[Currently in M01, from hereKurt exhaled loudly and suddenly when Kon sat on him. Jeez, way to knock the wind out of someone! Kurt was barely half Kon's weight, he would be crushed
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The fact Angel had somehow hidden a friggen ax under his bed was faintly alarming. But it also told Dean that one, he should be happy he hadn't woken up with the damn thing in his back and two, apparently the nurses didn't frequently check obvious hiding places like under a mattress. Or, y'know, inside a closet. Despite how much of an amateur he thought Angel was, he made it a point not to get too much on his bad side before he started giving the guy ideas.
Now that he was alone in the room, Dean stripped down all the way, tugging on his jeans and then working on his boots. They weren't exactly new - worn in with scuffs and ragged shoelaces - but the important thing was they kept his feet protected, especially if he had to go kicking down any doors safely. Dean collected the rest of the things he'd need for the night, pocketing the extension cord and picking up his flashlight and his bowie knife. He didn't plan to go stabbing Punk-Ass if he could help it, but he felt better carrying it all the same.
Ready. Sorta. Would've been more ready with some holy water or the Colt, but sometimes a guy had to wing it.
[Back from demon "hunting", he brings back the abducted Reid from here to get down to business and wait for Sam]
Dean was out of breath by the time he staggered back to M2.
He was about to step in when he just remembered to break the salt line by rubbing it out with his foot - he hadn't ever tried to carry a demon across an intact one but he already had the mental image of Punk-Ass bouncing off as if there'd been an invisible wall. He made sure to restore the line once they were over.
Despite the way his legs were threatening to buckle under him, Dean made sure to be nice and careful and slow about putting Punk-Ass down. Not 'cause he cared about treating him like china, but because he still had the bowie in his belt and he didn't want to stab himself with it putting him down. With Punk-Ass out of his hair, Dean reached behind his back and pulled the bowie knife from his belt, leaving it on the bed as he dragged one of the room's chairs into the middle of M2, looking up at the ceiling and making sure the chair was positioned in the very center of the crayon Key of Solomon drawn above him. Happy with it, Dean bent over the unconscious demon and lugged him toward the chair, plopping his ass to the chair and untying the extension cord.
Soon enough, he had duct-taped the demon's arms and legs to the chair. On second thought, he put another piece across the thing's mouth. If it woke up, there was a good chance it'd be trying to talk trash at him - it'd probably make him want to lay into the thing before Sam even got here for the rest of the fun. ;Sides, he remembered what happened that time when Sam had been possessed, how he'd started chanting and broken the devil's trap with some kind of magic. Might as well bite this one in the bud before they had a repeat. Couldn't exactly get any chanting done if your mouth was taped shut; it was simple and crude, but it got the job done and that was the important part.
Once Punk-Ass was situated in the chair and liberally duct-taped to its arms and legs, Dean sat back on the edge of his bed to wait. He watched Punk-Ass, elbows on his thighs, absently tapping the flat of his bowie knife against his knee.
Wasn't often the warlock had been knocked out by force. He remembered how it felt, though, and somewhere in the back of his foggy mind, the nebulous thought of what the fuck was accompanied by the asshole should know better than to let us up once we're down. His head alone felt like it weighed a ton, but he forced his chin up off of his chest, and that was when things really began to click into place. Although he tried to move an arm, then his legs, they weren't moving. Something wasn't...
The first emotion to strike him was anger, not fear, and he heaved his entire body against the restraints with a clear sense of indignation despite his spinning head. Unless it was because of one of the families, Reid had never been caught with his pants down, never been vulnerable. Never had to worry, never the underdog. For a moment, he didn't understand why whatever was holding him wasn't immediately ripped apart by invisible hands. He was... sitting up? Tied up? Gagged?
And then, of course, context began to sink in. Which only made him more angry.
The fucking firstborn son of the Garwin family, and he was in a place that'd stolen his magic.
He shook his head sharply (a mistake, that, given the bruised skull, but Reid didn't give a shit), a snarl caught behind the tape stretched across his mouth. Wakefulness was setting in bit by bit, along with the pain, which radiated outward from the spot he'd been hit; it caused a sickly heat to roll through his body, leaving the small of his back damp with sweat. Although the light-headedness and the darkness almost made the effort a lost cause, Reid tried to blink spots from his eyes, to focus. The soft touch of the bangs hanging in his face itched.
A person didn't get roped up for nothing. The anger only seemed to make that fact clearer.
That was when he got the distinct impression he wasn't alone. Lifting his head higher took a ridiculous amount of effort, but he did it. Oh yeah, the brain was definitely waking up. This was on purpose.
Dean watched as Punk-Ass started to come to; he clearly hadn't expected to get himself tied to the chair and so far it hadn't occurred to him he was trapped. The demon surged against the restraints, but with that Key of Solomon up there on the ceiling, the black-eyed sonuvabitch wasn't going anywhere. Dean remained where he sat. He set his flashlight to the side, angling it so he could keep a better eye on his prisoner.
"Morning, Sunshine," he drawled with a grin. He offered a seemingly casual wave with the bowie knife. "I gotta say, man, I was expectin' more of a fight, maybe get some TK action thrown at me instead of you going down so easily. Anyway, we're gonna have ourselves a nice little chat real soon, so you might as well get comfy..."
Dean trailed off, his eyes looking up pointedly at the Key of Solomon on the ceiling. Sure, he'd had to improvise and use Sam's very pink, very sparkly and very strawberry-scented crayon to do the job, but it didn't matter what he'd used: the demon might not be able to give him any lip right now with the duct-tape gag, but it should sure as hell recognize what a devil's trap looked like. Now they were playing on his court, not its. Any powers it might've had before? Not gonna help. It was as helpless as a human right now, provided it didn't start chanting at him like that Meg bitch when they removed the gag from this one. Dean was tempted to work Punk-Ass over in the chair a little - oops, his fist just slipped - but he made a very good effort to remain sitting on the bed. After all, he wanted to wait for Sam and while Sam wasn't the guy who would normally go slugging people, the point was that he was gonna wait for his little brother before he got started on anything.
Whether it was the actual exorcism or just working this thing over.
Not that it'd really hurt it. But with luck, Sam would be back soon with a rosary and they could brew some holy water. Maybe then Punk-Ass would turn into a regular Chatty Cathy once they had some quality time between the three of them.
Reid clenched his teeth so hard they felt fit to crack apart right there in his mouth. He didn't need to try and squint past the glare of light and see who was talking to be pissed the fuck off at what they were saying, and damn if he didn't recognize the voice, to boot. With single-minded focus, he held his head steady; when his chin lowered slightly, it wasn't out of weakness.
