The 24th pair: Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
When Marcus opened his eyes, the world had changed. He could see further than any human eyes could see, each color and shape perfectly defined despite being a hundred miles or a hundred feet away; the air was laden with smells, each tasting as new and refreshing as if he’d never experienced them before.
He felt twenty feet tall; he felt like he could fly.
His skin was on fire, a faint sensation that he recognized as alien, as something that should hurt but that his brain failed to recognize as a threat. Wanting to check for himself if the flames he could feel were real or just in his head, Marcus raised his arm.
In his mind, he could see the limb moving, stretching in front of him, tanned skin, glinting in the sun.
His eyes told him differently. His arm remained stubbornly by his side.
Trying harder, Marcus made himself walk towards the house. His feet didn’t even twitch.
“Not yet,” he heard himself say. It was his voice, but the accent and the cadence of words were not his own.
What have you done? He screamed, even though no sound escaped his mouth.
“You’re an angel now,” the same disturbingly familiar voice answered him. “Enjoy the ride while it lasts... because it wont last long, I’m afraid.”
No! NO! I’m in control! I’m in command! Let me out! You tricked me!
His body turned to the side; eyes that were no longer his to control landing on the man slumped in the metal chair by the table. He seemed asleep.
“See that gorgeous man sitting there?” the angel inside his body told Marcus. “The only reason why I traded that for-“ he paused, and Marcus could feel the evaluation in his tone, the way he was found lacking. “-for this, was because idiots are sort of a hobby of mine. And you, my dear, are a very rich idiot...”
Marcus was still screaming as his head of security informed him that the sigils had been broken and he could get back inside.
≪◇≫
“I thought you were gonna take care of the security cameras,” Sam whispered out the corner of his mouth to Bobby as all three of them were marched back into the house.
“I did,” Bobby whispered back, sneaking a look at the camera in the ceiling’s corner. The blinking red light mocked him in a beat-beat-beat tempo. “I think they found out and turned them back on.”
“Shuddup, you two!” one of the guards, a burly man with curly red hair yelled. He punctuated his command by driving the butt of his gun into Sam’s back.
Sam went to his knees, barely managing to catch himself with his tied up hands. He felt like a T-Rex, long arms rendered to the size of his fingers as he pushed himself back up with a angry glare in Red’s direction.
Red was nothing but a blur in Sam’s field of vision until he heard a grunt and a body hitting the wall. Sam looked up just in time to watch Dean press the guard’s face against the wall, his good shoulder pinning the man’s chest. Dean was rearing his head back to head butt the dazed man when the other guards moved in to action.
Two moved in to subdue Dean, while a third was reaching for his gun.
Alert, Bobby extended one foot just in time to send one of the guards flying through the air and crashing head first into the side of heavy cabinet. The china inside rattled almost as hard as the man’s teeth.
Sam twirled on the floor and scissored his legs, summarily trapping the other guard’s legs until he was on his back, staring at the ceiling, too surprised to react. Sam rolled his shoulders and lurched, hard enough to reach the downed guard’s face and head butted him. Eyes rolling back in his head, the man was unconscious before he could realize what the hell had just happened.
Sam stole a glance in Dean’s direction, just in time to see the guard he’d been fighting drop to the floor, also unconscious. Sam could see the blooming bruise on the man’s eye, where Dean had elbowed him; Dean however, seemed less than steady on his feet, a sharp reminder that he was fighting injured.
The remaining man was rearing up to jump Dean’s back, figuring he would be the easiest target; instead of shouting a warning that would only arrive too late, Sam spun and grabbed a paperweight from the top of the nearest shelf. The heavy object flew through the air like a silent missile, straight to the guard’s forehead. The man went down with a grunt, a trickle of blood flowing from a cut over his left brow.
Bobby looked around, appearing as dazzled as Sam and Dean felt; they were the only ones standing. Before there was time to celebrate, however, there was a loud boom outside, the walls vibrating under the onslaught.
The light bulbs in the large chandelier above them exploded in a burst of thin glass, forcing the three hunters to duck low and throw their bounded hands up over their heads, trying to avoid the cascading shower of glass that rained down on them.
