Due Supernatural [NC17] Sam/Dean, Part Four
“Azazel,” Sam explained grudgingly, spreading the papers he’d gathered to reveal his father’s journal and the sigil scribbled there. His hands hurt from where they’d held onto Dean’s wrists, aching like they were used to clutching something that didn’t exist anymore. Possibly wouldn’t exist for much longer.
God, stop. He had to stop. He had to get Dean to leave, not show him further excuses to stay. What was he doing?
Except. Dean knew Chicago. If Sam could get him to divulge the information without letting on-
“That’s what was in the photographs,” Dean said instantly, leaning close enough that Sam could smell the leather where it heated against his skin. Sam held himself still and refused to reclaim his personal space; if Dean wanted out of it, he could damn well move.
“Yes. Yeah,” he corrected himself. He didn’t-he wasn’t wearing the damn serge, he was allowed. “She either left them to scare me off, or gave them to Gordon as a souvenir. He is also, most likely, possessed. Or dead.”
Dean hummed, palming the back of the journal to hold it closer to his face. “Can this thing only get around by summoning?”
“No. Summoning simply gets it to a place faster.” Sam’s hands were shaking. He shoved them into his jean pockets and forced his breathing to remain even, forcing his squirming nerves further back in his mind. It certainly wouldn’t kill Sam to have a fresh perspective.
That’s not where this is going, a harsh voice whispered in his chest, and for once it didn’t belong to Bela.
“Beam me up, Scottie,” Dean murmured, and flipped a page. “Does it have to be done in animal guts?”
“No,” Sam said, hesitation dragging at the sound, “Chalk would do, or paint. Why?”
Dean’s eyes flicked up to him and stayed. “You got a way to kill it?”
Electricity snapped through his blood, constricting his rib cage hard enough he had to take a step back. “Dean. No. I mean, yes, I have a way but-“
“So let’s graffiti this bad boy on the floor and pop the thing between the eyes.”
“It won’t come alone,” Sam said as levelly as he could, hands curling into fists so he’d have something to hold onto. “If it even chooses to come at all.”
“Huh.” Dean turned the journal upside down, which was in no way going to help him read Enochian.
“This isn’t your fight.”
“I’m sorry,” Dean said, lifting his eyes and nothing else, “Didn’t realize you had anyone else stepping up to the plate.”
“I have Bela,” Sam pointed out, forcing his rigid arms to fold, “Dean, you’re a cop.”
“Chyeah,” Dean said, or something like it, “So between the three of us, I am the one who can legally carry a gun.”
“Legal doesn’t enter into it!” Was Dean being purposefully stupid? “There are no rules with demons. If you pull out a badge and tell them to put their hands in the air, they will make you eat it. Literally, and in the most painful way possible.”
“And you want me to let you go in alone,” Dean drawled, a dry, impish quirk to his mouth that didn’t come anywhere near his eyes. “No dice, Sammy.”
The name grated in a way it never had before, making his jaw clench. “Don’t. Bela-“
“Apparently has the attention span of a very furry gnat, because she keeps wandering off-”
Oh, I’m sorry, Bela’s sweet sarcasm slid across the marble tiles and apparently over both of their minds, as Dean jumped and turned to glare in her direction. Did you want me to stay and watch?
Sam caught a wet glisten in the darkness as she licked her chops before Dean leveled a look at him. “It creeps me out when your dog objectifies me.”
“Hellhound,” they corrected in rather eerie synchronization. Bela finally materialized from the shadows permeating the stacks, golden eyes glowing.
“Oh. Okay,” Dean said, pointedly slow, “so you’ve got one snarky half-demon Lassie and a can-do attitude. I can see where an extra gunman would just be superfluous, really.”
Now was not the time to explore the little shiver that ran down Sam’s spine. He wasn’t honestly sure he’d be able to survive another round with Dean, not without a hope of ever being able to let him go. God, dangerous. Didn’t Dean have any idea how-
“Hey,” Dean snapped, misreading Sam’s brief silence, “I have at least seen Pirates of the Caribbean, okay? I know the word ‘superfluous.’”
“I’m…glad for you.” Sam shook his head as far as the knotting muscles in his nape would allow him. “We have the Colt.”
