"Comes to Dust" - part two
Continued from Part one.
It seemed about half of Steamboat Springs was on fire. Or, what was left of it. The outer portions of the city had been scavenged for years by Mama and her orphans - by anyone who cared to take the time and effort to extract wood and stone and metal from the ruins. Now it was a shifting, sighing roil of smoke and flame, seething and creeping in a half ring around the orphanage and the Pony Express stables. The air was already thick with smoke and soot, sharp tang that made Sam's throat itch. The sky was blotted by clouds still, ragged masses of them whose underbellies were lit by the sullen, hellish glow of the fire. It made the air inside the orphanage walls seem to glow, ruddy and unnatural.
The children were running all over, carrying buckets and heaps of old sacks - working the pump by the stables to fill the troughs. The valves on the rain-catch tubs on the roof were being opened and water was pouring down, sloshed all over the roof by mops and rags, running down the walls. Holy water, because Dean had gone up and blessed it while Sam was picking the kids who could read the best.
Lena panted up to where Sam was standing, writing down the fourth copy of an exorcism in phonetic Latin, working fast by lantern-light. "Lena -" Sam said, and she lifted up her hand, stopping him.
"I know, I know. I been slackin', I know. I ain't never seen a demon in my life and you know it. Tink knows how, and Oliver, and Sassy -"
"It's not enough. Everyone should know." Sam finished a line and sanded the ink - handed the paper off to a waiting boy, a skinny thing with long blond braids and huge eyes. He took it, spun on his heel and ran. They all had their places in the bucket chains - on fire-watch and wall-watch. Sam started writing again, deliberate.
"I know they should," Lena said, and then she made a little sighing sound, worry and fear. "Ahh, there they go."
Sam looked up from his impromptu desk - three stacked wooden crates - to see Dean slapping the rumps of a pair of pinto ponies, sending them trotting past. Riding them were Tink's twins; rangy, very black boys with feathers in their puffs of wiry hair. They were heading toward the springs - the back wall of the orphanage enclosure - and Sam frowned.
"Where in hell are they going?"
"They's a rainmaker at Muddy Creek, up the line half a day." Lena watched Dean walk toward them, wiping his hands on a rag. "It's been a dry season, Sam - this fire knows that. We need all the help we can get."
"Gave them some anti-possession protection," Dean said, stopping by the desk. Sam could see streaks of pale paint on his fingers. "That fire-break of yours good, Lena?"
"Had a crew down in it last month, got it all clean and tight." Lena looked around at the ordered chaos of the courtyard, at close to fifty orphans bracing for a fight. "We sent the livestock down to the spring cave, and the babies with 'em. Got about six of the oldest to watch 'em, and a couple of Tink's Rangers."
"That's good. Sam?"
"Almost done," Sam said. He wrote the last line - fifth exorcism in as many minutes - and passed it off to the last kid waiting, tiny little girl with fused fingers on both hands and sharp, angled blades of bone standing up off her spine like fins. She scurried away, mouthing the words silently, and Sam capped the inkwell. "I think we should -"
"Mama! Sirs! Somebody comin'!" Tink shouted down from the wall and Sam and Dean moved fast, coats flaring around their knees as they trotted across the courtyard to the wall. Lena stayed behind, two stiff knees keeping her grounded.
An iron staircase - old fire escape, it looked like - had been pried off its original building and fastened to the wall, and Sam and Dean's boots rang on the rusting treads as they climbed upward. The wall was about fifteen feet high, at most; irregular and imperfect but strengthened by layers of salt-thickened paint and regular baths of holy water. Too, there were cold-forged iron wards nailed up at intervals, and a boundary of iron buried inside and out.
The top of the wall was circled by a walk, low enough to keep most covered but of course Sam and Dean both had to crouch a bit to avoid giving whoever was outside a clear head-shot.
"Tink?"
"I saw someone, sir. Moving fast. Couldn't tell...I mean...it's dark, sir."
"Show me," Dean said, and Tink led him to a look-out, protected by a criss-cross of iron bands.
"Two o'clock," Tink said, gesturing, and Dean looked out, scanning the rubble and ruins that lay there.
"Ah, hell." Dean turned away from the look-out, his expression one of irritation and Sam pushed past him to look out himself.
"Damnit." Sam let his forehead hit the iron bands, pushing into them for a moment, eyes shut in sheer frustration. Then he turned around, sharing a sour look with Dean. "It's Slink."
"What the hell is he doing?" Dean muttered, watching as Slink advanced and retreated, looking over his shoulder and then up at the walls, indecision in every line of him, his tail whipping and curling.
"Maybe he knows how the fire started."
"Maybe he started it," Dean said, and Sam shrugged. Slink wasn't much for the grand gesture. Was, in fact, prone to spending a lot of his time simply elsewhere, unhappy when he couldn't follow Sam because of wards and salt, uneasy around Dean, which Dean was more than happy to encourage. The storms that came every six or eight weeks seemed to agitate him, but he always slunk away in the end, going back to whatever hidey he had.
Now, Slink climbed a tilting heap of rubble, claws catching in the litter of weeds and sapling trees that had sprung up in it. Climbing until he was at the top of the eroded tip and then he crouched there, staring at the wall.
"Sssaaaam! Sssaaam!"
"Great." Dean was up and moving, along the cat walk and down the stairs, Sam trailing behind him, clumsy on his sore leg.
"Dean - hey! Dean, slow down."
"What, Sam? That fucking idiot is gonna draw everything in a five-mile radius to him, including however many damn demons are out there. We need to shut him up." Dean pounded down the last set of stairs and hit dirt, using the rail to swing himself around, heading for the gate. Until Sam launched himself over the railing like an idiot, landing hard in front of Dean. His leg crumpled and Dean grabbed his arms, shoving him against the ironwork and bracing him there. "What the fuck are you doing? Jesus -"
"What, exactly, are you gonna do with him, Dean?" Sam's voice was tight with pain - a little breathless. "Can't chase him off - he'll just come back. Can't bring him in here. What are you going to do?"
"I'm gonna - I'll.... Well, fuck, I don't know, okay? But he can't sit out there yelling for you like some half-assed Romeo."
"Ssssaaaam!"
"Christ," Dean said, and rubbed his hand over his face. Sam leaned against the stair rail and kneaded his thigh, looking pale in the murk of smoke and fire light that suffused the courtyard. Six months ago his thigh had been hamburger - flesh and bone pulverized to a sick, shattered mess. He'd healed, and healed well, but not enough, insisting they ride the Rim like always - insisting he was fine sitting Toto for seven, eight hours a day when Dean knew he was no such thing.
"Listen. You know he won't hurt me -" Sam said, and Dean's gaze snapped up from Sam's hands to his face, furious.
"Won't, not can't. And 'won't' only until you really piss him off. You know he's not safe, Sam. Not for one second is he safe."
"I know he's not. But he can't get to me, Dean. You know that, too. The most he could do is catch me with those claws. Anything else - he's helpless."
Dean threw his hands up, frustrated - this close to throwing a punch. "We don't fucking know anything, Sam! We assume and we - we hope but we don't know -"
"Ssssaaam, please, please Ssam!"
"Shut! Up!" Dean bellowed, loud enough to hurt his throat and they all heard the little cat-squeak of surprise from Slink. "Sam -"
"Dean, we gotta get him out of here." Sam pushed away from the rail and stood straight, gingerly testing his leg. He winced, lines of pain grooved beside his mouth, but then he drew himself up - in. Hiding everything. "Get up on the wall with Tink. She's got some archers in her Rangers, get them up there, too; arrows dipped in holy water, some tubs of salt. I'll go out -"
"No, Sam," Dean said, and Sam put his hands on Dean's shoulders, squeezing through the leather and canvas of Dean's coat. Serious, always so fucking serious.
"I'll go out there, just on the other side of the gate. Make him come to me, okay? See what he wants; see if I can get him out of here. Okay?" Sam rubbed his fingers over Dean's shoulders, pulling him a little closer - catching Dean's gaze and holding it. "It's the only way, Dean."
Dean stared back at Sam, a muscle in his jaw ticking, his hands balled into fists at his side. Fury and terror and frustration roiling inside him. Knowing he was right, but that Sam was right, too. They had to get Slink out of there, and they had to do it now. Dean opened his mouth, ready to muster one more argument - or to simply say no, again. And Sam just smiled at him, tiny little quirk of his mouth, one corner going up, his slanted eyes softening, little crinkles at the corner.
And Dean felt it all just drain away because...well, hell. There was nothing else to be done. Dean let his head drop down - let out a ragged chuckle, his hands opening, coming up to grab onto Sam's forearms. "God damnit, Sam...okay." He looked up again, serious himself, now - resolved. "Okay."
"Okay," Sam said.
Dean huffed in frustration and then leaned forward and kissed Sam, hard, letting a little of his worry and fury bleed through. Then Dean was stepping away - yelling up to Tink, sending two of the kids on fire-watch running for water and salt. Sam wasn't going anywhere until everything was exactly how Dean wanted it.
Sam stepped out of the little sally port they'd built into the gate, his shotgun in his hands. He could feel the wards shivering, touched somewhere down the length of the wall by things that shouldn't be touching them. Things razor-edged and not quite right and it was like nails on a chalkboard. Sam knew Dean could feel it too, maybe not quite as clearly, but it wasn't helping his mood any, and Sam turned to give him a last little nod before he stepped out from under the arch of the gate.
Just a few steps. Still within the ward's influence, if not the actual boundaries of them. But Slink didn't know that, so it probably didn't matter.
Slink was scrambling down the rubble-heap now, claws striking sparks from the twisted remains of stone and steel. He landed as graceful as a cat and crouched for a moment, just looking at Sam. Thirty or so feet away, his cotton-white hair nearly phosphorescent in the rufous murk.
"Slink," Sam called, and the creature stood slowly. He hesitated, tail lashing, and then he walked forward. Or, more properly, slinked forward, head down and a little averted, haunches rolling. Seduction in the cant of his shoulders and the twist of his hips but Sam had been pretty much immune to Slink's particular wiles for a very long time.
"Sssaam...."
"You shouldn't be here, Slink."
"You always push me away, Sam." Slink paused about fifteen feet away, sinking down onto his haunches and looking up at Sam through wisps of tangled hair. "You always tell me to go. I don't want to go, Sam. I want...." Slink's claws raked the dirt, digging furrows. "Want," he muttered, petulant pout to his cherubic mouth.
"Did you start the fires?"
Slink grinned, white tongue and glimmering teeth, quick and feral. "Like old times, Sam."
"Did you?" Sam shifted the shotgun in his hands, restless. He could feel Dean behind him, disapproving glare and all, itching to reach out and yank him back inside. "Tell me, Slink. Tell me the truth."
"Oh, the truth. What would you know about that, Sssam? Sam-liar." Slink's voice sank lower - raspier. Furious. "Liar and thief, liar and thief."
Sam felt a little chill go over him, little knot of ice in his belly and he shoved it away. "I didn't take anything from you, Slink."
"Sam - get back in here," Dean said, low, furious rumble and Sam's shoulders twitched.
"Damnit, Slink, you came here yelling for me, what do you want?"
