SPN fic: Fire in the Hole 7/9 (Part Two)
Fire in the Hole, 7/9 (Part Two)
Chapter 7/Wizard (Part Two)
Go on...read it...read...more...
--
Singer was halfway to the rathole’s mouth before he realized that John hadn’t followed him out. He skidded to a stop, light bobbing uncertainly in the silty air kicked up from his footsteps, turned on his heel.
Dammit.
Whether it was the demon down below, or whether it was John’s ornery cussed nature, the hunter was not beside him, was not anywhere to be seen. Or heard, because Singer halted, listening.
I’m not leaving anyone behind.
So he turned, knew that the yellow fog creeping out the shaft had heralded death, knew it as well as he knew anything in this half-world of hunting and the supernatural he called home. Yellow death from below, and Singer’s best guess now was a fire demon, likely one fairly high up in the hierarchy that hadn’t been heard from for some time. Biding its time, mining what was hidden here, trapped itself. Waiting for the ingenuity and greed of Man to release it.
What demons always waited for, and they were so rarely disappointed.
More research was required, obviously, but not right now because right fucking now John Winchester was not beside him, nor immediately behind him, and the tommyknockers - bless their little hearts, if such things had hearts - were hammering out danger like high noon in a clockmaker’s showroom.
Don’t go back, they seemed to be telling him. Get the hell out. But Singer didn’t pay any attention. Not in his nature to leave someone behind. He dropped the thin fuseline, knew he could pick it up if he had to, the charges still set, but Winchester was in trouble one way or another and Singer didn’t know if it was John who inspired such stupidity, or the thought of facing Dean up top, alone.
Tying a rumpled bandana around his lower face, a piece of cloth that usually wicked sweat from his neck during underground operations, Singer flashed his light down the tunnel, ran. The yellow fog was everywhere now, idling at his feet, malicious and hot.
Past the open shaft, light pouring from it now, alert, a fire down there waiting to rush up, and Singer had heard tales of mine fires, about being trapped in flame, oxygen disappearing.
It was how his son had gone, dead even as Singer had taken that interminable flight down to South America, five days to get to the mine itself, and by then they were counting bodies, the ones they’d been able to retrieve. His first view of the disaster had been in the Buenos Aires airport, seeing the operations on the big screen television, not understanding the Spanish announcers, hopelessly trying to whittle the distance into nothing.
Cathy didn’t blame him. She blamed herself, and that had been an impossible distance, too.
“C’mon, guys, help me out,” he muttered through the bandana. Stood for a moment, faced with the tunnels and the glowing shaft.
Silence. The tommyknockers had warned him all right: get the hell out of here, the whole thing’s going to blow. What did he expect?
Then Singer looked a little further, beyond the shaft, flashlight raking across dust and gravel and abandoned rail lines. Down the main tunnel, not far, thirty feet maybe, a dark clump of clothing that looked too substantial to be an old piece of canvas, crumpled against a darkened timber.
Singer got there, dropped to John’s side. He wasn’t moving. Not firedamp, because you didn’t see that before it exploded. Poison, like chlorine gas, or something related. Good reason to haul ass now, because the yellow fog eddied around him, solid and opaque, nudging around his clothes like a stop action creeper growing over architecture.
A knock, hard enough to dislodge a snowfall of dust from the cross beams above. Again, and Singer’s limbs felt like lead, slow death. He couldn’t feel his hands. Despite this, he got the salt out from his pack, made a clumsy circle around them. Dear God, this isn’t a solution, but he watched the sulfurous fog retreat a little, not liking the purifying salt.
He leaned against the dirt wall. Think, Singer.
Fire demons, assholes, all of them. They didn’t possess humans, not these guys. They took a while to wake up, but once they did? Torturers. Fire incarnate, impervious to holy water and dismissive of Latin. Fire made them but earth held them - silver, iron, salt; these were the weapons to use. I’m trying. Then he heard laughter, deep and empty, followed by the ringing of a phone, and knew that they were screwed.
--
This was why. This was exactly why he worried and harangued and issued orders instead of pleas. This was what he’d been trying to teach his boys, not in so many words, but through his actions, and now it was all coming apart like a circus tear-down come Monday morning.
What floor was he on? Maybe the third. The floor with the red door. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell, taking two steps at a time, his gun out, muzzle hot, not waiting for the elevator, because it was at the top, where Dean had taken it. Flush this thing out. Trap it between floors and…and…
Fourth floor was purple; fifth was blue. Nothing was in the stairwell, John heard nothing. Damn it, what was Dean doing? The look on Dean’s face before he had turned to the elevator was the result of pure training: his eyes had dimmed like a blown lightbulb, shutting off, shutting down. Forcing himself to not care, to not question, on automatic.
John came out on the fifth floor. Where was Dean? Where was he? The floor was empty, no cars here, not at this time of night, not with all the suicides, either. People thought it was haunted. It was haunted, he reminded himself, sternly. It had to be.
Given the same situation, Sammy would have freaked. All sinew and brains, fast mind, fast mouth, Sam would have been screaming at his father right now, had he been here. It starts in the cradle the dust demon had said and it was true and how the fuck was John going to protect him? How the fuck could he protect either of them, except to train them?
Kill before you were killed yourself.
Dean knew. Dean listened. He learned. He followed orders. The smart one, and John shoved all of it aside, no time for it, not now, not when he didn’t know where his son was in this concrete maze.
John couldn’t hear a damn thing. Nothing. The place seemed deserted. Fearing to call out Dean’s name, knowing that would alert what they were chasing, he padded slowly to the circular down ramp, gun raised by his shoulder. He found the shelter of a cement support column, prepared to break cover so he could look up, see if anything was happening on the top floor of the garage.
