius whom Dean knew he never could have come so far without. He and Sam both knew the risks of the “family business” and both were prepared for the worst, but at the same time. . . God, if something happened to Sam. . .
“No,” he lied. “I only saw the kids.” Then he retreated before he was seized with the urge to scoop Sam into his arms and make an absolute idiot of himself ruining his image. He hurried into the bathroom, slammed the door and turned on the shower head, stripped down while he waited for the water to warm up.
The mirror revealed a body hardened with muscle and still bearing bruises from the last mission. His pendant dangled on its worn leather thong, down between his chiseled pectorals. Dean raised his right leg and propped his foot on the edge of the tub for a better view of his inner thigh. Slowly his shaking fingers traced over three long, pale pink scars. . . claw marks. . . that ran up under his groin and ended dangerously close to the soft, silken tissue of his taint.
. . . hello, little boy. . .
His stomach lurched, and he frantically climbed into the shower and doubled over. What little he’d eaten spewed up and spattered on the drain to be washed away quickly. Dean spat out stomach acid and burger bits and swished with some of the over chlorinated water. The bleach taste cleared away the bile, while the flow from the showerhead blended away the tears that rose up and rinsed down his face. Dean turned up the heat until he was safely blanketed in white steam and the blood pounding in his temples melted away his senses.
Sam had been noticing the shiners under Dean’s eyes for some days now, but this morning they were particularly dark even though Dean seemed generally alert. As planned, they ate last night’s dinner for breakfast and headed out promptly at six. It was a strange feeling to recognize the role reversal going on; Dean tended to complain when Sam was up and about before the crack of dawn, but today it was Dean dressed and antsy as hell to get back into the field.
Even in small town Eddington, rush hour started early and the café was open with a short line forming at the counter. Dean went straight to a table with his laptop and booted up while Sam stood in line to order two coffees. The place didn’t have the clean, hip feel of a Starbucks, and there were no biscotti in a big clear jar on the counter, but the brew smelled fresh enough. Sam wove his way between the tables and sat down to find Dean had already Googled up the town’s chamber of commerce web site.
“So, there is a paper mill, but it looks like it’s still in business.” Dean didn’t even look up as his hand went around the coffee cup as soon as Sam plunked it down on the table. “The one I saw was too run down. No way it was in operation.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be if that’s where those kids are stashed.” Sam leaned closer as Dean turned the computer toward him. “This is all current; nothing about the old mill.”
Dean nodded and sat back, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Shit.” Which really meant: Damn, not the library again.
Sam unconsciously pulled in his lower lip and chewed on it, thinking about options since Dean, by nature, was not a patient person. Sam couldn’t complain about that anymore. In St. Louis, had Dean waited as Sam had insisted, before going back into the sewers to the shapeshifter’s lair, he wouldn’t have discovered the fiend’s further plans. Impatience was, oddly, one of Dean’s virtues that had saved their lives more than once.
Sam sipped his coffee, found it particularly barky and bitter. So much for fresh. He grimaced and sniffled back some congestion and studied Dean for a moment. Jade eyes were illuminated by the glow of the computer screen as Dean only stared at it, lost in a myriad of thoughts; his sandy lashes lowered in a long sluggish blink and his brow furrowed. Sam had seen that look a rare few times before, but it wasn’t so surprising anymore; he only wondered how long it would last before the shields went up and replaced it with smarm and that fake happy-go-lucky attitude.
“We could. . .” Dean suggested thoughtfully, “just drive over to the current mill, see if it’s built near the old one. There’s an address right here.” He immediately began to enter here-to-there addresses on MapQuest and studied the results.
Sam nodded. “Sure, it’s likely.” Then he watched as Dean turned up his coffee and gulped it down, draining the entire cup in seconds. It had to be scalding still, and Sam’s own throat constricted in sympathy pain. “Jesus, man, isn’t that still too hot?”
Dean wiped his mouth and put the cup down. His jaw was clenched so. . . yeah, Sam guessed, the coffee had been too hot. What the hell was he trying to prove? Or did Dean just need the shock to his system? Was the caffeine working too slow on its own? “Let’s go,” he said hoarsely and rose from his chair, closing the computer lid as he went.
Sam grabbed his own cup and took it with him as he followed Dean’s shorter figure out the door and into the damp, gray morning. He could smell a horse farm not far away and diesel fuel as an ancient, puttering pickup truck pulled into the little shopping center.
Most of the time, Dean would have taken a slower stride to the car, dragging his heels just enough to stay closer to Sam, but this time he was booking it and veered around the front end of the Impala with a lack of grace that cost him a dull bump to the hip on the corner.
Sam saw his brother’s hot breath gust white against the chilly air at the jolt. Dean gave an empty glare that just happened to be aimed in Sam’s general direction then stormed to the car door and got in, tossed the laptop into the backseat. Sam shook his head to himself and decided to cast his coffee into the nearest trash can before he climbed into the passenger side. He had barely closed the door before the elder Winchester revved the engine for the hell of it.
He had learned not to take his brother’s moods personally, but damn this was getting tiresome. This grumpy morning attitude was the least of his concerns. Sam had noticed that Dean had a thing for showers. Every motel they went to, he made sure the water would run scalding hot, and then there was that damned steam shower in Oasis Plains. It was almost ridiculous, but then last night Dean had shut himself up in the bathroom for a good two hours which went a little far beyond the norm. The shower hadn’t been running for all of that time so Sam could only guess what he was doing in there. For a moment, Sam visualized Dean leaning over the sink taking his slow ass time shaving. It was a comforting, common image, but somehow he doubted Dean was busy with such mundane routines in there.
There was more to it than Dean disturbed by his dreams or missing children, but damned if Sam could draw a bead on it without imposing the dreaded chick flick moment. Sentiment and Dean were like oil and water, and Sam tried to remember if Dean had always been so guarded. Four years ago, before he’d gone off to college, Sam thought he remembered his brother actually hugging him. Or was that just wishful hindsight? Maybe it was more like a chummy slap on the shoulder. Come to think of it, had Dean been so obsessed with bathing before as well?
Glancing at his brother, he noted Dean’s gaze planted firmly on the road. This was how Dean brooded most of the time. Driving, listening to old music. . . Only, Sam realized that there was nothing on the radio. Most any day, he would have welcomed that, but today it was unsettling. The silence in the cab and the hush of the pavement beneath the wheels thickened the air between them.
“Hey, you want some music?” Sam leaned forward, put a hand on the knob for the tape player, started to turn. . .
“Nah, that’s okay.”
Dean propped on his left arm along the inside of the door and drove one handed.
So much for breaking the silence. Sam scratched his chin and looked out the window, watched middle class housing and yards scattered with wet autumn leaves pass by. They were moving toward Mainstreet, where Eddington was split in half by the Green River. Heavy rains had recently widened the river banks and exposed a tangle of roots and muddy boulders. The water ran reddish brown with clay, but had receded in the last couple days. Somehow that muddy water reminded Sam of their lives. It’d had its turbulent flood and was now settled, fairly calm and running at a gentler flow, but it was still murky-opaque, hiding the mysteries of the river bed.
What the hell. . . “You know what, I could use some music.” Sam reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a tape: Queensrÿche’s The Warning. Christ, Dean needed a CD player as well as updated music. The cover was faded and the case slightly warped from heat exposure. Sam switched it out with Pink Floyd from the cassette player.
Dean didn’t say a thing.
“All right, I’m putting the tape in now,” Sam said. Click. . . the tape went in.
“Huh?”
And now the weirdness spike was jumping a little too high for Sam’s comfort. Whatever else was eating at Dean, it was time for him to spit it out. “All right, Deano, what gives?”
Dean flashed a confused glare at him and refocused on the road in time to catch their next turn. He sounded truly confused by the sudden confrontational tone. “What?”
“I’ve now touched your music and your radio.” That alone was a punishable offense.
Dean made the turn and headed along a river road that followed a small tributary. Traffic was thin enough he could take a moment to stare back at Sam without swerving dangerously. His brows knitted and a soft look of amusement ghosted through his eyes.
Or was that sadness thinly masked by amusement? Sam couldn’t be sure. God, his brother was so unreadable, and he knew Dean liked it that way. Now it was his turn to ask, “What?”
A fragment of a grin tugged at the corner of Dean’s mouth and then faded away as he looked ahead. “Hey, I think that’s it.”
Sam shifted his attention toward the distant silhouette of several smoke stacks. The closer they drove, the more a foul odor wafted into the car: processing paper pulp.
“Smells like a skunk laid a rotten egg,” Dean said gruffly and wrinkled his nose.
Sam smirked at that. Locals would call that the smell of money, and most were immune to the stink. The mill was not a particularly huge one, only three of its chimneys emitting clouds of white vapor, but it was definitely in operation.
Sam copped out on his interrogation and took a route he thought Dean more likely to respond to. “Is it the dreams that bother you that much? I mean, I’m the one who’s supposed to be losing sleep.”
Dean shrugged. “Nah, not really. Well. . . I mean, I am thinking about those kids. Why?”
“Thought maybe if it really is precog. . . we should try to work with that some more. I mean, I’ve gotta learn some control, too. Wouldn’t hurt to try to work together on it.”
Dean slowed the car as they reached the parking lot for the mill. “I dunno, Sammy. I can’t say I love the idea of you hypnotizing me regularly.”
Fair enough. “But with practice, you might not need that. You could recall the visions on your own.”
“If this isn’t a one time thing. . . maybe.”
Sam frowned. “One time thing?” Somehow he felt there was more knowledge behind that comment than Dean let on.
Dean didn’t say anything more as he craned his head to get a better view of the parking lot and a huge loading bay with a tractor trailer backed into it. The overall structure of the mill was ugly. All yellowed metal paneling, pipes and piercing floodlights. There was hardly a person in sight, but given the number of cars in the lot, this was one of Eddington’s prize industries. Nothing about it really looked unusual or out of place. Everyone was tucked inside like workers in a beehive.
“We’ll keep going,” Dean said and returned his attention to the road. They passed a fenced in lot piled high with wood chips that added an extra sour smell to the air along with the skunk piss smell from the mill. Beyond that was a scrap lumber yard—still part of the mill—before the landscape gave way to more river bank and the road wound on, further from town and the newer mill, across a two lane bridge and on until Dean suddenly leaned forward and squinted into the distance past some trees. “There.”
A fog from the river lingered here, almost totally concealing the gray shape of a brick structure covered in ivy and decay. Two crumbling smoke stacks rose from the ruin. No wonder the place wasn’t mentioned on the town’s web site. Nature had been allowed to bury it.
Dean pulled the car over to the road side and they got out to look across a scrubby field of dead grass, where a single swaybacked cow stood chewing cud and ignoring them. Sam pulled a pair of binoculars from under his seat and unsheathed them. He had a look, seeing nothing more than a close up of what they could already view from the road. Looked like some of the old rose brick had been raided, probably to be used elsewhere in the town. A rusted piece of sheet metal leaned against the outer wall creating a lean-to for any little critters to hide under. Sam made out the old logo and handed the binoculars to Dean.
Dean took only a quick look, lowered the binoculars. His face looked drawn and tired. “That’s it. That’s the logo in my dream.”
“I guess we’ve ventured into worse places before.” Sam put the binoculars back in their case and took a breath. He tried reaching out his senses the way Missouri had coached him, attempted to give a general probe of the place. Nothing particular touched him, at least not from this distance. “I don’t sense anything in there, except. . .”
“The kids,” Dean suddenly blurted out and turned back for the car. He dragged his pack from the back seat and took it to the trunk where he unlocked the weapons box and began to select bottles of holy water, a couple crosses, and shotguns with the usual rock salt, just in case.
“Are we going after a vampire?” Sam asked, watching the items get shoved into the big black duffel. “Don’t we need some stakes?”
Dean opened a small wooden box and pulled out a silver disk on a black cord. “Come here.” Sam blinked at him. Dean gave an irritated huff and grabbed Sam’s arm, jerked him closer before reaching up and tying the cord around his neck.
Sam looked down at the amulet that was almost two inches wide and finely engraved with a pentacle in which each arm on the star, and the middle, was set with a Hebrew symbol and invocation for a protective angelic force, while the letters TET filled in one section between two arms of the pentacle, and RA in the next section, and so on all the way around the circle. Looked like a custom job and he wondered where the hell Dean had gotten the spare money for it.