Piece of shit! He'd show this mother of all fuck-ups a fight--
He spotted the knife first, the way its blade caught some of the light, but it didn't give him pause like maybe it should have, if he were just a guy helpless in a chair, with another guy holding him up with a weapon like a psycho, like he were Elle about to get his head bashed in and not wake up from it. Every one of his muscles clenched, too, straining against the bindings, practically vibrating with an excited energy. No, he wasn't scared. 'TK action'? Fuck that! He was a fucking warlock, goddamn it, he could do a hell of a lot more than that! An unholy spark of Power, and then his eyes were bleeding black. Who the fuck did this funny farm reject think Reid was!?
Thinking about how Mr. Slippery Fingers--and he was sure it was the guy from the lunch line, the guy with the salt, right, right--knew he could throw people across a room if he wanted? Not so much. Not even when he saw where that fucking grinning face was looking, and instinctively glanced up himself. Then something changed. He might've been feeling sick enough to puke, but he wasn't about to mix up dancing red blobs in front of his eyes with red lines crisscrossing the ceiling. And there were lines on the ceiling even after he blinked, an outline, a drawing... The scant light shifted, leaving the ceiling dark and indiscernible again, and Reid's gaze went with it, dropping back down to focus on the man.
Reid was still poised on the brink, Power whispering in his veins, but now thoughts were beginning to come together. The shitface sounded like he knew. The image above him seemed familiar. But... In that moment, however, those details didn't matter. Something else occurred to him, a twinge of instinct in the pause between thought and action.
Reid could've blasted the figure on the bed, no problem, pounding head and blurry vision or not, crush the fuck back against the wall, ten times as hard as what he'd done to get Reid trussed up like a show animal. He could've taken the knife and really given a good show. But there was one little thing holding him back from doing it. Literally. The tape, and now he was fucking sure it was tape. He had to get fucking untied first! He sucked in a breath and tipped his head back, like he were trying to get a better look at the ceiling, but in reality he was trying to concentrate, pull his Power away from the thought of violence and direct it to the duct tape keeping him trapped in the chair. If he could take care of that shit first...
And there they were. The tell-tale black eyes of a demon, the surefire sign you were dealing with a bad sonuvabitch who would probably skin you alive and wear whatever was left as a coat just for a laugh. He definitely hadn't been imagining it the other night!
Dean didn't move at first. The room was dark, the lights shot, but he had enough to go by with the flashlight to study Punk-Ass. He seemed to be pretty pissed, judging by the death glares he was trying to shoot out of his little black eyes. The demon looked up at the ceiling. Dean got to his feet, not liking the particular interest it was having in the devil's trap up there: demons knew what it was and they should be more interested in trying to talk their way out or taunt him, not looking up at the very thing that was trapping them here, not unless they thought there was something special about it. He didn't think Punk-Ass could chant his way outta this one, but he had a gut feeling that said he didn't like the way he was looking at the Key of Solomon, all the same. Was it possible for him to just break the lines, without even saying a word?
Sorry, Sammy. Looked like he was gonna have to rough up Punk-Ass a little, if only to shake the demon's concentration. Getting up from the bed, the mattress squeaking under him, Dean left the flashlight angled to give him a good view of the demon. Strolling forward, the hunter seemed almost bored from the way he was unconsciously flipping the bowie knife's handle in his hand, and while it was so damn tempting to just plunge it right up to the hilt into whatever soft bits he could get at, Dean knew the demon would still be walking after it. Without any warning, Dean spun toward the tied up demon and slugged him, hard as he dared without tipping the chair over.
His hand hurt but shit, did it feel good just to hit something and not feel guilty at all about it. Dean knelt back, making a point of meeting Punk-Ass's eyes and letting him get a good long look at his face. He didn't care if he'd meet this damn thing in Hell in a year's end, so long as the demon remembered who was responsible for sending it downstairs.
"Don't think you're the first one who got the genius idea of breakin' the lines," Dean said. His smile was empty. "I know whatever I can possibly think of, it won't hurt you in the long run. Might be fun for me, but let's face it: having fun with you and actually getting anything useful from you are two different things. So just shut up, sit tight, and we'll get right to it."
Soon as Sam got here. But Punk-Ass didn't need any warning ahead of time that Dean wasn't flying solo here, so he "forgot" to mention he was expecting backup.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. There wasn't much finesse required in doing something simple like undoing physical matter, but Reid just... couldn't. Couldn't get it! Like he was thirteen again, being asked to untie a series of knots without laying a hand on them, learning how to control his brute force and turn it into something more refined.
He preferred force. Just not when it was all he had.
He could break the chair, he was sure he could break the chair. But the duct tape, damn it. Fuck! Was he really stuck? Was he really stuck? He squeezed his blackened eyes shut briefly, felt his fingernails bite into his palms.
Of course, it was a little hard to concentrate when someone was punching him in the face, making his head jerk around and everything flare in a hot white burst of disorientation. Time seemed to grind to a halt right then and there. That's it. For a moment, he held completely still, refusing to so much as blink in response, but slowly, he turned his face back while Dean spoke. It could be hard to tell, looking into eyes that had no definition and seemingly no end, but there was a wildness lurking there, the reason why Reid had been the first suspect to call on when bad magic had been about.
He hit the mother fucker in the solar plexus with a burst of Power the size of a volleyball, but that had the momentum of a runaway truck.
Shit, so this was like Meg, where the demon had a few tricks up its sleeve despite being trapped. That or the Key of Solomon wasn't up to full strength because he'd had to draw it in crayon.
Dean went sprawling on his back when Punk-Ass finally did hit him with that TK action. He wheezed, feeling like he'd either been hit by a truck or by Company Man again, and rolled over, gritting his teeth. Far as he could tell, he hadn't had anything broken, but he wasn't about to give Punk-Ass more of a chance for a few potshots. The hunter got to his feet, doing his best to hide his wince and hoping the little bastard hadn't reopened his injuries from the other night, despite being tied up and about to get a hell of a nice tan downstairs tonight. The last thing he needed to be was bleeding all over the place again because it turned out some demons didn't lose all their juice under a shoddy Key of Solomon. Obviously they couldn't just sit tight and wait for Sam - or, at least, Punk-Ass couldn't. Not conscious, anyway.
Dean went for the bowie on the bed again, flipping the hilt in his hands again so he could strike with the butt again. Breathing hurt, moving hurt even more, but he'd had way too many years of the job under his belt to just sit there and cry like a bitch because he'd been knocked on his ass. He could always nurse it once the demon was KOed again. Dean circled out of the spread of the flashlight, moving behind Punk-Ass. His breath hitched a little in his chest and he knew, at the very least, that he'd have some very impressive bruises all over come tomorrow morning. Dean didn't say anything to give the demon more warning than he had to as he struck again with the bowie knife's hilt at the back of Punk-Ass's head.