Where the hell is he? He knows how to flush out a --
And at that moment, not a yard from the tip of his nose, a blur of silent clothing and flesh plummeted past with a sound like a flag on a warship, incomprehensibly fast. John jumped back, startled, mind not quick enough, not enough light to determine what the fuck that was. Then his mind caught up.
It was his heart that didn’t.
The world had suddenly stopped producing oxygen and John literally couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw breath, the gun falling to his side. He was gulping like a fish and he didn’t care if he was suddenly in something’s sightlines, because he knew what that was, what had just passed by him so quickly.
So quickly, and so close he might have been able to reach out, to reach and -
He looked over the edge, down, not up.
There, at the bottom, hopelessly at the bottom of a very great drop, splayed like one of those icons of a falling person on a Slippery When Wet sign, was his son.
John didn’t wait. It was a six story drop and he tore away from the funnel, knew the stairs would be fastest - no, not fastest, fastest route would be what Dean had just done -- five flights down past blue and purple and red and orange finally to the same yellow that haunted his sleep and plagued his waking hours for close to nineteen years.
Please, oh please, I promise anything. My life for his, and the words rattled in his brain along with that inhuman voice, the grit of sand and sheer delicacy of wind and he didn’t know if he was praying to a god or a demon.
He burst through the door, running, hearing the sirens because of the gunshot, likely, and he wasn’t going to think about that, because what had come before was inconsequential. Bigger things were in play now, and it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Except -
Dean was already off the bicycle cage, was on his feet, arm at a terrible angle, face green in the sulfuric light and their eyes met.
Nothing was hidden: no blame, no indictment, only incandescent disbelief. One long moment, then Dean tried to shut down, to switch the fuck off, but he couldn’t work it this time and it was so obvious to the both of them. The crook of Dean’s arm suddenly hid the struggle, not wanting his father to see. Or not wanting to see his father.
And John looked away, not knowing which is was.
--
It held only so long, Dean found. Only so long and then it was as though John’s iron grip evaporated in the thin mountain air. He’ll kill me, he thought as he moved, as he gathered together an assortment of deadly things into a worn canvas side bag, the kind that army grunts used to carry grenades. He slung it over his shoulder, took the flashlight that Bobby kept on the cluttered dashboard and started up the hillside.
Bobby and his father had been inside for more than two hours now, and that was a magic number as far as Dean was concerned, that’s when John’s directives expired, when Dean had tacit permission to do as he saw fit. Not from John, never from him. Dean had given himself permission, and it felt right somehow. He’d been earning the right for some time now, had paid for it with blood and tears and little pieces of his soul scattered to John’s dark night.
So he would go in and he would save them.
Maybe they came out another hole, he thought, a worm in his reasoning. Maybe they’ll blow the whole thing with me inside. Not likely. John might act on impulse, but Bobby sure as hell didn’t. Bobby was careful.
Down the rathole, familiar territory. As he approached the junction of the two systems, rathole and Kentuck, he smelled sulfur and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He slowed his footsteps, listening.
A small knock behind him.
“I know,” he whispered. “Danger ahead. Thanks anyway, guys.”
Two steps forward and he felt a tug on his arm, pulling him back. That, and a cold wave shutting out the sulfur, again familiar. Dean turned, aware, not afraid, and looked at the tommyknocker that had a hand on his arm.
Taller than he was, slipping from icy mirage to something more solid, a leather skullcap covering a bald pate, eyes blue and glowing, ragged trousers rolled up to its bony knees the only clothing hanging from a lean frame. It flickered in and out of focus like the projectionist was drunk, finally settling on gaseous form, semi-solid.
Not a little elf. A ghost.
“Trubbl-za-ed,” the tommyknocker warned. Another form materialized beside the first, a huge mallet slung over sinewy shoulder. They both nodded, eyes grim.
The accent was strong, almost incomprehensible. Dean sighed. “I know. It’s my dad, he’s in there.”
“Eeza arsehawl, im. Pardun,” tipped its head to Dean.
“Is he this way?” And pointed to the Kentuck adit.
“Courzee iz,” the first tommyknocker said. “Bull strong, im. Down below. Thatllgetim.”
Jesus.
“Shud go abuv, zun. Bad’eer. Arsehawls senzuz below, noweer ztuck.”
Fuck it, he thought they were speaking English. “Can you help me? Us?”
The bent their heads together, talking so fast and Dean was pretty sure it wasn’t English now. They shimmered and through them, Dean could see the head of a stake driven into the wall, painted yellow. A charge. They’d come this far, his dad and Bobby, laid the dynamite. If he squinted, he could almost see the thin fuse line. He had a Zippo in his jeans pocket and these two things - fuse and fire - suddenly filled him with hope.
“Yawz do uz afavr?” The taller of the two asked. Their images filtered slightly and the tommyknocker’s body suddenly sagged like his bones had all snapped, like he’d been dropped from a great height and landed on his feet. The other was burned, his skin peeling away, crispy on one side. One second only, then they shook their molecules or ozone or ectoplasm and were more presentable.
They had died down here, horribly.
Dean wished for spit to swallow, nodded. “Of course.”
“Pzz on the bonez of themz it cawzdit. Bazturdz.” They both nodded enthusiastically.
Sure, whatever, Dean thought. If I can get out of here in one piece, I’ll be happy to take a leak on whoever you want me to.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Ez. Cumuz on now,” the shorter burned ghost muttered, turning. “Thizl doyaw. Aveezel?”
“What?”
“Zel,” Crispy repeated as though Dean was a cloth-eared child.
Salt. Did he have salt? In answer, Dean reached into his bag, took out a canister, which he shook.
“Mebee ajointa meet?”
Did he look like a fast food counter? Still, he wasn’t unprepared. He handed over a small bag of peanuts that he’d thrown in at the last minute. They didn’t eat them; Dean couldn’t tell what they did with them. Better not to know maybe.