As soon as the shattering and rumbling died down, Sam was on his feet, checking to make sure Dean was none the worse for wear before exchanging a worried glance with Bobby. He searched the older man’s face for confirmation that the last bang wasn’t of their making; Bobby’s subtle head shake confirmed his suspicions. He had set only one charge of C4. “Shit!”
“Lemme guess,” Dean broke in, out of breath, one hand resting over the chest of the guard he’d rendered unconscious. “The rest of the party guests have arrived?” he finished, grimacing in pain as he shifted his dislocated shoulder.
Even from a distance, Sam could see the way his brother’s legs were shaking. He figured Dean wouldn’t be standing on his own two feet for much longer. And now, they had pissed off angels to deal with...
Sam never got a chance to answer his brother or worry further. The electric discharge of three different taser guns hit them all at once, sending Sam, Dean and Bobby contorting and frizzing to the ground like fish on dry land.
“Great... now we get to carry them,” Sam heard one of the newly arrived guards saying, just the before the lights went out. Sam’s last thought was that it served them right. Maybe they’d get a hernia and die.
≪◇≫
The room was plunged into almost darkness, a soft spotlight hitting the desk where a man sat, phone in hand. Sam blinked his eyes, forcing himself to focus. Beside him, he could hear Bobby and Dean also beginning to stir.
Making eye contact with Sam first, Marcus held up a single finger, clearly anticipating their immediate questions and staying their comments until he finished his call. They were all still loopy enough to actually obey.
“Yes, I’m sure this is what I want to do. You’re paid to do my bidding regarding my money, not to questions my reasons, so do I advise you to do what you’re paid to do, or I’ll find someone who will.”
Sam blinked, taking a moment to center himself. He shifted on the leather couch were they had been place, shoulder bumping into Bobby to his right and eliciting an obnoxious sound from the fabric that resembled all too much a fart. Dean, on the far end of the comfortable seat, leaned forward to look at his brother.
Sam resisted the urge to laugh hysterically. The all thing was too bizarre, even for them.
In the middle of stopping Castiel from putting the world at risk, in the middle of being worried sick for Dean’s well being for more than a week, in the middle of walking around with a metaphorical wall put inside his head by Death itself, to protect him from his memories of Hell, Sam was sitting on an expensive leather couch that made fart noises every time he tried to move, waiting for a mad man to finishing his call to what sounded like his accountant.
Somewhere far away, in between this existence and the next, God had to be laughing really hard at Sam’s life.
Marcus finished his call and finally turned his attention towards them with a smile on his weasel face. His eyes lingered on their bound wrists for a second before he spoke to the guards. “Okay... you gents can go now. Your services are no longer needed,” he said, throwing a large stack of bills towards the waiting men. “Don’t worry... the fellas outside won’t harm you, you guy can leave safely.”
The guard in charge lifted an eyebrow, puzzled by the odd command. He wiggled the stack of bills in his hands, obviously trying to figure how rich he now was. “But sir-“
Marcus’s fist hit the desk in front of him with enough force to crack the solid oak top. His face, as it slid into the light, was hideous to look at. The skin around his eyes, nose and mouth seemed to be eroding away, like the air in the room was made of acid. His colorless lips contrasted with the sipping red on the rest of his face, making him look like a burn victim who, by looks alone, should be dead. He looked dead.
Sam shivered, realizing whom Marcus looked like. He reminded him of Nick, after Lucifer had ridden his skin for too long. What the hell had that man done to himself?
The guards flinched away, their eyes downcast. Sam doubted they had seen anything like that before. Marcus hardly seemed human at all.
“Are you so dumb you can’t understand when you’re being fired?” the man behind the broken desk said, his voice far too powerful. “Now give me some fucking peace and quiet inside my own house or I’ll deal with the lot of you the same way I dealt with those other useless!”
The head of security gave him one last dubious look, before shrugging his shoulders and leaving.
Sam stole a glance outside. Everything seemed quiet enough for now, but he remembered the sonic bang he had heard before. There was more than one angel out there, waiting for them to exit the illusion of security they had inside that house. He wanted to fear for the guards’ lives when they ventured outside, but he found out that, after what he’d seen them do, Sam couldn’t really bother to care.
He could guess pretty accurately how Marcus intended to get out of this with his hide intact; all he had to do was exchange them for his own safety.