“The Tetragrammaton? Dean, seriously?”
“Just wear it, okay?” Dean closed the trunk and tossed the duffel over his shoulder.
Sam shrugged and dropped the amulet down the front of his shirt. Why this? he wondered. By having him wear it, Dean was essentially invoking angelic protection and the unspoken name of God, at least for Sam. He wondered what kind of protection Dean had on other than his usual Egyptian amulet.
Dean looked both ways and hustled across the road. Sam followed at a steady jog and caught up with his brother just as Dean took a long stride over a grassy ditch and onto the edge of the meadow. They eased their way between the runners on a barbed wire fence and headed toward the old mill, finding the ground more spongy than expected. The cow watched them indifferently and snorted. Sam felt cold damp from the grass leak into his tennis shoes and waggled his toes to keep them from feeling too stiff.
Ahead loomed the first barrier into the mill, an old iron gate. Luckily, its lock had long been cracked by vandals. It ground on its hinges as they pulled it open and slipped inside, where they found themselves in what might have once been a courtyard, a place for employees to have their lunch. There were old concrete picnic tables cracked down the middle and covered in dead ivy. The brick walls surrounding the little lot were darkened with mold and more wilted ivy with fragments of spray painted graffiti showing through. Sam made out a few savory words he didn’t care to file in his memory banks. Dirt had blown across pavement and formed a layer thick enough to sprout weeds and small briar bushes.
Ahead the main building stood, its windows broken out to form gaping sockets as if on a giant skull. Dean froze and thrust a hand up to gesture for Sam to follow suit, and he did, listening as crows called somewhere in the mist and the nearby river whispered like a set of old reed wind chimes. Sam couldn’t deny the place felt oppressive, the sensation heightened by the sight of his brother standing so still, staring toward an opening in the ruin. After a moment, Dean turned, gave a head jerk toward the doorway, and headed on. Sam nodded and followed.
Inside they clicked on flashlights and slowly picked their way past old machinery, the smell of mold and rust prevalent through out. Dean kicked aside the mummified corpse of a rat and jerked suddenly when wind howled in the towering darkness above. His flashlight beam swept upward and fell on a series of old iron girders. Sam sensed nothing unusual about it; no phantom in the gust. It was just those ancient eves up there slicing the moving air.
And then from somewhere ahead, he thought he heard a tiny gasp. Dean heard it too, for he perked up and flicked his flashlight down to angle the beam ahead. Now it was Dean who gasped softly.
“Sam, get my back.”
Sam moved up behind him and turned his body at an angle to keep perspective on both the forward path and their wake while he readied his shotgun. Dean cocked his shotgun and laid his finger across the trigger guard, raised the barrel and angled it with the beam of the flashlight as he stepped gingerly toward a forward opening and then drew up in a sudden stop.
“What. . . what is it?” Sam turned and realized there was a light flickering in the passage ahead.
Dean abruptly swept his flashlight to the right, past an array of old pipes to where an iron furnace door hung open on its hinges. He swallowed. “This is the place,” he said with absolute certainty.
Sam felt a chill just looking at the furnace mouth, like it was some gateway to hell. Water had accumulated on the floor at the base of the wall and begun to turn dark green with slime. So Dean had been visiting this place in his dreams for the past month. No wonder his brother had been in such a sour mood lately.
Then Dean gestured ahead, and they made their way toward the flickering light. The closer they drew, the faster Dean moved, until he plunged through the opening. Sam kept a short distance to guard the doorway, but his skin prickled when the screams began in unison: three separate and young little outcries, all full of holy terror.
Sam burst through the doorway behind his brother and found Dean already across the small cramped room. Someone had left a kerosene lantern burning on an old crate, just as Dean had described last night while in trance.
“Shhhhh,” Dean was crouching down slowly, putting the shotgun away, as he tried not to appear threatening to the three little boys tucked as tightly as they could go into the far corner. “Hey. . . it’s all right.” He chucked the shotgun into his bag and held up open hands. “We’re not gonna hurt ya.”
Sam almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Yes, there they were, all three of the missing kids, their little tee shirts dirty, their round cheeks tear-streaked. He took a step forward, stopped, remembered to check the rest of the room. Nothing but old pipes and the grungy light from that lantern. He looked around, found the same corroded old vat Dean had described with the mill’s faded logo still visible through the patches of rust.
“We’re here to help, okay,” Dean was saying to the boys. “I’m Dean. . . this is my brother Sam.”
Sam turned and looked down at them, saw how their little wrists were reddened from the chains around them. He gave a gentle smile at them.
“Can I see your hands?” Dean asked the nearest child.
It was the one named Jamie Anderson. . . beautiful kid, huge saucer-round eyes like sapphires framed in big wet lashes. His smooth forehead knitted up with distress and he nodded as he thrust out his hands.
Dean fumbled with the chains and the padlocks holding them on. He traced them, found that one loop connected to the other, and then on to another loop made around the wrists of the next child, and so on, until the chain reached the wall where it had been wound around a pipe that ran out of the wall and deep into the floor.
Sam eased his way closer, inwardly cringing as the chains rattled and creaked, the sound echoing in the room. He pulled out his cell phone and shined his flashlight on the display. “I can’t get a signal in here.”
“And I can’t get these chains undone,” Dean replied. A slobbery sniffle sounded from one of the kids. “You want to try—“ He started to stand and take a step toward Sam when Jamie’s hands reached out and grabbed his wrist.
“Don’t leave us!” the child wailed.
“Whoa, hey, I didn’t say I was going to do that,” Dean said gently, backing up and squatting again until he was at eye level. “Jamie, right?”
The little boy nodded and blinked. The other two murmured, gradually tackling their fear.
“Is there anyone else here, Jamie?” Dean asked. “Some bad man that brought you here?”
“Dean. . .” Sam dropped his voice to a warning level.
Jamie shook his head. “He came to put on the light.” He pointed at the lantern.
Dean’s eyes widened with concern. “When was that? Can you give me an idea how long it’s been since he was here?”
“A long. . . long. . . long. . . long time.”
Well, that didn’t exactly put a real time stamp in it, but Sam sensed there was no one else here now. Still. . . best to bring in the authorities to secure the area. “Dean,” he insisted. He knew Dean wanted to pick the locks and free the kids’ wrists, but explaining how two brothers happened to go investigating into the old mill with a set of lock picks would make matters more complicated. “We’ve got to get the police in here on this right now.”
Dean shot him a look, eyes dark and full of nails. He turned back to the kids. “Can you tell me what he looked like?”
Sam’s jaw clenched slightly. Damn it, they needed to be calling the police yesterday. “Dean. . .”
“Black,” Jamie said.
“You mean like a black man? Dark skin?” Dean asked.
“No, black. Lots of black.”
Sam frowned at that. The boy could mean anything. Could be black clothing, or could be that they had never gotten a good look at their kidnapper in all of these shadows.
“Scary. . . eyes. . .” one of the others stammered.
Dean’s gaze glassed over at that, unblinking and strangely entranced.
“Dean, come on.”
Then Sam could see rationale catch up with his brother and Dean blinked and nodded. “Okay.” He turned back to the kid who had naturally become the spokesman for the little huddle. “Jamie, I’m just gonna go talk to my brother a second, okay, and then I’m gonna stay right here with you all while he gets the police.”
Gradually the little fingers let go of his wrist and Dean was allowed to stand again. He crossed back over to Sam and inclined his head to speak.
An hour and a half later, the place was crawling with cops. Sam stood outside in the courtyard leaning against a cold concrete table while he watched officers file in and out of the place like ants. He and Dean had agreed on a story that they had seen someone go into the mill earlier and gone to investigate. Before the police arrived, Sam had taken the shotguns and the pack and hurried back to the car to stash everything so they wouldn’t have to answer too many questions. One by one he watched as the kids were carried out each bundled up in a fluffy flannel blanket. He could hear the last one, Jamie, asking with genuine curiosity, “Where’s Dean?” before the boy was carried off to an ambulance waiting out by the roadside.
Beyond the iron gate, Sam could still see that cow nibbling and staring at the activity. What a world to live in, he thought absently of the cow. Beyond the field, a white sky began to slowly break open and beam in much welcomed crisp morning sun.
“. . . and you got no details on what this person looked like?”
Sam blinked and looked down at Sheriff Hadley who had already taken Dean’s statement. And then Jamie Anderson’s last question caught up with him. Where was Dean? Sam cleared his throat. “No, Sir,” he said. “We were in our car. It was too far away.”
Hadley nodded and frowned, the corners of his mouth drawing in as he made some check to his notes and then gave Sam a rather fatherly slap on the shoulder. “It was mighty brave of you boys to come in here. . . and dangerous. Next time, you call us first, you hear, son? That kidnapper could’a still been around.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Why don’t you go on over by the road with the squad cars? I’m sure someone’ll scrape up a hot cup of coffee for you.”
“Thank you, Sir.” Sam boosted away from the table and looked back toward the mill door. It was no longer the forbidden cavern it had been before. Portable standing floodlights, powered by a cable from a car battery, had been strewn one after the other into the passage. As Hadley detached himself and stepped over to speak to one of his deputies about contacting the boys’ parents, Sam eased back toward the opening. For the most part, he received pats on the shoulders as he entered, surprised no one stopped him from treading back into the crime scene. It was beginning to catch up with him that Dean really had experienced some kind of psychic vision that had proven incredibly accurate. Maybe it ran in the family, he thought, but then he wondered why Missouri hadn’t sensed it in Dean. Or maybe she had, and that was why she had come down so hard on him, mainly for not accepting it in himself. If Dean would only cooperate on developing it, as Sam was doing with his own abilities, they might manage to improve their hunting techniques. As he wove carefully past the first block of machinery, he felt the amulet against his chest. The silver had warmed from his skin, and again he wondered why, out of the blue, Dean had insisted he wear it.
He passed the iron furnace and reached the room where the kids had been stashed. There he found Dean standing still, staring at the wall across from the vat. It had been a dark corner before, but now it was thoroughly illuminated. Just a dirty, wet wall. Nothing special about it.
“Hey,” Sam whispered when he reached Dean’s side. When there was no immediate response, he waved a hand in front of his brother’s nose.
Dean blinked and looked at him. “Huh?”
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing, just. . . in the dream there was writing here, though—“ a sideways glance that looked strangely suspect “—I don’t remember what it said.” He scratched his head and gave a tired sniffle. “Guess my imagination intruded a little.”
Sam wondered why the look, but he nodded. “Maybe, but you separated the grain from the chafe didn’t you?”
Dean arched a brow at the old saying and gave Sam a dull, tempered look.
“Nevermind.” Sam leaned closer. “We need to go before reporters start showing up.”
“Agreed.” Dean straightened himself up and they extracted themselves as calmly and quietly as possible.
Sam waited until they were back across the road and at the car before he asked, “When you want to head out?”
Dean shrugged, unlocked his side and tossed Sam the keys over the roof. “Uh, tomorrow sometime, I guess.”
“Really?” Sam had expected it to be this afternoon, before the police could contact them with more questions. . . and there were always more of those. He watched Dean climb into the car and then followed suit, handed the keys back.
Dean stared up the road at the alignment of squad cars and ambulance where the kids were being treated, then back toward the activity at the mill. His eyes narrowed as he focused on something, and Sam looked from Dean to the mill, trying to assess what was still so important. “Dean, that kidnapper’s probably long gone. I didn’t sense anyone else in there, anyway.”
Nodding, Dean cranked up the car and pulled out into the road. “Let’s go catch up on some sleep.”
Sam nodded to that and watched the old cow’s shape dwindle with the distance. At least Dean’s voice was regaining its usual edge. Sam untied the cord around his neck and removed the amulet. The silver disk and its engravings gleamed back at him. “So, why’d you want me to wear this?”
Dean glanced over, opened his mouth, appeared to be considering what to say, and then shrugged. Typical. “Oh, we just. . . didn’t know what was in there, so I figured something universal for protection.”