“Izza bad un downna ole. Zel iz gud, bunawt enuf. Zilva. Ates zaw zilva. Zatawa, weez gud. Void zaw yella,” the taller one with the broken bones said. Salt is good, but not enough. It hates silver. Avoid the yellow. Tell me something I don’t know.
They moved slowly, the tommyknockers not kicking up any dust, Dean following carefully behind. Breakbone turned, whispered, one finger gesturing to Dean’s flashlight. “Yerliaght. Leebm lawn.”
It had to be joking. Breakbone was entirely serious, though. The tommyknocker seemed to sense Dean’s reluctance. “No worryz. Zee yaw riaght. Offnit.”
Dean snapped off his flashlight and the whole world was plunged into a darkness so complete he thought that maybe he’d ceased to exist. No body, no walls. No-
And there, misty glow beside him, once his light-dazzled pupils had dilated and expanded to include all the light that was in this god-forsaken place, Dean could see three things, two of which were the ghosts of dead Cornish miners.
The other thing was the warm glow coming from down one tunnel, which meant the shaft that he’d fallen through last week. Okay, here I come.
“Thanks,” he said to the tommyknockers. They didn’t know how to kill the demon, otherwise they would have done it. All they had was their own misery and solitude. Shy creatures in some ways, existing only when shown minute deference. He owed them a favor and he would return it, but first things first.
“U zeeit?” Crispy asked and looked worried.
Dean nodded. “I’ll take it from here,” and he had packed Bobby’s silver loaded revolver, which might do some good, might not. He had salt and he had Latin and they seemed small weapons against what was down that hole.
He was talking to air, though, because they were gone. Without the tommyknockers’ ghostly cold, the air filled with heat, and sweat slid down the side of Dean’s face, into his eyes.
Shit. Don’t use your light, Winchester. Fire demon seems to sense it. Just great.
Down the tunnel, the square outline of the shaft glowing, shedding light in all directions. Dean eased around it, not looking directly at it for fear that he’d miss other things. The air was fetid, cloying, and he put a sleeve up to his face, tried not to cough.
Because he wasn’t looking directly at the shaft, Dean saw it: a tiny light down the adit some twenty or thirty feet, feeble light nothing against the fierce glow of a pissed off demon.
He came quickly, hunkering down, barely able to make out Bobby’s sweat bathed face, his father unconscious beside him, breath coming in little gasps, Bobby’s flashlight dying in the poisonous air.
“Bobby,” Dean whispered, and Bobby’s eyes came open in a snap.
“Jesus, Dean,” Bobby replied. He sounded tired, heartbroken. “You shouldn’t…you…”
“Shut up.” Dean didn’t want to hear about what he shouldn’t be doing. “Turn off your light. It’ll see you.”
Bobby turned his head slightly, a dog made curious by a waved stick. “Huh. Could be right.”
That’s great, Bobby, let’s talk about what makes a demon sit up and take notice of you. Maybe take some notes. But Bobby snapped off his sick light and Dean allowed a moment to get used to the lack of it.
Dean stepped over the salt line, the only thing that had kept Bobby and his father safe this long, because the yellow gas was creeping all around and Dean felt his strength fading, drained like a deer carcass hung from a hook. Inside the circle, it was much better, but space was tight.
“Okay, can you get up? I can’t carry both of you,” he was making a joke and he was serious, because if Bobby couldn’t stand they were fucked.
After a long moment, Bobby nodded, and with Dean’s help, came to his feet. Dean bent down again, preparing to sling his father’s considerable weight over his shoulders. Shit. John was a big man and Dean didn’t know if he could manage it.
“Dean,” Bobby knelt down with him, scuffing the salt line. No time now, really, and a salt line wasn’t going to hold back a demon. “Dean, you can’t take this weight. You know you can’t.”
Dean took a breath to contradict him, but no words came. Even bending down, his back ached, felt hollow, felt like one wrong move would snap it. Fuck, everything came down to this, didn’t it? The Vegas fall, what had preceded it, and the year that had come before.
And if Dean was truthful, it came down to his own decision in the bus station parking lot, Sam weeping beside him. Right for Dad. Right for Sam, thank Christ. Right for him?
Still didn’t know.
But it meant that he couldn’t pick up his father now when it mattered most.
Wordlessly, Bobby took one of John’s slack arms, draped it over his back and heaved. It took three tries before he did it, and Dean could see the sweat rolling down Bobby’s face into his beard, could imagine the redness and the effort.
Bobby Singer wasn’t going to leave anyone behind down below and Dean knew it. Bobby hadn’t given up on either of them - not John and not him. A year of getting left in his father’s furious dust, and this was suddenly too much for Dean to take in.
Something brilliant and hard shattered in him, understanding this, but there was no time to consider whether it was too beautiful or too hurtful because it was a long way back to the rathole’s mouth and the salt line had been broken.
Bobby staggered under the burden, bumped into a wall and Dean guided them past the glowing hole, everyone understanding how important silence was now. The demon either didn’t notice them, or was distracted, or was resting - who the fuck knew - and Dean intended on keeping it this way. He let Bobby go first when they got to the rathole, and bent his head to Bobby’s ear as the older man struggled past.
“Get out of here. I’m right behind you,” and he knew that Bobby wanted to protest, but couldn’t. He had John on his shoulders, fireman style, and there was no time. “Really. I’m not getting stuck down here, but I know where the fuses are and all this work isn’t for nothing. Doesn’t hurt my fucking back to light a match.”
It was too dark to read Bobby’s expression, but after all their time together, Dean could imagine it. When Bobby didn’t say anything, Dean whispered, “Thank you.” That surprised Dean; he’d been meaning to say ‘I’m sorry.’ Maybe they were the same thing, in the end.