“Listen, this doesn’t have to end like this,” Sam started talking as fast as he could, squirming out of the couch and taking a step forward. If nothing else, maybe he could distract Marcus long enough to give Bobby and Dean a chance to escape. “We can still get you wha-“
“Save it for the desperate women at the bar,” Marcus said, getting off his chair and walking towards them. “I’ve been cramped in here for far too long to have the patience to listen to your babbling. And I’m not in the mood to risk my fine ass over the three of you. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a fucking garrison standing outside, just waiting to tears us apart. So...”
The three hunters didn’t miss the moment when a knife appeared in Marcus’ hands, their bodies tensing in a flee-or-fight stance.
They outnumbered the man, but that meant little to their advantage. Even if his display of strength earlier hadn’t been enough to let them know that it wouldn’t be an easy fight, Sam knew that he would be the one doing most of the actual fighting.
Bobby was no lame duck when it came to a scuffle; Sam knew that the man could hold his own in a tight spot better than anyone. But that was with a weapon on his hands. Hand-to-hand had never been a favorite of the older hunter.
And Dean… Sam was sure that his brother had used the last of his remaining strength fighting that guard in the corridor. Now, even seated, he was slumped against that couch like the thing had suction powers; his head wobbled from time to time, like his neck occasionally forgot that it was suppose to hold it up. Dean’s gaze, however, was intently focused on Marcus’ peeling face.
Instead of charging the approaching man, Sam waited until he was near enough to reach them before he lunged.
His body hit empty air.
“Way to show your appreciation, you idiot!” Marcus barked, in a very unlike Marcus’ tone, from his new location in front of Dean. “What were you going to do? Squish me to the floor until I died? Dry hump your way out of here through my leg?”
Before Sam could pick himself off the floor and Dean had time to react, Marcus had already used the knife in his hands.
To cut the ropes around Dean’s wrists free. Dean hissed in pain the second his broken arm lost the support of the bindings. Tears sprung to his eyes as he silently cradled the injured limb on his good arm, staring at the man with the knife.
When Marcus turned around without so much as throwing an insult his way, Dean frowned.
“Balthazar?” Bobby ventured, tentatively offering his wrists to the approaching knife.
“No, it’s Mother Teresa,” the eye-roll could be heard in his tone of voice. “Of course it’s me, you idiots!”
He saved Sam for last, giving him a scowl while he cut the ropes. “What are you doing inside Marcus?” Sam asked, confused.
“I grew tired of being handsome and decided to give fugly a chance,” was Balthazar’s sarcastic answer. “The man wanted to be an angel vessel,” he added, voice equally mocking. “I was happy to oblige.”
“His body seems to be disagreeing with that,” Bobby pointed out.
“Yes, yes,” Balthazar said with a flourish of his hand, going back to the desk and peeking into the open laptop. “I did warn him about that, but the man was positively sure that he had found the perfect solution for the inexorable fact that his body was simply not meant to be a vessel. Now that we got that out of our chests... can we get the fuck out of here, please?”
≪◇≫
“What do you mean?” Dean asked. Now that they had a moment to breath, he could finally get a sense of the damage done to his body and try and figure out some of his lost time. The world was moving too damn fast for him to keep up and Dean grabbed on to what he could grasp. “He wanted to be a vessel?”
Dean had been trying to wrack his tired mind, searching for a reason why Marcus had done this. He’d taken Dean prisoner and had gone to such extremes, inflicted such pain and torment… and for what? To learn about angels? Dean shook his head, no, try as he might, it made no sense to him; there were easier ways to find out about angels.
Dean looked at his arms, one clutched to his side, the other extended. Dean felt a chill running up his spine. It was like looking at a stranger’s skin.
There was an inflamed path of needle marks that went from the crux of his arm to his wrist, ending in a dark bruise in the back of his hand, where he figured an IV had been inserted at some point. His back still felt on fire, even without leaning back against the soft couch. Tentative fingers probed blindly, touching the damaged area and feeling around the swollen flesh. The memory of electric jolts that were bad enough to steal his breath away made Dean pull out his hand before he could figure what was wrong with his back.
God! Even his dick hurt and even though Dean had no recollection of pulling out that particular tube, he knew all too well how that felt like. What had that man done to him?
The aftermath of being injured jarred Dean more than the pain of the injuries themselves. He hated not remembering, he hated knowing that he’d been at the mercy of strangers.
