A Very Supernatural Journey Chapter 13
A birthday story for Enkidu07, co-manager of the E/O Drabble Challenge.
by womanofletters, theymp, mainegirlwrites and wynefred
Previous Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
This chapter written by theymp
Summary: If you thought things were bad before...
Chapter 13: Hook, Line and Sinker...
Tyrone had barely made it to the pre-vigil briefing ceremony in time, but that hadn't stopped the Chief from tearing him a new one for what was now seen as his "new habit of repeated tardiness".
He had almost bitten through the inside of his cheek in an effort to hold back a couple of choice retorts as he fumed at the authorities for allowing this nonsense to go ahead. The drain on limited resources for a public event when they should be scouring the area for the perp, supernatural or not, was bad enough - and it wasn't like they needed an excuse to fill the drunk tank with frat boys.
His foul mood wasn't improved by bumping into Sam Winchester and his new puppy traipsing along behind him in obvious adoration. If a gorgeous, six-foot tall, redhead Amazon could be described as a puppy.
"Who's your new friend, Sam?" Tyrone asked in a tight voice.
"Oh, hi Detective!" Sam gave a beaming smile and seemed so genuinely pleased to see him that Tyrone felt an inch tall for daring to be irritable with the man. "This is Shawna, she's a good friend of Rachelle's and she's been a huge help in figuring out how to stop the creature."
Tyrone didn't know what was worse: the long, torrid looks the pair didn't seem to realize they kept giving each other, or that a Winchester seemed to be pulling yet another innocent college girl into the path of danger. Tyrone sighed and rolled his eyes, See this is what I get for skipping a night's sleep, he thought. It was then that he noticed the suspiciously bulky duffel bag slung over Sam's shoulder.
"What's in the bag, Sam?"
Sam gave another wide, easy grin, as he opened the bag for inspection, "Crossbows. We've treated the bolts with the samples of oil from the bagiennik."
"Very domestic-terrorist chic," Tyrone said, feeling light-headed with the onset of a migraine.
"That was my idea," chuckled Shawna, not picking up on the sarcasm, her eyes shining with excitement, "We totally raided the archery club. It was freakin' fan-tas-tic!"
The detective stared down at his scuffed shoes, letting out a long, slow breath as he mentally counted to ten. I still can't believe I'm doing this. Please God, don't let me live to regret this.
"Okay, I'll get you and your concealed weapons past the security detail, but you're going to tell me everything you know," he hissed at Sam.
After Sam's explanation, the thought of something even worse than a bagiennik weighed so heavily on Tyrone's mind that he forgot to tell the Winchesters about the odd landlady.
X X X
Ryba stood by the door and listened to Henri moan and groan as he was caught in the throes of a bad dream. She moved to knock, but stopped, her hand in midair. Some things just need to be endured, she thought.
Forcing herself to leave her lodger to make peace with his own demons, she made her way over to her favorite armchair by the window with an ease borne of long practice. She sat for a moment to allow the happy, bubbling sound of the water in the nearby stream wash her worries away. Even through the glass she could feel the warming and life-giving heat of the sun against her face. Giving a sad smile to herself she sat combing her long, scraggy hair while humming an old half-remembered tune from her childhood.
Things don't have to be endured alone, she decided, humming louder.
X X X
Henri tossed and turned, lost in the depths of his dream.
A song in the background worked its way into his subconscious and eased and calmed him, letting him know that he wasn't alone. While it was little more than the tiniest of minnows, he took great comfort from the fact that he at least had moral support of some sort.
The faint call of the song carried him from his pain to the rivers of his childhood and for a moment his heart lightened and he swam and played with childhood friends from his past in the swampy riverbanks.
But the light soon passed and he could feel another, darker presence calling him like a siren song.
He tried to pull against it, but once it had found purchase on him it would not let him go. The usual tiredness won over him and he resigned himself to the currents of his dream dragging him towards the source of the call.
With a start he realized that it was the other ring bearer, but this time the dream vision was much stronger, more intense. He wondered what had happened, as something she had done seemed to tie them together closer than before. The spell tightened around them like a fishing net, and he wondered if she realized she was as much a captive of it as he was.
He had tried to reason with her before, but then the link had been too weak and her human thought processes were far too strange to properly communicate. Now things seemed a little easier and he wondered if he was becoming more human, while the woman became more of the sea.
He begged the woman, Rachelle, for the ring; it was maddeningly close - he could see it gleaming on a chain around her neck. He noticed that the link strengthened when it pressed against her skin. He shuddered, trying to contain his revulsion; human flesh was so strange, the absence of scales made them look so naked.
He struggled to follow her words, but the mental link helped him understand her intent. He knew she meant well, but the things she said about his queen were blasphemous, and the stab of guilt he felt at his own questioning of Wąda's motives only made him more determined not to listen.