Bobby’s hands were full, otherwise something else might have happened then, but as it was, Dean sensed Bobby pulling away, shouldering his load and biting his tongue. Trusting me and I better live up to it.
As Bobby disappeared into the darkness, Dean slowly turned. How long should he give them? How long should he give himself? Because for all his years of staking zombies and burning bones, he’d never lit a stick of dynamite and didn’t know how long it would take for a fuse to burn. Shit, all he had for reference was Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote.
Despite everything, Dean grinned.
Thinking of Coyote, he waited, noticed how fast his breath was coming, wondered how long it would be before the insidious gas crept into his lungs and sapped all strength from him. Coyote said bigger things had marked him, and Dean could believe it. Lucky, my ass. Thought of the pool games and banking shots and how easy it all had been. How easy it could have been. Could have stayed there, in Arizona. Dad was happy.
He was leaving me, just didn’t know it.
It was a truth that he hadn’t admitted before, a truth he couldn’t even contemplate. But in the depths of the earth, waiting to experiment with dynamite or to have a demon suddenly take notice of him, Dean had some time to think, no way to avoid it really. He didn’t need tommyknockers to tell him it was dangerous.
Dad’s gonna kill me. But that wasn’t what his father would do and Dean knew it. His father would do worse: he would leave Dean’s sorry ass in some motel bed, just take off into the darkness. Leave me behind, just not come back, never answer his fucking phone. That caught Dean in an unprotected place, and shook his head once, decisively. God, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’d never do that.
He forced the thought away, shut the scenario out. Jesus.
We’re all cursed, that’s what that dust demon said, wasn’t it. Had said that they’d all die for each other and if that was the way out, Dean could think of no better death.
But it wouldn’t be his father killing him, that much he knew.
He leaned against the dirt wall, shirt soaked right through with sweat - exertion, heat, fear - and felt every muscle twitch along his spine. Don’t do this, he warned his back. Don’t you give up on me now. Doesn’t take much to light a match, he kept telling himself. He’d light the first fuse right there - he could see the yellow stake head in the demonglow - and then run like hell down the rathole, stopping only to light the second fuse that would seal the rathole from curious explorers.
This running and jumping and exploding things wasn’t exactly what Bliss had recommended.
What had it been? Twenty minutes now? He hadn’t noted the time, didn’t want to draw attention to himself by pressing the tiny button on his watch. He remembered reading about some guy who had led people down the Twin Towers during the first terrorist attack in ’93 using only his watch for light. He wondered if the man had continued working in the Towers, if he had survived the next attack. Don’t usually get a second chance when destiny’s marked you, he thought. Like living through two lightning strikes. Count yourself lucky the first time, then get the fuck out of Dodge.
Is that what I do? He chuckled silently. Keep hammering away at it until I kill it or it kills me and I haven’t lost yet.
Bravado, and he knew it. Screw it, long enough.
He crept over to the yellow stake-head, and he could see it so well because it was very close to the glowing shaft. A spasm shook him as he controlled a cough. Damn, this air was beyond bad, and he needed to get this done. He wiped his face with one arm, heart tripping, and retrieved the Zippo from his pocket.
Following the stake-head, he grasped the thin fuse between his fingers, ran it along gently, teased out its length. Should he cut it shorter? He wondered. No, Bobby would have cut it to the right length, surely. Unless he’d been overcome by the gasses before he’d been able to do it.
Dean wished he knew more about it.
He snapped open the Zippo, surprised at the decisive click. With one motion against the thigh of his jeans, he lit it, right hand holding the fuse. Lit it and it caught immediately. Forgot that maybe all this gas was flammable, hadn’t even occurred to him.
Man, this was like a tightrope over Niagara Falls, between the World Trade Center Buildings, over the Grand Canyon.
Across six stories of a Vegas parking garage and Dean shook his head, trying to clear it.
It wouldn’t clear. The Zippo, lit in his hand, illuminated the uneven walls of the mine, the wet dampness of it, the creeping yellow mist at his feet. The lit fuse sparked its way along the tunnel floor, heading towards the wall, slow burn. It would take a while.
Dean’s lighter was a beacon, and he heard the laughter, awakened, and a rush of sulfuric smoke billowed from the suddenly bright shaft, so bright it made his own light like a pinprick of starlight a billion miles away, the light of a dead sun finally reaching earth.
His legs were lead and he couldn’t draw breath; all was fire around him, so bright after the darkness, and the flames licked over the side of the shaft. Suddenly, the air imploded. A plume of fire shot over him, light and laughter accompanied by the relentless ringing of his phone.
Dean was thrown backwards by the rush of searing air, crashing against the tunnel wall. He slumped to the floor, threw an arm over his eyes, unable to see much of anything in the demon’s light.
--
Read Chapter 8/Mobius
TBC
a/n: You’ll be happy to know that chapter 8 is already with the betas. I’m hoping that 8 and 9 will be coming shortly…as they should, considering I fly to Glasgow a week Saturday. And then Fire in the Hole will be OVER. So, be careful what you wish for, okay?
Research note on tommyknockers: In Cornwall, where tommyknocker lore begins, the creatures are likened more to ‘mine fairies’ or supernatural critters that need to be appeased, that can help or hinder a miner depending on the deference shown them. When the Cornish miners came to America (as they did by the thousands during California and Nevada rushes in the 19th century), they brought their tommyknocker legends with them.
Once in American mines, however, a strange thing happened, though: the legends started to meld with non-Cornish ghost lore, turning the smallish almost dwarf-like creatures into something more ghostly and perhaps more ominous, the ghosts of miners who had perished underground. The Cornish miners were not the only ones who believed or at least paid lip-service to appeasing these apparitions - records indicate that miners of various ethnic stripes knew which side of the bread their butter was on. I’ve used the Americanized version of the tommyknockers here…with bastardized Cornish accents.
