Nov 25, 2015 19:44
Chapter One: Immigrant Song
Dean and Sam fell. And fell. And fell some more. It was like the most epic cannonball off of the world's highest high dive, but Dean felt in his bones they wouldn't go splat when they landed.
They did tumble, though. Dean rolled through dead leaves and dirt before gravity stopped him. He lay still on his back and stared up at gray, viridescent clouds. They blanketed the sky, the air heavy with the calm before a violent storm that never came. Dean shivered. This whole dimension - or whatever - hummed with the tension of an eternal Mexican standoff.
Dean climbed to his feet, searching for Sam. He spotted the mass of limbs and hair sprawled a few yards away. "You all right, Sammy?" Dean called, keeping his voice soft. They were in Purgatory, after all. No sense announcing their presence to whatever nasties might be out there listening.
"Ugh. Yeah." Sam lurched to his feet and staggered over to Dean. "What a trip."
Dean opened his mouth to agree when something hit him on the head. "Ow!"
Rubbing his bruised scalp, Dean glared down at the offending missile - a roundish, rough, black rock. Dean made a face and squinted up at the roiling clouds. "Did the sky just throw a rock at me?"
Sam shook his head, equally flummoxed. He bent over and picked up the rock. His face went blank, then lit with recognition. "I don't think it's a rock, Dean. I think it just looks like one."
"What?"
Sam held the rock out to Dean, who raised a skeptical eyebrow at his brother, but reached out and grabbed it anyway.
The instant Dean touched the rock his hand tingled and warmth spread through his whole body. The sensation was vaguely familiar. It tugged at Dean's memory. It kind of felt like...
"It's the Elhyim Yad, Dean," Sam declared, his pitch rising with excitement. "It feels like when I used it on Ishtar back in Iowa. You can feel it too, right?"
Dean nodded slowly, staring at the not-a-rock in his palm. "Yeah, I can feel it Sammy," he breathed.
"Do you think you can use it, like Michael said?" Sam asked.
Dean tilted his head and bit his lower lip, considering. "Maybe. I mean, I never actually used it before, but..."
Sam waited a moment. "But what?" he prompted.
Dean shrugged and shoved the not-a-rock into his front pocket. "But it feels familiar, I guess. I don't know. I'm not good at this stuff." Dean scanned their surroundings. "I think we're better off looking for actual weapons in case we run into unfriendlies." In case. Dean snorted to himself. Right. Like we’re ever that lucky.
"But-"
Dean cut his brother off with a stony glare. Sam followed his brother’s wary gaze around the gray, monster-filled forest and deflated. "That's probably a good idea. I get the feeling this is the calm before the storm."
***
Pain. Wrong. Castiel's angelic senses could seize hold of nothing else to center him. There was only Ishtar's unyielding grip on his vessel and the dissonance deep inside his grace screaming you do not belong here.
Purgatory. She must have pulled him into Purgatory. Castiel struggled to bring the last few minutes of the fight in Iowa into greater focus. He remembered Ishtar torturing him with Raphael's blade, and he remembered seeing Michael with Dean as his vessel, and he remembered Michael telling him that Dean was aware before Ishtar drove her black knife into them both. If it was poisoned like the one she’d stabbed him with… Castiel closed his eyes. He must not let himself think that they are dead. Hopefully the venom he felt flowing through his vessel and his grace would kill him before the goddess could break him.
At a sharp jerk of his shoulder and tug from the hand in his hair Castiel’s eyes snapped back open. "Don't drift away on me, little favorite," Ishtar sing-songed, the corpse housing her making her voice sound far too young. "We still have a long ways to go. Don't you want to see the all beautiful scenery God's lies left for my children and me?" Castiel tried to keep Jimmy's features from showing the sharp twist in his grace at the distain permeating her words. He must have failed, because she stopped and jerked his head closer to hers. "Half-fallen and you still can't stand to hear blasphemy," she marveled, staring down at him with wide eyes. Matted strands of her long blonde hair tickled his face. Ishtar sneered and continued her march, towing him by the hair.