“It’s not that universal.” Granted, the symbol was Qaballah based, which did present a universal appeal, but this particular configuration was relatively new, having been created by Eliphas Levi in the 1800’s during the rise of various mystery organizations that practiced Hermetic High Magic, and the Victorian interest in the occult in general. Its components, however, were ancient and related to the Key of Solomon, and Sam couldn’t deny that the whole of them put together was indeed a powerful talisman. Still. . . “I mean, why this particularly?”
“Oh, Sammy, just chill all right? What’s the big deal?”
“Sam.” Sam gave a little smile and leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes as warm sun blanketed his face. His thumb caressed over the amulet, tracing one of the engraved lines with the very edge of his nail. He didn’t deny he appreciated the gesture from his otherwise antisocial sibling. So Dean wanted to protect him from something.
. . . but what?
Sam was the one who grabbed some sleep that afternoon, though he hadn’t really felt it. He’d lain down, folded his hands behind his head, and managed to drift in and out of consciousness, ever aware of Dean sitting up in bed reading something in their father’s journal. His eyes fluttered open at the occasional whispery sound of a page turning, and then eventually he stared up at Jess on the ceiling again, that look of utter shock on her face as her middle bled. He snapped awake then, and knew there was no chance of any more peaceful dozing. The light beyond the yellowed curtains had faded and a slat of streetlight fell on the opposite wall. Dean had turned on the bedside table light and was still reading. Didn’t look like he had budged one inch.
“Thought you were going to get some sleep, too.” Sam rolled over to look at the clock radio: 6:30 p.m.
Dean chewed on the end of a pen. “Yeah, I was. . . just reviewing something.”
Sam yawned and while he wondered what that something was, he left it alone. They were both getting deeply acquainted with the journal so whatever Dean was reading, it was just as available to Sam.
“It’s about dinner time,” Dean said with his eyes still on the pages. “Any idea what you want?”
Sam sat up and stretched. “I dunno.”
“There’s a pub-grub place up the street.” Dean closed the book, tucked it under one arm, and got up to go crouch at the foot of the bed and rummage in his pack. “I could stand some jalapeno poppers.”
Sam nodded and shrugged at the same time. He wasn’t really hungry, so he wasn’t picky, but at least Dean was showing a shift back to routine and appetite. “Any idea where we’re headed tomorrow?”
Dean pulled something from his pack and eased it into his back pocket as he turned toward Sam. “Nah, we need to find a job first, bro.” He headed across the room, and Sam couldn’t help but notice that the journal was still under his brother’s arm.
“Where you going with that?”
Dean paused near the bathroom door, threw a glance over his shoulder. “I need to spend some quality time on the throne, do you mind?”
Sam raised a brow. Okay, that was T-M-I. He waved off the remark and said nothing more as the bathroom door closed with a loud clack. Dad’s journal hardly seemed toilet reading material, but whatever. . .
Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose and fell back onto the bed again, staring at the ceiling. When he blinked he saw burning over his head, so he kept his eyes open and only stared until his vision blurred. He could hear some rustling from the bathroom, but no water running. After five minutes, Sam’s mind wandered.
Considering the last few weeks, and this recent situation with the kidnapped children, Sam wondered if it would be a good idea to talk Dean into a small break. They could always go back to west Lawrence and the garage apartment at their Uncle Mike’s and Aunt Kate’s, which was far on the other side of town from their original family home. It was the place from which Sam had departed for Stanford, sworn never to return, while Dean and their father had continued to call the place “home” for some time, until John’s disappearance.
But then. . . the apartment wasn’t really a home so much as an HQ serving as a mail drop, a place to register their license plates, and to cook up silver bullets. Nope, Sam decided. Scrap that idea. There was no home now, just the road and hunting, and. . .
And. . . good God, he sounded like Dean thinking that.
Sam remembered when he had begun to grow weary of hunting. At ten, he was sitting in the back seat of the car. . . Dad was driving, fourteen-year-old Dean riding shotgun. . . idle chat between the two of them on how to banish minions of the Unseelie Court (apparently, they seemed to be repelled by iron, salt and hag stones). . . and Sam looked out the window.
They were passing through an average neighborhood. . . kids racing their bikes. . . dogs chasing after. Later, at a rest stop off the interstate, he watched a family throw a Nerf football around and then eat hotdogs at a picnic table. They talked and laughed about normal things like school and soccer and taking a trip to the Grand Canyon. Sam felt like he was watching from within a glass bubble that was beginning to run low on air inside, gradually suffocating him, until by sixteen he began to raise his voice and object to going hunting. He demanded to stay at Mike and Kate’s and finish high school. John didn’t object to that. Maybe he thought it would help Sam get the desire for normal out of his system. . . but no, Sam wanted more. He wanted friends and a career, loved spending his time huddled in a library corner or those late nights in his first couple semesters, in Jessica’s dorm room with her and their other friends, having a beer, talking about their dreams and aspirations and making sense of the world in general.
But he had found such discussions limited for him. He couldn’t talk about his past, or the fine details of his family, not like the others could talk about their families. Occasionally they all went out for a horror flick at the bargain matinee and Sam flinched to think that some of those scary things on film were actually out there on the prowl, but he couldn’t talk about them. No one would have believed him and for that alone he hadn’t felt like he truly fit in. He’d admitted as much to Dean before, and he was finding peace with that, little by little. Searching for Jess’ killer gave him a focus, but whatever was happening to him now. . . this ability to see things before they happened, was driving it home that perhaps he’d been chosen for something, and perhaps Dean had been chosen, too, it was just that the elder Winchester had been bred to accept their fate as hunters.
The elder Winchester who had been in the bathroom now, oh. . .
Sam craned his head and looked at the clock again: 7:30
What the hell? Where had the time gone while he was lying here engaged in such lovely and fulfilling introspection?
And Dean was still in the bathroom. . .
Sam sat up, boosted off the bed and went to knock on the door.
“Yeah?” came muffled back but with the usual deep authority behind it.
“You fall in or something?” Sam smarted. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Just a minute. . .” And Sam was sure there was a minor tone of concern under that, maybe even a tremble. Interesting. . . that. . .
“Deano!”
“Hold on!” the disembodied voice reached an instant warning level in depth and command.
Sam decided to test his luck and banged on the door again. . . loud.
“Are you doing the friggin’ pee-pee dance, Sammy? I’ll be right out!”
“It’s SAM.” Good thing he was used to his brother’s jabs or he’d be really vexed. Sam huffed a breath and leaned closer to the door, cocking an ear. He heard a hush of clothing and a click and jumped back—and nearly out of his skin—when the knob turned and the door jerked open so fast the wind stirred his long bangs. Sam swore he detected the faint aroma of spray paint, but certainly he’d have noticed if Dean had been putting graffiti up in the bathroom.
Dean was shrugging on his flannel long-sleeve over his tee shirt. The journal lay on the sink counter, closed up with a pen marking one section. There was something off about this picture. Something missing.
“All right, go pee,” Dean said. He scooped up the journal and took it with him into the main room while Sam slipped past him with a glare and went to the toilet; the tart chemical smell of something like Krylon acrylic still wafted then finally vanished.
Sam had just finished and hit the lever when he realized what was out of place. For someone who had supposedly been indisposed for an hour, Dean hadn’t needed to flush. Sam had not heard a flush prior to the door opening, nor in the last hour had water run in the sink so Dean had certainly not been washing his face or brushing his teeth. He zipped up his fly as he rounded the corner out of the bathroom, opened his mouth ready to bombard his brother with questions and found the front door open to let in fresh night air.
Dean stood leaning against the frame, hands jammed into his pockets, staring up the walkway, casting a shadow on the floor that made Sam suddenly think of a gunslinger hanging out on a saloon boardwalk. Dean gave a quick smile and flashed gleaming green eyes at a young woman in biker leathers as she walked past the doorway.
Sam clamped his mouth shut before he asked the wrong thing too loud and took one more moment to observe. The journal had been left on Dean’s bed, and Dean’s gold amulet on its thong lay on the book’s cover, absently left there. Sam blinked at the little horned bauble and then his eyes darted to meet Dean’s.
“Ready to go?”
“Yeah.” Sam grabbed his jacket and pulled it on as he stepped out the door and Dean closed and locked it up.
They headed up the street, keeping companionable silence, while Sam pondered how to apply his own interrogation techniques. And there it was again, the tiniest hint of acrylic paint. Maybe they were near a body shop he decided and let it go.
Yesterday’s rain had dried away, but left the cracks in the pavement dark and wet. Most of the sidewalks were rolling up for the night, but the little joint ahead looked lively enough. Cars of every variety were parked outside, along with a small clutch of Harleys, and the smell of grilling meat permeated the air. Dean led the way through the door and into a deafening buzz of table chatter, glasses clinking, and Shania Twain. He inclined his head toward the waitress and exchanged a few words before she guided them toward a far table that took them away from the main crowd enough that Sam could hear himself think.
Dean plopped into his chair and grinned as the young woman pulled a pad out of her tiny apron and prepared her pen.
“Take your drink order, hon?” Her honeyed Kentucky accent was rather soothing over the pub’s din.
“Let’s have. . .” He looked at Sam for suggestions.
“Um, a Coke will be—“ Sam started. ”Two Dos Equis,” Dean interrupted, “with lime and some jalapeno poppers to start.”
“All rightey.” Her lips, glossy dark red, stretched into an inviting smile. Dean beamed back a doozie of his own and Sam wondered how his brother did it. Granted, Dean faired best with women when he wasn’t talking, but flash those pearly whites and give them that little boy grin and they were keen to call him “Sugar” or “Hon” and toss in an extra sway to their hips when they walked away.
“And four shots of your best Sauza.”
Sam frowned and gave a tiny head shake, but the waitress was off with the order before he could stop her. “Dean, we can’t waste money on liquor.”
Dean blinked innocently at him, swayed his head like he was surprised at the objection, and settled back in his chair. On second thought, Sam wondered if he really wanted his brother back to normal. “You may be used to having your dreams come true, Sammy, but I’m not. I need a drink.”
“Drinks,” Sam corrected dryly. And Dean had certainly ordered plenty of them.
Dean only smirked at that and despite his renewed carefree attitude, Sam thought he saw fatigue lingering in his brother’s eyes.
“So. . . Dean,” Sam began, “what were you doing an hour in the bathroom with Dad’s journal?”
Dean absently twisted his lips and shrugged. “Reading. Why?”
“Because you didn’t actually use the toilet.”
Dean’s brow furrowed into an incredibly disturbed look at this observation. “You’re keeping tabs on whether I take a shit or not?”
“No!” Sam cringed at the rise in his own voice. If he didn’t choose his words more carefully, Dean would corner him and threaten him with embarrassment until he shut up. He propped an elbow on the table and leaned closer. “No, it’s just. . . you were in there for an hour, Dean. . . doing what? Why’d you need privacy to read Dad’s journal? You were reading it all afternoon on the bed.”
Dean shifted uncomfortably in his chair, opened his mouth to offer God knew what kind of explanation. As fast and loose as he played it with the truth when on a hunt, Sam could imagine him preparing to launch the Hope Diamond of fibs right now to cover his ass.
Sam shot him a hard stare that cut him off at the pass. “Is this thing with the kids really over?”
“What do you m—“
“Just answer the question.”
All humor melted from Dean’s face, leaving a bland expression through his eyes. He simply stared for a moment, obviously sorting something out in his head, and then right as a red plastic basket of deep fried jalapenos slid onto the table, he said, “Yes.”
The waitress smiled from one to the other as she sat down two cold beer bottles with lime slices corking their necks, and then one after the other, four shot glasses full of silver tequila. Dean flashed her that damned sweet “fuck me please” smile.
“Can I get you anything else?”
Dean opened his mouth.
“That’ll do for now,” Sam said before the aroma of bullshit grew too strong to stomach. When she had sashayed off again, he glared at Dean. “You mean that?”
Dean nodded. “Yeah,” he said seriously. “I mean it.”
“You know you can tell me if you have more dreams like before. You know I’ll understand, don’t you?”
Dean blinked slowly and a warmer, more sincere smile eased across his lips. Sam felt a tiny stab in the heart. It wasn’t until now that he realized how much Dean had inherited their mother’s looks. Until encountering her spirit face to face, Sam had only glimpsed her in a few old faded photos that hadn’t been enough to keep her memory even remotely alive for him. But now he knew where Dean got his eyes and the contradiction of soft and hard in his jaw line, the fullness in his lips.