Before the bastard even hit the floor, the warlock was straining as hard as he could against his restraints, thrashing with all he had. The chair tipped dangerously. He couldn’t think, see, or hear anything beyond the meek reservoir of Power pounding in him, the need to cream the sorry fuck who thought he could get away with getting the drop on him and then thinking he could jerk Reid around when Reid was wide fucking awake.
No, no way, as long as he had the slightest bit of magic, he wasn’t going to “sit tight” and put up with whatever crap the guy had planned.
It was testimony of Reid’s temperament that he could jerk his right arm against the duct tape to the point where his muscles trembled when he was close to passing out all on his own. (Close, but not quite. No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t! If he could just get one arm free…) Red splotches of color exploded and faded in front of his eyes, matching the beat of the thundering blood in his ears. There was a deep pain in his jaw now, too, as he locked the muscle and made no other sound than his harried breaths.
Somehow, he could still tell when the figure moved out of the light entirely. One, two, three… Counting seconds as the tape stretched and every inch of him sang at the flood of fury, adrenaline, and Power.
No chance to pull it together and send out another concentrated blast, but Reid wasn’t thinking about that. He just heaved himself sideways without any concern for what the fuck he was doing, knocking him and the entire chair over. Sweat stung his eyes as he hit the ground. Needless to say, he would’ve been crawling out of there by his fingernails if given half the chance.
Even before Sam reached the door, he could hear the sound of something crashing. Crap. He should've expected as much.
He swung open the door without hesitation, no clue as to what he was expecting the scene inside would look like. Not very good, it turned out. At least Dean was on his feet and the demon was down. And inside the trap, even though evidence of an ongoing scuffle was pretty clear. What?
Damn it. He'd seen this before, though the last time, he was the one tied down. Meg. If the Key wasn't reining the demon in, reciting an exorcism could be completely ineffective, too. Except the demon was still struggling to free itself from the chair. Was it that powerless? This wasn't making much sense; snapping free of that tape should've been no problem if there was nothing holding its full power at bay. So maybe the Key was only...what? Half effective?
His gaze flicked to Dean before going back to the demon. With his brother there, his powers were off the table. He didn't know if they'd work, either, but they had a better chance of doing so than a verbal exorcism. Better chance of the host surviving, as well.
The only thing holding him back from using them was Dean. There wasn't a lot of time to think it over; he knew he wouldn't be able to get Dean away from the action without some serious manhandling and the demon could still break free any second now. Sam took a split second to trip his way to a decision, settled on reciting an exorcism a shot first in the end.
It was easy enough to dredge up the Latin from his memory, but he stumbled over the first few words, rusty from disuse. He hadn't needed it since Ruby. His eyes were on the demon, watching. If it was working, there'd be immediate signs.
This particular demon really didn't want to be here, did it?
Dean staggered, thrown off-balance when his target suddenly was gone, the chair and its prisoner thudding loudly to the floor in the darkness. Seriously, what did this one even think it was doing? It wasn't gonna be able to step out of the devil's traps lines, no matter how much he struggled like a wild cat to get free of the chair. All Dean knew was he was probably gonna want to get more duct tape and extension cord, especially if he was struggling this much and that was before the actual exorcism. He had reached down and roughly hauled up both the chair and the imprisoned demon when Sam suddenly let himself in...
And immediately went for the big guns, busting out the Latin.
Punk-Ass plus the chair wasn't exactly light, but Dean was able to tip the chair back onto its legs as he glanced over his shoulder at Sam.
"Dude," he hissed sharply, "The hell're you doing? We need this joker top-side so we can get some answers from him!"
As he spoke, he grabbed up more of the duct-tape and began wrapping it around Punk-Ass's chest, as an afterthought winding some around his neck and looping it through the chair's back. He was already putting up more of a fight than he would've wanted, but this would just be another thing to slow the bastard down in the off chance he actually did bust loose. Shooting a look at Sam - he could see his brother's tall shadow, just at the edge of his flashlight's spread, but not much else - the hunter suddenly reached out and grabbed Punk-Ass by his chin with a bruising grip, jerking his head back and putting the bowie knife up against his neck, letting him feel the blade's edge. It wouldn't kill him, but he imagined it might be difficult to concentrate when you could be bleeding from a cut jugular. That and it'd be pretty hard to blend in with the rest of the humans bleeding from the throat like that. Sure, all that duct tape was in the way but that? Dean could work around that. Might take some sawing but if the demon didn't like it? Tough.
He was past the point of handwringing over the human the demon was holed up in. These demons had started all this crap, not him, and he wasn't gonna pussyfoot around when they were threatening the only family he had left.
Dean grunted, not yet slicing but leaving the threat very much there for the demon. "Just soften him up. Did you get the rosary?"
He could probably whip up some holy water in less than five minutes, and while Sammy seemed pretty gung-ho about sending Punk-Ass back to hell, he could easily stretch the exorcism to last long enough for Dean to get back and get cracking on this sonuvabitch himself. His whole front hurt, aching in that nauseating way as if Company Man had come back for an encore and kicked him in the friggen kidneys for the round two, but once they got that holy water, the tables would be turned and Dean was pretty sure he could make this demon beg to tell him its life story when he got through with it.
Somewhere, something felt jarred from the fall. Or maybe a lot of somethings. All Reid’s body knew was that there was pain in new places, and it sizzled up and down his nerves, only adding to the rest of it. But Reid wasn’t about to let that stop him; he was acting on instinct, and that’d always been good enough for him. Instinct faltered, though, when there was movement in the dark, and a shifting of stale air--his eyes went to the door where some else seemed to be, and his trembling muscles sagged a bit at the distraction. The warlock couldn’t hear much of anything over the buzzing in his head and the sound of his own hot, laboured panting, but he thought he caught some words.
Which didn’t make sense to the part of Reid’s mind that was still rational, because they sounded like Latin. Real Latin. The Book of Damnation Latin.
Before he knew what was happening, him and the chair were back upright, and over the sick sensation of his stomach crawling into his chest, he realized there was more duct tape going on. He jerked his head, both at the touch of something cold against his throat, and at Asshole #1 grabbing him. Oh no, no, he’d had enough of this, he could hurt them, both of them, and fucking hurt them good. And for a few heartbeats, the warlock didn’t even realize there was a knife blade to his throat, so obvious was that simple truth. When the vague thought did come to him, the only thing he felt was the sharp burn of anger, which helped sear away more of his disorientation and clear his head.
Thoughts coming together again. Just soften him up. Rosary? His black eyes rolled in the direction the Latin was coming from, the words falling like familiar music notes. Familiar. He felt like he should know--the idiot threats, knowing what he was, the lines on the ceiling, breaking the lines, “top-side”…
Later, Reid would wonder why the hell he hadn’t just let loose on the two in that moment, because there hadn’t been anything holding him back from willing another burst of Power, not his shaking and sweating, not the knife, not anything. But the sudden clarity that came to him seemed to hold him in thrall, where there was nothing but the puzzle coming together in one big bang. Oh. Jumped, tied to a chair, kept alive, of course he knew where he’d seen and heard everything before…
Exorcism.