“I heard about that,” Dean said, startling Sam’s eyes wide. Bela’s ears shot forward, tensing almost imperceptibly as she made a show of settling at Sam’s feet. “From the Inspector, when I swung by the Consulate looking for you. Been around in your family for a while, right? And no one remembers how…”
“Yes,” Sam started tentatively.
Bela jumped in, catching on immediately to Sam’s unease. It just so happens, the Colt is one of those rare mythical weapons that kills whatever it hits. Her tail brushed once across the marble as she glanced pointedly away. Leave it to the Americans. But it’s worth a fortune if you know the right buyers.
Dean rolled his eyes, then rounded on Sam. “Why are you so hell-bent on ditching me? Look,” he added before Sam could open his mouth, “I mean, setting aside all of…this, I realize-”
“Dean, don’t.” Sam took a not-entirely-steady breath, but his gaze locked on Dean’s as firm as he could make it. “You aren’t coming.”
“Coming where? Do you even have a clue where we’ve got to go?”
Sam’s patience snapped. “Stop saying ‘we.’”
Dean sucked in a breath, green eyes boring into Sam as deep and painful as if he were physically digging into him. “What’s got you so scared?”
He could feel the serge-red walls buckling over him like armor, and he didn’t feel strong enough to stop it. “The prospect of facing the monster who murdered my family might have something to do with it.”
Dean shifted his weight, but didn’t back down. “If that was it you’d jump at the chance of having backup.”
Sam’s voice lowered to a more than audible murmur. “Depends entirely on the merit of the backup.”
Dean’s eyebrows arched, but Sam caught a muscle twitch in his jaw, belying the casual answer. “Not raising to that, try again.”
Infuriating-! “You’ve never faced a supernatural being in your life-”
“Hello, death omen.”
“You didn’t kill it-”
“It wasn’t trying to kill me!”
“This thing will,” Sam snarled, feeling every inch he had on Dean turn brittle. “Azazel will.” His heart seized, and he turned his face away to hide the blood draining from it.
He’d made a mistake. First his accidental glance at the ceiling when he was lying in Dean’s arms, and after when Dean’s wrists were in his hands-and before, god, what had he been thinking? Need was dangerous. Everyone he’d ever loved died and he needed. He had to keep Dean alive.
“So that’s it, then?” Dean asked into the echoing silence, expression and tone completely unreadable before melting into tightly controlled anger. “I might not have been trained from birth to deal with these things, but that doesn’t mean I’m no good at holding my own and you know that. So what you’re telling me is you know you’re heading into a suicide mission, and you expect me to be a-okay with that.”
Sam was thrown at how he’d leapt to that conclusion, too stunned to hide the fact that Dean was right. And maybe Dean had been guessing, or hoping he was wrong, because when he read the truth on Sam’s face his entire being twisted.
“God damn it, Sam!” He tore a hand through his already sleep- and sex-disheveled hair. “God- If John Winchester was alive I’d punch him in the face!”
Sam hissed in a breath, shock ricocheting down his bones. “What does my father-”
“You were alone, Sam,” Dean snapped, cutting him off. “You were alone and you learned how to live alone and make decisions alone and now you think you’ve got to die alone when you don’t have to fucking die at all. Son of a bitch, maybe-maybe if you’d had a brother or something, maybe-just. God damn it!”
Look, I think it’s time the three of us had a heart to heart. Bela’s low growl made them both twitch, Dean’s hand jerking towards the shoulder holster he wasn’t wearing as she prowled forward to place herself between them. Azazel killed your father, fine. She turned her muzzle from Sam to Dean. And Azazel hurt your mate. But Azazel has something of mine and I want it back-listening to the two of you whinge about it isn’t going to get us anywhere. I can continue hunting the demon on my own if you two don’t shape up, and I will.
“I know where he will be.” A spike of adrenaline made Sam speak without thinking, Dean’s previous words leaving his nerves raw and exposed. He froze the instant his own words left his mouth, tensing to a painful degree as Bela’s golden eyes and Dean’s burning green ones settled on him like molten lead.
Aren’t you a sharp tack, Bela said, and the intensity flattened with a flick of her ears as she realized just how Sam would know.