Chapter 7/Wizard (Part Two)
Go on...read it...read...more...
--
Singer was halfway to the rathole’s mouth before he realized that John hadn’t followed him out. He skidded to a stop, light bobbing uncertainly in the silty air kicked up from his footsteps, turned on his heel.
Dammit.
Whether it was the demon down below, or whether it was John’s ornery cussed nature, the hunter was not beside him, was not anywhere to be seen. Or heard, because Singer halted, listening.
I’m not leaving anyone behind.
So he turned, knew that the yellow fog creeping out the shaft had heralded death, knew it as well as he knew anything in this half-world of hunting and the supernatural he called home. Yellow death from below, and Singer’s best guess now was a fire demon, likely one fairly high up in the hierarchy that hadn’t been heard from for some time. Biding its time, mining what was hidden here, trapped itself. Waiting for the ingenuity and greed of Man to release it.
What demons always waited for, and they were so rarely disappointed.
More research was required, obviously, but not right now because right fucking now John Winchester was not beside him, nor immediately behind him, and the tommyknockers - bless their little hearts, if such things had hearts - were hammering out danger like high noon in a clockmaker’s showroom.
Don’t go back, they seemed to be telling him. Get the hell out. But Singer didn’t pay any attention. Not in his nature to leave someone behind. He dropped the thin fuseline, knew he could pick it up if he had to, the charges still set, but Winchester was in trouble one way or another and Singer didn’t know if it was John who inspired such stupidity, or the thought of facing Dean up top, alone.
Tying a rumpled bandana around his lower face, a piece of cloth that usually wicked sweat from his neck during underground operations, Singer flashed his light down the tunnel, ran. The yellow fog was everywhere now, idling at his feet, malicious and hot.
Past the open shaft, light pouring from it now, alert, a fire down there waiting to rush up, and Singer had heard tales of mine fires, about being trapped in flame, oxygen disappearing.
It was how his son had gone, dead even as Singer had taken that interminable flight down to South America, five days to get to the mine itself, and by then they were counting bodies, the ones they’d been able to retrieve. His first view of the disaster had been in the Buenos Aires airport, seeing the operations on the big screen television, not understanding the Spanish announcers, hopelessly trying to whittle the distance into nothing.
Cathy didn’t blame him. She blamed herself, and that had been an impossible distance, too.
“C’mon, guys, help me out,” he muttered through the bandana. Stood for a moment, faced with the tunnels and the glowing shaft.
Silence. The tommyknockers had warned him all right: get the hell out of here, the whole thing’s going to blow. What did he expect?
Then Singer looked a little further, beyond the shaft, flashlight raking across dust and gravel and abandoned rail lines. Down the main tunnel, not far, thirty feet maybe, a dark clump of clothing that looked too substantial to be an old piece of canvas, crumpled against a darkened timber.
Singer got there, dropped to John’s side. He wasn’t moving. Not firedamp, because you didn’t see that before it exploded. Poison, like chlorine gas, or something related. Good reason to haul ass now, because the yellow fog eddied around him, solid and opaque, nudging around his clothes like a stop action creeper growing over architecture.
A knock, hard enough to dislodge a snowfall of dust from the cross beams above. Again, and Singer’s limbs felt like lead, slow death. He couldn’t feel his hands. Despite this, he got the salt out from his pack, made a clumsy circle around them. Dear God, this isn’t a solution, but he watched the sulfurous fog retreat a little, not liking the purifying salt.
He leaned against the dirt wall. Think, Singer.
Fire demons, assholes, all of them. They didn’t possess humans, not these guys. They took a while to wake up, but once they did? Torturers. Fire incarnate, impervious to holy water and dismissive of Latin. Fire made them but earth held them - silver, iron, salt; these were the weapons to use. I’m trying. Then he heard laughter, deep and empty, followed by the ringing of a phone, and knew that they were screwed.
--
This was why. This was exactly why he worried and harangued and issued orders instead of pleas. This was what he’d been trying to teach his boys, not in so many words, but through his actions, and now it was all coming apart like a circus tear-down come Monday morning.
What floor was he on? Maybe the third. The floor with the red door. His footsteps echoed in the stairwell, taking two steps at a time, his gun out, muzzle hot, not waiting for the elevator, because it was at the top, where Dean had taken it. Flush this thing out. Trap it between floors and…and…
Fourth floor was purple; fifth was blue. Nothing was in the stairwell, John heard nothing. Damn it, what was Dean doing? The look on Dean’s face before he had turned to the elevator was the result of pure training: his eyes had dimmed like a blown lightbulb, shutting off, shutting down. Forcing himself to not care, to not question, on automatic.
John came out on the fifth floor. Where was Dean? Where was he? The floor was empty, no cars here, not at this time of night, not with all the suicides, either. People thought it was haunted. It was haunted, he reminded himself, sternly. It had to be.
Given the same situation, Sammy would have freaked. All sinew and brains, fast mind, fast mouth, Sam would have been screaming at his father right now, had he been here. It starts in the cradle the dust demon had said and it was true and how the fuck was John going to protect him? How the fuck could he protect either of them, except to train them?
Kill before you were killed yourself.
Dean knew. Dean listened. He learned. He followed orders. The smart one, and John shoved all of it aside, no time for it, not now, not when he didn’t know where his son was in this concrete maze.
John couldn’t hear a damn thing. Nothing. The place seemed deserted. Fearing to call out Dean’s name, knowing that would alert what they were chasing, he padded slowly to the circular down ramp, gun raised by his shoulder. He found the shelter of a cement support column, prepared to break cover so he could look up, see if anything was happening on the top floor of the garage.
Where the hell is he? He knows how to flush out a --
And at that moment, not a yard from the tip of his nose, a blur of silent clothing and flesh plummeted past with a sound like a flag on a warship, incomprehensibly fast. John jumped back, startled, mind not quick enough, not enough light to determine what the fuck that was. Then his mind caught up.