Against all odds, something like a laugh wanted to escape him.
Sam had been ready to ignore Dean outright, seeing as he was kind of very not interested in Dean getting answers of any sort. He just wanted to send the demon packing before something about the deal or any of that spilled past its lips. Dean could yell at him about it later all he wanted.
But the exorcism obviously wasn't working. He stopped abruptly. There was no point in going on. It did leave the issue of where to go from here. They couldn't just leave the demon here forever. Sam juggled the idea of finishing off the exorcism while using his abilities at the same time, cover it up that way, but he wasn't so sure he could split his focus like that.
Too busy trying to sort this out, he didn't answer Dean's question and by the time it registered, the glint of a blade had caught his attention. Never mind where the hell did Dean get his Bowie from in the first place, what was Dean even doing? It was a demon, a slit throat was just gonna kill the host and slow the demon a bit at best. Whatever was going through Dean's head, Sam really didn't want another dead body tacked to his list. Not if he could help it. Which he could, except he needed Dean to not be here.
He also needed Dean to not start questioning the demon. He could tell his brother was building up to it. There was no way for the interrogation to even go remotely well even if Dean miraculously picked the most innocuous questions to ask. The information Dean would be looking for, it was in all likelihood obsolete-about events long passed. And the moment the demon pointed this out, one thing was going to lead to another.
Sam crossed the room, no clue as to how he was gonna stall this or convince Dean to leave, just knowing that he had to do it. If this looked like a bit of a desperate move, it was probably because it was. It was stupid to be trying to deal with this crap while a demon was right in the room, one that wasn't even trapped, but somehow self-preservation felt less important than preventing everything from crashing down. The demon couldn't touch him, anyway, not the way it could regular people. He could tell Dean was in crap shape, too, as he drew closer-he'd learned to tell, no matter how well Dean hid it-and that was only one more reason why he wanted Dean away from the demon, to let Sam take care of this on his own.
His fingers curled around Dean's arm, the one not holding the knife to avoid jarring Dean into causing the weapon to slip. This was the only thing he could address that was both actually a real concern of his and something that Dean might be able to buy coming from him. His voice was low, almost just loud enough for only Dean to catch. "Dude, you can't."
Dean didn't shake off Sam. "Sure I can," he said and moved the knife a little bit lower under the duct tape, pressing the bowie's blade against the exposed skin. It didn't take much to draw a trickle of blood from Punk-Ass. "I get you wanna put this bastard down, but we've still got work to do. Y'gonna let me do my job or what?"
His finger tightened around Punk-Ass's chin as he ignored Sam, turning his attention back on the demon.
"I think we all know this," and Dean pressed the blade a little deeper, "ain't gonna kill you. But I imagine it'd be pretty inconvenient to walk around undetected bloodied up a bit. Everyone in this room knows what you really are, so let's just get past all the bullcrap and get to the point: I want answers, Punk-Ass, and you're gonna give them to me."
This was usually the part where Sam would hand him the rosary or a flask of holy water so he could "encourage" the demon to get chatty. After his little TK show, Dean wasn't too keen on pulling the knife away from their prisoner's throat, even if it wasn't lethal, by far. When Sam didn't hand over either items, Dean shot a look at him - or, well, at his shadow, because he was still standing barely in the flashlight's crappy light - and raised an eyebrow. First he'd busted in here, Latin-blazing, and now he was tip-toeing around roughing up this demon like they were kids again. After Cold Oak, after everything these things had put them through, Dean just didn't get these friggen mood-swings his little brother went through sometimes; you'd think especially after Cold Oak that Sam would want to get straight to the payback and have a chance to get some answers, maybe even some information that could help them track down Yellow-Eyes and Jake. Dean let go of Punk-Ass's chin, reaching around and jerking off the duct-tape across his mouth non-too-gently.
"You start chanting, Princess, and I'll give you more than a little nick," he warned the demon. "How'd we get here? Is this Martin Landel that yellow-eyed sonuvabitch? And how did you find him?"
He didn't point at Sammy. But if this demon was in the loop at all - and they usually were, although the idea of a group of demons chatting it up like a bunch of gossips was enough to make him shudder - then it'd know who Sam was. It seemed to possibly know who he was, already. And the fact it was in a devil's trap and tied up had to be a big blinking sign right there about who and what they really were. Doctor Kisugi had made threats about Sam, seeming to know where he was and while he knew for certain she wasn't a demon, someone (or something, most likely) had been keeping her updated. Maybe this demon knew something about their abductions. Maybe it didn't. Either way, Dean didn't give a shit. Demons were evil, no awkward shades of gray except for the poor kid this one was holed up in. They'd be doing the world a favor by dealing with this demon, whether or not it knew anything useful.
Reid’s eyes stayed riveted on the two figures in the room with him, going back and forth between them as everything just seemed to click together and make sense. At least, sense in warlock terms.
The gut-twisting fury that’d had Reid thrashing around like an feral animal seemed to have cooled to a smoulder in a matter of seconds, and the feel of blood mingling with sweat on his exposed skin barely registered in him. So this was what it was like dealing with the fanatical nobodies. Sure, godlike users of the black arts had been caught and strung up before--the Salem witch mess had been a prime example of that. Lots of ancestors had gotten their jollies off with regular people who thought they were the Antichrist and tried to drown them in a vat of holy water. All in the past, though. Never in the present day, where that sort of shit seemed laughable, what with all the rules and regulations of the covenant.
But hey, it looked like Reid was getting his turn. Exorcised for being demon possessed.
These class act retards really had no idea.
He watched the taller one for a while, trying to pick out features while his vision continued to swim, up until the guy with the salt said answers. Then Reid looked over like he were finally acknowledging he was one wrong twitch away from death. Yeah fucking right. The warlock didn’t flinch when the duct tape was ripped away, gaze dipping to a spot on Dean‘s jacket. Just a little more pain. He could handle pain. Suddenly everything seemed a hell of a lot less urgent now that the warlock had figured out what Dumb and Dumber were up to, and he could handle it.
Chanting… That was a good one. He could will the knife away without so much as a word, and they--Well, no, apparently only Reid knew it.
Now that he could breathe through his mouth again, the air felt cold in his throat; he ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. And then the smile that had been lurking in the back of his mind appeared on his lips, aggravating his bruised face. But it only got bigger. He sniffed first, cleared his throat, then swallowed. Yeah, it was sure going to be nice paying both of them back for this. What Power he had was still coiled like a spring, continuing to make his body tremble slightly. If they happened to think anything he did was out of fear, they were going to be in for a surprise.