“I know, Sam. I know I can tell you,” he said with that alien gentleness Sam had yet to really fathom. Oh, he knew it was there, all right, but so rarely did it carry in Dean’s naturally hard-edged voice. “It’s over, really. Let’s just have a drink.” He pushed one of the shot glasses across the table.
Sam looked at the crystal-clear pool of Sauza and blinked. Part of him dared, part of him didn’t. The last time he’d had a truly hard drink was on his twenty-first birthday when Jess and the gang had taken him out. “I dunno. . .”
Dean lifted one of the shots, tossed it back, appeared to savor it for just a moment, and then swallowed it in one gulp. With another smooth move he flipped over the shot glass and planted it rim down on the table. The sweet woody smell of the tequila wafted through the air and remnants gleamed on those lips that Sam had moment’s ago compared to the delicate lips of his mother’s spirit. “What’s the matter?” Dean said with a shit-eating grin. “Too chicken to drink with your big brother?”
Sam’s brows shot up and then immediately sank down into an irritated frown, and before he thought about it. . . pride took over. A challenge, huh? He knew he was being manipulated, but. . . but. . . Dean outdid him enough already, from slaying monsters and evil spirits to bow hunting. His fingers curled around the shot glass.
“Come on,” Dean pushed, “show me what you got.”
Now it was on.
Dean felt like a shit heel. He certainly wasn’t laughing as Sam came up for air after emptying the contents of his stomach in the alleyway behind the pub.
Sam’s hands were braced against the brick wall, hanging on for dear life as he bent over, hung his head and spat the last of the vomit away. “Oh. . . God. . .” He lurched again like more would come up, but it was only a dry heave.
“All right,” Dean said and gripped his brother’s shoulder. “Let’s get you back to the room.”
Sam shrugged him away. “I can walk,” he declared defiantly and spun around to drop back and lean against the wall.
Dean held up his hands in truce. “Right, whatever you say, dude.” Ah, man, he was going to hate himself for this. Sam’s eyes were thoroughly bloodshot and teary, his nose running. It hadn’t taken much to get the job done. Sam was such a light-weight, and with the right pestering, Dean had gotten him to throw back the other three shots with a beer chaser behind each one. Sam glared with determination each time he raised a glass, and then slammed it back with a loud gulp; it was pretty damned impressive. But by the time Sam nibbled on an order of fries, the booze was well in his system and now he was clearly on his way to a hopefully vision free night in bed. Dean watched him hang his head again as if the effort to hold it up straight was just too much. “Come on, Sammy.”
”Sam. . . dammit. . .” came spitting out from under the ruffled long bangs.
Dean turned away and hid his grin in the collar of his shirt. When he got the last twitch in the corner of his mouth under control, he turned back and gave a gesture. “Let’s go.”
Sam took a breath, pushed away from the wall, and swayed. His cheeks puffed out briefly like he was about to hurl again, and then he composed himself, took one step, then two, and finally they gained a decent stride back for the motel, which was at least two blocks away. Half way there, Sam staggered over to a lamp post and found new support, still refusing any help from Dean.
Being the one responsible, Dean couldn’t say he blamed his brother, so he merely watched and waited for Sam to clear the dizziness. A cool breeze tingled through his hair and his gaze roamed to a flapping page from an old newspaper as it soared gently up the street. On the opposite sidewalk, a black terrier dog trotted along, disappearing in and out of shadows along the front of a dilapidated picket fence that had once been white. There was nothing paranormal about this particular black dog, Dean could easily deduce that much, but he felt the chill of death nonetheless. He checked his watch, saw that it was now close to ten o’clock. He’d get Sam back to the motel and settled—and hopefully unconsciously so—which might take him another hour.
Sam finally up righted himself with the lamp post’s help and once more salvaged his dignity as he walked on keeping a good ten paces away from Dean. This was the YOU-did-this-to-me treatment. It could have been worse, Dean figured. Sam could have turned out to be a mean drunk, or the type to blather on about nothing. From the way Sam had been questioning him, Dean expected more of the blathering on, but thank whatever good force in the universe there was that Sam just flat out didn’t want to talk to him right now. Fine. Dean rather preferred Sam pissed off at him. It would make heading out tonight a whole lot easier.
They reached the motel and Dean unlocked the door. He stepped out of the way and made sure Sam went in first, just so he could keep his brother in his line of sight. Sam sat down on his bed and made the puke-face again.
“Hang on, hold that thought.” Dean closed and locked the door behind him, hurried to grab a plastic can and set it in front of Sam. Then he went to the bathroom, unwrapped one of the spare Styrofoam cups and filled it with water. When he returned, Sam was on his side, hands clutching his stomach. “Damn, I had no idea you were so allergic to tequila.”
“Screw you,” Sam growled.
Dean knelt and lifted his brother’s head. “Drink some water, better something in and out than dry heaving ‘till you bust a gut.”
“You sound a little too experienced dealing with this, Deano,” Sam muttered and sipped the cup pressed to his lips.
Dean returned a shadow of a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. He had nursed their father’s hangovers plenty of times, not that they happened that often, but occasionally the dark place of hunting grew heavy and some nights John found an outlet in the bottom of a bottle. Dean didn’t need to give Sam any details. Right now the good thing was that the water stayed down. Sam was probably more nauseated from walking upright. Tall as he was, the ground had probably felt like it was ten stories down. Talk about major vertigo. “Roll over and unzip.”
“Pervert.”
“Hey, don’t make me remind you that I changed your diapers.”
Sam did what he was told and peeled his jeans down from his hips, revealing his cotton briefs. Dean pulled off Sam’s sneakers, placed them at the foot of the bed, then shucked the jeans the rest of the way off, tossed them across a chair. He carefully manipulated Sam’s lanky limbs under the bed covers, trying not to jostle the ill tummy. He left plenty of give for his patient to make a mad scram for the trashcan if necessary. Sam moaned an objection and settled on his side again, the pillow firmly lodged under his leaden head. His eyes drifted half shut.
“Dude, you are maintenance sometimes,” Dean said under his breath.
“You’re a prick sometimes,” Sam slurred.
“Yeah,” he admitted freely. “Yeah, I am, you wanna make something of it?”
Despite his miserable state, a tiny grin crawled over Sam’s lips and he raised one hand to flip Dean off before his wrist went slack and he lay still. Dean stood quietly for a moment, listening. Sam’s breathing came at a steady rate, indicating he was asleep or close to it. At any rate, his dark lashes seemed firmly locked against his lower lids. Dean went and refilled the cup and set it down on the bedside table within easy reach.
Then gradually he backed up until he reached his own bed and he sat down to watch a little longer. Sam’s young face was flushed, and little veins of hair clung to his forehead. Dean remembered watching him sleep when he was a baby, always concerned for when he would wake up crying. Sammy had never wanted milk, or to be held; he just cried, and Dean wondered if even as a baby Sam’s nightmares had been frightening premonitions no infant’s mind was ready to comprehend. These days Sam woke up with a gasp, or sometimes a shout, his voice deep and masculine, the child long buried. It was moments like this when Dean truly wished everything could be different for his brother.
You know you can tell me if you have more dreams like before. You know I’ll understand, don’t you? Dean knew with every cell of his being that Sam meant that. But he also remembered Sam’s previous statement sometime back that there were some things he needed to keep to himself.
And there are some things I need to keep to myself, too, he thought. He reached over to pick up the journal he’d left on his bed. His amulet slid off and landed on the bedspread. Dean hadn’t put it back on out of concern its own symbolic power might conflict with that he was already in process of conjuring now. He opened the journal where he’d left the pen as a marker and started to read from a slip of paper he had scribbled on earlier while going over the notes his father had made on Latin.
“Sancte Michael Archangele, defende fraterculus meus.” His eyes burned from saying it, and Dean closed the book thinking how much his Latin sucked. “Ut supremus, sic subter supter.” He crumpled the paper up in his palm and stood, shoving it into his back pocket as he went back to stand over Sam. His hand drifted almost on its own to Sam’s forehead and swept back a clinging brunet lock. Sam didn’t stir, and thank God for that because Dean was pretty sure his little bro would never let him live it down if he were caught making a tender gesture around the vicinity of Sam’s face. “I didn’t lie, Sam,” he whispered. “This thing is over. . . for you. . . but not for me.”
Then he spun away before he lost his nerve and went to grab his leather jacket and the car keys. In the open doorway, he looked back one more time.
Sam’s body was veiled in yellow light from the bedside table. He murmured something unintelligible and rolled over, pulling the covers up to his shoulders as he faced away and his hair splayed around his head on the pillow. The tequila was doing its job right.
Dean closed and locked the door, shutting his brother in safe and sound and hopefully protected from the things that did far more than simply go bump in the night.
It was the night Dean absolutely, and finally, lost what little faith he had.
He was twenty-two and had put Sam on a Greyhound bus bound for Stanford just three days prior to following their father out on a fresh hunt. There had been nothing but tension in the car after that; John was pissed off that his elder son had used up his recent poker winnings to buy his younger a one-way ticket out of the family and on to a new life. Dean had tried to convince him it was for the best—let Sam get his fill of the outside and he’d eventually come back on his own—but John didn’t let the matter slide easily. Three nights later, in a motel off the Pennsylvania turnpike, John had gotten too drunk to continue the investigation, so Dean did something incredibly stupid.
He tried to banish a demon on his own.
Dean had come to the abandoned shell of a church armed with holy water, an exorcism memorized in Latin, and shotgun shells loaded with rosary beads. There had been local talk of lights flickering in the old church, and sounds, voices chanting, until not far from here, three teenagers had been found slaughtered. A previous daylight scout had indicated some kind of infernal activity. Dean and his father had smelled sulfur on the scene, and found remnants of char in a neat circle amid the scattering of broken pews. It was an easy conclusion that the teens had performed a ritual here prior to their deaths. Stupid kids messing about with a spell book, out for kicks and not taking any of the shit they were pulling seriously. Amazing how many nether beings were summoned by accident that way.
But this was no ordinary pit fiend that he discovered this night. The thing that stepped out of the shadows around the cracked stone altar had a human body, was male, broad shouldered and wearing what Dean could only define as a black long coat or a caftan that moved easily on the slightest breeze. In the haze of cool-blue moonlight that fell through a hole in the roof, Dean made out a head of ebon hair that cascaded to the shoulders, but he couldn’t see the face. Could just be someone out for a midnight stroll for all he knew.
And then the needle on his old EMF reader topped, the device screamed like it was in a world of electromagnetic pain, and then let out a sharp snap and a burst of ozone as it died. That was a first. There was off the charts, and then there was plain ole busted.
A deep rumble of a chuckle emerged from the shadows around the stranger’s face. “Hmmm, state of the art.” It was a smooth purr of a voice that reminded Dean of a Disney villain. . . Shere Khan the tiger, or some such. Likewise, the figure began to approach with the grace of a big cat in quick strides that made the caftan billow in its wake; Dean’s gut reaction was to ditch the EMF and raise the shotgun.
“Okay, stop right there,” he put on his most commanding voice, but he knew the figure wasn’t about to remotely obey.
BAM!!!
Rosary shot exploded into the air before him, and the figure vanished in a gust of black mist only to. . .
. . . appear right in front of him.
A strong hand swept up under the front end of the shotgun, angling it upward before Dean squeezed off the trigger again.
BAM!!!
The second round of shot punched a hole in the roof and splinters of old wood rained down. Within the same set of motions, the figure pivoted his body, thrust forward his other hand with the heel of his palm turned out and gave Dean a blunt jab in the chest. It was a martial technique Dean knew quite well, but he’d never felt it used on himself with such power.
The blow forced out a breath and knocked Dean backward. He fell, let go of the gun, and coughed.
“You’re not the one I expected,” the voice said as the figure descended to one knee and finally, in the moonlight, Dean saw a face.