Dean, who didn’t-who couldn’t- Dean took two steps towards him and stopped. “You prepared to fight me the whole way there?”
“I don’t- It’s not exact.” Sam felt cold settle in along his shoulders, and tried not to hunch them.
Oh, for goodness sake, Bela snapped before either of them could fumble another word, and loped forward to place herself in front of Sam, fixing Dean with her unearthly stare. Samuel has a gift; understand, cupcake? He’s a regular Gordon Smith.
Dean stared at her. “Like anyone knows who that is.”
“I see things,” Sam said, as fast as he could. “Before they happen.”
And Dean’s stare turned to him, his voice coming out almost too quiet to hear the strain. “Like…what?”
“I-The nightmare.” Sam’s fingers brushed at the small cut at his hairline before he realized his hand was moving. “I dreamed-I saw-” you die. I saw you die on the ceiling with your blood soaking through-“a building.” He swallowed, tasting bile, and forced each word to form. “Huge, abandoned… Carpet peeling off the floors and a good number of long, thin black tables. It looked like an office building, maybe, and I felt…It felt like there were cars…” His hands were moving again without permission, awkwardly twisting in the air in an attempt to show how it had seemed as if there had been traffic under his feet. He gave up and let them fall to his side, misery sinking to a pit in his stomach. “I do realize how unstable this all sounds-”
“Oh no,” Dean said, and Sam was too tired to work out the degree of seriousness in his tone, “of all the things I’ve heard tonight? This is actually making sense to me.”
It was Sam’s turn to stare. “I…Pardon?”
“Don’t say pardon, say what,” Dean said, correcting an entire world’s definition of correct grammar. “And I know where to find Anasazi.”
Azazel, Bela reproved, though her teeth glinted with the shape of her grin.
“Dude, whatever.” He turned his full attention back on Sam, and Sam liked to think he was ready for it when nothing could be further from the truth. “So,” Dean growled, likely aggravated by the hard set of Sam’s jaw, “you two are going to get in the car, and I will drive us to this place. And on the way, you’re going to teach me how to kill demons. Okeydokey? Awesome.”
He stormed off in the direction of the lobby with the journal still clutched in one hand, leaving Sam to gather up the rest of his things and follow after, abandoning a pile of printouts the janitorial staff would puzzle over soon enough. Bela remained absolutely no help, smirking up at Sam in a manner that would have been more suited to a feline.
Reverting back to your higher vocabulary? Bela stood and shook herself off, settling her fur and the nerves gathering in them both like static electricity. I understand. It makes perfect sense to put some distance between you two before the inevitable.
“Bela,” Sam said. “Don’t.”
He's cannon fodder. She reared up and planted her paws on his shoulders to give his jaw a cursory lick. He can't be saved in time, and you know it.
He shoved her down and hurried after Dean, heart thumping painfully in his chest, well aware that Bela was trotting along behind him, languidly wagging her tail.
Sam was quiet in the car. Shocker. And he was grim about it. Like Dean was driving him to the execution block when he was just driving them to the damn post office.
It wasn’t even a long drive-right out of the parking lot and in two seconds they were on the highway, the only car except for one stray early bird guzzling coffee as he trundled along in his beamer. God, Dean would kill for coffee. He’d gone longer with less sleep before, but that was usually without a round of intense and emotionally draining…fighting. And sex, while fighting. And usually, he’d had coffee.
If there was a Starbucks within the next...Dean caught himself thinking, but then they were over the bridge, and the building Sam had dreamed up was looming in their headlights, along with the sign telling them “19 MINUTES TO MANNHIEM,” in chipped digital letters. Thirty more seconds, and they’d be underneath the abandoned building.
Dean wasn’t thinking about that-the dreaming. It didn’t matter. Sam could be as crazy as Tom Cruise and Dean would still bust in there with him, gun drawn, ready to go out like Cassidy and Sundance if it’d get it through that thick skull that Dean was in this.
Too clingy. Only been one day. But the truth was…he didn’t know how to be anything else.
Sam’s breath caught, a barely audible hitch from the passenger’s seat, and maybe he’d thought they’d have more time too.