The only injury that Dean remembered receiving with any certainty was the two broken fingers on his right hand, from when Marcus had tried to question him. He remembered laughing in the man’s face like it was a distant dream.
“Can we focus on what’s important here?” Balthazar’s rattled tone broke in, ignoring both Dean’s thoughts and his question. “Right now, the only thing preventing Raphael and his goons from coming inside and reducing of us all to dust, is the angel proofing on the damn house... but that still leaves us trapped as rats inside it.
“He was studying me?” Dean concluded on his own, ignoring Balthazar’s frantic rant, pushing for answers. He could feel Sam’s eyes on him, questioning, worried. “Answer the fucking question!”
The angel ran a hand over Marcus hair, staring in disgust as half of it ended up in his hand. “Yes, okay! Somehow he managed to find out that one little detail that makes certain humans capable of housing one of us, while others aren’t,” the angel went on, looking bored with the explanation. “Apparently there’s a specific extra pair of chromosomes on your sorry asses that allows us to link,” he said with a shrug. “A twenty-forth pair, if I understood it right. The man’s thoughts aren’t exactly the most organized thing around.”
“He developed a gene therapy to become a vessel?” Sam asked in a mix of awe and horror. He looked once more at Marcus deteriorating body. “But it didn’t work.”
“Because every vessel is specific to an angel,” Bobby pitched in. “That’s why his body’s falling apart... because Dean’s genes are compatible with Michael alone, not you.”
Balthazar shrugged. “As I said, I tried to warn him, but the man wouldn’t listen. I figured it wouldn’t harm your little rescue plan to be inside the man in charge, so I indulged him.”
“Is that what you were doing on the phone,” Sam asked, remembering the odd conversation. “Indulging him?”
The smirk on Marcus lips was twisted, but it was easy to recognized Balthazar’s own trademark smirk behind him. “No... that was me indulging myself. The man is, after all, filthy rich. And as soon as I get out of this mess you idiots dragged me into, so will I.”
“How long?”
The question was spoken so softly that no one seemed to have heard it at first. “How long?” Dean tried again, louder this time, his eyes burning holes on Balthazar’s new face. He couldn’t sit still anymore, his legs remembering the former paralysis and wanting nothing more than pace the room until the carpet was threadbare.
“How long what, Dean?” Sam asked when the angel failed to answer once again.
For Dean, four years had gone by. A period of time where he had been a father, a teacher, a widower. And yet, Sam still looked the same, Bobby hadn’t aged a day. The world was still standing. It was so confusing that it made his head throb. “How long was I here?”
“It’s been a little over a week,” Sam whispered, sounding ashamed that it had taken them that long to find him and free him from that fake world. “Eight days.”
Dean sat heavily on the leather couch that took up most of the small office. Concerned, Sam moved quickly across the room and knelt in front of him. His hand hovered above Dean’s shoulder, seemingly uncertain of where to land.
“Hey,” Sam stared into his eyes, finally choosing Dean’s knee for the touch. “You all right?”
Dean huffed in answer. He ran a hand through his hair, again surprised to find out how much it had grown in such a short time. There was more hair on his face than Dean ever remembered having, never being one to grow a beard. He had one now. “How soon until Raphael finds a way around the angel proofing?” he asked, looking from Sam’s worried face to the angel occupying Marcus’ body.
Balthazar waved his arms around, shaking his head. It was easy to see that the angel hated being trapped like that. “Minutes... hours... days. Depends on how good the proofing is.”
“Why is he here, anyway?” Dean asked. After all, they hadn’t exactly been hiding from Raphael and he had spent a better part of the almost two years ignoring them. Why the sudden interest?
The answer was plain to see in the way the angel averted his gaze from them.
“Dean’s right,” Bobby joined in. “Why is Raphael here? What ain’t you telling us?”
”He’s after the Nail, isn’t he?” Sam offered when Balthazar’s silence stretched for too long.
‘Our paths keep crossing, Dean Winchester... it is most... annoying’
Dean blinked. The onslaught of doubling images was splitting his aching head in two. Raphael coming after the Holy Nail and killing everyone in his path in a dark basement under Vatican City; Raphael prowling the grounds of Marcus’ house, waiting to kill them just the same.