Strong cheekbones angled down to a square chin, and a set of heavy black brows knitted over a straight and narrow nose. The skin was pale, with an almost waxy, translucent quality. It was a perfectly proportioned human face, but at the same time too disturbingly otherworldly and mask-like, to be handsome. The eyes were what held Dean’s attention most, as they glared down at him, two smooth crystalline orbs that reflected back captivating amber light. “I thought it would be the other one with you. Who is he? Your father? And he let you out on your sweet lonesome tonight?”
Ice slithered down Dean’s middle at the thought they’d been watched. His mouth bobbed open, tried to deliver the right words. “Ego hic expello vos immunda. . . phasmatis in nomen—“
He was immediately back handed so sharply his head cracked to the side, and his bottom lip split, spilling blood down his chin. While stars danced across his vision, strong hands grabbed the lapels on his jacket and pulled him from the ground.
“Your Latin sucks,” the voice hissed near his face and frosty breath ghosted over his cheek.
Dean’s mind scrambled to inventory the other possibilities. So much for the shotgun, and to hell with trying to speak Latin. He licked absently at the blood on his lip, felt the cut sting, shocking some clarity into his head. His left hand fumbled into his jacket pocket and gripped the handle of a second weapon. A man could learn a lot from movies; in this case, Lost Boys had come in handy. Dean knotted his right hand into a fist with the tip of his thumb jutting outward, turning it into a neat little jabbing weapon. At the same time he brought it up between his attacker’s arms, breaking the hold on his lapels, and rammed the thumb tip into the soft tissue under the chin, he drew the water pistol out of his pocket and commenced squirting. Dean stumbled free and scrambled for distance while pumping the trigger on the plastic gun for all he was worth. Holy water made a repeated glistening arc through the air and sizzled as it spattered on the assailant’s face.
Demon. . . definitely a demon. . .
The fiend let out a strange low sound, not quite a roar of pain, not quite a growl. Steam rippled into the air around him, but he recovered quickly. Too quickly. This wasn’t right. He should be writhing on the ground in crippling pain. Dean bounded to his feet and prepared for the next physical attack to come in.
“Let there be light,” the demon said, and suddenly one of the old shattered pews in the sanctuary burst into flame. Golden light danced against the crusty walls, illuminating the figure. They were controlled flames, summoned by otherworldly means. The demon wanted to be seen. “Look on me,” he said calmly.
Dean swore he saw twin shadows rise against the flames from behind the figure’s back. They weren’t tangible so much as mist-like, feathery wisps reaching out into the air, spreading like giant fingers.
Wings. . .
Then Dean knew he was in a world of shit, and it must have shown on his face.
“That’s right,” the demon said as he advanced. “It’s going to take a lot more than holy water and Latin to send me away.” His hands spread and his elegantly long fingers extended into sharp points. In a swift action he brought one hand up, fingers together so that the claws formed a serrated edge.
Dean turned his body sideways, let his opponent’s strike flow past him, barely missing his throat. Another strike and yet another came in, and each time he dodged or blocked. On the next, Dean dropped and threw himself into a roll away from his opponent. He came up into a three point stance and turned around, hands raised in defensive posture, ready to take on more but. . .
The demon was not there and Dean had less than a second to register this before a hand grabbed him from behind and he was pulled back into arms that held his entire upper body with an iron grip. The thing had either moved too damned fast or teleported.
“That was cute,” the voice whispered in his ear. “You think you’re a hunter. You’re just a little boy with a water pistol.”
The hand on his throat tightened, only allowing Dean enough air to breathe. He gritted his teeth and tried to flex his arms and break the hold. When that didn’t work, he leaned his head forward, and then rammed backward. He felt the nose crunch beneath the blow and the hold loosened briefly, but only long enough for the fiend to bring a fist down on the base of Dean’s own skull.
Briefly the orange glow of the world around him dulled into dancing muddy brown patches before his vision began to clear and he realized he was belly down on the ground. His jeans were being torn from his hips and he felt cold night air caress his ass cheeks. He didn’t have to have a totally clear head to know the demon’s intentions.
“NO!” He kicked and wriggled his way out from under his assailant with renewed determination, scrambling toward the altar without thinking where he was going. One pant leg was still tangled around his ankle and the demon simply stepped on it, instantly tripping him. Dean fell smack on his belly again and heard a muted chuckle as the same clawed hands reached down, grabbed the back of his jacket and jerked it down from his shoulders turning the sleeves into shackles around his forearms and keeping his hands snuggly pinned at his back. Instinct to prevent the worst raged fiery-red behind his eyes and he continued to kick and shouted through clenched teeth. “Get off me! Get the FUCK off me!!!”
The demon only grinned and grabbed Dean’s elbows, pulled him up from behind and spun him around, shoved him backwards into the altar. “Little spitfire, aren’t you?” Dean head-butting him hadn’t done any damage. His nose was still in tact, perfectly straight, not even a drizzle of blood.
Unable to physically fight, Dean sought words of power again. . . anything that might have an effect. . . “Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis. . .” He sniffled back hot snot and tears. Fucker wasn’t going to see him cry. No way in fucking hell.
A hand bitch slapped him across the face, opening the cut on his lip a little more. “I told you, it’ll take more than that.” The demon boosted his catch up onto the altar and leaned closer. Dean cringed as his naked behind scraped against the stone. It was cold and he swore he felt something spidery run along the side of his hip.
Then the rotten wood in the wall behind the altar burst into flames as had the pew, and the full light flickered over the demon’s face again. This time there was no looking away from those eyes as the fiend leaned closer and smiled. Dean shuddered as he saw the flames dancing in those hollow crystal hell-eyes, felt the thing clawing its way into his mind, burrowing down, picking apart his soul little by little.
“So. . . Dean, is it? Dean Winchester.”
A miserable groan crawled out of Dean’s throat and he tried to turn his head, but a vise-like hand grabbed his chin. God, it hurt just to hear his own name spoken by this thing. And then, even as he was trussed up like a Christmas turkey about to be roasted on a spit, he recalled what it was that he’d missed. There was power in names. He didn’t know the demon’s name, but it knew his. That was why he had failed. On the whole, most lower demons didn’t have to be identified. They could be driven away with a prayer and a holy symbol and that was that. But then there were the elite. . . the major motherfuckers of the bunch. Dean inwardly cursed his own misfortune that he’d run into one of them.
“Look at me!” the demon snarled. Then just as quickly he calmed again, musing at the quivering mass he had splayed upon the altar. His free hand reached down between Dean’s legs and tore into one inner thigh starting up close under Dean’s balls and then ripping downward.
Dean clamped down on a whimper and pulled his lower lip into his mouth, sucked on the blood, worked it around with some spit. The gashes inside his leg burned and he felt his blood leaking onto the stone. The fire at his back grew hotter, embers snapping, and reminded him of the night his mother died.
“Maybe you don’t understand the seriousness of your situation, boy,” the demon declared. “I gave you miserable naked apes machines of war and metal works. You should be worshipping me.” He glanced toward the flames and upward. “Not. . . Him.” The last came out with a bitter hiss to it.
Dean worked the spittle to the front of his teeth and let it fly with a firm, Sptttt! It spattered a diluted red on the demon’s ivory cheek. “Worship that, fucker.”
The demon paused only to shrug at the spit and wipe it away on his sleeve. “You know, Dean, I like your spirit. It’s quite remarkable for a child who grew up too fast. Awww. . . only four years old when it happened. She was on the ceiling, wasn’t she?” Now his smile turned into a mockery of everything in Dean’s past.
Dean’s throat constricted and he cringed as he felt a single thumb stroke almost tenderly over the tears in his thigh. He knew what the thing was doing to him, screwing around with his mind, trying to break him. The physical assault was more tolerable than this.
“Yes, I know about your mother. I can see it in there.” He gave Dean’s temple a tap with the tip of one claw, opening a tiny bleeding welt. “She comes to mind every time you go on the hunt. You take out your frustration on anything that gets in your way. It’s easier than to actually track what really did it. So you and your daddy run around in a vicious circle, never making any real progress.”
Dean sniffled and felt the salty tang of blood congealing in the back of his throat. The fiend had undone the front of his pants and eased out a rock hard member that he stroked with the same thumb he’d dipped in Dean’s blood. His cock was as waxen-plastic in appearance as his face. Everything about him was a construct of elements willed together from some nether region.
“You know,” the demon continued with cool certainty, “the thing that killed her. . . it’s so close to home, right under your nose. That little brother of yours. . . abandoned you, hasn’t he?”
“You. . .” Dean said with emphasis on each word. “Shut. Your. Fucking. Mouth.”
And stabbing pain shot up into his body as the demon abruptly thrust forward. “Fine, I’m tired of talking.”
Dean cried out and threw back his head, closed his eyes, tried to shut it all out, but between the agony spearing up through his center and the crackling of the burning church, for once he knew true damnation. Whatever force ruled above was not going to send down an angel to save him. Sammy wasn’t going to arrive just in time to create a distraction, and John was too drunk off his ass to get here from the motel just up the road, and Dean had no one to blame but himself for walking into this situation. For the first time in his life, he felt truly, utterly alone. A heartsick heaviness sank into his chest. Each thrust drove him a little closer to inner death. Tears were inevitable, but concentrating on suppressing them gave him an outlet, a dark place to hide.
He couldn’t remember when it ended, only that suddenly he came around laying in a fetal position at the base of the altar, his hands still caught in the tangle of his jacket behind his back. Now the entire apse wall of the church was going up around him and spreading gradually out in a U-shape that would eventually consume the building. The demon had buttoned up its pants and knelt down to grab Dean’s hair and pull him close one last time.
“Guess what. . . you’re not dead yet.”
Dean blinked weakly, bleary eyed as he saw the wings rising up again, shadows against the flames.
“That would be too easy. It’s much more fun to let you live, always looking over your shoulder,” the demon pointed out. “See, I’ve marked you, little boy.” He dropped Dean’s head particularly hard, and Dean barely kept his temple from knocking hard against the crumbling step of the dais. “If you continue hunting, I’ll know, and I’ll find you,” the voice concluded from above. “That’s a promise.” From this vantage, Dean saw the figure walking away, casual as before, until abruptly the flowing caftan and its owner appeared to dissolve and black mist rose upward with the flames, swirling like a dust devil until it disappeared into the night.
Dean took only a few seconds to get his breath and his bearing before he tried to move. His shoulders and elbows were stiff as he awkwardly worked to shrug his jacket back up his arms and into place so he could move again, but his lower half. . . he felt like a half-crushed bug, bleeding between his legs, burning inside and out. All he could think about for a moment was that horrid, filthy promise.
I’ve marked you. . .
But the demon was gone, he was certain of that, and only then did he allow the flood waters behind his eyes to spill. Heat evaporated the tears away quickly, left streaks on his dirty cheeks.
After dragging himself over to the mass of his jeans, he struggled to pull them on, nearly passing out several times as he managed to lay on his back, lift his butt into the air and tug them over his hips. He was able to zip up but his hands shook too much to navigate the top button through its hole. Blood drenched the inseam and dried with the heat, causing the denim to stick to his skin and pull, stinging. Smoke grew thick above his head, and Dean stayed low, crawling out from under it, until near the entrance, he collapsed completely, too tired and broken and dizzy. He inhaled some of the smoke and coughed violently, spat up some of the blood.
“Dean!”
Amazing how, this close to death, his father’s voice rang so clearly in his imagination.
“Dean!”
No, wait. . . that was very real. And very close. Dean barked out another raucous, harsh cough as he was dragged to his feet and walked out of the church. Some twenty yards away he landed on his knees, felt cold damp in the grass seep through the denim. John Winchester shook him by the shoulders, and in the darker area outside the burning church, Dean realized his father didn’t see how much blood there really was on him. He could smell the woody aroma of Jim Beam lingering on his father’s breath, but John was far more lucid than he had been earlier.
Dad didn’t see. . . Dad didn’t have to know. . . One son had already left; the other had just been raped by something unknown; Dean could spare his father that last piece of knowledge. It might be the final thing to push John over the edge, and he would never allow Dean to hunt on his own. . . ever. . . and now Dean had a vendetta. He would keep hunting. . . oh yeah. . . he’d make that bastard keep his promise.
“Thing got away,” Dean reported and his eyes roamed sluggishly to take in a flash of lights coming up the road toward the scene. Someone in a neighboring house must have seen the fire and made the call. Likely John had come around back at the motel to the report on the police scanner.