“Dude,” he said abruptly, mocking the both of them for their over usage. His gaze was still turned away from their faces. “If you wanted me here, you could’ve just asked.”
Well, that managed to stall off an impressive five seconds. Sam let him go.
Dean was looking at him, obviously expecting the rosary, and Sam wasn't really sure what to say at first. This seemed an awkward moment to launch into an explanation of how he'd almost suffocated under a pile of ghostly hair, therefore preventing his acquisition of the rosary. He ended up shrugging a shoulder and giving a slight shake of his head as apologetically he could manage, indicating that he'd explain later.
Hearing Dean ask about the yellow-eyed demon when Sam precisely who had killed the thing was downright absurd. At least the demon hadn't immediately pointed out that Yellow-Eyes was dead. Actually, why hadn't it pointed that out? Was it possible for a demon to be caught up in the same sense of temporal discrepancy they were?
Probably, come to think of it, though he couldn't imagine why. He'd already had the feeling demons had nothing to do with this; Yellow-Eyes might've had the twisted sense of humour for it, but Lilith was fairly standard evil, creepy little girl persona and all. Bringing on fire and brimstone seemed more like her deal. So, what, if this was a demon, it was here by accident? Because he couldn't think of another reason why there would be a lone demon here, apparently a part of the patient population no less. Who had...locked itself inside the body of someone with an exceptionally limited freedom to move around or do anything? What purpose could that even serve?
Sam glanced back at forth between the shadowy figures of his brother and the demon, frowning, but he didn't have much to go on aside from a hunch. He'd have to let Dean go ahead with the interrogation; if it started to go south, then Sam would...do something. Besides, no holy water and an inability to exorcise meant that there wasn't a lot of hold they had over the demon. Sam was kind of hoping Dean would just give up as a result and knock it out.
Not that he didn't have questions of his own. But those were off the table, too. Considering he used to let Dean take the lead on this kind of stuff, maybe Dean wouldn't question his silence all that much.
Now that he was alone in the room, Dean stripped down all the way, tugging on his jeans and then working on his boots. They weren't exactly new - worn in with scuffs and ragged shoelaces - but the important thing was they kept his feet protected, especially if he had to go kicking down any doors safely. Dean collected the rest of the things he'd need for the night, pocketing the extension cord and picking up his flashlight and his bowie knife. He didn't plan to go stabbing Punk-Ass if he could help it, but he felt better carrying it all the same.
Ready. Sorta. Would've been more ready with some holy water or the Colt, but sometimes a guy had to wing it.
[To here]
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Dean was out of breath by the time he staggered back to M2.
He was about to step in when he just remembered to break the salt line by rubbing it out with his foot - he hadn't ever tried to carry a demon across an intact one but he already had the mental image of Punk-Ass bouncing off as if there'd been an invisible wall. He made sure to restore the line once they were over.
Despite the way his legs were threatening to buckle under him, Dean made sure to be nice and careful and slow about putting Punk-Ass down. Not 'cause he cared about treating him like china, but because he still had the bowie in his belt and he didn't want to stab himself with it putting him down. With Punk-Ass out of his hair, Dean reached behind his back and pulled the bowie knife from his belt, leaving it on the bed as he dragged one of the room's chairs into the middle of M2, looking up at the ceiling and making sure the chair was positioned in the very center of the crayon Key of Solomon drawn above him. Happy with it, Dean bent over the unconscious demon and lugged him toward the chair, plopping his ass to the chair and untying the extension cord.
Soon enough, he had duct-taped the demon's arms and legs to the chair. On second thought, he put another piece across the thing's mouth. If it woke up, there was a good chance it'd be trying to talk trash at him - it'd probably make him want to lay into the thing before Sam even got here for the rest of the fun. ;Sides, he remembered what happened that time when Sam had been possessed, how he'd started chanting and broken the devil's trap with some kind of magic. Might as well bite this one in the bud before they had a repeat. Couldn't exactly get any chanting done if your mouth was taped shut; it was simple and crude, but it got the job done and that was the important part.
Once Punk-Ass was situated in the chair and liberally duct-taped to its arms and legs, Dean sat back on the edge of his bed to wait. He watched Punk-Ass, elbows on his thighs, absently tapping the flat of his bowie knife against his knee.
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The first emotion to strike him was anger, not fear, and he heaved his entire body against the restraints with a clear sense of indignation despite his spinning head. Unless it was because of one of the families, Reid had never been caught with his pants down, never been vulnerable. Never had to worry, never the underdog. For a moment, he didn't understand why whatever was holding him wasn't immediately ripped apart by invisible hands. He was... sitting up? Tied up? Gagged?
And then, of course, context began to sink in. Which only made him more angry.
The fucking firstborn son of the Garwin family, and he was in a place that'd stolen his magic.
He shook his head sharply (a mistake, that, given the bruised skull, but Reid didn't give a shit), a snarl caught behind the tape stretched across his mouth. Wakefulness was setting in bit by bit, along with the pain, which radiated outward from the spot he'd been hit; it caused a sickly heat to roll through his body, leaving the small of his back damp with sweat. Although the light-headedness and the darkness almost made the effort a lost cause, Reid tried to blink spots from his eyes, to focus. The soft touch of the bangs hanging in his face itched.
A person didn't get roped up for nothing. The anger only seemed to make that fact clearer.
That was when he got the distinct impression he wasn't alone. Lifting his head higher took a ridiculous amount of effort, but he did it. Oh yeah, the brain was definitely waking up. This was on purpose.
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"Morning, Sunshine," he drawled with a grin. He offered a seemingly casual wave with the bowie knife. "I gotta say, man, I was expectin' more of a fight, maybe get some TK action thrown at me instead of you going down so easily. Anyway, we're gonna have ourselves a nice little chat real soon, so you might as well get comfy..."
Dean trailed off, his eyes looking up pointedly at the Key of Solomon on the ceiling. Sure, he'd had to improvise and use Sam's very pink, very sparkly and very strawberry-scented crayon to do the job, but it didn't matter what he'd used: the demon might not be able to give him any lip right now with the duct-tape gag, but it should sure as hell recognize what a devil's trap looked like. Now they were playing on his court, not its. Any powers it might've had before? Not gonna help. It was as helpless as a human right now, provided it didn't start chanting at him like that Meg bitch when they removed the gag from this one. Dean was tempted to work Punk-Ass over in the chair a little - oops, his fist just slipped - but he made a very good effort to remain sitting on the bed. After all, he wanted to wait for Sam and while Sam wasn't the guy who would normally go slugging people, the point was that he was gonna wait for his little brother before he got started on anything.
Whether it was the actual exorcism or just working this thing over.