‘You know why I’m here, Dean. The same reason Jacob is... the same reason you are’
The words could’ve been spoken just now, even if Dean had heard them in a dream. It hadn’t happen. If he were to believe Sam, it hadn’t happen at all.
And yet here they were, trapped while Raphael circled the waters, sniffing their blood like a hungry shark.
“I might’ve slightly lessened the importance of the Nail,” Balthazar whispered, looking like a naughty boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “It’s true; it can’t be used to control any angel or Heaven’s army...”
“But...”
“It is viewed as a sign of leadership,” the angel confessed.
“Whoever controls Heaven’s weapons, controls the power,” Sam said, remembering the occasion when Castiel and Balthazar had used he and Dean to secure the weapons that Balthazar had stolen from Heaven. “These Nails... they were the main reason for that, weren’t they?”
Balthazar sagged against the edge of the table. “Yes, yes, yes, okay? What do you want me to say?”
“You damn idjit!” Bobby let out. “You could have at least let us know the risk we were taking by bringing the real thing here.”
“There’s something else it does,” Balthazar whispered, looking defeated. “Something that might get us out of here alive.”
“And you failed to mention it so far because...?” Bobby asked sarcastically, his patience for the evasive ways of the angel having run out a long time ago.
Balthazar gave him a scolding look that did little to affect the older man. “Because it requires the destruction of the Nail... something that I would’ve rather not do, thank you very much.”
Sam looked outside, even though the curtains were drawn closed and there was nothing he could see. The oppressing presence of the angels, however, went beyond their ability to being seen. “I don’t think we have much of a choice.”
Dean sat silently, cradling his throbbing arm, as Balthazar explained how to use the Nail to assure their survival. He was only half listening, his mind barely registering the words as they left Marcus’ mouth.
Dean had no idea that it was possible to hate so much someone he had only seen twice in his life. His brain was rattling with unanswered questions, but one... one in particular was making it hard for air to find its way into his lungs.
If the Nail worked as Balthazar had advertised, this was Dean’s last chance of getting some answers. He couldn’t let it pass. Not without going insane.
“Dean... DEAN!” Sam spoke louder, finally managing to attract his brother’s attention. “We’re ready to go.”
Dean nodded; the affirmative gesture as far from agreement as it could be. “As long as the Enochian sigils hold, Raphael can’t come inside, right?” he asked, quietly, tentatively.
“And I can’t get out,” Balthazar pointed out, annoyed. “In case you’ve forgotten.”
“Sam, Bobby... could you give me a minute with Balthazar,” Dean said, looking at his family. “Alone.”
Sam’s eyes burrowed inside his brother, seeing a lot more than what Dean was willing to show. He recoiled from the searching gaze. “No, Dean... don’t do this,” he whispered.
“I’m not gonna do anything,” Dean answered without meeting his eyes. “I just need some answers and-“
“And you want Marcus to pay for what he’s done,” Sam finished for him, crouching near the spot where Dean sat. “Look at him, Dean... the man is already paying.”
Dean chuckled, a dry and humorless sound that scared the crap out of Sam. “Eight days, right? That’s what you said, eight days?”
Sam nodded, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
“It was the anniversary of your death, and Lisa decided that I needed a distraction, that we should go out and have some fun,” Dean started, his eyes fixed on the carpet red as wine. “She would do stuff like that, you know? To make it easier for me to get over the pain and I... the ring had been in my pocket for close to a month when she dragged me out. I proposed at dinner, that very night. She said yes-“
Dean stopped him, one shaking hand washing over his face and dragging the hidden tears away.
“Dean-“
“I watched her die that night, Sam,” Dean cut in, his voice corroded away by emotion. “I lost control of the car and I had to watch her die that night. Slowly. In agony. Gurgling in her own blood by my side.”
It was Sam’s turn to avoid Dean’s eyes, sucking in a breath at his brother’s words. It had been over six years since he’d lost Jess, but sometimes it still felt like yesterday.
“That knowledge, those memories,” Dean went on, “that guilt-that was my reality for four years, courtesy of Marcus,” he said, spiting out the name. “And Ben...”
“Dean... it wasn’t real,” Sam forced himself to say, needing the reminder as much as Dean.