Castiel tried to get his bearings enough to plant his feet as they slithered through the dank undergrowth, but Ishtar changed directions too often and this entire plane of existence seemed engineered to disorient him. "Where are you taking me?" he rasped. The ubiety Purgatory forced on Castiel’s grace was as inconvenient as it was abrasive. It blinded him, removing any perception outside of his vessel's senses.
Ishtar smiled, teeth bared. "It doesn't matter. You won't like it any better than any other part of my prison, my home. You forget, angel, I have lived here for millennia, and I hold within me the souls of many of my children." She pulled him across jagged branches, tearing Jimmy's slacks and coat. Castiel heard the truth in her words. His Father created angels to exist in Heaven and equipped them to fight in Hell, but Purgatory? He did not belong here and the wrongness of it sapped and clawed at his recently healed grace. He doubted he could defend himself here, even if he could muster the strength to attempt an escape flight. If he could distract the insane goddess long enough, though, perhaps he could flee on foot...
The sharp sting of thorns on his face jarred Castiel from his strategizing. "Thinking of running away, little favorite?" Ishtar taunted as she sidestepped another tangle of thorns, forcing her captive through them. "Don't try my patience. I may not have killed you yet, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. After all, I killed your brother and your pet human."
No.
The goddess of the dead looked upon Castiel's broken face and smiled. "You didn't guess, little favorite? The black blade I sunk into your precious Dean's back poisoned both him and the archangel riding his meat. They're both dead, Castiel. Consumed by darkness."
Castiel felt the breath leave his lungs. Dean was gone, and Michael with him. Last year, when Castiel had thought his Father abandoned them all, he thought he had experienced as much loss and grief as an angel is capable of feeling. This hurt so much more. Castiel's world crumbled, and so did his will to resist. He wilted in Ishtar's grip and felt hot tears slide down his cheeks.
Castiel turned his gaze out into the gray decay surrounding them. Ishtar’s shrieking laughter at his despair echoed through the rotting brush and churning fog. Dark, amorphous shapes shifted through the trees, like black water sifting through cracks in a dam.
***
Purgatory reminded Sam of fifth grade. He'd had a teacher whose fondness for pop quizzes bordered on pathological. The constant low-level anxiety of that classroom had done more to prepare Sam for hunting than many of John's gruff speeches about vigilance, possibly because Sam had actually wanted to please his teacher. Sam had walked into that classroom each morning with the wariness and focus of a soldier trapped behind enemy lines. Purgatory dialed that feeling up to 11. This place and its ashen landscape and its hordes of monster souls made his teeth itch and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Sam hated it.
Dean loved it. Or at least thrived on it, Sam thought. Where Sam's response to Purgatory's atmosphere was stress, Dean came alive, eyes and head swiveling as he watched for danger, steps light and quiet. The consummate hunter, naturally efficient and deadly as Sam had never been.
"Don't sell yourself short there, Sammy. You're plenty deadly. You've gotten more people killed than Jack the Ripper."
Sam froze. Lucifer guffawed. "You didn't really think running away to Purgatory would keep me away, did you?"
Sam had, actually. Lucifer had been after his vessel, so why would he be interested in tormenting Sam now that he was just a soul?
"Because it's just so much fun messing with you, Sam," Lucifer cackled, then his voice dropped. "Remember all the fun we had in the Cage? This is just me moving the show to a new venue."
Sam inhaled deeply through his nose. Exhaled slowly. All logic said that this wasn't real. His mind was just catching glimpses through the wall Death had put up. Or it was breaking down altogether, Sam thought.
"Sam!" Dean's hoarse, voiceless shout jolted Sam out of his own head. "Pay attention, man," Dean admonished. "We're in the middle of Godzilla versus Mothra, here. Keep your head in the game."
Sam shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah, I am. I was just thinking."