Rachelle had only borne the ring for a short time, he reasoned, she probably only suffered from intermittent visions, not like the insanity-inducing onslaught he was subject to. She should be the one to relinquish the ring, before she became too changed to survive without it, like he had.
He swam nearer to her and could sense she was in the company of many others. From her feelings he deduced she had retreated to her own pod for comfort. This only fueled his anger as he thought of all he had sacrificed, his family gone, all for the sake of the future of his whole people.
Henri could sense when her thoughts turned to the one close to her side and how her desire burned hot when she gazed at the man. She had a potential mate then, there was a chance for her to spawn her future generations. His chest ached in response with an insane jealousy.
The mate's intentions were dark and complex, reminding Henri of Wąda's contingent of guards. They were renowned for their single-minded purpose, for them their role was everything and they would kill anything in their path. Their worldview was very simple, you were either a threat or you were treated like you might be one day.
The man was definitely intimidating, his thoughts were jagged with threats of barely concealed violence and even his movements crackled with danger. So many implements of death surrounded the man, wicked and sharp, the well-honed edges reflecting white pools of light around the room, white like the blood in Henri's body that the man wanted only to spill.
The mate's thoughts and actions gave proof to the lie of the words that Rachelle disgorged. A vomit of lies about the Lady Wąda. Is there nothing these scaleless freaks will not try to destroy? First the land, then the sea, then my people, and now the good name of my Queen?
Henri knew he wasn't perfect; he had doubts. By the Lady, do I have doubts, but who could say they had not even in their darkest hour? But he was a loyal subject and Wąda had given herself to a devoted lifetime of duty serving her people. Ever vigilant, ever the protector, like a stern but loving parent guiding her children to ensure their best hope of survival. It had not been easy, the long years he had spent beyond even her reach, without her to guide and control his thoughts and actions as was best. Thinking for himself had been difficult and an unaccustomed action. He felt another stab of guilt deep in his heart as a dark part of him relished the ability to control his own actions, a part that feared a return to the comfort of his Queen overseeing his every waking moment.
No, it is not me, it is another human trick, he thought, I would never think such evil of the Lady.
He reached out to Rachelle with his mind, readying himself to send a psychic blast that would cripple the human, when his attention was diverted by a series of urgent banging sounds echoing around him. The link was lost as he surfaced back to wakefulness and for a moment he gazed around the room in sleepy confusion.
Ryba hammered again on the door, "Henri! Henri, are you alright in there, my dear?"
Henri took a deep breath, filling his lungs to capacity, as if readying himself for a deep dive. The heat of his anger had dissipated like he had swum through a sudden freezing underwater current. Sensing his landlady was alone he did not bother to assume the glamour of a human disguise as he opened the door.
"Henri, I heard shouting. Everything is all right?" the old woman asked, her eyes moving across him sightlessly, as milky looking as his own. He found it oddly comforting.
"I am fine, Mrs. Bouřková. It is just bad dream. Sorry to disturb you."
"Ryba," she mock scolded, "You know you can always talk to me if something troubles you, Henri."
"I am fine," he lied, "Nothing to worry about."
As she turned to leave he couldn't help but wonder at the odd look of triumph on her face.
X X X
After the interruption, Henri found that sleep and the ability to use the mental link had temporarily escaped him. He decided another direct approach was required as, although he felt over-tired and just wanted to rest, he couldn't let the ring just slip from his clutches after so long.
Hearing the sound of his approaching footsteps, Ryba asked him to stay, "Please Henri, I am worried about that detective, please do not go."
Henri wondered briefly what Ryba thought of him, for someone without sight she seemed so very perceptive. He had grown strangely fond of the old woman and he felt a pulse of anger at the thought of the detective causing her anguish... because of him.
"I do not want to, but I cannot turn away from this now. I must face this..."
Ryba's face twisted in a naked expression of choked anguish, too overcome to speak. She turned away from him to stare sightlessly out of the window in the direction of the river.
"Thank you Ryba, for everything," he called.
Ryba heard the door click shut behind him. Ignoring the tears falling from her eyes, she returned to the endless combing of her hair. After a moment of decision she started to sing with a voice that at first wavered from years of disuse.
X X X
Henri dove into the river and the water seemed to vibrate around him with the call of the bagiennik. As he forged ahead, he felt powerful and unstoppable in a way that he hadn't for too long to remember.
He swam faster and deeper, enjoying the sensation of the liquid flowing against his scales like a lover's kiss, before he used his natural abilities to move into the places between. He sensed a large body of water near to the other ring whose location now burned with a brilliant light in his mind's eye.