Slink tilted his head to one side, as if listening, and then he grinned again, his black eyes sparking red. "You, Sam. Always, always. You."
There was a sudden, deafening noise, like the air tearing - like the earth shattering - and fire slammed into the wall about fifty feet away, splintering it. There were shrieks - burned kids, kids sliding down in the rubble - and then another crackling roar, sonic boom of sound that rocked Sam on his feet. More fire, exploding out of nowhere and hitting the tinder of the wall. Flames and smoke billowed outward, dry rush, wood popping as it was consumed, and there were more screams.
Slink leaped to his feet with a shout, head tipped back, arms outspread. The fire alarm was wailing again inside the orphanage and Sam could hear Lena shouting orders, panic tightly tamped down but spreading. Dean's voice, too, shouting instructions and Sam took a step back. Another crack, seemingly right on top of Sam and he cried out, startled - deafened for a moment.
The top of the gate blossomed into fire, the flames curling out, white-hot fingers and Sam ducked, stumbling away, seeing a bloodied leg hanging down near the look-out Tink had been at last. The gate itself seemed mostly intact, but burning timbers were already dropping down, cross hatching the sally port with lines of smoky fire. Sam could hear barely hear Dean's voice from inside, sharp and breathless with fear and fury.
"Sam!"
"I'm okay! I'm coming in!"
"Staying out," Slink said, far, far too close and Sam spun - stumbled - went down, his leg finally giving out, feeling as if it were broken all over again. Slink was crouched two feet away, his claws sunk into the dirt and his tail whipping hard - his eyes predatory slits. He ducked his head, shoulders bunching as if to leap and Sam brought the shotgun up and fired in one smooth motion.
Slink screeched and jolted backward, peppered with salt and blessed iron. He vanished into the smoke and darkness, wailing. Sam knelt there, panting, but Slink didn't reappear. He put the butt of the shotgun on the ground and began to slowly lever himself upright, wincing. He could hear shouts and the sizzling sounds of water hitting fire - could hear the gate groaning, being dragged open. As he gained his feet he looked up, sparks and bits of burning trash whirling overhead. And something else - something more.
As the gate creaked wider, a dozen demons - their smoke-forms writhing and knotting, red-lit and awful in the fire light - swooped out of the air and swarmed around Sam, engulfed him. A high, sick buzzing filled his ears and his head, battering at him from the inside. Sam was buffeted and spun, flayed with their very essences, a burn like acid. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun again - felt it buck in his hands, but whatever damage it did was not enough - not nearly enough. The smoke - the demon bodies - whipped away for a heartbeat, no more, and then whirled inward again, a collapsing spiral.
Out of the maelstrom, a hand suddenly knotted itself into the front of Sam's shirt and he was yanked forward - upward - out. The last thing he saw were eyes, rolling back white, and then nothing at all.
"Sam, God damnit!" Sam's shotgun barked again and Dean kicked burning timbers aside - shoved the gate another half-inch and scraped through, splinters tearing the shirt across his chest, the back of his coat. Scraped hard enough to catch the skin on his sternum and Dean hissed and twisted and shoved and was through, finally.
And Sam wasn't there.
Dean spent about ten seconds too long gaping at the place he should be and then he was moving. Running. Going first to the finger of rubble that Slink had climbed, then along the wall, because Sam, damn him, would be trying to help people, would be in there getting his hands burnt trying to dig some kid out....
Dean kicked at smoldering planks - nearly fell into the fire break, stumbling on the edge of the trench cut into the soil. "Sam, damnit, answer me!!" Dean knew Sam wasn't there, he could feel it, but...he had to be sure, had be one hundred percent sure and God, please, don't let him be under the damn wall....
"Not yours, not yours, mine now," Slink said, fading in out of the smoke and glare of the fire and Dean reacted, pure instinct. Drew the Colt that he carried always, riding close to his skin - like Dad's journal, like the Horsemen's talismans. Drew and cocked and fired but Slink was already gone, flicking away between one second and the next.
"Sammy!" Dean's voice was lost in the dry roar of the fire - in the chaos beyond the wall - in the empty devastation of the city. Sam was gone. "Fuck. Jesus. Okay, okay...."
"Dean," someone said, a sibilant rustle, and Dean jerked around, the Colt coming up. Point blank on Malak, who was standing far too close, his arms wrapped tight around his ribs, his wings half shadow, the fire shining through them and on them, turning them to flame and smoke. "Dean -"
"Christ, Malak. I don't have time for you right now." Dean skirted around him, striding back toward the gate. He needed Seven and Toto, needed supplies, needed -
"They took him," Malak said, and Dean stopped dead.
Stood there, his belly twisting up into a knot, his lungs hitching. "What did you say?"
"Sam's gone. They took him."
Dean spun on his heel and took three - four - fast steps, right up to Malak. Reaching out and taking his shoulder in a grip tight enough to leave bruises and ignoring the little flinch - the wide, startled eyes. "Who took him? What the hell do you know about it? Tell me, damnit, or so help me -"
"Dean, please -" Malak was shrinking away, his wings fluttering in agitation, his eyes welling and Dean shook him.
"Tell me."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it hurts, please -" Malak was crying now, tears streaking down his cheeks, mouth trembling and Dean shoved him away. Stood there glaring as Malak stumbled - fell against the wall and huddled there, shivering. "I didn't do it, I didn't take him."
"Christ, I...." Dean took in a hard breath, tamping down the anger and the panic. Setting it aside. For now. "Tell me who did."
Malak sniffed - straightened up and rubbed his shoulder. There were marks there already, bruises filling in in the shape of Dean's hand. Malak scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and for a moment he was a child. For a moment he was Sam, bruised knees and hurt feelings and Dean wanted to scream.
"I saw them. I felt them coming and I followed them - I wanted to tell you but I...I was afraid. They're stronger than me...." Malak sniffed again, his cheeks smeared wet and his wings drooping, feathers dragging in the soot and dirt.
"Yeah, okay. It's okay." Dean looked around him at the fires - the wall that was blasted and sagging, still burning. He could hear the orphans - Lena - working the bucket chain and digging out the wounded and he just.... Just wanted a moment of quiet. Just one damn minute. "Just - tell me, Malak."
Malak nodded - pushed his tangled hair back off his face and sidled closer, hugging himself again. The fire reflected in his eyes, sheer gold for a moment, and Dean flinched. "It's...there's so much power, Dean. You have to be careful. He's old...he's so old...the air aches with his age. Hates him, it hates to touch him...." Malak shivered, his wings coming to wrap around him, rags of shadow and the white feathers smutted with soot - the black ones gone chalky, the starlings-wing gleam drowned in dust.
Dean stared at him, his thoughts running rabbit-fast, rabbit-erratic. "Do you know who it is? Is it...a demon? An angel?"
"Old," Malak said, his voice cracking. "He...I don't know, I - I was too scared. I just...had to find you. Had to protect you, Dean."
"Doin' a bang-up job," Dean muttered. He sighed - shoved the Colt away and started walking again, fast. "I gotta find Sam, Malak. That's all that matters."
"I know. I can help. Dean -" Malak was in front of him, flick of his there-and-gone-again wings, and Dean scowled and walked around him, avoiding the out-stretched hand. "Dean, I can, I can feel him, I can find him. Please, I can help you."
Fuck. "Fine. You help me, then. You stay out here and wait for me, got it?"
"No." Malak took the couple of steps that got him right up in Dean's face, way too fucking close and Dean edged backward a step, fingers twitching toward the Colt. "We can't wait. There's no time, Dean. No time." And then Malak reached out, snake-strike quick, and his fingers touched Dean's forehead, a gesture totally familiar and completely unexpected.
Dean had time to think Goddamnit and then everything was gone.
The air was warm, rising off the earth in waves that He could feel, like a million tiny fingers or feathers, lifting Him. He could taste it, desert-dry and salt-iron, and it was like Before, it was like forever. Above, far above, He could feel the lazy, banking glide of the Other falter and stall.
And then become an arrowing dive, a fall like a lightning-strike and He laughed aloud, stretched Himself on the air, unfurling and unfurling, a broad expanse of water far below that gleamed like ice - like stars. Making His own stoop, falcon of pure light, braced for the Other to catch Him. And He does, and they fall together, entwined, entangled - shatter the earth with a crack like first peal of thunder at the dawn of creation. Miles of stone split and churn, water boils into steam and the very air gouts away from them; recoiling, burning, turning the sky to blood and ash.
Tearing them both asunder, matter and not-matter going to atoms - to particles - to nothing at all.
Sam swam upward, slowly, through air that seemed thick as syrup. He was resting against something hard and cold and his wrists hurt, his head did, and there was something.... Something suffocating him. Something that seemed to weigh him down, making his heart beat so slow - making his lungs struggle to breathe.
I don't want to set the world on fire
I just want to start a flame in your heart.
The singer's voice was cracked - hissing and popping with static and dust - and Sam finally forced his eyes open and looked around slowly, blinking. He was in the remains of a room. Adobe bricks, abraded by wind and time, formed rudimentary walls, and most of the roof was gone. The space was lit by a bank of candles, shadows rippling up the crumbling structure. What looked like the splintered remains of pews lay tangled in leggy bitterbrush and desert grasses, bluestem and millet and one Christmas cactus, splaying itself far and wide from the ruins of a basin - a font. Church, Sam thought, and the rubbed-down walls slowly took on a more familiar shape.
"Oh, hell no," Sam whispered, and winced. His throat was smoke-dry and burning and he swallowed painfully and struggled upright. His wrists were tied. His coat and sweater and long-sleeved undershirt were gone, and the air was meat-locker cold, fingertips and nose and ears already aching with it.
In my heart I have but one desire
And that one is you, no other will do.
Sam sat hunched over for a moment, his head swimming - ears ringing - the scratchy tin-horn sounding music drowned in a staticky buzz. Then it cleared and Sam looked down at his wrists. Whatever was wrapped around them looked like.... Sam swallowed and looked sharply away, trying not to throw up. It looked like skin, strips of skin, still bloody. Seeping and curling at the edges, leaking runnels of watery blood down his forearms. Looped and knotted, reeking faintly of iron and salt and rot. God only knew where it had come from - what person lay dead because of it.
"God."
"Left the building," someone said, and Sam jerked, startled. Didn't have to look around because he could feel it; nerve-rasping hum, too deep for his ears, sawing at his bones. "Isn't that what you say? 'Left the building.' I think it rather...apt."
Something stepped from the shadows near what had once been the altar. The thing was tall, lean - stretched, in a way, hands and feet and face longer than they should be, distorted. A facsimile of a man in a funhouse mirror, unclothed, it's skin a sort of pallid olive. It walked with a limping, liquid grace, as if gravity and uneven surfaces were a constant surprise and yet....
It didn't fall, but glided, twisting around the slumped rubble of the altar, thin fingers fluttering over what Sam realized was an old-fashioned Victrola, complete with corroded brass trumpet. The record on the turntable was warped, sending the tone arm and needle up and down on a lurching, roller-coaster path. It was all wrong - too warped to actually play - and Sam pushed at the heaviness in his mind, the numbing cold and an ache that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside.