Dean eyed him. Sam could tell he wanted to pry, but Dean let it go. "Less thinking, more searching, poindexter. We're looking for Cas, remember?"
Dean turned and started through the woods without waiting for an answer. Sam followed, convincing himself not to tell Dean about hearing Lucifer until he figured out if it was really the devil talking or if there was a problem with the wall. No sense in both of them worrying about it when they had more pressing concerns, like not getting killed. Sam knew Purgatory wouldn't stay quiet for long.
Sam’s feeling was right. Not thirty minutes later, they were ambushed.
The werewolf who stepped out from behind a copse of trees in front of them was smallish, a several inches shorter than Dean and not as built. The three others who flanked them were huge.
"Well now, what have we here, boys?" the small(er) one asked, a strange cadence to his accent that Sam couldn't place.
"Looks like humans, boss," one of the giants answered in a register so low Sam practically felt it in his chest.
"I reckon you are correct, Smithy," the boss said. He peered at Sam and Dean, back to back in defensive crouches. "Now I have not seen nor smelled a human since I was alive," the werewolf drawled. He slipped his thumbs behind his suspenders and inhaled deeply through his nose. "That's the stuff. Good, living hearts they have, boys."
Sam wet his lips. As the four werewolves closed in, he heard Dean mutter "Shit, shit, shit, a whole friggin' pack, shit..."
The wolf nearest to Sam took a step forward, a long ax-like weapon with a jagged cutting edge in his hand. "Let me rip into him, Silas. I can't hardly recall the taste of a human heart."
"Nor can I, Levi, but like my father always said, patience is a virtue." Sam swept his gaze in a frantic semicircle, desperate for anything he might use as a weapon. The leader, Silas, stepped closer. "Suppose that's why Pops and I never did get on well. I ate him, in the end." A feral grin split the werewolf's lips, further exposing his elongated teeth and fangs. "I get one of the hearts. The three of you can fight over the other."
The pack of werewolves leapt, and Dean and Sam burst into action. Sam lunged forward, barreling into the werewolf rushing at him, Levi, and used his momentum to tackle his burly opponent. They hit the ground hard, the impact jarring the werewolf's grip on his weapon loose. Sam rolled so that his entire bodyweight pinned Levi's weapon arm down. They grappled for control of the ax.
Sam managed to get both hands on the staff of the weapon just as Levi shook him off his arm. The werewolf pulled up and back on the ax as they rose off the ground, trying to choke Sam with its long handle. Sam's arms strained, veins popping as he fought to keep the werewolf from cutting of his breath. It was a losing battle. As the wooden handle pressed against Sam's jugular, Levi leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "I want you to know, I'm not gonna share one bite of your heart. It's all mine."
Sam scuffled his feet into a different stance. "First you have to get it out of me," he gasped. Then he dug his feet in and thrust his hips back and shoulders down, heaving the werewolf over his head. Levi landed on the ground on his back hard enough to jolt the ax completely out of his grip. Sam swung it down with all the force he could muster. The shiny black cutting edge buried itself in Levi's face. The werewolf spasmed, then went still. Gasping for air, Sam yanked his new weapon free and turned to find Dean.
Dean was in trouble.
The two remaining grunts had him backed against a large tree trunk about fifty yards from where Sam stood, Silas looking on from a few strides farther on. Dean must have tried running to a more defensible position. From what Sam could see, his brother had a gash on his forehead and was favoring his left side, which meant he'd probably taken a hit or two to the chest and possibly cracked a rib.
Sam started running toward his brother, even as he calculated the odds. Dean had gotten at least a few blows in on the two bulky werewolves, because one had a broken nose and the other's right elbow was bent the wrong direction. None of that was going to make any difference, because there was no way Sam would get there before they dealt serious damage to Dean. Sam shouted, trying to distract them, but he didn't know what possible good it would do.