It was his heart that didn’t.
The world had suddenly stopped producing oxygen and John literally couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw breath, the gun falling to his side. He was gulping like a fish and he didn’t care if he was suddenly in something’s sightlines, because he knew what that was, what had just passed by him so quickly.
So quickly, and so close he might have been able to reach out, to reach and -
He looked over the edge, down, not up.
There, at the bottom, hopelessly at the bottom of a very great drop, splayed like one of those icons of a falling person on a Slippery When Wet sign, was his son.
John didn’t wait. It was a six story drop and he tore away from the funnel, knew the stairs would be fastest - no, not fastest, fastest route would be what Dean had just done -- five flights down past blue and purple and red and orange finally to the same yellow that haunted his sleep and plagued his waking hours for close to nineteen years.
Please, oh please, I promise anything. My life for his, and the words rattled in his brain along with that inhuman voice, the grit of sand and sheer delicacy of wind and he didn’t know if he was praying to a god or a demon.
He burst through the door, running, hearing the sirens because of the gunshot, likely, and he wasn’t going to think about that, because what had come before was inconsequential. Bigger things were in play now, and it didn’t matter, nothing mattered. Except -
Dean was already off the bicycle cage, was on his feet, arm at a terrible angle, face green in the sulfuric light and their eyes met.
Nothing was hidden: no blame, no indictment, only incandescent disbelief. One long moment, then Dean tried to shut down, to switch the fuck off, but he couldn’t work it this time and it was so obvious to the both of them. The crook of Dean’s arm suddenly hid the struggle, not wanting his father to see. Or not wanting to see his father.
And John looked away, not knowing which is was.
--
It held only so long, Dean found. Only so long and then it was as though John’s iron grip evaporated in the thin mountain air. He’ll kill me, he thought as he moved, as he gathered together an assortment of deadly things into a worn canvas side bag, the kind that army grunts used to carry grenades. He slung it over his shoulder, took the flashlight that Bobby kept on the cluttered dashboard and started up the hillside.
Bobby and his father had been inside for more than two hours now, and that was a magic number as far as Dean was concerned, that’s when John’s directives expired, when Dean had tacit permission to do as he saw fit. Not from John, never from him. Dean had given himself permission, and it felt right somehow. He’d been earning the right for some time now, had paid for it with blood and tears and little pieces of his soul scattered to John’s dark night.
So he would go in and he would save them.
Maybe they came out another hole, he thought, a worm in his reasoning. Maybe they’ll blow the whole thing with me inside. Not likely. John might act on impulse, but Bobby sure as hell didn’t. Bobby was careful.
Down the rathole, familiar territory. As he approached the junction of the two systems, rathole and Kentuck, he smelled sulfur and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. He slowed his footsteps, listening.
A small knock behind him.
“I know,” he whispered. “Danger ahead. Thanks anyway, guys.”
Two steps forward and he felt a tug on his arm, pulling him back. That, and a cold wave shutting out the sulfur, again familiar. Dean turned, aware, not afraid, and looked at the tommyknocker that had a hand on his arm.
Taller than he was, slipping from icy mirage to something more solid, a leather skullcap covering a bald pate, eyes blue and glowing, ragged trousers rolled up to its bony knees the only clothing hanging from a lean frame. It flickered in and out of focus like the projectionist was drunk, finally settling on gaseous form, semi-solid.
Not a little elf. A ghost.
“Trubbl-za-ed,” the tommyknocker warned. Another form materialized beside the first, a huge mallet slung over sinewy shoulder. They both nodded, eyes grim.
The accent was strong, almost incomprehensible. Dean sighed. “I know. It’s my dad, he’s in there.”
“Eeza arsehawl, im. Pardun,” tipped its head to Dean.
“Is he this way?” And pointed to the Kentuck adit.
“Courzee iz,” the first tommyknocker said. “Bull strong, im. Down below. Thatllgetim.”
Jesus.
“Shud go abuv, zun. Bad’eer. Arsehawls senzuz below, noweer ztuck.”
Fuck it, he thought they were speaking English. “Can you help me? Us?”
The bent their heads together, talking so fast and Dean was pretty sure it wasn’t English now. They shimmered and through them, Dean could see the head of a stake driven into the wall, painted yellow. A charge. They’d come this far, his dad and Bobby, laid the dynamite. If he squinted, he could almost see the thin fuse line. He had a Zippo in his jeans pocket and these two things - fuse and fire - suddenly filled him with hope.
“Yawz do uz afavr?” The taller of the two asked. Their images filtered slightly and the tommyknocker’s body suddenly sagged like his bones had all snapped, like he’d been dropped from a great height and landed on his feet. The other was burned, his skin peeling away, crispy on one side. One second only, then they shook their molecules or ozone or ectoplasm and were more presentable.
They had died down here, horribly.
Dean wished for spit to swallow, nodded. “Of course.”
“Pzz on the bonez of themz it cawzdit. Bazturdz.” They both nodded enthusiastically.
Sure, whatever, Dean thought. If I can get out of here in one piece, I’ll be happy to take a leak on whoever you want me to.
“Which way?” he asked.
“Ez. Cumuz on now,” the shorter burned ghost muttered, turning. “Thizl doyaw. Aveezel?”
“What?”
“Zel,” Crispy repeated as though Dean was a cloth-eared child.
Salt. Did he have salt? In answer, Dean reached into his bag, took out a canister, which he shook.
“Mebee ajointa meet?”
Did he look like a fast food counter? Still, he wasn’t unprepared. He handed over a small bag of peanuts that he’d thrown in at the last minute. They didn’t eat them; Dean couldn’t tell what they did with them. Better not to know maybe.