His lips formed words, Enochian wards, syllables of protection and power. The thing - demon - lifted a hand, two fingers cutting across the air and Sam felt as if a noose had been dropped around his neck. No air, just pressure and he gaped soundlessly, his chest heaving. Trying to draw in what it couldn't have.
"We have business, SamuelWinchester. So there will be none of that." The demon looked away from him, watching the record revolve - the arm lurch up and down. "I remember this. Music...." Its head snapped around to where Sam was writhing, hands clawing clumsily at his throat. "The caterwauling of the damned. Now...shall we talk?" Sam nodded - tried to nod. Black sparks were swarming in the periphery of his vision and his heart seemed to catch-step-catch, erratic and labored and too slow, too slow. As the sparks coalesced and swirled inward, fuzzing the edges and turning the candle-flame dim, the demon lifted its hand.
The pressure lifted abruptly and Sam whooped in a raw breath - immediately coughed it out again. He rolled onto his side, gagging for air - dragging it in and coughing it out until his ribs hurt. Gradually, his breathing steadied and he pushed himself slowly upright, arms shaking. His throat felt scraped open, iron-taste on the back of his tongue and he spat into the dust, seeing his spittle tinged with rust.
"I forget how fragile you are." The demon spoke from inches away - directly behind Sam - and he jerked wildly, scrambling clumsily up onto one knee, scooting awkwardly away. The demon reached out and curled its hand around his ankle, yanking him back with one hard pull, fingers like a vise of fire, branding through canvas and leather and wool.
"Let me go," Sam rasped, kicking, dumped on his back in the dust, and the demon cocked its head again, obviously puzzled. Amused, if such a thing could be. Sam could feel sand and grass sticking to his shoulders, skin slick with fear-sweat, belly clenching sickly. It was - pressure and vacuum and noise, infrasonic roar that made Sam's bones ache. "Fuck -" It hurt, to have the demon so close, and Sam twisted helplessly, the loops of flesh around his wrists dripping little spots of chilly fluid onto his chest.
"This is tedious." The demon stood abruptly, holding its hand out. Smoke coiled in from the gaps in the broken roof. Animate smoke - demons without hosts. They curled around the demon's hands - around its body, rubbing and twisting like eager dogs, pooling around its feet. A peculiar sort of whining moan came from them, scraping across Sam's nerves. Something else came out of the darkness then - Slink, creeping over the rubble of the altar and settling into a crouch midway between demon and Sam.
"Told you...to come with me." Slink was streaked with blood, trails of glistening wet in the candle glow. He wiped at his shoulder and licked his palm, white tongue stained scarlet for a moment. "Told you. Didn't want to hurt you," Slink said, "But you hurt me, and you wouldn't come, I didn't have a choice, Sam, Ssam -"
"Be quiet, creature." The demon sent the smoke-forms away with a flick of its weirdly articulated hands and they swarmed upward, keening. Coiling restlessly up near the lone roof joist, lit with sickly purple-yellow flares. "What you've been reduced to - revolting." Slink ducked his head down, shoulders coming up. Looking between Sam and the demon, something like hurt on his too-pretty, feral face. "They will pay for it, however. Pay quite exquisitely." The demon grinned at Sam, too many teeth and a sudden, flickering, serpent's tongue and Sam shuddered.
"Mine, he's mine," Slink muttered, but he darted away from the demon, head down. Not looking at Sam.
"What do you want?" Sam got his legs under him - got himself to his knees and then - shakily - his feet. His thigh ached, sharp and insistent. The demon watched, mouth curled in a crooked smirk. "The war's over - you lost. Or did you forget that?"
"I never fought in your war, SamuelWinchester." The demon flicked its hand out again and the Victrola, which had settled to a throbbing hum, the record over, suddenly started playing again. "I was down so very deep - pushed so very far away. It took me eternities to climb up to what Lucifiel made his Hell. And when I arrived - what did I find?"
The demon glided a step closer to Sam and Sam steeled himself and didn't move. Working his wrists in the clammy twists of flayed skin, feeling it stretch, just as little.
"Found out you missed the party?"
"I found Hell deserted. Oh, there were a few, straggling hundreds, limping and lurking in the corners. But Hell was...empty. So empty...all my brothers, all my sisters...." The Victrola was playing faster than it was supposed to, and the music was music-box plinky, the singer's voice a shrill whine that grated in Sam's ears.
Believe me - I don't want to set the world on fire.
I just want to start
A flame in your heart....
"It was empty because Lucifer killed them." Sam took a deep breath, centering himself. Drawing up power that he hadn't used in...years. "And we killed the rest." He let his eyes flutter shut, reaching - pushing. Trying to wrap his power around the demon in front of him and destroy it. Disperse it to nothing, end this. He could feel the power, a tightly-coiled spring somewhere deep in his mind but...he couldn't free it. The pain in his head ticked upward, sickening, and he felt something hot and wet slip down over his lip. Blood. Sam opened his eyes, gasping. Not gonna work, what is it, what is it....
The demon hissed, tongue flickering out again and Sam stepped back, one step. Staring as the dark, human eyes rolled back white. "You can't touch me, SamuelWinchester. I have gained...so much. Learned so much...." The demon shivered and its eyes darkened again, but not to plain human brown. To something poison-green and slitted, a reptile's unblinking gaze and Sam stepped back again, toward the altar, toward the possibility of something - anything - that could help. Stepped back and flinched and wobbled on his leg, gritting his teeth against the pain.
"The Horsemen, they were there, in that empty Hell. Whining on and on about how little time they had to spend up here. How you killed them. Famine and his whimpering cry of hungry. Always hungry." The demon made a chewing motion with its mouth, showing too long, too sharp teeth. Fangs. "Eating my demon-dogs until I took that little trick from him." The demon advanced another step - another - and Sam felt the tumbled mess of the altar bump against his calves.
"He tasted like rot and dust, but he fed me, yes. Fed me well. As they all did." The demon reached out suddenly, its long fingers curling around the back of Sam's neck and jerking him close. Fever-heat and the dizzying scent of blood - of a peculiar, dry spice that made Sam's nose burn. "And you'll feed me, too. You, your brother -" Sam jerked, trying to get away, but the demon held him tighter, long nails sinking into Sam's neck, sharp as knives.
"Oh, yes, I know your brother will come. Tethered and tugged along in your wake like a kite, isn't he? On your string. You, your brother, and this one...."
The demon jerked Sam around - into a stumbling walk up and over the altar. Behind it was a pit, the earth heaped up in damp-looking mounds and at the bottom of it - a figure. A body. Shrouded in white linen that had gone to tawny-rust under the earth but Sam knew, he knew....
"Drink you down, break your seals, crack the world apart, and this time...this time...." The demon's mouth was on Sam's ear, lips just brushing the edge, hot breath making Sam shudder all over, sick and furious. The demon's other hand was on his belly, petting, and Sam wanted to throw up.
"This time, no heavenly host to interfere. This time, just us...just me...." The snake's tongue flickered out, licking at Sam's cheek and he jerked away, a strangled noise of disgust rasping out of his throat, and the demon let him. Let him go - pushed him - and Sam slipped and skidded on the crumbling edge and fell, straight down.
Dean thumped down, solid ground under foot and clear air all around, rapidly fading dizziness that he shook off with an impatient huff. "Damnit, Malak, I needed to -"
"No time, no time, no time, Dean!" Malak's hand was on Dean's arm, tugging - his wings were lifted high and fluttering, stirring little twists of dust up from the ground. They were at the edge of a clump of desiccated sweet acacia, the thin branches trembling in a light wind. All around was nothing but sand and dust, rippled by storms into dunes. Dry, bone-cracking cold, and Dean looked up at the night sky. Rags of clouds were spread thinly here and there, and the curved blade of the moon was rising to his left, rust-red. There was nothing else. Certainly no too-tall brother in need of help or otherwise.
Dean shook Malak's hand off with a little growl. "Where the fuck are we?"
"Where it all started, Dean, where it all ended. He's here, and Sam is here, and it's time, it's time...."
"Time for what?" Dean asked. But he was distracted by sense of unease - by a slowly-forming recollection and recognition. Away down the alley of dunes and the occasional hump of dry shrubbery was what looked like walls. Walls toppled and eroded, walls that seemed to be lit from behind by some low, tawny light. Candles - fire. "Is this -?"
"You know this place. You know." Malak hugged arms and wings around himself, his hair stringing into his eyes, his eyes wide and liquid-silver in the dim starlight. "First ground dedicated to Him. To any power, to any god. First blood spilled, last blood spilled. The storm, Dean."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Dean checked that the Colt was in his coat pocket - drew it and made sure of the rounds inside it, and then tucked it away again. He started to walk, silent in the dust. There were no sounds - not even insect noises. Nothing but a faint, crackling thump, like a ragged heartbeat. He aimed for the glow behind the walls, circling a little, using the dunes and the tilt of the land as cover for as long as he could.
Malak walked beside him - flickered here and then there, his wings opening wide, stars and sand gleaming faintly through feathers like smoke. "He's strong, Dean, strong, I can't...I don't...."
Dean turned and snagged Malak's wrist in a fast, hard grip - tugged him close. Too close, he could hear in his head, Sam's voice and even his father's, warning him. Never let your guard down. "You brought me here, Malak, you better not fucking disappear on me, you hear? You stay with me."
Malak shivered under Dean's glare, looking like he would bolt the second Dean let go. "I need to keep you safe, safe -"
"That's right. So you better stick close." Dean let go - winced at the bruise that was already smudging Malak's skin, cuffing the thin wrist. "Fuck, I'm sorry. Just...don't leave, okay?"
Malak put his wrist to his mouth, little dart of his pink tongue. "I won't. I'll stay."
"Okay. Here we go." Dean drew the Colt and then eased around the last dune - picked his track by eye through the scattered Lego-blocks of tumbled adobe and stone. Yeah, he knew this place. Hadn't ever expected to come back to it, really, and now....
Now here he was, and dollars to doughnuts Sam was in there, and fuck knew what else. Demons, yes, but something else. Something that was making Malak twitchy as a cat. Dean wasn't quite as in tune with - things - as Sam was, but he could still feel it. Something that seemed to press down all over - seemed to weigh the freezing air like lead, crushing all sound, making even his footsteps in the sand muffled and far away. Just that rubbing, thrumming noise, whatever it was, that was starting to get on Dean's nerves. He took a long breath - glanced over at Malak one more time and then he was moving forward, following the path he'd picked out, settling his boots carefully so there would be no noise - nothing to give him away.
Of course, it didn't do a damn bit of good. The second he passed the shoulder-high barrier of the first wall, he could feel whatever was in there turn its notice on him. The air seemed thick, too dense to breathe, and Dean dragged a freezing lungful in and stopped, staring. Scrub and rubble and...something. Not a person, because a person didn't look like that. All stretched and strange, warped by unseen pressures, twisted in all the wrong ways.
"DeanWinchessster...." The thing said, and there was enough smug satisfaction in the words to make Dean's lip curl up in a snarl.
"The one and only," Dean said. He lifted the Colt, like ice in his hand, and drew a bead. And fired, jump and spit of fire, puff of smoke. Bullet like a bead of mercury flashing through the air. Hitting the thing right between the eyes.