Silas glanced Sam's direction, and his two underlings followed suit. The instant their eyes were off him, Dean reached into the front pocket where he'd stashed the Elhyim Yad and pulled out... his Colt 1911? How the hell had Dean brought his favorite handgun with them into Purgatory?
Dean fired off two quick shots, hitting both lackey werewolves square in the chest. Knowing his brother, Sam didn't have to wonder if they hit the hearts. Silas darted forward and grabbed Dean from behind, slamming his right wrist into the tree trunk, trying to dislodge the gun. Dean grunted in pain, but held on. He threw his head back, slamming into Silas' nose. The werewolf lost his grip and Dean jerked forward, stumbled, and sprawled onto the leaf-covered ground. He twisted onto his back just in time to see Silas's head slide from his shoulders.
Sam lowered his ax and wiped some of the blood spatter from his chin. He stepped forward and offered Dean a hand. Dean let out a gust of breath, then took Sam's hand and let his brother haul him to his feet. "Nice timing, Sammy."
"No problem." Sam gestured at the handgun still in Dean's hand. "Were you planning on telling me you brought your gun along somehow?"
Dean looked down at the gleaming weapon in his hand. "Thanks, Ellie," he murmured.
"What?"
Dean looked up at him. "I started thinking Ellie here'd be a lot more useful as a gun than a rock and then boom. Gun."
“Ellie?” Sam's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. "You mean the Elhyim Yad? You gave a weapon designed by God himself, something that's capable of killing archangels, a nickname?"
His brother shrugged. "It's easier to say." Then Dean tucked the most powerful weapon either of them had ever encountered into the back of his jeans and led the way forward, though neither of them knew where they were even trying to get to.
***
Finally, they arrived. It took days of travel, longer than she would have preferred, but dragging the angel slowed her pace and ages had passed since she sought out this place and its power. Ishtar bound Castiel to a great tree with rope and ritual, then glided toward the edge of the still, black water of the shallow pool, lithe steps leaving no trace of her passage over the dank ground. Ishtar kept the angel in her line of sight; even weakened, the Maker's First Children were not to be underestimated, especially His favorites.
Ishtar's voice grew deep as her lips shaped words of power. "Asbu a alkam. Asbu a alaksu qabu sisituam. Asbu a alkam." ** The dark water roiled for a moment, then settled, the surface now covered with an inky black film. An oily voice undulated out of ripples in the water. "With whom am I speaking?"
Ishtar stepped into the shallow pool and leaned until her reflection stared back. "Don't you recognize me, old foe?"
The water gurgled. "Ishtar! How are you? I heard you managed to take a trip back home. I'm guessing that didn't end well for you."
Her lip curled. "I'm not here to be insulted by you, Leviathan. I'm here to offer you something: freedom."
"I'm listening."
"We've both been caged in here too long. Now that I've been to Earth, I know what will be necessary to subdue it." Ishtar knew her gambit posed great risk. No one could control the leviathan, save their king. She must make him understand she is indispensable. "Only together, is it possible for us to both get what we want."
The water churned. "Do not presume to know what I want, hag."
Ishtar bared her teeth. "I know you want out, just as I do. It's not difficult to figure out, you stain." She squeezed her fist around the filthy edge of her body’s meager clothing and steadied her voice. "I have a way out for all of us." Ishtar lifted her eyes from the pool to Castiel, who had given up struggling against his bonds. "But I need more time to prepare. Time that you can give me."
An unnatural wave spiked out of the pool, turned toward the captive angel like a periscope. The inky water settled and was still for a long moment. Ishtar started to think she'd pushed too hard, but the surface rippled again. "What would you have me do?"
Ishtar smiled. "Kill the humans trying to rescue him. Without their interference, I can make the angel comply."
The black water swelled. "It would be our pleasure, goddess."
** Rough translation:
"Dark water come. Dark water I command and summon you to me. Dark water come." -- I played fast and loose with an online Sumerian dictionary. This is most definitely not correct. Sorry I butchered an ancient language. :(
means nothing without you,
dcbb2015