“Izza bad un downna ole. Zel iz gud, bunawt enuf. Zilva. Ates zaw zilva. Zatawa, weez gud. Void zaw yella,” the taller one with the broken bones said. Salt is good, but not enough. It hates silver. Avoid the yellow. Tell me something I don’t know.
They moved slowly, the tommyknockers not kicking up any dust, Dean following carefully behind. Breakbone turned, whispered, one finger gesturing to Dean’s flashlight. “Yerliaght. Leebm lawn.”
It had to be joking. Breakbone was entirely serious, though. The tommyknocker seemed to sense Dean’s reluctance. “No worryz. Zee yaw riaght. Offnit.”
Dean snapped off his flashlight and the whole world was plunged into a darkness so complete he thought that maybe he’d ceased to exist. No body, no walls. No-
And there, misty glow beside him, once his light-dazzled pupils had dilated and expanded to include all the light that was in this god-forsaken place, Dean could see three things, two of which were the ghosts of dead Cornish miners.
The other thing was the warm glow coming from down one tunnel, which meant the shaft that he’d fallen through last week. Okay, here I come.
“Thanks,” he said to the tommyknockers. They didn’t know how to kill the demon, otherwise they would have done it. All they had was their own misery and solitude. Shy creatures in some ways, existing only when shown minute deference. He owed them a favor and he would return it, but first things first.
“U zeeit?” Crispy asked and looked worried.
Dean nodded. “I’ll take it from here,” and he had packed Bobby’s silver loaded revolver, which might do some good, might not. He had salt and he had Latin and they seemed small weapons against what was down that hole.
He was talking to air, though, because they were gone. Without the tommyknockers’ ghostly cold, the air filled with heat, and sweat slid down the side of Dean’s face, into his eyes.
Shit. Don’t use your light, Winchester. Fire demon seems to sense it. Just great.
Down the tunnel, the square outline of the shaft glowing, shedding light in all directions. Dean eased around it, not looking directly at it for fear that he’d miss other things. The air was fetid, cloying, and he put a sleeve up to his face, tried not to cough.
Because he wasn’t looking directly at the shaft, Dean saw it: a tiny light down the adit some twenty or thirty feet, feeble light nothing against the fierce glow of a pissed off demon.
He came quickly, hunkering down, barely able to make out Bobby’s sweat bathed face, his father unconscious beside him, breath coming in little gasps, Bobby’s flashlight dying in the poisonous air.
“Bobby,” Dean whispered, and Bobby’s eyes came open in a snap.
“Jesus, Dean,” Bobby replied. He sounded tired, heartbroken. “You shouldn’t…you…”
“Shut up.” Dean didn’t want to hear about what he shouldn’t be doing. “Turn off your light. It’ll see you.”
Bobby turned his head slightly, a dog made curious by a waved stick. “Huh. Could be right.”
That’s great, Bobby, let’s talk about what makes a demon sit up and take notice of you. Maybe take some notes. But Bobby snapped off his sick light and Dean allowed a moment to get used to the lack of it.
Dean stepped over the salt line, the only thing that had kept Bobby and his father safe this long, because the yellow gas was creeping all around and Dean felt his strength fading, drained like a deer carcass hung from a hook. Inside the circle, it was much better, but space was tight.
“Okay, can you get up? I can’t carry both of you,” he was making a joke and he was serious, because if Bobby couldn’t stand they were fucked.
After a long moment, Bobby nodded, and with Dean’s help, came to his feet. Dean bent down again, preparing to sling his father’s considerable weight over his shoulders. Shit. John was a big man and Dean didn’t know if he could manage it.
“Dean,” Bobby knelt down with him, scuffing the salt line. No time now, really, and a salt line wasn’t going to hold back a demon. “Dean, you can’t take this weight. You know you can’t.”
Dean took a breath to contradict him, but no words came. Even bending down, his back ached, felt hollow, felt like one wrong move would snap it. Fuck, everything came down to this, didn’t it? The Vegas fall, what had preceded it, and the year that had come before.
And if Dean was truthful, it came down to his own decision in the bus station parking lot, Sam weeping beside him. Right for Dad. Right for Sam, thank Christ. Right for him?
Still didn’t know.
But it meant that he couldn’t pick up his father now when it mattered most.
Wordlessly, Bobby took one of John’s slack arms, draped it over his back and heaved. It took three tries before he did it, and Dean could see the sweat rolling down Bobby’s face into his beard, could imagine the redness and the effort.
Bobby Singer wasn’t going to leave anyone behind down below and Dean knew it. Bobby hadn’t given up on either of them - not John and not him. A year of getting left in his father’s furious dust, and this was suddenly too much for Dean to take in.
Something brilliant and hard shattered in him, understanding this, but there was no time to consider whether it was too beautiful or too hurtful because it was a long way back to the rathole’s mouth and the salt line had been broken.
Bobby staggered under the burden, bumped into a wall and Dean guided them past the glowing hole, everyone understanding how important silence was now. The demon either didn’t notice them, or was distracted, or was resting - who the fuck knew - and Dean intended on keeping it this way. He let Bobby go first when they got to the rathole, and bent his head to Bobby’s ear as the older man struggled past.
“Get out of here. I’m right behind you,” and he knew that Bobby wanted to protest, but couldn’t. He had John on his shoulders, fireman style, and there was no time. “Really. I’m not getting stuck down here, but I know where the fuses are and all this work isn’t for nothing. Doesn’t hurt my fucking back to light a match.”
It was too dark to read Bobby’s expression, but after all their time together, Dean could imagine it. When Bobby didn’t say anything, Dean whispered, “Thank you.” That surprised Dean; he’d been meaning to say ‘I’m sorry.’ Maybe they were the same thing, in the end.