“It’s the Old Chicago Main Post Office,” Dean said, gentle and quiet like they’d wake someone up talking too loud out here. They didn’t even need to be on the highway, but Dean had wanted to show him…it didn’t matter. “It’s been abandoned for…shit, over a decade? I don’t know. They filmed bits of Dark Knight here-You ever see that movie?”
Sam shook his head, staring up at the broken glass in the boarded up industrial windows just before the tunnel swallowed them up, yellow emergency lights turning his skin sickly. Dean put his eyes back on the road.
“Yeah, well, you and me. Pizza and beer, we’ll watch it. When this is over. Okay?”
“Dean…” Sam said, head rolling on the headrest towards him like he couldn’t help it. Then he shook himself, and turned back to scanning the shadows.
Cute, Bela said, dropping her muzzle over the front seat to give Dean a look, but a bit of a drama queen, yeah?
“I liked you better when you weren’t talking,” Dean told her.
Fair enough. She shot a glance over at Sam, but either he was being excluded from her side of the conversation or he was just too caught up in ignoring them to notice. Since Sam seems a bit preoccupied, allow me to fill you in. Your bullets won’t do much.
Dean twitched; he couldn’t help it. “Great.”
They will slow the demons down, however, so bring it along. Iron can hurt them, or at leas most lesser demons. How’s your Latin?
Dean had gone undercover as a priest once or twice, so he shrugged. “I can fake it. Why?”
Good, we’ll give you a book. Holy water works as acid to them, so make sure Sam gives you a bottle. Or three. She licked his ear, and it was a good thing there were no cars in the cracked and abandoned parking lot or Dean would’ve sideswiped them. Try not to die too soon, for his sake.
“Oh, okay,” Dean rolled his eyes as he parked, and looked over to find Sam watching him. “She miss anything?” he grumbled, awkwardly wiping the dog slobber off with his shoulder, scanning the parking lot for any signs of trouble.
“Devils traps. But if the demons are already inside we won’t have the chance to set them.”
“Demons,” Dean repeated, fighting back the chilled anger swelling up at Sam’s lifeless tone. “Armand Assante and who else?”
“Azazel and Meg,” Sam said, slight frown tugging at his distant gaze because he knew Dean was being wrong on purpose. Dean swallowed a not-entirely-happy smile. “But there will be more.”
“…I feel like there’s gotta be an appropriate movie quote to say right now.”
“Dean!”
“Yeah?” Dean was well in Sam’s precious space in an instant, screw Bela snickering her furry head off. He didn’t care. He’d never liked the look of someone in the passenger’s seat of the Impala more.
“Don’t joke about this,” Sam grit out, but his fist was curling the loose cotton of Dean’s t-shirt over his belly like he couldn’t help himself.
“Not about this.” Dean made damn sure each word was heard, and understood, eye-contact all the way. He bumped his forehead to Sam’s and squeezed the back of his neck, and then he got out of the car.
Sam followed only a few seconds behind, just long enough for Dean to let Bela out of the backseat and force his legs to stop shaking. Sam grabbed his duffle from the trunk and peeled it open, fishing out two scuffed water bottles, an even rattier bible with strange markings up the side, a bag of salt, and the Colt, of course.
“It’ll really kill this thing,” Dean said before he could stop himself, somehow less of a question out of his mouth than in it.
“Yeah,” Sam said, only slightly unsteady on the exhale before his jaw hardened into that unforgivable line Dean hoped to see a lot less of in the future. “It really will.”
“How many bullets you got?” Oh man, as soon as Sam looked at him he knew he shouldn’t have asked. “Christ, just the one?”
All we need is one, Bela slipped in, twining between their legs. Now. If there isn’t going to be sweaty life-affirming make-up sex in the next thirty seconds might I suggest we head inside?
Sam only faltered once on the way inside, when they passed the dilapidated little toll booth and his eyes got stuck on the sign that read One Way Drive. Dean didn’t even have time to reach out for him before he snapped out of it, which was kind of a bummer.
The place was shit, really. The big shiny lock and chain the city paid to put on every door did squat when the hinges were so rusted Dean barely had to tap them with the butt of his gun before they fell off. The carpet really was peeling, cheap foam covered in mold and puffing up clouds of spores and dust with every step, every single light above their heads cracked and leaking whatever gunk filled neon bulbs. Good old Chicago, though, she pulled it off with an eerie kind of grace.