Henri flew from the water so gracefully that many of the nearby students assumed that the fountains - switched off out of respect for the vigil - had been reinstated. He somersaulted and landed on all fours within view of his target, Rachelle.
It was almost anticlimactically easy to force his way through the crowds of puny humans, casting them aside like twigs in the rivers, to pull the ring from the weak chain about her neck while all around her were frozen in shock and surprise.
There was a sudden blast of a gun so close to his chest that even his scales couldn't protect him. He screeched in agony as the bullets tore through his body, but he had lived with pain for centuries and he had no fear of death. I am too close to stop now.
The rings flipped in his hands like mismatched magnets, but then finally snapped together with a sound that echoed like thunder off of the surrounding buildings. A rapidly expanding tunnel of whirling wind exploded from the rings with startling speed, sending the spectators running for their lives under the onslaught of flying debris.
Rachelle looked at him with such an expression of abject horror that his own sharp-toothed grin of triumph faded and died under its weight.
A roaring, grinding cry, like mountains colliding, announced the arrival of an enormous beast from the centre of the vortex. The ground shuddered and rolled, while flagstones cracked under the shockwave of thunderous footsteps. Huge, heavy appendages like a cross between fins and wings shook out with frightening force, instantly killing two passersby and sending out a powerful blast that uprooted a nearby tree.
Henri fell to his knees in wide-eyed adoration, "My lady, my lady," he cried over and over again, holding his side to staunch the blood loss from the worst of his gun shot wounds.
Rachelle's reaction was like a kick to his gut as she raised her hands to her head and sobbed, "No, no, no!" louder and louder. She's a human, she doesn't understand. They do not know joy, they only destroy, he thought to himself, but the old catechism - long drummed into him since he was first spawned - no longer seemed to ring true.
It was like a veil was lifted from his vision, and with new eyes he watched as Wąda flexed her body, testing the limits of her strength. She was finally free from the armored guards that for so long had kept her restrained.
Her tail thrashed, swiping a car into the screaming crowd and Henri found he couldn't lift his gaze from the long stain of red left in its wake. Something is wrong, he thought, feeling like he'd woken from a long, deep sleep only to discover he was burning with a fever.
He recognized the human he'd attacked earlier and in a moment of doubt and weakness had allowed to live, slowly get to his feet and - along with a number of others, The human equivalent of the Queen's guards, he guessed - start firing their crude, noisy weapons at the Lady.
"Henri! The rings, give them to me," she ordered imperiously, barely bothered by the assault. She slapped with one claw, as if swatting an annoying gnat, sending several of her assailants flying through the air to land broken and dying at a distance.
Without conscious thought, Henri moved nearer to her, his hand stretching out.
"Please, Henri. Don't do it, she'll destroy us all," Rachelle begged. She tried to run towards him, but was held back by the two men from earlier.
Henri felt divorced from reality, this was everything he had been aiming to achieve for the last several hundred years; he couldn't stop now. As Wąda glared at him with her hypnotic eyes he realized he couldn't stop now. He tuned out the screams and cries of the hurt and dying all around him as he placed the rings in her huge taloned hand.
Wąda screamed in triumph as the last of the remaining, invisible bonds failed. She is no longer a prisoner of the underwater lawns, now the whole world will fall at her feet, he realized. Pulling the thought from his mind Wąda laughed, "And when I've sucked this one dry I'll move on to the next one," she crowed, turning her hungry, vulture-like gaze on Rachelle.
"And then the next one, and the next one," she continued, her long forked tongue licking across her blunt snout and the many uneven rows of shark-like teeth.
She laughed at the matching expressions of horror and betrayal on Rachelle and Henri's faces. "Don't worry ulubieńcami, I'll take you with me..." she said pointing one of her dagger-like fingers at Rachelle, "Thanks to that binding spell of yours it will only take the manipulation of a couple of generations until your kind are as easy to control as the bagiennik."
Rachelle's face twisted into an expression of rage as, moving with a single purpose like a well-oiled machine, she and her friends brought their crossbows to bear and let loose volley after volley of poisoned bolts into the great beast before them.
Wąda twitched and convulsed at the sting of the arrows.
"Keep firing, it's working," shouted Dean, motioning for Amy to distribute spare crossbows to the beleaguered police force.
Henri looked at the weapons in sudden realization as he detected the faint scent of bagiennik oil.
"Nie! No... stop," he gasped.
"How can you still defend her?" cried Rachelle in disbelief.
"You do not understand! It is only poisonous when fresh... once in the air for too long... it heals."
With a deafening, joyous roar, Wąda reared up onto her hind legs, the diseased patches of brown on her scales already fading.
"Oh, crap!" Dean gulped.
Read Chapter 14: Monster Monsoon