Bobby’s hands were full, otherwise something else might have happened then, but as it was, Dean sensed Bobby pulling away, shouldering his load and biting his tongue. Trusting me and I better live up to it.
As Bobby disappeared into the darkness, Dean slowly turned. How long should he give them? How long should he give himself? Because for all his years of staking zombies and burning bones, he’d never lit a stick of dynamite and didn’t know how long it would take for a fuse to burn. Shit, all he had for reference was Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote.
Despite everything, Dean grinned.
Thinking of Coyote, he waited, noticed how fast his breath was coming, wondered how long it would be before the insidious gas crept into his lungs and sapped all strength from him. Coyote said bigger things had marked him, and Dean could believe it. Lucky, my ass. Thought of the pool games and banking shots and how easy it all had been. How easy it could have been. Could have stayed there, in Arizona. Dad was happy.
He was leaving me, just didn’t know it.
It was a truth that he hadn’t admitted before, a truth he couldn’t even contemplate. But in the depths of the earth, waiting to experiment with dynamite or to have a demon suddenly take notice of him, Dean had some time to think, no way to avoid it really. He didn’t need tommyknockers to tell him it was dangerous.
Dad’s gonna kill me. But that wasn’t what his father would do and Dean knew it. His father would do worse: he would leave Dean’s sorry ass in some motel bed, just take off into the darkness. Leave me behind, just not come back, never answer his fucking phone. That caught Dean in an unprotected place, and shook his head once, decisively. God, no. He wouldn’t do that. He’d never do that.
He forced the thought away, shut the scenario out. Jesus.
We’re all cursed, that’s what that dust demon said, wasn’t it. Had said that they’d all die for each other and if that was the way out, Dean could think of no better death.
But it wouldn’t be his father killing him, that much he knew.
He leaned against the dirt wall, shirt soaked right through with sweat - exertion, heat, fear - and felt every muscle twitch along his spine. Don’t do this, he warned his back. Don’t you give up on me now. Doesn’t take much to light a match, he kept telling himself. He’d light the first fuse right there - he could see the yellow stake head in the demonglow - and then run like hell down the rathole, stopping only to light the second fuse that would seal the rathole from curious explorers.
This running and jumping and exploding things wasn’t exactly what Bliss had recommended.
What had it been? Twenty minutes now? He hadn’t noted the time, didn’t want to draw attention to himself by pressing the tiny button on his watch. He remembered reading about some guy who had led people down the Twin Towers during the first terrorist attack in ’93 using only his watch for light. He wondered if the man had continued working in the Towers, if he had survived the next attack. Don’t usually get a second chance when destiny’s marked you, he thought. Like living through two lightning strikes. Count yourself lucky the first time, then get the fuck out of Dodge.
Is that what I do? He chuckled silently. Keep hammering away at it until I kill it or it kills me and I haven’t lost yet.
Bravado, and he knew it. Screw it, long enough.
He crept over to the yellow stake-head, and he could see it so well because it was very close to the glowing shaft. A spasm shook him as he controlled a cough. Damn, this air was beyond bad, and he needed to get this done. He wiped his face with one arm, heart tripping, and retrieved the Zippo from his pocket.
Following the stake-head, he grasped the thin fuse between his fingers, ran it along gently, teased out its length. Should he cut it shorter? He wondered. No, Bobby would have cut it to the right length, surely. Unless he’d been overcome by the gasses before he’d been able to do it.
Dean wished he knew more about it.
He snapped open the Zippo, surprised at the decisive click. With one motion against the thigh of his jeans, he lit it, right hand holding the fuse. Lit it and it caught immediately. Forgot that maybe all this gas was flammable, hadn’t even occurred to him.
Man, this was like a tightrope over Niagara Falls, between the World Trade Center Buildings, over the Grand Canyon.
Across six stories of a Vegas parking garage and Dean shook his head, trying to clear it.
It wouldn’t clear. The Zippo, lit in his hand, illuminated the uneven walls of the mine, the wet dampness of it, the creeping yellow mist at his feet. The lit fuse sparked its way along the tunnel floor, heading towards the wall, slow burn. It would take a while.
Dean’s lighter was a beacon, and he heard the laughter, awakened, and a rush of sulfuric smoke billowed from the suddenly bright shaft, so bright it made his own light like a pinprick of starlight a billion miles away, the light of a dead sun finally reaching earth.
His legs were lead and he couldn’t draw breath; all was fire around him, so bright after the darkness, and the flames licked over the side of the shaft. Suddenly, the air imploded. A plume of fire shot over him, light and laughter accompanied by the relentless ringing of his phone.
Dean was thrown backwards by the rush of searing air, crashing against the tunnel wall. He slumped to the floor, threw an arm over his eyes, unable to see much of anything in the demon’s light.
--
Read Chapter 8/Mobius
TBC
a/n: You’ll be happy to know that chapter 8 is already with the betas. I’m hoping that 8 and 9 will be coming shortly…as they should, considering I fly to Glasgow a week Saturday. And then Fire in the Hole will be OVER. So, be careful what you wish for, okay?
Research note on tommyknockers: In Cornwall, where tommyknocker lore begins, the creatures are likened more to ‘mine fairies’ or supernatural critters that need to be appeased, that can help or hinder a miner depending on the deference shown them. When the Cornish miners came to America (as they did by the thousands during California and Nevada rushes in the 19th century), they brought their tommyknocker legends with them.
Once in American mines, however, a strange thing happened, though: the legends started to meld with non-Cornish ghost lore, turning the smallish almost dwarf-like creatures into something more ghostly and perhaps more ominous, the ghosts of miners who had perished underground. The Cornish miners were not the only ones who believed or at least paid lip-service to appeasing these apparitions - records indicate that miners of various ethnic stripes knew which side of the bread their butter was on. I’ve used the Americanized version of the tommyknockers here…with bastardized Cornish accents.