Sam landed hard, his bound hands useless, his leg giving out as completely as it had earlier, at Mama Lena's. He rolled onto his side and lay still for a long moment, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched, willing the knife-sharp pain to subside. The Victrola was still playing, but no music was coming out, just the static-thump of the tone arm going around and around, end of the record like a cracked heartbeat.
After a few moments he stirred, grimacing as rocks and dirt were ground into his bare shoulder and arm. It seemed slightly warmer here at the bottom of the pit, though the earth itself was cold and slightly damp under his fingers. He sat up slowly, shuddering at the way the flesh around his wrists stuck to his skin, tacky and drying, stiffish. Stretching, but not stretching enough. He could see parts of a blurred tattoo on it - hairs - and he clamped his jaw tight against a rush of nausea and looked away. Bent his head and wiped his nose and lip on his shoulder, leaving a smear of blood behind.
He was about a foot from the shrouded body and he inched closer on his knees, reaching hesitantly out. A little trickle of sand and rock chips tumbled down the side of the pit and Sam jerked back, looking up.
"Slink!" Sam's voice was a cracked rasp, barely a whisper. "Help me!"
"Too late, Sam. It's too late." Slink huddled on the edge of the pit, black eyes darting up and around, again and again. His tail was wrapped around his own ankle, tip twitching. "I told you, you should have -"
"Slink. It's not - not too late. You can still help me." Sam stretched his arms up, shivering in the cold. "Just - help me get this off. Bring me my knife."
"Ssaam...." Slink twitched, ducking down - flinched violently at a sudden, booming report. Gunshot - gun - Dean, Sam was sure, and he pushed himself to his feet, dismayed to realize he was about three feet from the lip of the pit.
"Dean! Dean, I'm here!"
"Too late, too late, too late," Slink groaned, and then he darted away, out of sight. Sam lunged at the wall, digging his fingers in - sand instantly under his nails, cascading down around his wrists. He kicked at the wall, trying to get a toe-hold, but he couldn't stand on his left leg and kick - couldn't kick with his left leg, either, so he was stuck, cursing and trying not to fall over. Trying not to fall on the body that lay just behind him.
There were noises above - scuffling and scraping, something being dragged over the sand. And then Dean was pushed over the pit-edge, tumbling down loose-limbed to sprawl at the bottom, one arm flung out, the other caught under him, his legs half bent. Out cold, blood trickling from his temple.
"Fuck, fuck, Dean, Jesus...." Sam went to his knees, pulling at his brother, tugging him over so that his face wasn't pressed into the sand; wiping at the blood with his fingers; pressing lightly on the bone under the rapidly bruising flesh. "Dean, damnit -"
"Shouldn't have done it, he shouldn't have...." Slink appeared over the edge, eyes wide. "Shouldn't have -"
"Shut up," Sam snarled, and Slink hissed, showing teeth.
"Loved you and you never cared, loved you and you never loved me...."
"Because you're a fucking.... Shit." Sam pushed at Dean's coat, feeling for the knife at his waist. He drew it from its sheath and reversed it awkwardly, slotting the razor-sharp blade carefully between his wrists, against the edge to the rapidly drying strips of skin. He started to saw at the skin, fingers aching from the cold. Shivering all over, now, down deep in his belly. It was making cutting himself free a little suicidal, but there was nothing else to be done.
"Dean, Dean, c'mon, wake up," Sam muttered, biting his lip as the blade slipped a little, scraping his own skin. "Ow, damnit...."
"You're mine, Ssam, he said so, not his, not Dean's...." Slink shifted away again, making that little cat-mewl, wounded and desperate sounding and the first loop of the skin parted against the knife.
"He just gets...creepier...all the time," Dean said, his voice thin and cracked, and Sam almost stabbed himself, fumbling the knife and nearly dropping it.
"Dean, Jesus, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I...fuck." Dean struggled weakly for a moment, his limbs moving in an uncoordinated sort of swimming motion. And then he was sitting up, his hand going to his temple, hunching over. "Fucker."
"You're bleeding, what happened?" Sam started sawing again, lip caught between his teeth.
"Slink jumped me. After I shot that...that...."
"Demon. I guess."
"You guess? Here, gimme that before you slice yourself open, Christ's sake, Sam." Dean pulled Sam's bound hands down, taking control of the knife and Sam let him, curling his fingers out of the way so Dean could get a better angle. "What the hell is this?"
"What you think," Sam said, and Dean's mouth went thin and tight. He sawed carefully - quickly - and a moment later the loops fell free and Sam twitched them away into the dirt, shuddering. He rubbed his wrists, flaking off dried blood and fluids, and Dean wiped the knife on his boot - slid it away.
"You're kinda blue," Dean said. He shrugged his coat off, going up on his knees to free it from his legs and handed it over to Sam. Sam pulled it on gratefully, Dean's heat settling around him. He buttoned the front up and then looked up at the pit edge. The Victrola was still humming, a throbbing, staticky beat that made Sam feel smothered - buried.
"So what is it?"
Sam rubbed at his forehead, trying to make his aching brain work. "It's a demon, it just...it said it crawled out of Hell. It said it was down deep, it said...said it 'ate' the Horseman."
"Ate them?"
"Like Famine did, with the - the demons."
"I shot it. It went down, but...doesn't feel like it's gone," Dean said.
"It's not. Fuck...." Sam rubbed harder and Dean reached out and caught his hands - tugged at them.
"Sam?"
"Can you make that fucking thing stop? It's...it's screwing with my head, Jesus, it...it hurts...." Sam felt a new trickle of blood on his upper lip, tickling and shockingly warm on his chilled skin and he felt Dean stand up - heard him scramble his way up the pit wall, cursing, rocks and sand cascading down behind him. Something thumped into the dirt next to him and Sam jerked - lifted his head to squint around.
It was Malak, crouched at the head of the body, wings arched up high and twitching, pale eyes wide. His fingers kept reaching out and then pulling back, too nervous to actually touch. Hell, maybe he couldn't.... "Malak..."
There was a sudden splintering crunch and the throbbing hum of the Victrola stopped and Sam drew in a hard, deep breath, some of the ache - some of the suffocating weight - dropping away.
"Shouldn't have, he shouldn't have, hurt him...." Malak finally rested his fingertips on the head of the body and shuddered all over, looking up at Sam through tangled hair and long lashes. "He's here, Sam. Oh, wake him...." Then Malak launched himself upward and Sam heard a sharp cry - Dean, Malak, it was hard to say.
"Sam!" Dean shouted, and Sam shoved his hands into the coat's pockets, searching...there. Holy water, holy oil, and another knife, smaller than the Bowie Dean still carried. Sam opened the knife and started cutting away the shroud.
Dean slithered up and over the edge of the pit and then down the tumbled heap of the altar. The demon - thing - whatever the hell it was, was pawing at the sand, pushing itself upright in slow, jerky increments. There was a bloodless hole in the center of its forehead and for a fleeting moment, Dean wondered if they could dig the bullet back out - if it was just in there, rattling around.
And then he did a sharp, round-house kick to the record player that was propped on a tilting slab of rock, grinning in satisfaction as it shattered. The demon growled, wet and low, gesturing with its spidery fingers. With a whining shriek, a cloud of disembodied demons screamed down out of the rafters, swirling around Dean like a tornado.
He reached for the Colt and then cursed as he realized his coat was down in the pit, wrapped around Sam. Wings battered at him, and Malak dove at the demons, crying out as they twisted around him, tumbling him through the air. The demon was crawling to its feet and Dean drew the knife - the demon-killing knife - and crouched, waiting.
"Sam!" Think of something, anything....
"From the abyss have I come and to the abyss you will go, your blood, your soul, your life...." The thing was unfolding upward, tall and taller still, a thing of bones and stretched flesh, gleaming wetly. The candle-flames flattened and wavered upright again, casting lurid shadows, and Dean could see viscera and ropey intestines - the stretched-cable of tendons and the sinew of muscle all sliding under rags of wet, torn-looking flesh. Legs that bent backward at the knee, like a dog's, and arms that unbent and unbent, umbrella-like, showing ragged wings between long, long fingers.
Something hellish - something profoundly, utterly of Hell, and Dean felt the spit dry in his mouth, his heart leaping against his breastbone, sweat sick and clammy along his ribs. Pure demon, its bones glowing through the putrefying shroud of flesh that hung on it, a sickly greenish-yellow that hurt Dean's eyes. He could see Slink just behind it, looking up with horror and longing, and he leapt upward, teeth barred, and the thing shook him off like a cat, sending him reeling into shadow.
"Sam, it's now or never!" Something moved in the air behind the demon - something flew, crooked and faltering. Malak, his pale face slashed with blood, his wings tattered. "Malak, don't -!"
"No!" Malak screamed. He darted at the demon, fingers hooked into claws, and the demon swatted him out of the air, sending him in a tumble of blood and feathers to the far corner of the ruined church.
"Damnit.... Come on!" Dean spread his arms wide, glaring at the demon. "Come and get me, you ugly fucker! We beat you once, we can do it again!"
The demon tipped its head down, white eyes reflecting golden candlelight, grinning through a jaw grotesquely unhinged and gaping. It opened its maw wider, the corrupt glow of itself expanding - strengthening - and roared.
It was a sound so loud - so huge - it was nearly soundless, but it blasted Dean backward - shook the ruin like a child with a toy, sending rocks sliding and dust puffing upward - bringing the last of the roof crashing down. It thundered in Dean's skull and seemed to crush his bones - flatten his lungs - and he tried to curl up under it. Tried to cover his ears, protect his head. It hurt, it was endless, it was intolerable, and Dean yelled, pain and fury.
Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes
Dean closed them.
Sam hacked furiously at the shroud, yanking it back - unraveling it. Exposing layers of cleaner and cleaner cloth, until the body lay under only a thin scrim of pale white linen. The disembodied demons were roiling overhead, harrying Malak, and something was happening, something awful, something....
The power, the presence of the thing was overwhelming. Ice-cold suffocation, a void that was taking all the air, all the light, and Sam groaned under it, his fingers shaking, yanking away the last of the shroud.
Snow white, nude, dark hair lying like feathers across his forehead, the body was covered from head to foot in wards, sigils, and symbols, in spell work and invocations, in bindings and blessings and seals. Sam gasped for air, coughing as blood flowed over his mouth. He licked and spat and spat again - reached into Dean's coat for the holy water - the oil, opening them with cramping, aching fingers and pouring them over the body.
He washed away everything; every symbol drawn in blood and charcoal, in chalk and water, in earth and ash and semen. His palms rubbed over flesh that felt like marble - that slowly warmed and changed under his hands until Sam was touching flesh - true, living flesh, and not a statue - not an icon.
In the sullied remains of the oil, he drew one, simple sigil on the chest of the body, his lips forming the words, his throat unable to make them. He could hear Dean shouting and then.... And then a noise, like the world cracking apart and the body - the man - opened his eyes.
Blue eyes, like a summer sky, like the shifting, fathomless depths of a tropical sea. Eyes wide and laughing and full of wonder - surprise - love.
Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes
And then, for the second time in Sam's life, the world - ended.
Sort of.
Continued in Part three.