“You came out here on your own?” John began to rage. “Dean, what were you thinking?!?”
Dean winced as nerves in his torn anal canal acted up with shooting soreness. He covered up the real source of the pain by doubling over and pretending it came from bruised ribs and not his ass. Some part of him laughed snidely about it, another wanted to weep at the violation. He could feel his core growing cold, his body going into shock. “Those kids, they summoned a. . .”
So filthy. . . his inner voice whispered.
John grabbed his chin and turned it toward the flame light for a better look at the bruises and the severely cut lip. His dark eyes, often so harsh in their focus or glassy with grief, softened slightly. “Dean. . .” He shook his head in dismay at the damage he saw. “What happened?”
“It was a. . . f. . . fallen. . .” but he couldn’t finish, couldn’t quite explain what he’d just been up against. The approaching sirens, the roaring flames, the flash of lights, all blended into one huge din of color and sound, and that was all he remembered of that night. . .
. . . the night he lost his faith.
It was now two in the morning and he had driven for most of the time between the motel and getting here. He’d driven up the river road to its end, then back to Main Street and up and down, and then back again, making sure he had a clear head, that he was calm and ready. He played through the entire Blue Oyster Cult Don’t Fear the Reaper album and most of the way through Tales of the Psychic Wars. When he got tired of the shabby early holiday decorations lighting up Eddington’s light poles, he finally turned back to go meet his destiny.
Dean pulled the Impala to the side of the road across from the mill, where he and Sam had parked before. His heart was hammering in his chest and he tried to keep taking deep breaths to calm himself. He killed the engine and sat for a while staring into the night. Enough moonlight broke through the clouds to backlight the silhouette of the mill and its remaining smokestacks.
Well, here I am. . .
He got out of the car and went to the trunk to gear up. He switched out his leather for a black BDU jacket with padded shoulders and elbows, shrugged it on and zipped up. It had extra pockets, places to stash things. From under the wooden box where he kept the Tetragrammaton amulet he’d made Sam wear, he pulled four shuriken. They all had four sharp tips and their flat sides had been inscribed with sigils Dean had put there himself with a permanent marker. These he slid into the pockets and, except for a flashlight, were all that he took with him. No holy water this time. No guns. He closed the trunk and headed across the road.
Mist rose ghost like from the marshy pasture. As before, the river rang gently from its flow on the other side, and Dean trod toward the gate. Police tape had been put up in a crisscross over the iron bars, but Dean broke it and pulled the gate open to step into the courtyard. He turned on the flashlight and swept the beam across the scattered tables. Between the flashlight and the moon, everything bore various shades from dull gray to deepest black. The entrance to the mill ahead was opened, it also blocked off by police tape, the only thing of color here as the beam reflected back glossy yellow.
Dean headed for the opening, guessing that what he was looking for waited inside where the boys had been found. He was not ten feet from the door before a familiar smooth voice spoke from behind.
“You needn’t go that far. I’m right here.”
Dean froze and gradually turned to look back the way he’d come. Across the courtyard, in the moonlight, stood the figure he’d been waiting to see again for four years. It was all the same. . . a mask of waxy ivory for a face. . . black hair. The same long black caftan. He shined the beam directly on the demon’s face. This seemed to piss his nemesis off a little, for the amber eyes glared back at him and the demon raised a hand into the air, made a simple wave of a gesture, and the ivy clinging to the courtyard walls and tables burst into flame, flooding the place with light and scattering snapping sparks.
Dean returned a dry smile to that and lowered the flashlight, dropped it aside. “That pyrokinetic trick comes in handy, doesn’t it?” Mostly, he figured it was the demon’s way of reminding him that it could singe him to a crisp if it wanted. He took a breath. The demon strolled toward him, narrowed its eyes and cocked its head. The shadow remnants of wings clouded the air behind his shoulders and then vanished. “All the better to show you your own heart when I pull it out.”
Two breaths. . . Okay, now, Deano, keep your cool. This is it.
“So, you got my message.”
Dean nodded. “Took me long enough, but yeah. You were almost too subtle. Those kids’ lives for mine, was that it?”
The demon nodded and steepled his fingers together so that two sharp claw tips touched perfectly. “Look at you,” he said with an almost warm tone in his voice. “All grown up, now.” His eyes roamed up and down Dean’s body and flashed with the spark of lust. Dean felt violated again under that stare and every muscle in his body recoiled.
Wait for it. . . “I’m impressed. . . you kept hunting even after my warning. I’ve been watching you for some time.”
“So why wait until now to do something about it?”
The demon gave that sly, symmetrical smile. “It was when your baby brother decided to join you again.”
Dean couldn’t control the frown that creased his brow with instant worry. To have this thing even lightly touch on the subject of Sam made his skin crawl, and he felt hot tingles rake up the sides of his neck into his cheeks. Likely he was flushing over it, and before he thought about it, his hand was slipping into one pocket, finger tips closing on the edge of one of the shuriken.
No, he warned himself. This opponent was too fast. He could ruin everything if he tried to make a move too soon.
“There were times I thought of just killing him to punish you, but then I realized I can kill two proverbial little birds with one stone. You disappear, he’ll be alone. . . abandoned. . . Oh, he might look for you for a while, but sooner or later he’ll give up, go back to law school. Ouch.”
“And our father. . .” Dean side tracked, his voice tightening, his jaw clenching even though he tried to keep playing it casual.
Wait for it. . .
“You have something to do with his disappearance?”
The demon’s brows rose and he put on an impressive display of surprise. “Me?” He chuckled. “Hell no, the old man abandoned you on his own. That was beautiful, I tell you. I couldn’t have come up with anything better than that.”
All right, now the fiend was truly crossing the line, just as Dean had expected. Here came the real mind screwing, the toying with words, the taunting to chip him down into a sorry mass of nerves.
“So, Dean, it’s just you and me now. How about a fuck for old time’s sake before I send you to. . . wherever you’re going.” There was cruel laughter in the tone. “I bet it isn’t up there.” He walked forward and slowly began to circle around Dean, examining him like a piece of meat.
“My life for theirs, remember?” Dean reminded him. “Surely that sacrifice will get me some favor with the Big Guy.”
A tiny clip of a demonic snicker. “I doubt it. He’s so stubborn these days about whom He lets in and who gets shut out. And Dean, I can tell just by looking at you, even with the work you’re doing down here, you’re a shut-out. Just like me, really.”
Dean actually had no doubt about that. Or maybe he just didn’t give a shit anymore. “So what are you waiting for?”
The demon continued moving and circled behind him. Dean turned his head slightly, keeping the dark figure within his peripheral vision. “Do what I tell you, and I’ll make it quick. On your knees.”
Wait for it. . .
Another breath. This was hard. Damned hard. Dean’s heart was pounding again, and sweat beaded on his brow until it conglomerated into a single irritating rivulet that ran between his eyes and down to tickle the edge of a nostril. Slowly he lowered to one knee, then the other. The demon circled completely around to stand over him, looking down. A cool pale hand came up under his chin and lifted it, but Dean kept his eyes cast down in submission.
“So beautiful,” the demon purred. His thumb caressed Dean’s lower lip that had long since healed of the deep gash once laid there. “Look at me.” It was not a demand as it had been before. “I want to see the jade in your eyes when I kill you.”
Close enough. . .
Dean blinked slowly and looked up into the face that had been burning in his memory for too long. Fire glow danced over the exquisite angles of the demon’s cheekbones. Dean offered back a faint smile of his own.
“Expello te, Exael.” The words were not slow to take effect. The demon’s face shifted from warm and admiring to shock. His hand jerked back from under Dean’s chin as if he’d touched a hot skillet and he backed up two steps.
“What—“ he started. “How did you—“
“Exael,” Dean repeated. “That is your name, isn’t it.” A statement, not a question.
The fiend drew in a sharp breath at the second utterance. His reactions were enough. There was no denying it. “How did you know?”
At the same time Dean rose swiftly to his feet, he drew the shuriken from his pocket and with a flick of the wrist flung it. A sing of metal through the air and the star embedded in the demon’s chest; the marker pen sigils on the star came to life with soft blue light. The demon stiffened and his mouth fell open.
“Because bad guys like you talk too damned much.” Dean reached into his pockets to withdraw two more stars. “That thing about teaching us naked apes how to build machines of war—” He shook his head and emphasized his next statement. “BIG giveaway. I did the research.”
“No. . .” Exael tried to grip the shuriken and pull it out, but it burned his hand. He let out an ungodly shriek of pain and dashed smoking fingers through the air, coming straight at—
“Shit!” Dean spun sideways, dodging just in time as the first full attack came in. As he pivoted back around, tracking with the movement of black, he let fly the second shuriken.
It planted firmly in Exael’s upper arm and he let out another ear-abrading shriek. Beyond the walls of the courtyard, birds roosting in some trees were startled into flight and scattered against the moon disk like a billow of leaves. The sigils on the second star lit up as well. It’s working, Dean thought and tried not to let himself get too excited. Still had to finish the job. He hurriedly flung the third shuriken just as Exael turned toward him, recoiled, and dove forward.
Thunk!
Dean heard the hit but couldn’t tell where it made its mark as he and his personal demon both tumbled over until Dean landed flat on his back and Exael’s hands wrapped around his neck and immediately squeezed. Dean wheezed and beat his hands against the firm grip; his face burned and he felt his own pulse pounding inside his head. Finally one hand tried to pry at the grip while the other fumbled into his pocket and started to pull out the fourth shuriken. Then the damned thing snagged on the edge of his pocket while, above him, the expression on Exael’s face turned from anger to triumphant pleasure.
“That was a nice try,” the demon hissed through his teeth. “I was going to call us even, but now. . . for that, I’m going to go fuck your brother, just like I did you.”
A miserable groan wormed out of Dean’s throat, the most he could manage, before desperation drove him to jerk the fourth star completely free, tearing the pocket out, and he raised it, felt three of the sharp tips cut into his palm as he gripped the whole thing like a knife and brought the fourth tip down and into the back of Exael’s hand where it lodged firmly and wouldn’t come free.
Exael roared as the fourth sigil lit up and now Dean felt his skin under his shirt tingle. A warm glow curled up through the material of the BDU jacket.
“What did you do!” Exael’s voice was dropping into the range Dean expected from such a demon. It was deeper now, less smooth, echoing upon itself.
“Angelic scripts, asshole!” Dean flipped over to kick his way free, but a hand grabbed the back of his jacket. The claws dug in, grazing his skin, as he was lifted from the ground and effortlessly flung some twenty feet, where he crashed into one of the picnic tables. Dull, sickening pain exploded in his side as he came down hard and small chunks of concrete and dust rained around him. His temple smacked into the corner of the seat that went with the table, and he fought to shake off the stun before his opponent could make another move. But all he heard was that awful shrieking and roaring that told him that, at long last, he had finally returned the favor and put Exael in a world of hurt. Clenching his jaw, he forced his eyes open and saw that the flames in the courtyard were crawling toward Exael, who bowed up, his curling fingers lengthening into not just claws but talons. His amber eyes glowed hot, and blue veins of lightning danced over his body from where each shuriken was embedded.
Now Dean saw the wings for real. Not just the evasive shadows he’d seen manifest before, but fully spread, leathery membranes stretched over spiney bone. They extended toward the sky, raggedy and black. Dean pushed himself carefully up onto his knees and balanced that way, too tired to stand. His body was still glowing under his clothing, and similar little veins of lightning flashed around his arms and over his front torso, but it didn’t hurt him. Time to finish this.
Now who’s getting fucked?
Dean drew in a breath and spoke. “Expello te, Exael, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in noimine Jesu Christi Filii ejus. . . Tu autem effugare, diabole; appropinquabit enim judicium Dei!” The demon’s cries reached their crescendo and at once the flames jumped from the ground and arced into the air, turning on the very thing that had once commanded them. Exael’s skin peeled back, revealing a blackened skull, lower jaw opened wide in holy agony as fire speared into it and down his throat and in an instant the flames billowed and consumed themselves, taking their hideous master with them.