Big ass building, unfortunately. Meg could be anywhere, if she was in here at all. Dean wished he could dredge up a little more doubt about the whole thing.
They’d silently fought over who would go first, up until Sam looked like he was one threadbare maple leaf away from socking Dean in the jaw and leaving him crumpled in the mold spores. So they were side-by-side, weapons drawn and shoulders tense, when a shadowed figure crossed the hallway in front of them.
Dean sucked in a quiet, startled breath, and the man stepped back, peering down into the darkness surrounding them. If their belt buckles so much as glinted-
Bela materialized behind the figure, pinpoints of golden fire marking her eyes as she pounced, slamming him into the ground and pinning his neck between her jaws. The man convulsed, limbs thrashing as his neck snapped again and again and again and-black smoke spilled out of his mouth as thick as syrup, blacker than the gloom of the building, and sank into the floor.
“Demon,” Sam murmured, barely an inch from Dean’s ear, and Dean wasn’t quite fast enough to suppress a flinch. He nodded, made sure to meet Sam’s eyes when he did it.
So it looked like Bela was good for something.
He couldn’t stop himself from checking for a pulse as they passed the body, even on that mangled throat. The guy looked like a squatter, scruffy and unwashed, but that didn’t make it any easier to wipe the blood off on his jeans.
“Dean…” Sam started, but Dean shook his head and caught up until their shoulders brushed on every step, Bela in the lead.
Okay, so he wasn’t as prepared for this as he’d thought. Fuck, there were people in the monsters Sam wanted him to kill. Not that he’d given Dean anything to fight them with that would do more than sting, but shit. Sam shouldn’t have anyone’s death on his conscience.
He didn’t have time to think anymore, not with Bela shrinking back from an open door with her ears pressed flat to her skull and her hackles up. They crept forward, whispers of words trailing back through the damp, dark air.
“Tire quiero patem me a di…”
Meg was standing in front of a makeshift altar, a mangle of bones and symbols and candles shoved onto one of the abandoned letter-sorting tables. Azazel’s sigil had been carved into the peeling paint on the wall, etched out in soot on the area of floor they’d cleared of carpet. And by ‘they’ Dean meant Meg and the man who was quite obviously Gordon Walker, even as he kneeled before Meg with a huge silver chalice in his hands.
“Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica…”
The hairs on the back of Dean’s neck stood on end so fast it made his muscles scream with a near-primal need to run. No. Just because he was dealing with previously impossible shit did not mean he was out of his depths. It couldn’t, not if he wanted out of this alive.
Meg grabbed Gordon’s jaw and shoved it towards the ceiling, and in a flash of silver Gordon’s lifeblood was spilling out of the gash in his throat to fill the chalice to the brim.
Dean jerked forward without thinking, instantly caught by Sam’s arm as if he’d known he would move. His gaze said Not yet, and Dean got that, really, but there was a man bleeding out in there-
“Good boy,” Meg sang, trailing a bloody fingertip in unholy patterns over his shaved skull. Gordon glared at her with eyes that were as black as pitch, but didn’t so much as sway let alone crumple to the ground. She laughed at his blunt hatred. “I’m Azazel’s child. Did you honestly think you wouldn’t be the one with their throat slit, here?”
Gordon made like he was going to speak; instead he coughed out a small puff of black smoke and had to suck it back out of the air as he stood. Meg jerked her head towards Sam and Dean’s location and ordered, “Go watch the door,” before she turned back to the altar, blood-smeared hands raising the cup high.
This was good, so good that Dean felt the smallest knot of tension loosen up as they moved silently into position, as quick and effortless as if they’d been doing this their whole lives. Dean spared a fraction of a second imagining spending the entirety of his life with Sam and thought that wouldn’t have been such a raw deal-and Gordon stepped into the hallway.
The room he’d left was bright with candlelight and something source-less that made Dean’s skin crawl, but Gordon’s eyes snapped to Dean in the darkness as sure as if they were all standing in broad daylight. And that look, Dean had seen that on psychos before, on sickos and pedos and perps just before they took a shot at him. Maybe they didn’t usually have smoke leaking out of a gash in their neck, but that didn’t mean shit to Dean’s cop brain. Not when could squeeze a water bottle and set the fucker writhing.