It seemed about half of Steamboat Springs was on fire. Or, what was left of it. The outer portions of the city had been scavenged for years by Mama and her orphans - by anyone who cared to take the time and effort to extract wood and stone and metal from the ruins. Now it was a shifting, sighing roil of smoke and flame, seething and creeping in a half ring around the orphanage and the Pony Express stables. The air was already thick with smoke and soot, sharp tang that made Sam's throat itch. The sky was blotted by clouds still, ragged masses of them whose underbellies were lit by the sullen, hellish glow of the fire. It made the air inside the orphanage walls seem to glow, ruddy and unnatural.
The children were running all over, carrying buckets and heaps of old sacks - working the pump by the stables to fill the troughs. The valves on the rain-catch tubs on the roof were being opened and water was pouring down, sloshed all over the roof by mops and rags, running down the walls. Holy water, because Dean had gone up and blessed it while Sam was picking the kids who could read the best.
Lena panted up to where Sam was standing, writing down the fourth copy of an exorcism in phonetic Latin, working fast by lantern-light. "Lena -" Sam said, and she lifted up her hand, stopping him.
"I know, I know. I been slackin', I know. I ain't never seen a demon in my life and you know it. Tink knows how, and Oliver, and Sassy -"
"It's not enough. Everyone should know." Sam finished a line and sanded the ink - handed the paper off to a waiting boy, a skinny thing with long blond braids and huge eyes. He took it, spun on his heel and ran. They all had their places in the bucket chains - on fire-watch and wall-watch. Sam started writing again, deliberate.
"I know they should," Lena said, and then she made a little sighing sound, worry and fear. "Ahh, there they go."
Sam looked up from his impromptu desk - three stacked wooden crates - to see Dean slapping the rumps of a pair of pinto ponies, sending them trotting past. Riding them were Tink's twins; rangy, very black boys with feathers in their puffs of wiry hair. They were heading toward the springs - the back wall of the orphanage enclosure - and Sam frowned.
"Where in hell are they going?"
"They's a rainmaker at Muddy Creek, up the line half a day." Lena watched Dean walk toward them, wiping his hands on a rag. "It's been a dry season, Sam - this fire knows that. We need all the help we can get."
"Gave them some anti-possession protection," Dean said, stopping by the desk. Sam could see streaks of pale paint on his fingers. "That fire-break of yours good, Lena?"
"Had a crew down in it last month, got it all clean and tight." Lena looked around at the ordered chaos of the courtyard, at close to fifty orphans bracing for a fight. "We sent the livestock down to the spring cave, and the babies with 'em. Got about six of the oldest to watch 'em, and a couple of Tink's Rangers."
"That's good. Sam?"
"Almost done," Sam said. He wrote the last line - fifth exorcism in as many minutes - and passed it off to the last kid waiting, tiny little girl with fused fingers on both hands and sharp, angled blades of bone standing up off her spine like fins. She scurried away, mouthing the words silently, and Sam capped the inkwell. "I think we should -"
"Mama! Sirs! Somebody comin'!" Tink shouted down from the wall and Sam and Dean moved fast, coats flaring around their knees as they trotted across the courtyard to the wall. Lena stayed behind, two stiff knees keeping her grounded.
An iron staircase - old fire escape, it looked like - had been pried off its original building and fastened to the wall, and Sam and Dean's boots rang on the rusting treads as they climbed upward. The wall was about fifteen feet high, at most; irregular and imperfect but strengthened by layers of salt-thickened paint and regular baths of holy water. Too, there were cold-forged iron wards nailed up at intervals, and a boundary of iron buried inside and out.
The top of the wall was circled by a walk, low enough to keep most covered but of course Sam and Dean both had to crouch a bit to avoid giving whoever was outside a clear head-shot.
"Tink?"
"I saw someone, sir. Moving fast. Couldn't tell...I mean...it's dark, sir."
"Show me," Dean said, and Tink led him to a look-out, protected by a criss-cross of iron bands.
"Two o'clock," Tink said, gesturing, and Dean looked out, scanning the rubble and ruins that lay there.
"Ah, hell." Dean turned away from the look-out, his expression one of irritation and Sam pushed past him to look out himself.
"Damnit." Sam let his forehead hit the iron bands, pushing into them for a moment, eyes shut in sheer frustration. Then he turned around, sharing a sour look with Dean. "It's Slink."
"What the hell is he doing?" Dean muttered, watching as Slink advanced and retreated, looking over his shoulder and then up at the walls, indecision in every line of him, his tail whipping and curling.
"Maybe he knows how the fire started."
"Maybe he started it," Dean said, and Sam shrugged. Slink wasn't much for the grand gesture. Was, in fact, prone to spending a lot of his time simply elsewhere, unhappy when he couldn't follow Sam because of wards and salt, uneasy around Dean, which Dean was more than happy to encourage. The storms that came every six or eight weeks seemed to agitate him, but he always slunk away in the end, going back to whatever hidey he had.
Now, Slink climbed a tilting heap of rubble, claws catching in the litter of weeds and sapling trees that had sprung up in it. Climbing until he was at the top of the eroded tip and then he crouched there, staring at the wall.
"Sssaaaam! Sssaaam!"
"Great." Dean was up and moving, along the cat walk and down the stairs, Sam trailing behind him, clumsy on his sore leg.
"Dean - hey! Dean, slow down."
"What, Sam? That fucking idiot is gonna draw everything in a five-mile radius to him, including however many damn demons are out there. We need to shut him up." Dean pounded down the last set of stairs and hit dirt, using the rail to swing himself around, heading for the gate. Until Sam launched himself over the railing like an idiot, landing hard in front of Dean. His leg crumpled and Dean grabbed his arms, shoving him against the ironwork and bracing him there. "What the fuck are you doing? Jesus -"
"What, exactly, are you gonna do with him, Dean?" Sam's voice was tight with pain - a little breathless. "Can't chase him off - he'll just come back. Can't bring him in here. What are you going to do?"
"I'm gonna - I'll.... Well, fuck, I don't know, okay? But he can't sit out there yelling for you like some half-assed Romeo."
"Ssssaaaam!"
"Christ," Dean said, and rubbed his hand over his face. Sam leaned against the stair rail and kneaded his thigh, looking pale in the murk of smoke and fire light that suffused the courtyard. Six months ago his thigh had been hamburger - flesh and bone pulverized to a sick, shattered mess. He'd healed, and healed well, but not enough, insisting they ride the Rim like always - insisting he was fine sitting Toto for seven, eight hours a day when Dean knew he was no such thing.
"Listen. You know he won't hurt me -" Sam said, and Dean's gaze snapped up from Sam's hands to his face, furious.
"Won't, not can't. And 'won't' only until you really piss him off. You know he's not safe, Sam. Not for one second is he safe."
"I know he's not. But he can't get to me, Dean. You know that, too. The most he could do is catch me with those claws. Anything else - he's helpless."
Dean threw his hands up, frustrated - this close to throwing a punch. "We don't fucking know anything, Sam! We assume and we - we hope but we don't know -"
"Ssssaaam, please, please Ssam!"
"Shut! Up!" Dean bellowed, loud enough to hurt his throat and they all heard the little cat-squeak of surprise from Slink. "Sam -"
"Dean, we gotta get him out of here." Sam pushed away from the rail and stood straight, gingerly testing his leg. He winced, lines of pain grooved beside his mouth, but then he drew himself up - in. Hiding everything. "Get up on the wall with Tink. She's got some archers in her Rangers, get them up there, too; arrows dipped in holy water, some tubs of salt. I'll go out -"
"No, Sam," Dean said, and Sam put his hands on Dean's shoulders, squeezing through the leather and canvas of Dean's coat. Serious, always so fucking serious.
"I'll go out there, just on the other side of the gate. Make him come to me, okay? See what he wants; see if I can get him out of here. Okay?" Sam rubbed his fingers over Dean's shoulders, pulling him a little closer - catching Dean's gaze and holding it. "It's the only way, Dean."
Dean stared back at Sam, a muscle in his jaw ticking, his hands balled into fists at his side. Fury and terror and frustration roiling inside him. Knowing he was right, but that Sam was right, too. They had to get Slink out of there, and they had to do it now. Dean opened his mouth, ready to muster one more argument - or to simply say no, again. And Sam just smiled at him, tiny little quirk of his mouth, one corner going up, his slanted eyes softening, little crinkles at the corner.
And Dean felt it all just drain away because...well, hell. There was nothing else to be done. Dean let his head drop down - let out a ragged chuckle, his hands opening, coming up to grab onto Sam's forearms. "God damnit, Sam...okay." He looked up again, serious himself, now - resolved. "Okay."
"Okay," Sam said.
Dean huffed in frustration and then leaned forward and kissed Sam, hard, letting a little of his worry and fury bleed through. Then Dean was stepping away - yelling up to Tink, sending two of the kids on fire-watch running for water and salt. Sam wasn't going anywhere until everything was exactly how Dean wanted it.
Sam stepped out of the little sally port they'd built into the gate, his shotgun in his hands. He could feel the wards shivering, touched somewhere down the length of the wall by things that shouldn't be touching them. Things razor-edged and not quite right and it was like nails on a chalkboard. Sam knew Dean could feel it too, maybe not quite as clearly, but it wasn't helping his mood any, and Sam turned to give him a last little nod before he stepped out from under the arch of the gate.
Just a few steps. Still within the ward's influence, if not the actual boundaries of them. But Slink didn't know that, so it probably didn't matter.
Slink was scrambling down the rubble-heap now, claws striking sparks from the twisted remains of stone and steel. He landed as graceful as a cat and crouched for a moment, just looking at Sam. Thirty or so feet away, his cotton-white hair nearly phosphorescent in the rufous murk.
"Slink," Sam called, and the creature stood slowly. He hesitated, tail lashing, and then he walked forward. Or, more properly, slinked forward, head down and a little averted, haunches rolling. Seduction in the cant of his shoulders and the twist of his hips but Sam had been pretty much immune to Slink's particular wiles for a very long time.
"Sssaam...."
"You shouldn't be here, Slink."
"You always push me away, Sam." Slink paused about fifteen feet away, sinking down onto his haunches and looking up at Sam through wisps of tangled hair. "You always tell me to go. I don't want to go, Sam. I want...." Slink's claws raked the dirt, digging furrows. "Want," he muttered, petulant pout to his cherubic mouth.
"Did you start the fires?"
Slink grinned, white tongue and glimmering teeth, quick and feral. "Like old times, Sam."
"Did you?" Sam shifted the shotgun in his hands, restless. He could feel Dean behind him, disapproving glare and all, itching to reach out and yank him back inside. "Tell me, Slink. Tell me the truth."
"Oh, the truth. What would you know about that, Sssam? Sam-liar." Slink's voice sank lower - raspier. Furious. "Liar and thief, liar and thief."
Sam felt a little chill go over him, little knot of ice in his belly and he shoved it away. "I didn't take anything from you, Slink."
"Sam - get back in here," Dean said, low, furious rumble and Sam's shoulders twitched.
"Damnit, Slink, you came here yelling for me, what do you want?"
Slink tilted his head to one side, as if listening, and then he grinned again, his black eyes sparking red. "You, Sam. Always, always. You."