Dean felt a jolt in his body as the banishment ended, the glow from under his coat dissipated, and the lightning crackled into nothing with a final zzzzzzzzzz. . . zap!
In the immediate silence, he waited, listened and noted the lingering smell of brimstone. His back began to sting as the last blow from Exael’s claws caught up with him. With a grunt he started to get up, but his bruised side gave him a sharp twinge, and he collapsed back against the cracked table. For a long time he sat, tired and numb as the heat from the flames died and cool night touched his face reminding him that he was still alive, that he’d just sent his enemy back to Hell, for good, and yet he felt. . .
Nothing. . .
It didn’t matter that neither his father nor his brother was here to share the glory with him. That wasn’t the case. Something else still wasn’t right, but Dean was too tired to fathom it. With any luck, he’d get back to the motel, cleaned up and settled before Sam batted one eye open.
Dean gritted his teeth, put in the effort, and hauled his sorry ass off the ground.
The song was supposed to be Steve Miller’s Big Ol’ Jet Airliner, but the little hangover gremlin singing in Sam’s head was out of tune and didn’t know any of the lyrics so he vouched for pounding out a beat on the insides of Sam’s temples instead.
Sam grumbled as he turned over, opened pasty eyes, and realized the light was still on and the alarm clock radio had come on at a murmur, just loud enough to plant the suggestion of music. Gradually he remembered that the clock had been problematic their whole stay here; some previous patron had set it for four-thirty in the morning and for some reason it stuck that way, so Dean had just turned down the volume as low as it would go. But this morning, it was like a police siren to Sam’s ears. He raised his head to glare at the clock and his gaze happened to roam toward the empty bed across from him.
“Dean?”
Sam pushed up onto his elbows and looked around, didn’t hear anything. . . no noise from the bathroom, which was what he would have expected. But then. . . the bed covers had not been turned down. They were a little rumpled where Dean had sat on them, but he’d obviously not gotten into bed that night.
Sam looked down and saw the strategically placed trashcan. Thankfully, he hadn’t needed to use it again. His stomach was settled well enough, and it was only his head giving him hell. Sam massaged the bridge of his nose, pushed aside the covers, and rose carefully into a sitting position. Okay, not bad so far. At least Dean’s choice of booze was clean. Sam knew he wouldn’t have fallen into the trap if he’d just eaten more. He remembered calling Dean a prick and drifting into a nice doze, but he swore now he’d also heard Dean speaking Latin. Something about Archangel Michael. . .
Yeah, right. Dean was probably as popular with the angels as Rasputin. Ice, Sam decided, that was what he needed, and then he would go look for his incorrigible brother and find out what the deal was. He stood carefully, realized he was in his underwear, and hunted down his jeans. He was doubled over struggling to get his foot to slide into a pant leg when he happened to look directly down into the trashcan. There were a couple wadded tissues and something else. Sam paused, halfway into his pants, and reached down to pull out a gold enamel paint pen.
Huh? He gave it a little shake and heard the mixing ball inside rattle. Well, that explained where he’d smelled paint from. Okay, whatever. . . he dropped it back into the garbage and stood up straight to finish dressing.
He crossed the room taking care not to move too fast or jostle his head, and grabbed the ice bucket along the way. Again, not too bad. The chain latch was undone, so obviously Dean had gone outside, maybe for a walk. Sam opened the door, and cool air caressed his face, livened his senses a little. He stepped into almost perfect silence except for the slight buzz in the motel’s neon sign erected out by the highway. The yellow tube lights forming VACANCY flickered slightly on the pavement, but there was. . .
Sam frowned. The Impala was gone. He looked up and down the street and clenched his teeth as he cursed under his breath. Damn it all, now what? Dean hadn’t slept in his bed, and now he’d left without at least putting a note on the door to say where he was going. Sam thought of their father and how John would have torn him a new one if he’d pulled something like that. Dean, however, got away with nearly everything, had even been allowed to go hunt on his own well before he turned up in Sam’s life again. But, Sam deduced, considering all that had happened lately, maybe Dean had felt like driving to decompress, or he might be at the road house they’d passed on their way into town. Probably blowing off steam gambling, which meant that when he returned, he’d be sleeping until noon while Sam paced or watched whatever signal the motel television offered.
If only, Sam wished, Dean would say more about this situation with the kids. Dean may have claimed it was over, but Sam couldn’t deny the strange nagging feeling he had. The fact the kids were found virtually unharmed and were being returned safely to their parents was a blessing, but finding them at all had, in the end, been. . . well. . . too easy. Ah, well, maybe he’d best not look a gift horse in the mouth, and maybe that was the way Dean was looking at the matter. Dean was nothing if not resilient, Sam would give him that.
Sighing, Sam took the bucket and sauntered down the walk to the breezeway dividing this motel block from the next. In the open corridor, he went to the ice machine, ignoring that the passage smelled like puke and mildew. One hand scooped up the ice on its own while he yawned and his other hand ran through his hair, smoothing some of the pillow head. He shook some of the excess ice back into the bin and paused as he heard. . .
Yes, there it was, the familiar rumble of a certain V-8 engine coming closer. Sam eased to the end of the corridor and peered back up the walk just as the Impala pulled into the parking place, neon streaking along its glossy black shell. Dean’s distant figure got out, sporting his leather jacket, and headed for the room. Sam watched as Dean paused when he saw that the door was ajar. Sam narrowed his gaze, waiting if only to see what his brother would do.
Dean turned from the door, looked down the walkway, and the light caught on a slight crease in his forehead. “Sammy?” he called in a hushed tone.
Sam stepped around the corner of the passage and waved casually. “Here.”
He saw Dean’s head nod and then the figure slipped into the room. Sam plodded back up the walk to the room, found Dean had left the door open for him but was nowhere in sight. Sam sat the bucket on the dresser and noted that Dean had once more made a swift retreat to the bathroom; he’d shed his jacket and tossed it onto the bed along the way, but now Sam heard running water. Hell, he hadn’t even gotten a chance to ask where Dean had been off to.
Well, no more of this fucking hiding. Enough was enough. Sam took a couple of ice cubes, ran them over his eyes and temples for a moment. They did a nice temporary job of chasing away the gremlin. Slightly more invigorated, he dropped them back into the bucket and stormed toward the bathroom door, rapped his knuckles on the hollow panel with a loud WHAM WHAM WHAM. The hush of water running shut off from within.
“Where were you, Dean?” he demanded through the barrier.
“Uh, just out for a drive,” Dean’s reply came back, but Sam noted that jittery shake in his brother’s voice. . . the same nervous tremor he thought he’d heard when Dean was holed up in there last time.
“At four in the morning?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Don’t tell me. . . still more nightmares?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed with the pukes?”
“Knock off the crap, Deano.” He banged on the door again. “We need to talk.” Sam leaned closer to hear better, was already preparing another retort, and found he didn’t need one.
From beyond the door came only. . . silence. . .
It lingered for a good ten seconds, and Sam’s irritation shifted to the level of worry. He looked down at the light beaming from under the door. It was cold and still, no signs of movement via Dean’s shadow shifting about. “Dean?”
A strange sense of dread struck him with that silence; it hummed at the back of his mind and ramified down into his body, clenched on his heart. Something here was too wrong. Sam’s hand hovered over the door knob. He preferred that Dean come out on his own and talk about the problem, but it didn’t take a genius IQ to figure out that wasn’t going to happen. With one strong, forced shove, he turned the knob and shouldered the door.
The movement jarred him a little hard, set the gremlin back to work pounding the insides of his temples, and then the door burst open and slammed back into the adjacent wall with a CRASH. Sam stumbled forward and skidded to a priceless Scooby-Doo style halt.
Good going there, Sammy boy, he chastised himself.
And good thing they seemed to be the only ones renting a room on this block or the neighbors would be pissed at all the noise. Sam blinked to clear the newest round of pain and focused on Dean leaning back against the sink counter, his hands at his sides gripping the edges until his knuckles were white. His tee shirt was off and clenched like a dirty rag under one hand while he stared evenly at the floor, his jaw clenched tightly. The sink was stoppered and half filled with steaming water and a soaking wash cloth.
Sam expected to be blessed out for invasion of privacy, but was more taken aback by Dean standing statue-still, his bare arms and chest covered in a series of lines and shapes. The markings were faint on Dean’s skin, but when the angle of the light changed, they became much clearer and shined.
They were drawn in gold ink.
Sam dared a step closer, forced the knocking in his head aside so he could focus on the sigils and he recognized their style. Angelic scripts. . . or as this particular series was known, the Passing of the River Script. So this was what he’d been doing in the bathroom for an hour last night. They were simple lines, much like runes, and Sam would need a guide chart to interpret them, but he could guess Dean had arranged them to invoke some kind of celestial power. In the center of his chest, the gold defined a circle in which a pentacle had been drawn, and Dean had repeated the same characters for the Tetragrammaton that were on the medallion. It was already shock enough that he’d painted the front of his body, but then Sam’s gaze fell on the bathroom mirror.
Dean’s back was to the mirror, so from this angle, Sam saw the claw marks, all five of them, in a rough circle. Something had made a grab for Dean. They had torn his skin, and blood still oozed from the lacerations and ran over taut skin. His shoulder blades were clenched and glistening with sweat. There was also a huge goose egg of a bruise on Dean’s side right under his floating rib. Any higher, and Sam could imagine what had done that would have broken the rib and punctured a lung. Every muscle around it was still whipcord tense and there were some smears of what looked like soot. A faint smell of sulfur clung to him.
“Dean. . .” Sam breathed, tried to form the question. “What’re you. . . what hap—“ He next noticed red bruising around Dean’s neck. He’d seen similar in the last weeks, on his own neck when the poltergeist in the Winchester house had tried to strangle him with a lamp cord. “Wh. . .” He raised a hand and made a weak gesture at the whole of the damage. “What did this? Dean? Where did you go?” Then he shut up and waited out the next excruciating five minutes of silence.
Dean didn’t look up when he finally spoke. “I don’t have precognitive dreams, Sam.” His voice sounded rusty, worn. “I never did.”
“What do you. . .” Sam fumbled with his own tongue, couldn’t take his eyes off the markings on his brother’s body. They were rather exquisitely rendered for someone who boasted absolutely no artistic talent whatsoever. “What are you talking about?” His logical brain was already attempting to sort it out. Between Dean’s statement and the sight of those markings, Sam couldn’t scramble for an answer fast enough.
And again Dean didn’t exactly jump to render one. His eyes darted up to Sam, who lingered in the doorway, then back down again to glare at the floor. His throat flexed as he swallowed what looked like a seriously hard lump. For all intents and purposes, he looked like a cornered animal, and. . .
Oh, shit. . . Sam realized he was blocking the door and had his brother so hemmed in, it was a wonder Dean could stand still at all. “Dean. . .” he coaxed, and green eyes glanced up at him again and this time lingered. God, what he saw in those eyes. Dean was good at masking what was really going on inside of there, but not this time. Whatever it was, it had too strong a hold for him to push it back and make believe everything was fine and dandy. Sam stepped aside and gave a gesture of freedom.
Dean boosted away from the sink and walked past him into the main room where he stood in the musty and dim yellow light. He paused, rubbed at his face with his hands, and turned around. “Those dreams I had. . . they weren’t premonitions. Something was calling me out.”
Sam inched as close as he dared, taking care to give his brother space. “Something?” He arched a brow.
Dean looked him over, and then that sad little hint of a smile graced his lips for a matter of seconds. “I didn’t want you to know.”
Then Sam blinked and behind his eyes a flash of light speared up. . . fire. . . and before that flame he saw a younger Dean. . . battered, lip busted. . . stripped from the waste down and perched, legs spread, upon an old altar while something winged and dark drove into him, fucking him senseless. There was no fear on Dean’s face. . . only hate. . . pure, unadulterated. . . rage-hate.
A half second later Sam’s eyes snapped back open and he gasped. What had he just seen? Premonitions were one thing, but what the hell was that?
Dean didn’t seem to have noticed Sam’s sudden zone out. He took a breath, paced slowly toward the bed, swung back around on his heel and crossed his arms over his body. It was a disturbingly vulnerable stance for Dean Winchester to assume. He was still clutching his tee shirt, which Sam saw now had blood on it. “It was four years ago,” he continued. “Dad and I were in Pennsylvania checking out a ritual site. Some kids had been fucking about and summoned something. We were sure it was a demon of some kind, but you’d just left for college, and Dad wasn’t in shape to deal with any of it. I went back to the site by myself.”