Not that it'd really hurt it. But with luck, Sam would be back soon with a rosary and they could brew some holy water. Maybe then Punk-Ass would turn into a regular Chatty Cathy once they had some quality time between the three of them.
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Piece of shit! He'd show this mother of all fuck-ups a fight--
He spotted the knife first, the way its blade caught some of the light, but it didn't give him pause like maybe it should have, if he were just a guy helpless in a chair, with another guy holding him up with a weapon like a psycho, like he were Elle about to get his head bashed in and not wake up from it. Every one of his muscles clenched, too, straining against the bindings, practically vibrating with an excited energy. No, he wasn't scared. 'TK action'? Fuck that! He was a fucking warlock, goddamn it, he could do a hell of a lot more than that! An unholy spark of Power, and then his eyes were bleeding black. Who the fuck did this funny farm reject think Reid was!?
Thinking about how Mr. Slippery Fingers--and he was sure it was the guy from the lunch line, the guy with the salt, right, right--knew he could throw people across a room if he wanted? Not so much. Not even when he saw where that fucking grinning face was looking, and instinctively glanced up himself. Then something changed. He might've been feeling sick enough to puke, but he wasn't about to mix up dancing red blobs in front of his eyes with red lines crisscrossing the ceiling. And there were lines on the ceiling even after he blinked, an outline, a drawing... The scant light shifted, leaving the ceiling dark and indiscernible again, and Reid's gaze went with it, dropping back down to focus on the man.
Reid was still poised on the brink, Power whispering in his veins, but now thoughts were beginning to come together. The shitface sounded like he knew. The image above him seemed familiar. But... In that moment, however, those details didn't matter. Something else occurred to him, a twinge of instinct in the pause between thought and action.
Reid could've blasted the figure on the bed, no problem, pounding head and blurry vision or not, crush the fuck back against the wall, ten times as hard as what he'd done to get Reid trussed up like a show animal. He could've taken the knife and really given a good show. But there was one little thing holding him back from doing it. Literally. The tape, and now he was fucking sure it was tape. He had to get fucking untied first! He sucked in a breath and tipped his head back, like he were trying to get a better look at the ceiling, but in reality he was trying to concentrate, pull his Power away from the thought of violence and direct it to the duct tape keeping him trapped in the chair. If he could take care of that shit first...
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Dean didn't move at first. The room was dark, the lights shot, but he had enough to go by with the flashlight to study Punk-Ass. He seemed to be pretty pissed, judging by the death glares he was trying to shoot out of his little black eyes. The demon looked up at the ceiling. Dean got to his feet, not liking the particular interest it was having in the devil's trap up there: demons knew what it was and they should be more interested in trying to talk their way out or taunt him, not looking up at the very thing that was trapping them here, not unless they thought there was something special about it. He didn't think Punk-Ass could chant his way outta this one, but he had a gut feeling that said he didn't like the way he was looking at the Key of Solomon, all the same. Was it possible for him to just break the lines, without even saying a word?
Sorry, Sammy. Looked like he was gonna have to rough up Punk-Ass a little, if only to shake the demon's concentration. Getting up from the bed, the mattress squeaking under him, Dean left the flashlight angled to give him a good view of the demon. Strolling forward, the hunter seemed almost bored from the way he was unconsciously flipping the bowie knife's handle in his hand, and while it was so damn tempting to just plunge it right up to the hilt into whatever soft bits he could get at, Dean knew the demon would still be walking after it. Without any warning, Dean spun toward the tied up demon and slugged him, hard as he dared without tipping the chair over.
His hand hurt but shit, did it feel good just to hit something and not feel guilty at all about it. Dean knelt back, making a point of meeting Punk-Ass's eyes and letting him get a good long look at his face. He didn't care if he'd meet this damn thing in Hell in a year's end, so long as the demon remembered who was responsible for sending it downstairs.
"Don't think you're the first one who got the genius idea of breakin' the lines," Dean said. His smile was empty. "I know whatever I can possibly think of, it won't hurt you in the long run. Might be fun for me, but let's face it: having fun with you and actually getting anything useful from you are two different things. So just shut up, sit tight, and we'll get right to it."
Soon as Sam got here. But Punk-Ass didn't need any warning ahead of time that Dean wasn't flying solo here, so he "forgot" to mention he was expecting backup.
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He preferred force. Just not when it was all he had.
He could break the chair, he was sure he could break the chair. But the duct tape, damn it. Fuck! Was he really stuck? Was he really stuck? He squeezed his blackened eyes shut briefly, felt his fingernails bite into his palms.
Of course, it was a little hard to concentrate when someone was punching him in the face, making his head jerk around and everything flare in a hot white burst of disorientation. Time seemed to grind to a halt right then and there. That's it. For a moment, he held completely still, refusing to so much as blink in response, but slowly, he turned his face back while Dean spoke. It could be hard to tell, looking into eyes that had no definition and seemingly no end, but there was a wildness lurking there, the reason why Reid had been the first suspect to call on when bad magic had been about.
He hit the mother fucker in the solar plexus with a burst of Power the size of a volleyball, but that had the momentum of a runaway truck.
Yeah, he preferred force.
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Dean went sprawling on his back when Punk-Ass finally did hit him with that TK action. He wheezed, feeling like he'd either been hit by a truck or by Company Man again, and rolled over, gritting his teeth. Far as he could tell, he hadn't had anything broken, but he wasn't about to give Punk-Ass more of a chance for a few potshots. The hunter got to his feet, doing his best to hide his wince and hoping the little bastard hadn't reopened his injuries from the other night, despite being tied up and about to get a hell of a nice tan downstairs tonight. The last thing he needed to be was bleeding all over the place again because it turned out some demons didn't lose all their juice under a shoddy Key of Solomon. Obviously they couldn't just sit tight and wait for Sam - or, at least, Punk-Ass couldn't. Not conscious, anyway.
Dean went for the bowie on the bed again, flipping the hilt in his hands again so he could strike with the butt again. Breathing hurt, moving hurt even more, but he'd had way too many years of the job under his belt to just sit there and cry like a bitch because he'd been knocked on his ass. He could always nurse it once the demon was KOed again. Dean circled out of the spread of the flashlight, moving behind Punk-Ass. His breath hitched a little in his chest and he knew, at the very least, that he'd have some very impressive bruises all over come tomorrow morning. Dean didn't say anything to give the demon more warning than he had to as he struck again with the bowie knife's hilt at the back of Punk-Ass's head.
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No, no way, as long as he had the slightest bit of magic, he wasn’t going to “sit tight” and put up with whatever crap the guy had planned.
It was testimony of Reid’s temperament that he could jerk his right arm against the duct tape to the point where his muscles trembled when he was close to passing out all on his own. (Close, but not quite. No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t! If he could just get one arm free…) Red splotches of color exploded and faded in front of his eyes, matching the beat of the thundering blood in his ears. There was a deep pain in his jaw now, too, as he locked the muscle and made no other sound than his harried breaths.