There was a sudden, deafening noise, like the air tearing - like the earth shattering - and fire slammed into the wall about fifty feet away, splintering it. There were shrieks - burned kids, kids sliding down in the rubble - and then another crackling roar, sonic boom of sound that rocked Sam on his feet. More fire, exploding out of nowhere and hitting the tinder of the wall. Flames and smoke billowed outward, dry rush, wood popping as it was consumed, and there were more screams.
Slink leaped to his feet with a shout, head tipped back, arms outspread. The fire alarm was wailing again inside the orphanage and Sam could hear Lena shouting orders, panic tightly tamped down but spreading. Dean's voice, too, shouting instructions and Sam took a step back. Another crack, seemingly right on top of Sam and he cried out, startled - deafened for a moment.
The top of the gate blossomed into fire, the flames curling out, white-hot fingers and Sam ducked, stumbling away, seeing a bloodied leg hanging down near the look-out Tink had been at last. The gate itself seemed mostly intact, but burning timbers were already dropping down, cross hatching the sally port with lines of smoky fire. Sam could hear barely hear Dean's voice from inside, sharp and breathless with fear and fury.
"Sam!"
"I'm okay! I'm coming in!"
"Staying out," Slink said, far, far too close and Sam spun - stumbled - went down, his leg finally giving out, feeling as if it were broken all over again. Slink was crouched two feet away, his claws sunk into the dirt and his tail whipping hard - his eyes predatory slits. He ducked his head, shoulders bunching as if to leap and Sam brought the shotgun up and fired in one smooth motion.
Slink screeched and jolted backward, peppered with salt and blessed iron. He vanished into the smoke and darkness, wailing. Sam knelt there, panting, but Slink didn't reappear. He put the butt of the shotgun on the ground and began to slowly lever himself upright, wincing. He could hear shouts and the sizzling sounds of water hitting fire - could hear the gate groaning, being dragged open. As he gained his feet he looked up, sparks and bits of burning trash whirling overhead. And something else - something more.
As the gate creaked wider, a dozen demons - their smoke-forms writhing and knotting, red-lit and awful in the fire light - swooped out of the air and swarmed around Sam, engulfed him. A high, sick buzzing filled his ears and his head, battering at him from the inside. Sam was buffeted and spun, flayed with their very essences, a burn like acid. He pulled the trigger on the shotgun again - felt it buck in his hands, but whatever damage it did was not enough - not nearly enough. The smoke - the demon bodies - whipped away for a heartbeat, no more, and then whirled inward again, a collapsing spiral.
Out of the maelstrom, a hand suddenly knotted itself into the front of Sam's shirt and he was yanked forward - upward - out. The last thing he saw were eyes, rolling back white, and then nothing at all.
"Sam, God damnit!" Sam's shotgun barked again and Dean kicked burning timbers aside - shoved the gate another half-inch and scraped through, splinters tearing the shirt across his chest, the back of his coat. Scraped hard enough to catch the skin on his sternum and Dean hissed and twisted and shoved and was through, finally.
And Sam wasn't there.
Dean spent about ten seconds too long gaping at the place he should be and then he was moving. Running. Going first to the finger of rubble that Slink had climbed, then along the wall, because Sam, damn him, would be trying to help people, would be in there getting his hands burnt trying to dig some kid out....
Dean kicked at smoldering planks - nearly fell into the fire break, stumbling on the edge of the trench cut into the soil. "Sam, damnit, answer me!!" Dean knew Sam wasn't there, he could feel it, but...he had to be sure, had be one hundred percent sure and God, please, don't let him be under the damn wall....
"Not yours, not yours, mine now," Slink said, fading in out of the smoke and glare of the fire and Dean reacted, pure instinct. Drew the Colt that he carried always, riding close to his skin - like Dad's journal, like the Horsemen's talismans. Drew and cocked and fired but Slink was already gone, flicking away between one second and the next.
"Sammy!" Dean's voice was lost in the dry roar of the fire - in the chaos beyond the wall - in the empty devastation of the city. Sam was gone. "Fuck. Jesus. Okay, okay...."
"Dean," someone said, a sibilant rustle, and Dean jerked around, the Colt coming up. Point blank on Malak, who was standing far too close, his arms wrapped tight around his ribs, his wings half shadow, the fire shining through them and on them, turning them to flame and smoke. "Dean -"
"Christ, Malak. I don't have time for you right now." Dean skirted around him, striding back toward the gate. He needed Seven and Toto, needed supplies, needed -
"They took him," Malak said, and Dean stopped dead.
Stood there, his belly twisting up into a knot, his lungs hitching. "What did you say?"
"Sam's gone. They took him."
Dean spun on his heel and took three - four - fast steps, right up to Malak. Reaching out and taking his shoulder in a grip tight enough to leave bruises and ignoring the little flinch - the wide, startled eyes. "Who took him? What the hell do you know about it? Tell me, damnit, or so help me -"
"Dean, please -" Malak was shrinking away, his wings fluttering in agitation, his eyes welling and Dean shook him.
"Tell me."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it hurts, please -" Malak was crying now, tears streaking down his cheeks, mouth trembling and Dean shoved him away. Stood there glaring as Malak stumbled - fell against the wall and huddled there, shivering. "I didn't do it, I didn't take him."
"Christ, I...." Dean took in a hard breath, tamping down the anger and the panic. Setting it aside. For now. "Tell me who did."
Malak sniffed - straightened up and rubbed his shoulder. There were marks there already, bruises filling in in the shape of Dean's hand. Malak scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and for a moment he was a child. For a moment he was Sam, bruised knees and hurt feelings and Dean wanted to scream.
"I saw them. I felt them coming and I followed them - I wanted to tell you but I...I was afraid. They're stronger than me...." Malak sniffed again, his cheeks smeared wet and his wings drooping, feathers dragging in the soot and dirt.
"Yeah, okay. It's okay." Dean looked around him at the fires - the wall that was blasted and sagging, still burning. He could hear the orphans - Lena - working the bucket chain and digging out the wounded and he just.... Just wanted a moment of quiet. Just one damn minute. "Just - tell me, Malak."
Malak nodded - pushed his tangled hair back off his face and sidled closer, hugging himself again. The fire reflected in his eyes, sheer gold for a moment, and Dean flinched. "It's...there's so much power, Dean. You have to be careful. He's old...he's so old...the air aches with his age. Hates him, it hates to touch him...." Malak shivered, his wings coming to wrap around him, rags of shadow and the white feathers smutted with soot - the black ones gone chalky, the starlings-wing gleam drowned in dust.
Dean stared at him, his thoughts running rabbit-fast, rabbit-erratic. "Do you know who it is? Is it...a demon? An angel?"
"Old," Malak said, his voice cracking. "He...I don't know, I - I was too scared. I just...had to find you. Had to protect you, Dean."
"Doin' a bang-up job," Dean muttered. He sighed - shoved the Colt away and started walking again, fast. "I gotta find Sam, Malak. That's all that matters."
"I know. I can help. Dean -" Malak was in front of him, flick of his there-and-gone-again wings, and Dean scowled and walked around him, avoiding the out-stretched hand. "Dean, I can, I can feel him, I can find him. Please, I can help you."
Fuck. "Fine. You help me, then. You stay out here and wait for me, got it?"
"No." Malak took the couple of steps that got him right up in Dean's face, way too fucking close and Dean edged backward a step, fingers twitching toward the Colt. "We can't wait. There's no time, Dean. No time." And then Malak reached out, snake-strike quick, and his fingers touched Dean's forehead, a gesture totally familiar and completely unexpected.
Dean had time to think Goddamnit and then everything was gone.
The air was warm, rising off the earth in waves that He could feel, like a million tiny fingers or feathers, lifting Him. He could taste it, desert-dry and salt-iron, and it was like Before, it was like forever. Above, far above, He could feel the lazy, banking glide of the Other falter and stall.
And then become an arrowing dive, a fall like a lightning-strike and He laughed aloud, stretched Himself on the air, unfurling and unfurling, a broad expanse of water far below that gleamed like ice - like stars. Making His own stoop, falcon of pure light, braced for the Other to catch Him. And He does, and they fall together, entwined, entangled - shatter the earth with a crack like first peal of thunder at the dawn of creation. Miles of stone split and churn, water boils into steam and the very air gouts away from them; recoiling, burning, turning the sky to blood and ash.
Tearing them both asunder, matter and not-matter going to atoms - to particles - to nothing at all.
Sam swam upward, slowly, through air that seemed thick as syrup. He was resting against something hard and cold and his wrists hurt, his head did, and there was something.... Something suffocating him. Something that seemed to weigh him down, making his heart beat so slow - making his lungs struggle to breathe.
I don't want to set the world on fire
I just want to start a flame in your heart.
The singer's voice was cracked - hissing and popping with static and dust - and Sam finally forced his eyes open and looked around slowly, blinking. He was in the remains of a room. Adobe bricks, abraded by wind and time, formed rudimentary walls, and most of the roof was gone. The space was lit by a bank of candles, shadows rippling up the crumbling structure. What looked like the splintered remains of pews lay tangled in leggy bitterbrush and desert grasses, bluestem and millet and one Christmas cactus, splaying itself far and wide from the ruins of a basin - a font. Church, Sam thought, and the rubbed-down walls slowly took on a more familiar shape.
"Oh, hell no," Sam whispered, and winced. His throat was smoke-dry and burning and he swallowed painfully and struggled upright. His wrists were tied. His coat and sweater and long-sleeved undershirt were gone, and the air was meat-locker cold, fingertips and nose and ears already aching with it.
In my heart I have but one desire
And that one is you, no other will do.
Sam sat hunched over for a moment, his head swimming - ears ringing - the scratchy tin-horn sounding music drowned in a staticky buzz. Then it cleared and Sam looked down at his wrists. Whatever was wrapped around them looked like.... Sam swallowed and looked sharply away, trying not to throw up. It looked like skin, strips of skin, still bloody. Seeping and curling at the edges, leaking runnels of watery blood down his forearms. Looped and knotted, reeking faintly of iron and salt and rot. God only knew where it had come from - what person lay dead because of it.
"God."
"Left the building," someone said, and Sam jerked, startled. Didn't have to look around because he could feel it; nerve-rasping hum, too deep for his ears, sawing at his bones. "Isn't that what you say? 'Left the building.' I think it rather...apt."
Something stepped from the shadows near what had once been the altar. The thing was tall, lean - stretched, in a way, hands and feet and face longer than they should be, distorted. A facsimile of a man in a funhouse mirror, unclothed, it's skin a sort of pallid olive. It walked with a limping, liquid grace, as if gravity and uneven surfaces were a constant surprise and yet....
It didn't fall, but glided, twisting around the slumped rubble of the altar, thin fingers fluttering over what Sam realized was an old-fashioned Victrola, complete with corroded brass trumpet. The record on the turntable was warped, sending the tone arm and needle up and down on a lurching, roller-coaster path. It was all wrong - too warped to actually play - and Sam pushed at the heaviness in his mind, the numbing cold and an ache that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside.