As he spoke, his voice dimmed little by little, tightening up with fatigue and wariness. Sam felt like he should sit down for this, but he couldn’t. Dean kept standing, so did Sam.
“But it wasn’t. . .” Dean suddenly shuddered. His jaw clenched and his lips pursed slightly as if he couldn’t spit out the words. “It was. . .” He broke off, let out a nervous chuckle and rubbed under his nose.
Sensing his brother was about to go on the emotional lam, Sam jumped in quickly. “It was what?”
“His name was Exael,” Dean concluded, “and he was more than I could handle that first time. He worked me over first, then he. . . um. . .” Dean cleared his throat, swallowed another lump. “He fucked me.” Quickly he turned away and with a painful grunt, raised the shirt and shrugged it back on. Sam watched the movement squeeze more blood out of Dean’s scrapes, before the gray cotton came down over them. Didn’t do much good. The blood was still there along with the rips that had nearly taken out the whole back of the shirt.
Between the hangover and this news, Sam felt faint. “What was he?”
A glance over the shoulder, another snide chuckle of denial. “A fallen angel.”
Again when Sam blinked he saw the flames, saw Dean clutching back a scream as his body was torn into and ravaged by the thing in black.
“A Watcher, Sam. One of the biggest infernal assholes in the world.”
That drove it home. Taking on something rumored to be so powerful was already hard to fathom, but Dean had done this on his own? Sam felt his chest tighten and bile threatened to rise in his throat. If all he was glimpsing were mere flashes, he couldn’t imagine what the full experience had been like. Didn’t matter, it all boiled down to one final, sickening answer: his brother had been raped.
“Dean. . .”
“I dealt with it.” Dean turned back to him and while there might have been moisture rimming on the edges of his eyes, his gaze was all hot coal and gunpowder ready to go off at any second. “I swore I wouldn’t let that bastard break me.”
“Does. . . Dad know about this?”
Dean’s brow furrowed and he huffed out a tired breath. “No. I didn’t want him to have to deal with anymore than he had to. This was my fight.”
Was he serious? Sam gaped at his brother and shook his head. “I can’t believe you,” he rasped incredulously. “Dean, you were raped! And you’ve never told anyone about this?” Goddamn, he knew Dean was bullheaded, but to endure such a huge inner scar and tell no one for four years. No wonder Dean slept with a big fucking knife under his pillow. And for whose sake? John Winchester’s? The father who had them on this wild goose chase all over the country? The father who hadn’t even returned a phone call when Dean had left a message asking him to join them in Lawrence? “Screw what Dad could deal with, Dean.”
“Don’t say that,” Dean spat viciously. “Leave him out of this. It wasn’t Dad’s fault.”
Sam stifled bitter laughter. “Well then where was he, Dean? While you were getting beaten and drilled, where the hell was he?” And right then he knew he’d gone too far when Dean took too storming steps closer and shoved him hard in the chest.
“I said leave him out of this!”
Sam stumbled back and reached up to grab Dean’s wrists before shoving hands became punching fists. For an instant they were locked close and glaring at each other as Dean tried to keep pushing against him, teeth gritted, and then pain glazed his eyes and the fight drained out of him. Sam let go on his own and stepped back. This wasn’t the time for a brotherly spat and fisticuffs. “All right, Dean,” he said more gently. “Just. . . just tell me what happened tonight then.”
Dean wiped absently at his mouth, turned and paced. . . a perfect caged animal routine if there ever was one. His shoulders hunched slightly and then rolled back like a prize fighter preparing to go round ten. He halted finally and drew in a breath that puffed out his chest like a pissed off rooster. “I sent that bastard back to Hell, that’s what happened.” Obviously he didn’t have to go into too much detail; anyone could see from looking at him that a furious battle had taken place. He brought up a clenched hand, held it in the air, and then the words simply released and he was off on a furious tear. “See, the dreams. . . those were Exael’s way of getting a message across to me. He wanted to break me, see. . . He thought by fucking me. . . marking me. . . he’d stop me from hunting. But I didn’t stop, Sam.”
Sam could hear the tone of pride and determination, but the foundation holding it up was rapidly crumbling.
“I didn’t stop, and so he used the kids. He kidnapped them, scared them a little, and used that fear to call out to me. So I didn’t have a choice, Sam. Do you see?” Now both fists were clenched. “He was going to kill them if I didn’t exchange myself for them, but I went prepared this time. He didn’t think I could banish him, but I was ready this time. I did the research. . .”
“The angelic scripts and the pentacle.” Sam nodded sadly. The more he heard, the more it hurt to breathe.
“And my Latin. . . I brushed up on my Latin. . .”
“Well, that makes me feel better.” Sam’s eyes were tearing. This was all so absurd for Dean to pretend that a battle won would make this whole sordid matter go away.
“I’m all right, Sam, really.” Dean looked like the lie tasted bitter. He made such a sour face. Anyone could see that he was anything but all right. “I’m A-okay. . .”
Sam’s nod became a disbelieving headshake. “Dean. . . stop. . .”
“He marked me, but he couldn’t break me. . .”
And here it came. Dean shuddered, tried to suppress it, but tears—the likes of which Sam had never seen from his brother—welled up and slid down his cheeks, carving clean streaks through a layer of grime.
“He. . . marked me. . .” Dean suddenly collapsed, and Sam jolted into action, diving forward to catch him by the shoulders and lower him to the carpet on his knees. Sam knelt with him. “I just feel so dirty, Sam.” He tried to bury his face in his cupped hands, but Sam pulled them apart and eased Dean forward into his arms. Dean embraced him instantly, held tightly, his face buried against Sam’s shoulder. “I just feel so. . . dirty. . .”
Sam massaged Dean’s shoulders, tried not to be too rough knowing there were claw marks back there, and even though the rape itself had taken place years ago, it felt so immediate. Dean had never felt fragile before, but now, at this moment, he felt like he was held together by silk thread. Sam clenched his eyes shut and, despite himself, savored the embrace and gently rocked. He cupped a hand to the back of Dean’s head and carded fingers through the short spiky hair. Just this once, he felt like the big brother, and it was his turn to protect.
“Let it go,” he whispered in Dean’s moist ear. “Just, let it go. . .” He felt another shudder rock the other man’s frame and warm wet leaked against his collar bone where Dean rested his face.
Dean didn’t sob loudly. It wasn’t his temperament. Even in the midst of a breakdown he maintained a level of control that Sam knew would always be there. Always. Dean was the strongest person he knew. He just needed this cleansing. For all that he bathed on the outside, it took tears to wash out the inside.
Sam nuzzled his chin against Dean’s forehead and smiled to himself at how good this felt, Dean’s warmth against him, Dean’s arms actually hugging his neck. Each new shiver, every little purifying tear, gave him a greater sense of purpose being with his brother. Sam continued to rock gently to and fro.
“You carried me out of the fire once, Dean” he whispered. “Now let me carry you.”
Things were moving relatively back to normal by mid morning. Dean had exhausted himself into near oblivion and Sam finally coaxed him to his feet and onto the bed where he slept for three hours and Sam kept watch, breaking only to take some aspirin, wash up, and don fresh clothes.
They didn’t talk much when Dean woke. Sam went for coffee and Dean slipped into the shower. This time, he only took fifteen minutes.
The gold paint pen markings didn’t wash off; the enamel would have to wear off on its own, and even then, Sam had no doubt the scripts’ protective power would remain for some time. So, now clean and a towel around his waist, Dean sat on the edge of the tub and sipped his coffee while Sam dabbed ointment on his back and laid bandages over the deep scratches. These, Sam thought, would heal, but there was no telling how deep they still reached inside. The scars inside would linger; it would not be realistic to think one good cry was all the therapy Dean needed.
And then. . .
“Not a word,” Dean mumbled.
Sam laid the last bandage on and smoothed down the latex edges. “About what?”
“If you ever tell anyone I cried in your arms, I’m kickin’ your ass.”
Good thing Dean was facing the wall so he didn’t have to see Sam’s smirk. “I will take it to my grave.” Sam packed up the first aid kit and made a hasty exit before Dean decided to kick his ass just on sibling principle. And that’s my brother, all right.
An hour later Dean was dressed, his Egyptian amulet once more around his neck. They took some time to determine where they would go next, which turned into a debate over their father’s whereabouts again. So Sam placed some calls around to various connections. Still no one had heard from John Winchester, even Caleb, one if his most trusted munitions suppliers. So the debate grew
Why hadn’t he tried to get in touch after Dean’s call in Lawrence? Was he hiding? Was he busy?
Dean refused, once more, to contact the feds, and despite all the emotional catharsis they had just been through, Sam found his usual view of his brother returning gradually. That was when the mysterious text message came in with nothing but John’s bullshit coordinates sending them to Rockford, Illinois not for his children to find him, but to take a job checking out some old insane asylum. Great, Sam thought, perfect place to go after his brother had just admitted to being raped by a demon. Nevertheless, Dean was adamant that they follow orders.
“If he wants us there, it’s good enough for me.”
Sam only gritted his teeth and shook his head. At any other time, he might have argued a little harder, told Dean that he and their father could both go take a flying fuck. But to turn away now was impossible.
Soon after the matter was settled—or unsettled, depending on which brother was looking at it—Dean walked down to the motel office to check them out while Sam packed up the car. Sam watched his brother’s back as he walked down the block, sun on his hair, his usual cocky stride in place.
It was almost infuriating that Dean couldn’t possibly blame their father for any of this. Never mind that John had dragged his sons into this business, but he’d turned his back at the wrong time and Dean had paid for it. And now he expected his sons to keep following his orders. At least, that was how Sam saw it, and he knew it was something that would nag at him for a long time, but for now there was no point in rubbing the proverbial salt into his brother’s wounds.
He climbed in behind the wheel and waited as Dean came back from the office. From the passenger seat, something reflected sunlight against his right eye and Sam turned to look down at the Tetragrammaton amulet. He must have let it slip from his hand after the events at the mill yesterday morning. Picking it up, he stroked over the surface with his thumb, felt the sun-warmed silver and gradually the bitterness over his father ebbed. This, he realized, was about Dean, not their father. It was all about everything Dean had given up to be who he was and that Dean had, essentially, sacrificed his own life and soul the night he decided it was more important to protect his father from the truth. And, ultimately, he had tried to protect Sam as well. The whole of it was hard to understand, but a single brilliant ray beamed out of that darkness.
Dean loved him. He had to remember that. Dean loved him enough to try to protect him from something so terrible—
“Yo, slaphappy, what’d you think you’re doing?” Dean’s gruff voice suddenly demanded as he leaned into the driver side window and glared.
“I’m driving,” Sam declared and focused a hard and-I-mean-it stare on Dean. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn us south while you’re napping.”
The corner of Dean’s mouth twitched uncomfortably, then he gave Sam the finger and finally crossed around the front of the car and stiffly got into the passenger side.
“Jerk,” Sam muttered.
“Bitch.”
Sam smiled to himself and cranked up. Over the sound of the engine rumbling, he heard Dean rummage through his tapes and select something out. Sam wheeled the car out of the lot and turned for the road, feeling like they lost a whole gallon of gas every time he pressed the pedal. At the exit onto the road, he stopped to look left, then right, and paused as he noted Dean fiddling with a tape case, absently rattling the plastic between his fingers, while he stared emptily toward the glove box.
Sam put the car in park and let it idle. “Dean?”
Dean looked tired again, but that was to be expected. He blinked slowly and looked up the road. “Exael didn’t break me, did he, Sam? I mean, you don’t think he did, do you?”
Sam’s hands clenched on the wheel and then released as he felt that same damned heavy weight in his chest again. So, Dean did give a damn what his little brother thought of him. “No, Dean, he didn’t. . . He never could.”
Dean nodded vacantly and leaned back, threaded fingers through his hair and propped his elbow against the door. He didn’t bother to put the tape in the player.
Sam shifted back into drive and cruised up the road.
Dad already did that, he thought.
Fin