Serve and protect.
Gordon’s vocal chords were sliced, which meant he barely got out a hoarse rasp before Sam’s huge hand closed over his mouth and yanked back, skin tearing at the edges of Gordon’s wound as he thrashed under the hiss of Latin slipping from Sam’s mouth. Dean jumped forward to catch Gordon’s arms and-jesus fuck!
Something massive shoved him back, slammed Dean against the wall with the force of an invisible freight train. Sam’s voice faltered and Gordon’s hand, outstretched like some sort of sick faith healer, pressed against the air and made Dean’s ribs scream. Dean clawed against nothing, couldn’t even lift his wrists. Message clear: Shut up or I crush him.
Gordon didn’t figure on Bela, or the fact that an arm between her jaws lasted about as long as a powered doughnut. His head snapped back, aiming for Sam’s and almost connecting before Bela jerked and Sam yanked, and there was nothing keeping the smoke from spilling out of the gaping hole his neck and up into the ceiling.
Dean stumbled as the pressure disappeared from his chest and dropped him the six solid inches he’d been off the ground. Shit and ow. Sam-who hadn’t mentioned anything about demons using the Force-looked white as a sheet as one shaking hand reached out and hauled him forward.
“He’ll be coming back,” Sam whispered, his breathing harsh in Dean’s ear, “to sound the alarm.”
“We can’t make our move until she pages Azazel, remember?” Dean hissed, tightening his grip on Sam when he took a step for the door. Meg’s chanting all but drowned him out. “If we go in now she’ll spook.”
Sam didn’t look like he cared. Why the hell didn’t Sam care? His eyes flared wide as he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter-Dean, our cover is blown.”
“Oh, boys.” Meg hip-checked the door with a sweet, evil smile. “You have no idea.”
She snapped her fingers, and what limited light there was faded to a painful black.
The ropes burned in tight circles around Sam’s wrists, blood thudding sluggishly in time with the pounding in his head. He felt hands on him and struggled, trying to wrench away from the searching touches that didn’t belong to Dean, and screw it he did not care how he knew. Then a slow drag of body-warmed metal slid from the back of Sam’s jeans to push against the twisted knot of scar tissue above it, and Sam went still and cold.
“Boys shouldn't play with Daddy's guns,” a male voice smiled, breath hot on Sam’s face as he struggled to open his eyes. He caught the tail end of a flash of movement as the barrel disappeared from Sam’s skin, and then a hard brutal burst of pain snapped his head to the side.
“…you Winchesters, huh?” he heard when the dull roar faded from his ears, and Sam forced his eyelashes apart in time to see yellowing teeth close around their owner’s bottom lip. “Always…just itching to jump on the bandwagon of revenge. But you know what they say, Sammy,” he added, and the nickname jerked Sam’s eyes to the toxic yellow orbs of the demon who had murdered his family. “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world pink and skinless.”
He was smaller than Sam expected, human shaped like the nightmares of his childhood hadn’t been. Short cropped graying hair, lined expressive face. Azazel smirked, and Sam’s nerves screamed like he’d been dropped into a bed of red hot coals.
“Good boy, you just sit tight and take it,” the demon crooned, stepping away, and distantly Sam knew Meg was the one stroking Sam’s hair with blunt, cutting fingernails as he choked on agonized screams.
“Let it all out,” she soothed mockingly, “Don’t you feel better now?” The fire vanished and Sam didn’t have enough strength to do anything but collapse back against Meg’s legs as she stood, and slide sideways onto the unforgiving concrete when she moved. She caught him just before he hit the ground with a twist of her fingers in his hair, hauling him upright just long enough to make the drop harder when he fell.
It took everything he had to turn his head and try to bite her, but he did try. She kicked him in the mouth.
“The cycle ends with you, Sammy boy,” Azazel said, hands splayed, “Don’t it feel great?”
Sam choked on copper sliding thick over his tongue. He had to-He had to- Where was Dean?
Azazel latched onto his jaw and tilted his head up, forcing Sam to meet his searching gaze. “No one to bother avenging you, is there? Or you thinking about that cop?”