“I look at my hands and I still see his blood!” Dean blared. His eyes, when he finally looked around the others in the room, were firing pits of green flames. “That... man... played my life like it was some comic book that he could just tear out entire pages and screw with the rest! I-“
The broken look in Dean’s face as his eyes finally rested on his brother told everything else that Dean couldn’t find in himself to voice.
“...I just want some answers,” Dean finished, slumping against the leather couch.
Bobby exchanged a worried glance with Sam. Neither liked to hear that level of despair on the oldest Winchester. Sam said nothing as he grabbed Bobby’s elbow and pulled him towards the door. Before stepping out, he turned and looked at Dean. “Just… don’t do anything stupid,” he said quietly, disappearing into the hall.
≪◇≫
Sam paced the wood floors of the room they’d stepped into. He glanced at the door to the office where they’d left Dean, Marcus and Balthazar, listening for a moment for any sounds of trouble. When none came, he resumed his pacing, feeling Bobby’s worry bounce from him to the door.
“We shouldn’t have left those two alone,” Bobby confided, playing with one of the balls on the pool table. The white ball slid smoothly across the felt, hitting three of the four sides before returning to his hand. Bobby’s knuckles were tight white when he grabbed it again. “That boy’s gonna do something stupid.”
Sam stopped and looked at the old hunter; Bobby didn’t notice. His eyes were fixed on the door where they’d left Dean, alone… with Marcus and Balthazar. “Dean knows better than that,” he said firmly.
Bobby hadn’t seen the look in Dean’s eyes, the utter pain and despair, the guilt and grief, the need to set things right. Sam knew he had done the right thing in letting Dean do this. Besides, getting his obstinate brother out of there wouldn’t have worked. Hell, until he’s good and ready, nothing short of a blow to the head would do the job and Sam wasn’t about to cause his brother more pain on top of what Marcus had done.
Sam leaned against one of the ceiling to floor windows, his hand playing with the button that controlled the light-waves on the smart wall. Whenever he flicked the switch to turn it into clear glass, he could see that the tall woman across the manicured yard, wearing an expensive business suit, was staring daggers back at him. He resisted the urge to wave at Raphael.
Deep down, Sam knew which feeling was fueling Dean’s actions at that moment.
Retribution.
The notion set his teeth on edge. Revenge had taken so much out of Sam, had been his fuel and goal for so long in his life, after Jessica’s death, after dad’s and Dean’s death, after everything; it hurt to think of Dean being driven by the same sentiment.
If there was one thing that Sam admired most about his brother, it was Dean’s ability to forgive, even if he never forgot. This time, however, Sam knew that would be asking for too much.
“You know that angel out there isn’t gonna content itself with just making scary faces in the window for long,” Bobby went on. The inertia was getting on his nerves, even if the hunter wouldn’t fess up to it. “I say we use the thing now and get the hell out of here.”
Sam gazed at the rusty Nail that Balthazar had given him for a second time in as many days. Like Dorothy in the Emerald City, all they had to do was click their ruby slippers... or rather, break the Nail and all angelic beings in the immediate area would be banished.
The Nails, Balthazar had explained, were the root of the banishing sigils, the reason why blood was needed for it to work. This one was already soaked in enough blood that it needed nothing else.
Blood of the lamb.
“Let’s give him a few more minutes.”
≪◇≫
Once Sam and Bobby’s footsteps died away, Dean looked at Balthazar. “He was in the dream with me, wasn’t he?”
Balthazar, who had been silently inspecting the liquor bar, opened one bottle and gave it a whiff. “Ghastly,” he sneered and pulled his nose away in disgust. “No taste at all.”
“Answer my question,” Dean said quietly, wearily. “Was he there?”
The angel turned to face him, leaning back against the cabinet. “Now, just so we’re clear... I’m wearing Marcus, but I am not Marcus, capisce?”
Dean nodded, forcing himself to be calm. “So, that’s a yes,” he said, waiting for Balthazar’s confirming nod. “Who was he? Who did he pick to fuck with me?” Dean asked, his anger slipping away. Inside, his heart was hammering, his mind screaming over and over ‘please don’t say Ben, please don’t say Ben’.
“I think you’re well aware of the answer to that question,” Balthazar said, not a hint of sarcasm or scowl in his voice for the first time. “I’m sorry man, I truly am... it was a lousy thing to do, but the man is a piece of shit. What more can I say?”