His lips formed words, Enochian wards, syllables of protection and power. The thing - demon - lifted a hand, two fingers cutting across the air and Sam felt as if a noose had been dropped around his neck. No air, just pressure and he gaped soundlessly, his chest heaving. Trying to draw in what it couldn't have.
"We have business, SamuelWinchester. So there will be none of that." The demon looked away from him, watching the record revolve - the arm lurch up and down. "I remember this. Music...." Its head snapped around to where Sam was writhing, hands clawing clumsily at his throat. "The caterwauling of the damned. Now...shall we talk?" Sam nodded - tried to nod. Black sparks were swarming in the periphery of his vision and his heart seemed to catch-step-catch, erratic and labored and too slow, too slow. As the sparks coalesced and swirled inward, fuzzing the edges and turning the candle-flame dim, the demon lifted its hand.
The pressure lifted abruptly and Sam whooped in a raw breath - immediately coughed it out again. He rolled onto his side, gagging for air - dragging it in and coughing it out until his ribs hurt. Gradually, his breathing steadied and he pushed himself slowly upright, arms shaking. His throat felt scraped open, iron-taste on the back of his tongue and he spat into the dust, seeing his spittle tinged with rust.
"I forget how fragile you are." The demon spoke from inches away - directly behind Sam - and he jerked wildly, scrambling clumsily up onto one knee, scooting awkwardly away. The demon reached out and curled its hand around his ankle, yanking him back with one hard pull, fingers like a vise of fire, branding through canvas and leather and wool.
"Let me go," Sam rasped, kicking, dumped on his back in the dust, and the demon cocked its head again, obviously puzzled. Amused, if such a thing could be. Sam could feel sand and grass sticking to his shoulders, skin slick with fear-sweat, belly clenching sickly. It was - pressure and vacuum and noise, infrasonic roar that made Sam's bones ache. "Fuck -" It hurt, to have the demon so close, and Sam twisted helplessly, the loops of flesh around his wrists dripping little spots of chilly fluid onto his chest.
"This is tedious." The demon stood abruptly, holding its hand out. Smoke coiled in from the gaps in the broken roof. Animate smoke - demons without hosts. They curled around the demon's hands - around its body, rubbing and twisting like eager dogs, pooling around its feet. A peculiar sort of whining moan came from them, scraping across Sam's nerves. Something else came out of the darkness then - Slink, creeping over the rubble of the altar and settling into a crouch midway between demon and Sam.
"Told you...to come with me." Slink was streaked with blood, trails of glistening wet in the candle glow. He wiped at his shoulder and licked his palm, white tongue stained scarlet for a moment. "Told you. Didn't want to hurt you," Slink said, "But you hurt me, and you wouldn't come, I didn't have a choice, Sam, Ssam -"
"Be quiet, creature." The demon sent the smoke-forms away with a flick of its weirdly articulated hands and they swarmed upward, keening. Coiling restlessly up near the lone roof joist, lit with sickly purple-yellow flares. "What you've been reduced to - revolting." Slink ducked his head down, shoulders coming up. Looking between Sam and the demon, something like hurt on his too-pretty, feral face. "They will pay for it, however. Pay quite exquisitely." The demon grinned at Sam, too many teeth and a sudden, flickering, serpent's tongue and Sam shuddered.
"Mine, he's mine," Slink muttered, but he darted away from the demon, head down. Not looking at Sam.
"What do you want?" Sam got his legs under him - got himself to his knees and then - shakily - his feet. His thigh ached, sharp and insistent. The demon watched, mouth curled in a crooked smirk. "The war's over - you lost. Or did you forget that?"
"I never fought in your war, SamuelWinchester." The demon flicked its hand out again and the Victrola, which had settled to a throbbing hum, the record over, suddenly started playing again. "I was down so very deep - pushed so very far away. It took me eternities to climb up to what Lucifiel made his Hell. And when I arrived - what did I find?"
The demon glided a step closer to Sam and Sam steeled himself and didn't move. Working his wrists in the clammy twists of flayed skin, feeling it stretch, just as little.
"Found out you missed the party?"
"I found Hell deserted. Oh, there were a few, straggling hundreds, limping and lurking in the corners. But Hell was...empty. So empty...all my brothers, all my sisters...." The Victrola was playing faster than it was supposed to, and the music was music-box plinky, the singer's voice a shrill whine that grated in Sam's ears.
Believe me - I don't want to set the world on fire.
I just want to start
A flame in your heart....
"It was empty because Lucifer killed them." Sam took a deep breath, centering himself. Drawing up power that he hadn't used in...years. "And we killed the rest." He let his eyes flutter shut, reaching - pushing. Trying to wrap his power around the demon in front of him and destroy it. Disperse it to nothing, end this. He could feel the power, a tightly-coiled spring somewhere deep in his mind but...he couldn't free it. The pain in his head ticked upward, sickening, and he felt something hot and wet slip down over his lip. Blood. Sam opened his eyes, gasping. Not gonna work, what is it, what is it....
The demon hissed, tongue flickering out again and Sam stepped back, one step. Staring as the dark, human eyes rolled back white. "You can't touch me, SamuelWinchester. I have gained...so much. Learned so much...." The demon shivered and its eyes darkened again, but not to plain human brown. To something poison-green and slitted, a reptile's unblinking gaze and Sam stepped back again, toward the altar, toward the possibility of something - anything - that could help. Stepped back and flinched and wobbled on his leg, gritting his teeth against the pain.
"The Horsemen, they were there, in that empty Hell. Whining on and on about how little time they had to spend up here. How you killed them. Famine and his whimpering cry of hungry. Always hungry." The demon made a chewing motion with its mouth, showing too long, too sharp teeth. Fangs. "Eating my demon-dogs until I took that little trick from him." The demon advanced another step - another - and Sam felt the tumbled mess of the altar bump against his calves.
"He tasted like rot and dust, but he fed me, yes. Fed me well. As they all did." The demon reached out suddenly, its long fingers curling around the back of Sam's neck and jerking him close. Fever-heat and the dizzying scent of blood - of a peculiar, dry spice that made Sam's nose burn. "And you'll feed me, too. You, your brother -" Sam jerked, trying to get away, but the demon held him tighter, long nails sinking into Sam's neck, sharp as knives.
"Oh, yes, I know your brother will come. Tethered and tugged along in your wake like a kite, isn't he? On your string. You, your brother, and this one...."
The demon jerked Sam around - into a stumbling walk up and over the altar. Behind it was a pit, the earth heaped up in damp-looking mounds and at the bottom of it - a figure. A body. Shrouded in white linen that had gone to tawny-rust under the earth but Sam knew, he knew....
"Drink you down, break your seals, crack the world apart, and this time...this time...." The demon's mouth was on Sam's ear, lips just brushing the edge, hot breath making Sam shudder all over, sick and furious. The demon's other hand was on his belly, petting, and Sam wanted to throw up.
"This time, no heavenly host to interfere. This time, just us...just me...." The snake's tongue flickered out, licking at Sam's cheek and he jerked away, a strangled noise of disgust rasping out of his throat, and the demon let him. Let him go - pushed him - and Sam slipped and skidded on the crumbling edge and fell, straight down.
Dean thumped down, solid ground under foot and clear air all around, rapidly fading dizziness that he shook off with an impatient huff. "Damnit, Malak, I needed to -"
"No time, no time, no time, Dean!" Malak's hand was on Dean's arm, tugging - his wings were lifted high and fluttering, stirring little twists of dust up from the ground. They were at the edge of a clump of desiccated sweet acacia, the thin branches trembling in a light wind. All around was nothing but sand and dust, rippled by storms into dunes. Dry, bone-cracking cold, and Dean looked up at the night sky. Rags of clouds were spread thinly here and there, and the curved blade of the moon was rising to his left, rust-red. There was nothing else. Certainly no too-tall brother in need of help or otherwise.
Dean shook Malak's hand off with a little growl. "Where the fuck are we?"
"Where it all started, Dean, where it all ended. He's here, and Sam is here, and it's time, it's time...."
"Time for what?" Dean asked. But he was distracted by sense of unease - by a slowly-forming recollection and recognition. Away down the alley of dunes and the occasional hump of dry shrubbery was what looked like walls. Walls toppled and eroded, walls that seemed to be lit from behind by some low, tawny light. Candles - fire. "Is this -?"
"You know this place. You know." Malak hugged arms and wings around himself, his hair stringing into his eyes, his eyes wide and liquid-silver in the dim starlight. "First ground dedicated to Him. To any power, to any god. First blood spilled, last blood spilled. The storm, Dean."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Dean checked that the Colt was in his coat pocket - drew it and made sure of the rounds inside it, and then tucked it away again. He started to walk, silent in the dust. There were no sounds - not even insect noises. Nothing but a faint, crackling thump, like a ragged heartbeat. He aimed for the glow behind the walls, circling a little, using the dunes and the tilt of the land as cover for as long as he could.
Malak walked beside him - flickered here and then there, his wings opening wide, stars and sand gleaming faintly through feathers like smoke. "He's strong, Dean, strong, I can't...I don't...."
Dean turned and snagged Malak's wrist in a fast, hard grip - tugged him close. Too close, he could hear in his head, Sam's voice and even his father's, warning him. Never let your guard down. "You brought me here, Malak, you better not fucking disappear on me, you hear? You stay with me."
Malak shivered under Dean's glare, looking like he would bolt the second Dean let go. "I need to keep you safe, safe -"
"That's right. So you better stick close." Dean let go - winced at the bruise that was already smudging Malak's skin, cuffing the thin wrist. "Fuck, I'm sorry. Just...don't leave, okay?"
Malak put his wrist to his mouth, little dart of his pink tongue. "I won't. I'll stay."
"Okay. Here we go." Dean drew the Colt and then eased around the last dune - picked his track by eye through the scattered Lego-blocks of tumbled adobe and stone. Yeah, he knew this place. Hadn't ever expected to come back to it, really, and now....
Now here he was, and dollars to doughnuts Sam was in there, and fuck knew what else. Demons, yes, but something else. Something that was making Malak twitchy as a cat. Dean wasn't quite as in tune with - things - as Sam was, but he could still feel it. Something that seemed to press down all over - seemed to weigh the freezing air like lead, crushing all sound, making even his footsteps in the sand muffled and far away. Just that rubbing, thrumming noise, whatever it was, that was starting to get on Dean's nerves. He took a long breath - glanced over at Malak one more time and then he was moving forward, following the path he'd picked out, settling his boots carefully so there would be no noise - nothing to give him away.
Of course, it didn't do a damn bit of good. The second he passed the shoulder-high barrier of the first wall, he could feel whatever was in there turn its notice on him. The air seemed thick, too dense to breathe, and Dean dragged a freezing lungful in and stopped, staring. Scrub and rubble and...something. Not a person, because a person didn't look like that. All stretched and strange, warped by unseen pressures, twisted in all the wrong ways.
"DeanWinchessster...." The thing said, and there was enough smug satisfaction in the words to make Dean's lip curl up in a snarl.
"The one and only," Dean said. He lifted the Colt, like ice in his hand, and drew a bead. And fired, jump and spit of fire, puff of smoke. Bullet like a bead of mercury flashing through the air. Hitting the thing right between the eyes.