Somehow, he could still tell when the figure moved out of the light entirely. One, two, three… Counting seconds as the tape stretched and every inch of him sang at the flood of fury, adrenaline, and Power.
No chance to pull it together and send out another concentrated blast, but Reid wasn’t thinking about that. He just heaved himself sideways without any concern for what the fuck he was doing, knocking him and the entire chair over. Sweat stung his eyes as he hit the ground. Needless to say, he would’ve been crawling out of there by his fingernails if given half the chance.
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Even before Sam reached the door, he could hear the sound of something crashing. Crap. He should've expected as much.
He swung open the door without hesitation, no clue as to what he was expecting the scene inside would look like. Not very good, it turned out. At least Dean was on his feet and the demon was down. And inside the trap, even though evidence of an ongoing scuffle was pretty clear. What?
Damn it. He'd seen this before, though the last time, he was the one tied down. Meg. If the Key wasn't reining the demon in, reciting an exorcism could be completely ineffective, too. Except the demon was still struggling to free itself from the chair. Was it that powerless? This wasn't making much sense; snapping free of that tape should've been no problem if there was nothing holding its full power at bay. So maybe the Key was only...what? Half effective?
His gaze flicked to Dean before going back to the demon. With his brother there, his powers were off the table. He didn't know if they'd work, either, but they had a better chance of doing so than a verbal exorcism. Better chance of the host surviving, as well.
The only thing holding him back from using them was Dean. There wasn't a lot of time to think it over; he knew he wouldn't be able to get Dean away from the action without some serious manhandling and the demon could still break free any second now. Sam took a split second to trip his way to a decision, settled on reciting an exorcism a shot first in the end.
It was easy enough to dredge up the Latin from his memory, but he stumbled over the first few words, rusty from disuse. He hadn't needed it since Ruby. His eyes were on the demon, watching. If it was working, there'd be immediate signs.
God, he hoped it worked.
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Dean staggered, thrown off-balance when his target suddenly was gone, the chair and its prisoner thudding loudly to the floor in the darkness. Seriously, what did this one even think it was doing? It wasn't gonna be able to step out of the devil's traps lines, no matter how much he struggled like a wild cat to get free of the chair. All Dean knew was he was probably gonna want to get more duct tape and extension cord, especially if he was struggling this much and that was before the actual exorcism. He had reached down and roughly hauled up both the chair and the imprisoned demon when Sam suddenly let himself in...
And immediately went for the big guns, busting out the Latin.
Punk-Ass plus the chair wasn't exactly light, but Dean was able to tip the chair back onto its legs as he glanced over his shoulder at Sam.
"Dude," he hissed sharply, "The hell're you doing? We need this joker top-side so we can get some answers from him!"
As he spoke, he grabbed up more of the duct-tape and began wrapping it around Punk-Ass's chest, as an afterthought winding some around his neck and looping it through the chair's back. He was already putting up more of a fight than he would've wanted, but this would just be another thing to slow the bastard down in the off chance he actually did bust loose. Shooting a look at Sam - he could see his brother's tall shadow, just at the edge of his flashlight's spread, but not much else - the hunter suddenly reached out and grabbed Punk-Ass by his chin with a bruising grip, jerking his head back and putting the bowie knife up against his neck, letting him feel the blade's edge. It wouldn't kill him, but he imagined it might be difficult to concentrate when you could be bleeding from a cut jugular. That and it'd be pretty hard to blend in with the rest of the humans bleeding from the throat like that. Sure, all that duct tape was in the way but that? Dean could work around that. Might take some sawing but if the demon didn't like it? Tough.
He was past the point of handwringing over the human the demon was holed up in. These demons had started all this crap, not him, and he wasn't gonna pussyfoot around when they were threatening the only family he had left.
Dean grunted, not yet slicing but leaving the threat very much there for the demon. "Just soften him up. Did you get the rosary?"
He could probably whip up some holy water in less than five minutes, and while Sammy seemed pretty gung-ho about sending Punk-Ass back to hell, he could easily stretch the exorcism to last long enough for Dean to get back and get cracking on this sonuvabitch himself. His whole front hurt, aching in that nauseating way as if Company Man had come back for an encore and kicked him in the friggen kidneys for the round two, but once they got that holy water, the tables would be turned and Dean was pretty sure he could make this demon beg to tell him its life story when he got through with it.
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Which didn’t make sense to the part of Reid’s mind that was still rational, because they sounded like Latin. Real Latin. The Book of Damnation Latin.
Before he knew what was happening, him and the chair were back upright, and over the sick sensation of his stomach crawling into his chest, he realized there was more duct tape going on. He jerked his head, both at the touch of something cold against his throat, and at Asshole #1 grabbing him. Oh no, no, he’d had enough of this, he could hurt them, both of them, and fucking hurt them good. And for a few heartbeats, the warlock didn’t even realize there was a knife blade to his throat, so obvious was that simple truth. When the vague thought did come to him, the only thing he felt was the sharp burn of anger, which helped sear away more of his disorientation and clear his head.
Thoughts coming together again. Just soften him up. Rosary? His black eyes rolled in the direction the Latin was coming from, the words falling like familiar music notes. Familiar. He felt like he should know--the idiot threats, knowing what he was, the lines on the ceiling, breaking the lines, “top-side”…
Later, Reid would wonder why the hell he hadn’t just let loose on the two in that moment, because there hadn’t been anything holding him back from willing another burst of Power, not his shaking and sweating, not the knife, not anything. But the sudden clarity that came to him seemed to hold him in thrall, where there was nothing but the puzzle coming together in one big bang. Oh. Jumped, tied to a chair, kept alive, of course he knew where he’d seen and heard everything before…
Exorcism.
Against all odds, something like a laugh wanted to escape him.
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But the exorcism obviously wasn't working. He stopped abruptly. There was no point in going on. It did leave the issue of where to go from here. They couldn't just leave the demon here forever. Sam juggled the idea of finishing off the exorcism while using his abilities at the same time, cover it up that way, but he wasn't so sure he could split his focus like that.
Too busy trying to sort this out, he didn't answer Dean's question and by the time it registered, the glint of a blade had caught his attention. Never mind where the hell did Dean get his Bowie from in the first place, what was Dean even doing? It was a demon, a slit throat was just gonna kill the host and slow the demon a bit at best. Whatever was going through Dean's head, Sam really didn't want another dead body tacked to his list. Not if he could help it. Which he could, except he needed Dean to not be here.
He also needed Dean to not start questioning the demon. He could tell his brother was building up to it. There was no way for the interrogation to even go remotely well even if Dean miraculously picked the most innocuous questions to ask. The information Dean would be looking for, it was in all likelihood obsolete-about events long passed. And the moment the demon pointed this out, one thing was going to lead to another.