Dean was barely listening to what the angel was saying. His mind was a haze of anger as he remembered the fatherly relationship that he had maintained for what had been, for him, what amounted to years; instead, it was days, weeks, months spent with a man who had kidnapped him, tortured him, experimented on him and violated his most cherished memories of a kid Dean saw as a son.
“Dean? Dean... you’re kind of changing color there, buddy,” Balthazar said, the concern in his voice more for himself than for Dean himself. “You’re not going to blow a gasket or something you humans do in these situations, are you?”
“How long before his body completely shuts down?” Dean asked very quietly.
Balthazar looked at him like he already knew what Dean was planning. He looked at his current vessel’s hands, analyzing the pale skin and burn-like marks. “Not long... maybe a couple of minutes, at most.”
Dean’s smile was a terrifying thing to see. “Good. That will be more than enough time.”
“For?”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Dean simply said. “There’s something I want Marcus to see before he dies.”
≪◇≫
Marcus looked at the double helix, spinning around itself on the computer’s screen, like two snakes trying to devour one another.
“What am I looking at?” Marcus asked dryly. From the excited looks that the scientists in front of the screen kept throwing him, he figured that they had finally discovered something useful.
“Dean Winchester,” one said, a short man with thin glasses that kept sliding down his hawk nose. “At least, his building blocks.”
“Fascinating,” Marcus let out, unimpressed and already making his way out. He had no need for bricks and wood, he needed a way to make himself as suitable for an angel has Dean seemed to be.
“We found what makes him different from us.”
That sentence stopped Marcus in his tracks. He looked at the three men in turn; waiting to see which of them would start spilling the beans before he lost his patience entirely. The men, however, looking as if they had discovered that there was life on the Moon and that the satellite itself was made of cheese, seemed too intent on keeping the damn suspense. “Yes...?” Marcus prompted.
“Well, you know how each person has the same number of chromosomes: forty-six. Twenty-three pairs of two chromosomes; one pair alone determines the sex and the remaining twenty-two determine everything else-“
“Get to the part where I care,” Marcus cut in. Biology was boring at school; it hadn’t improved with age.
“Dean has twenty-four pairs. Forty-seven chromosomes total.”
“Come again?” Marcus let out, looking back at the screen. The double helix, Dean’s DNA sequence, spinning on screen, was still just a squiggle for him.
“We checked and double checked, just to be sure,” another one of the scientist, a woman with small teeth, said. “Couldn’t believe it ourselves. Dean has an extra pair.”
“You mean an extra chromosome.”
“No, I mean an actual extra pair. I don’t think the scientific community has ever seen something like this,” the lead scientist said, looking like he was about to come in his pants.
“Unlike people with Down’s Syndrome or men with a XXY and XYY, all of which also have an extra chromosome, associated with the twenty-first pair or the twenty-third pair, Dean’s extra stands alone. A twenty-forth pair, a limp chromosome, waiting for its match.”
“The angel compatible with him,” Marcus deduced, his eyes glinting at the possibilities.
“Exactly!”
Marcus smiled for the first time since he had entered the lab. “And it can be duplicated?” he asked, hopeful, not daring to celebrate his victory yet.
The head scientist pointed to the far side of the room with a beaming smile, showing Marcus where a silver machine was spinning several red vials at blurring speed. “It’s happening even as we speak.”
Marcus’ smile broadened. “Good.” He was going to be just like Dean Winchester.
≪◇≫
“Hello, Marcus.”
Marcus looked around, trying to figure out where he was. All he could remember was being trapped in a ball of cotton, hearing and experiencing his own life through a veil of muffled sounds and feelings. “Where are we? What are you doing here?”
Dean smiled, his arms opened wide to embrace the empty alley. “Don’t you recognize it?”
Marcus breathing sped, his lungs working frenetically to expel the terror from inside his chest. “This isn’t possible!” he voiced, his eyes darting around, looking into the shadows, waiting. “I’m the one controlling the dream, not you.”
“Not anymore,” Dean whispered menacingly. “It’s time for you to get the whole tour. Let’s start,” Dean paused, drinking in the man’s fright. “With Hell.”
≪ ◇≫