One bruising jerk and Sam was looking at Dean’s crumpled, bloody form, tied to a pillar not ten feet away. Bela was bound at his feet, whimpering low and pained as the holy water in the ropes burned her fur. She stared at him, not daring to move, not daring to slip into his mind. He couldn’t tell if Dean was breathing. God, what if Dean wasn’t breathing?
Bela whined and slid her tongue out to lick Dean’s fingers, even though the movement made her skin sizzle.
“Kill me then,” Sam snarled, struggling into the demon’s space as fresh blood dribbled down his cheek. “End it. Go on.”
“And the actor for best melodrama goes to…” Meg’s black eyes rolled hard enough to make blood vessels burst. “Honestly, Sammy,” she sighed, lifting his chin up so high he felt his vertebra grind to sing, “my daddy shot your daddy in the head.”
Sam lunged the spare inch of give he had, bloody teeth bared. When she laughed, he spat. She laughed harder and licked the mess off her lips.
“Now, now, Sam,” Azazel growled, shooting his daughter a painful and silencing glance, “that’s not how this goes. You beg me for your boyfriend’s life, and I grant it. He walks outta here scot-free, not a scratch on him, with a pleasant hazy blur over the blip you caused in his hellishly normal life. And you, Sam… You get to lead my army while I-” He wriggled his fingers. “-take over the world. You’re the Pinky to my Brain, bucko. This is the way it was always gonna be.”
Sam coughed. “Since when?”
“Since I bled into your mouth and burned your Mommy on the ceiling. Keep up, Sam, you’re embarrassing the rest of the class.”
“You’re really something, you know?” Meg murmured before Sam’s ringing ears could even process what was being said. “You really thought you could be born with the power to see the future and still be human? Cute.”
“Every time Daddy told you you weren’t normal, every time he looked at you and thought ‘freak’…He knew you were a monster, Sam. Just like you know it. Luckily for you I got one freak-sized opening I’m looking to fill. I was going to make a big mess of it holding a Miss America pageant, but…well. Miss Canada lost the crown after punching out another woman in a bar fight-and I can appreciate the irony of not jiving on world peace. Sam. Sammy. You're my favorite.”
“You killed,” Sam spat, “everyone I ever loved.”
Azazel made a little disagreeing noise and tilted his head toward Dean’s still form. “Not yet. We could make it a hat trick if you w-”
A sharp flash of movement and Meg’s heeled boot came down across Dean’s windpipe, snapping his head back against the pillar to reveal his pained, open eyes. “Sweetheart,” she sang, “You got a knife on you?” She kicked Bela hard, knocking her away from Dean’s tied hands and the blade he was fumbling to hide. She wasn’t the least bit careful snatching it from his grasp, throwing it against a far wall as she settled in Dean’s lap. Sam’s stomach clenched. “Trying to cut yourself free while Sam distracted my father?”
“No…” Dean choked, throat working hard, and Sam felt sick and dizzy with relief at the sound of his voice and his bloody, crooked smile. “That’d be kind of dumb.”
Bela reared up, every black hair rigid as she shook free of her severed ropes and attacked, lethal white teeth bared and then buried as deep as her hellish jaws could go. Dean barely got his legs out of the way of her claws, struggling against his hobbling ties to stand just in time for Azazel to slam him back without a touch. One twitch of his fingers and Dean’s neck would snap.
That could not happen. That would not-
Something black and ugly reared up in Sam, flooding through his spinal chord into every cell he had. And then more. He could feel every minute tear in his screaming muscles, every twist of the rope as it-
Snapped.
Sam grabbed at the Colt, jamming his finger behind the trigger just the yellow eyed demon pulled it. He heard the crack of his bone shattering more than felt it, bound feet lashing out to catch Azazel just under his knee, ripping the gun free of his grasp as the demon crashed to the ground. All Sam had to do was roll on his side, press the gun to Azazel’s temple, and fire.
And it was done.
The shot deafened him, turned everything murky slow as Azazel’s head rocked with the force of the bullet, and he turned pupil-less yellow eyes on Sam. Then a spark, an echo of electricity that lit up his bones and a sound like rolling thunder, and the toxic yellow faded to pale blue.