Sam crossed the room, no clue as to how he was gonna stall this or convince Dean to leave, just knowing that he had to do it. If this looked like a bit of a desperate move, it was probably because it was. It was stupid to be trying to deal with this crap while a demon was right in the room, one that wasn't even trapped, but somehow self-preservation felt less important than preventing everything from crashing down. The demon couldn't touch him, anyway, not the way it could regular people. He could tell Dean was in crap shape, too, as he drew closer-he'd learned to tell, no matter how well Dean hid it-and that was only one more reason why he wanted Dean away from the demon, to let Sam take care of this on his own.
His fingers curled around Dean's arm, the one not holding the knife to avoid jarring Dean into causing the weapon to slip. This was the only thing he could address that was both actually a real concern of his and something that Dean might be able to buy coming from him. His voice was low, almost just loud enough for only Dean to catch. "Dude, you can't."
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His finger tightened around Punk-Ass's chin as he ignored Sam, turning his attention back on the demon.
"I think we all know this," and Dean pressed the blade a little deeper, "ain't gonna kill you. But I imagine it'd be pretty inconvenient to walk around undetected bloodied up a bit. Everyone in this room knows what you really are, so let's just get past all the bullcrap and get to the point: I want answers, Punk-Ass, and you're gonna give them to me."
This was usually the part where Sam would hand him the rosary or a flask of holy water so he could "encourage" the demon to get chatty. After his little TK show, Dean wasn't too keen on pulling the knife away from their prisoner's throat, even if it wasn't lethal, by far. When Sam didn't hand over either items, Dean shot a look at him - or, well, at his shadow, because he was still standing barely in the flashlight's crappy light - and raised an eyebrow. First he'd busted in here, Latin-blazing, and now he was tip-toeing around roughing up this demon like they were kids again. After Cold Oak, after everything these things had put them through, Dean just didn't get these friggen mood-swings his little brother went through sometimes; you'd think especially after Cold Oak that Sam would want to get straight to the payback and have a chance to get some answers, maybe even some information that could help them track down Yellow-Eyes and Jake. Dean let go of Punk-Ass's chin, reaching around and jerking off the duct-tape across his mouth non-too-gently.
"You start chanting, Princess, and I'll give you more than a little nick," he warned the demon. "How'd we get here? Is this Martin Landel that yellow-eyed sonuvabitch? And how did you find him?"
He didn't point at Sammy. But if this demon was in the loop at all - and they usually were, although the idea of a group of demons chatting it up like a bunch of gossips was enough to make him shudder - then it'd know who Sam was. It seemed to possibly know who he was, already. And the fact it was in a devil's trap and tied up had to be a big blinking sign right there about who and what they really were. Doctor Kisugi had made threats about Sam, seeming to know where he was and while he knew for certain she wasn't a demon, someone (or something, most likely) had been keeping her updated. Maybe this demon knew something about their abductions. Maybe it didn't. Either way, Dean didn't give a shit. Demons were evil, no awkward shades of gray except for the poor kid this one was holed up in. They'd be doing the world a favor by dealing with this demon, whether or not it knew anything useful.
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The gut-twisting fury that’d had Reid thrashing around like an feral animal seemed to have cooled to a smoulder in a matter of seconds, and the feel of blood mingling with sweat on his exposed skin barely registered in him. So this was what it was like dealing with the fanatical nobodies. Sure, godlike users of the black arts had been caught and strung up before--the Salem witch mess had been a prime example of that. Lots of ancestors had gotten their jollies off with regular people who thought they were the Antichrist and tried to drown them in a vat of holy water. All in the past, though. Never in the present day, where that sort of shit seemed laughable, what with all the rules and regulations of the covenant.
But hey, it looked like Reid was getting his turn. Exorcised for being demon possessed.
These class act retards really had no idea.
He watched the taller one for a while, trying to pick out features while his vision continued to swim, up until the guy with the salt said answers. Then Reid looked over like he were finally acknowledging he was one wrong twitch away from death. Yeah fucking right. The warlock didn’t flinch when the duct tape was ripped away, gaze dipping to a spot on Dean‘s jacket. Just a little more pain. He could handle pain. Suddenly everything seemed a hell of a lot less urgent now that the warlock had figured out what Dumb and Dumber were up to, and he could handle it.
Chanting… That was a good one. He could will the knife away without so much as a word, and they--Well, no, apparently only Reid knew it.
Now that he could breathe through his mouth again, the air felt cold in his throat; he ran the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip. And then the smile that had been lurking in the back of his mind appeared on his lips, aggravating his bruised face. But it only got bigger. He sniffed first, cleared his throat, then swallowed. Yeah, it was sure going to be nice paying both of them back for this. What Power he had was still coiled like a spring, continuing to make his body tremble slightly. If they happened to think anything he did was out of fear, they were going to be in for a surprise.
“Dude,” he said abruptly, mocking the both of them for their over usage. His gaze was still turned away from their faces. “If you wanted me here, you could’ve just asked.”
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Dean was looking at him, obviously expecting the rosary, and Sam wasn't really sure what to say at first. This seemed an awkward moment to launch into an explanation of how he'd almost suffocated under a pile of ghostly hair, therefore preventing his acquisition of the rosary. He ended up shrugging a shoulder and giving a slight shake of his head as apologetically he could manage, indicating that he'd explain later.
Hearing Dean ask about the yellow-eyed demon when Sam precisely who had killed the thing was downright absurd. At least the demon hadn't immediately pointed out that Yellow-Eyes was dead. Actually, why hadn't it pointed that out? Was it possible for a demon to be caught up in the same sense of temporal discrepancy they were?
Probably, come to think of it, though he couldn't imagine why. He'd already had the feeling demons had nothing to do with this; Yellow-Eyes might've had the twisted sense of humour for it, but Lilith was fairly standard evil, creepy little girl persona and all. Bringing on fire and brimstone seemed more like her deal. So, what, if this was a demon, it was here by accident? Because he couldn't think of another reason why there would be a lone demon here, apparently a part of the patient population no less. Who had...locked itself inside the body of someone with an exceptionally limited freedom to move around or do anything? What purpose could that even serve?
Sam glanced back at forth between the shadowy figures of his brother and the demon, frowning, but he didn't have much to go on aside from a hunch. He'd have to let Dean go ahead with the interrogation; if it started to go south, then Sam would...do something. Besides, no holy water and an inability to exorcise meant that there wasn't a lot of hold they had over the demon. Sam was kind of hoping Dean would just give up as a result and knock it out.
Not that he didn't have questions of his own. But those were off the table, too. Considering he used to let Dean take the lead on this kind of stuff, maybe Dean wouldn't question his silence all that much.
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