Sam landed hard, his bound hands useless, his leg giving out as completely as it had earlier, at Mama Lena's. He rolled onto his side and lay still for a long moment, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched, willing the knife-sharp pain to subside. The Victrola was still playing, but no music was coming out, just the static-thump of the tone arm going around and around, end of the record like a cracked heartbeat.
After a few moments he stirred, grimacing as rocks and dirt were ground into his bare shoulder and arm. It seemed slightly warmer here at the bottom of the pit, though the earth itself was cold and slightly damp under his fingers. He sat up slowly, shuddering at the way the flesh around his wrists stuck to his skin, tacky and drying, stiffish. Stretching, but not stretching enough. He could see parts of a blurred tattoo on it - hairs - and he clamped his jaw tight against a rush of nausea and looked away. Bent his head and wiped his nose and lip on his shoulder, leaving a smear of blood behind.
He was about a foot from the shrouded body and he inched closer on his knees, reaching hesitantly out. A little trickle of sand and rock chips tumbled down the side of the pit and Sam jerked back, looking up.
"Slink!" Sam's voice was a cracked rasp, barely a whisper. "Help me!"
"Too late, Sam. It's too late." Slink huddled on the edge of the pit, black eyes darting up and around, again and again. His tail was wrapped around his own ankle, tip twitching. "I told you, you should have -"
"Slink. It's not - not too late. You can still help me." Sam stretched his arms up, shivering in the cold. "Just - help me get this off. Bring me my knife."
"Ssaam...." Slink twitched, ducking down - flinched violently at a sudden, booming report. Gunshot - gun - Dean, Sam was sure, and he pushed himself to his feet, dismayed to realize he was about three feet from the lip of the pit.
"Dean! Dean, I'm here!"
"Too late, too late, too late," Slink groaned, and then he darted away, out of sight. Sam lunged at the wall, digging his fingers in - sand instantly under his nails, cascading down around his wrists. He kicked at the wall, trying to get a toe-hold, but he couldn't stand on his left leg and kick - couldn't kick with his left leg, either, so he was stuck, cursing and trying not to fall over. Trying not to fall on the body that lay just behind him.
There were noises above - scuffling and scraping, something being dragged over the sand. And then Dean was pushed over the pit-edge, tumbling down loose-limbed to sprawl at the bottom, one arm flung out, the other caught under him, his legs half bent. Out cold, blood trickling from his temple.
"Fuck, fuck, Dean, Jesus...." Sam went to his knees, pulling at his brother, tugging him over so that his face wasn't pressed into the sand; wiping at the blood with his fingers; pressing lightly on the bone under the rapidly bruising flesh. "Dean, damnit -"
"Shouldn't have done it, he shouldn't have...." Slink appeared over the edge, eyes wide. "Shouldn't have -"
"Shut up," Sam snarled, and Slink hissed, showing teeth.
"Loved you and you never cared, loved you and you never loved me...."
"Because you're a fucking.... Shit." Sam pushed at Dean's coat, feeling for the knife at his waist. He drew it from its sheath and reversed it awkwardly, slotting the razor-sharp blade carefully between his wrists, against the edge to the rapidly drying strips of skin. He started to saw at the skin, fingers aching from the cold. Shivering all over, now, down deep in his belly. It was making cutting himself free a little suicidal, but there was nothing else to be done.
"Dean, Dean, c'mon, wake up," Sam muttered, biting his lip as the blade slipped a little, scraping his own skin. "Ow, damnit...."
"You're mine, Ssam, he said so, not his, not Dean's...." Slink shifted away again, making that little cat-mewl, wounded and desperate sounding and the first loop of the skin parted against the knife.
"He just gets...creepier...all the time," Dean said, his voice thin and cracked, and Sam almost stabbed himself, fumbling the knife and nearly dropping it.
"Dean, Jesus, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I...fuck." Dean struggled weakly for a moment, his limbs moving in an uncoordinated sort of swimming motion. And then he was sitting up, his hand going to his temple, hunching over. "Fucker."
"You're bleeding, what happened?" Sam started sawing again, lip caught between his teeth.
"Slink jumped me. After I shot that...that...."
"Demon. I guess."
"You guess? Here, gimme that before you slice yourself open, Christ's sake, Sam." Dean pulled Sam's bound hands down, taking control of the knife and Sam let him, curling his fingers out of the way so Dean could get a better angle. "What the hell is this?"
"What you think," Sam said, and Dean's mouth went thin and tight. He sawed carefully - quickly - and a moment later the loops fell free and Sam twitched them away into the dirt, shuddering. He rubbed his wrists, flaking off dried blood and fluids, and Dean wiped the knife on his boot - slid it away.
"You're kinda blue," Dean said. He shrugged his coat off, going up on his knees to free it from his legs and handed it over to Sam. Sam pulled it on gratefully, Dean's heat settling around him. He buttoned the front up and then looked up at the pit edge. The Victrola was still humming, a throbbing, staticky beat that made Sam feel smothered - buried.
"So what is it?"
Sam rubbed at his forehead, trying to make his aching brain work. "It's a demon, it just...it said it crawled out of Hell. It said it was down deep, it said...said it 'ate' the Horseman."
"Ate them?"
"Like Famine did, with the - the demons."
"I shot it. It went down, but...doesn't feel like it's gone," Dean said.
"It's not. Fuck...." Sam rubbed harder and Dean reached out and caught his hands - tugged at them.
"Sam?"
"Can you make that fucking thing stop? It's...it's screwing with my head, Jesus, it...it hurts...." Sam felt a new trickle of blood on his upper lip, tickling and shockingly warm on his chilled skin and he felt Dean stand up - heard him scramble his way up the pit wall, cursing, rocks and sand cascading down behind him. Something thumped into the dirt next to him and Sam jerked - lifted his head to squint around.
It was Malak, crouched at the head of the body, wings arched up high and twitching, pale eyes wide. His fingers kept reaching out and then pulling back, too nervous to actually touch. Hell, maybe he couldn't.... "Malak..."
There was a sudden splintering crunch and the throbbing hum of the Victrola stopped and Sam drew in a hard, deep breath, some of the ache - some of the suffocating weight - dropping away.
"Shouldn't have, he shouldn't have, hurt him...." Malak finally rested his fingertips on the head of the body and shuddered all over, looking up at Sam through tangled hair and long lashes. "He's here, Sam. Oh, wake him...." Then Malak launched himself upward and Sam heard a sharp cry - Dean, Malak, it was hard to say.
"Sam!" Dean shouted, and Sam shoved his hands into the coat's pockets, searching...there. Holy water, holy oil, and another knife, smaller than the Bowie Dean still carried. Sam opened the knife and started cutting away the shroud.
Dean slithered up and over the edge of the pit and then down the tumbled heap of the altar. The demon - thing - whatever the hell it was, was pawing at the sand, pushing itself upright in slow, jerky increments. There was a bloodless hole in the center of its forehead and for a fleeting moment, Dean wondered if they could dig the bullet back out - if it was just in there, rattling around.
And then he did a sharp, round-house kick to the record player that was propped on a tilting slab of rock, grinning in satisfaction as it shattered. The demon growled, wet and low, gesturing with its spidery fingers. With a whining shriek, a cloud of disembodied demons screamed down out of the rafters, swirling around Dean like a tornado.
He reached for the Colt and then cursed as he realized his coat was down in the pit, wrapped around Sam. Wings battered at him, and Malak dove at the demons, crying out as they twisted around him, tumbling him through the air. The demon was crawling to its feet and Dean drew the knife - the demon-killing knife - and crouched, waiting.
"Sam!" Think of something, anything....
"From the abyss have I come and to the abyss you will go, your blood, your soul, your life...." The thing was unfolding upward, tall and taller still, a thing of bones and stretched flesh, gleaming wetly. The candle-flames flattened and wavered upright again, casting lurid shadows, and Dean could see viscera and ropey intestines - the stretched-cable of tendons and the sinew of muscle all sliding under rags of wet, torn-looking flesh. Legs that bent backward at the knee, like a dog's, and arms that unbent and unbent, umbrella-like, showing ragged wings between long, long fingers.
Something hellish - something profoundly, utterly of Hell, and Dean felt the spit dry in his mouth, his heart leaping against his breastbone, sweat sick and clammy along his ribs. Pure demon, its bones glowing through the putrefying shroud of flesh that hung on it, a sickly greenish-yellow that hurt Dean's eyes. He could see Slink just behind it, looking up with horror and longing, and he leapt upward, teeth barred, and the thing shook him off like a cat, sending him reeling into shadow.
"Sam, it's now or never!" Something moved in the air behind the demon - something flew, crooked and faltering. Malak, his pale face slashed with blood, his wings tattered. "Malak, don't -!"
"No!" Malak screamed. He darted at the demon, fingers hooked into claws, and the demon swatted him out of the air, sending him in a tumble of blood and feathers to the far corner of the ruined church.
"Damnit.... Come on!" Dean spread his arms wide, glaring at the demon. "Come and get me, you ugly fucker! We beat you once, we can do it again!"
The demon tipped its head down, white eyes reflecting golden candlelight, grinning through a jaw grotesquely unhinged and gaping. It opened its maw wider, the corrupt glow of itself expanding - strengthening - and roared.
It was a sound so loud - so huge - it was nearly soundless, but it blasted Dean backward - shook the ruin like a child with a toy, sending rocks sliding and dust puffing upward - bringing the last of the roof crashing down. It thundered in Dean's skull and seemed to crush his bones - flatten his lungs - and he tried to curl up under it. Tried to cover his ears, protect his head. It hurt, it was endless, it was intolerable, and Dean yelled, pain and fury.
Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes
Dean closed them.
Sam hacked furiously at the shroud, yanking it back - unraveling it. Exposing layers of cleaner and cleaner cloth, until the body lay under only a thin scrim of pale white linen. The disembodied demons were roiling overhead, harrying Malak, and something was happening, something awful, something....
The power, the presence of the thing was overwhelming. Ice-cold suffocation, a void that was taking all the air, all the light, and Sam groaned under it, his fingers shaking, yanking away the last of the shroud.
Snow white, nude, dark hair lying like feathers across his forehead, the body was covered from head to foot in wards, sigils, and symbols, in spell work and invocations, in bindings and blessings and seals. Sam gasped for air, coughing as blood flowed over his mouth. He licked and spat and spat again - reached into Dean's coat for the holy water - the oil, opening them with cramping, aching fingers and pouring them over the body.
He washed away everything; every symbol drawn in blood and charcoal, in chalk and water, in earth and ash and semen. His palms rubbed over flesh that felt like marble - that slowly warmed and changed under his hands until Sam was touching flesh - true, living flesh, and not a statue - not an icon.
In the sullied remains of the oil, he drew one, simple sigil on the chest of the body, his lips forming the words, his throat unable to make them. He could hear Dean shouting and then.... And then a noise, like the world cracking apart and the body - the man - opened his eyes.
Blue eyes, like a summer sky, like the shifting, fathomless depths of a tropical sea. Eyes wide and laughing and full of wonder - surprise - love.
Close your eyes close your eyes close your eyes
And then, for the second time in Sam's life, the world - ended.
Sort of.
Continued in Part three.