Dust spun in aimless clouds around their heads, settling in the bloody blistered gunshot wound.
Over. It was…
“Dean.” Sam dragged himself up on one unsteady arm and looked for him, vision starting to swim.
“Yeah, I’m here.” He was. Unsteady, bloody and bruised, but he was. Sam wasn’t sure which he found harder to believe. “Alive. Barely. You?”
“Yeah…” Sam’s voice was hardly audible. He honestly wasn’t sure.
“Bela?” Dean called, and she trotted away from the corner where she’d left Meg’s mangled body to join them, long tongue swiping over her bloody chops.
Excellent, well. Surprise, surprise, the gang’s all here. She padded up to Sam, only refraining from licking him at the last moment when he flinched at the blood slicking her fur. Instead she sat on her haunches, and placed an almost regal paw on his knee. It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Samuel Winchester.
“Likewise,” he rasped out, and she cocked her head at him in a smirk. “Go on and take what you came for.”
First. She lifted her head. Lend a girl your opposable thumbs?
“Right, of course.” He fumbled with her thin silver collar, broken finger already purpling and held at an angle he couldn’t look at for long without feeling nauseous.
“Hey, hey, I’ve got it,” Dean said, crouching down and deftly flicking open the catch before Sam could protest. Not that he had much energy to, or the will once Dean was beside him, smelling of pain and sweat and leather-and girl?
No, the girl smells were definitely coming from Bela as she shed her shape and stood, naked skin glowing in the dim light. Dean fell over, landing hard on his ass.
“The-wh-shit.”
Bela’s lips curled in a smirk. “Articulate as ever, I see.” She held out her hand and Sam…Sam didn’t let himself feel like he was losing a piece of his Dad when he gave her the gun.
“Whoa, hold up,” Dean snapped as he stood, surprising them both with his vehemence. “That gun’s been in his family for generations.” He stared at Sam. “You’re just gonna let her have it?”
“It’s payment,” Bela assured him, only a little sharply. “Services rendered for helping Sam slay the dragon.”
“I don’t need it anymore, Dean,” he murmured, and only realized after he said it that it was true.
It was over.
He stared at the body and knew Bela was saying her goodbyes and fleeing, changing back into her lupine shape to smuggle the gun back across the border disguised now as one of her collar charms, but he couldn’t think of a thing to stop her. He didn’t need to stop her. He didn’t even realize he was shaking until Dean’s hand slid against the back of his neck, fingers tangling lightly in the hair at his nape.
“Sam?”
He leaned back knowing Dean would catch him, air sliding out of his lungs, over his tongue, teeth, lips. And his eyes slid shut, so he could breathe Dean in again. Dean tucked his face against Sam’s shoulder and waited him out.
Almost. “We should really get your hand looked at.” His lips moved against Sam’s hoodie, sending a dim, sweet shiver down his spine. “Plus I don’t know about you, but I’m about to crash right here.”
That wouldn’t be so bad, the falling asleep here part, but Sam’s finger was setting into that bone-deep ache that preceded screaming pain so maybe Dean was right. Sam still couldn’t bring himself to move.
“I just…” he started, and trailed off with a noise he didn’t want to call a laugh as he took in the carnage of Meg Masters and a nameless, nightmare-riddled face. “I don’t know what to say.”
“How ‘bout, ‘That’s for my parents, you son of a bitch?’” Dean offered, hauling Sam upright with both arms looped around his ribs. “You good?” he asked, steadying them both when Sam tried to turn to him too soon.
Sam shrugged a little helplessly, feeling strangely bereft when Dean removed his hands. “Don’t know.”
“But you’re talking like a human being.” Dean smiled through the bruises, blood, and dirt on his face, and Sam actually felt like one, almost. “So that’s a good sign.”
Something changed on Dean’s face lightning fast, horror and shock, and his hands yanked at Sam before he could get in the breath to shout. Sam almost fell, and then realized falling would have saved him.
Pain flared from his side like an explosion underwater, like it was happening to someone else, and Sam’s ears were ringing with the sound of gunfire and shouted Latin as he stared down at the knife protruding from his ribs.
And then he really did fall.
