Speaking for the Dead - Pt 1
Speaking for the Dead: Part One
He flinched when the door slammed shut.
:::
The first time Dean woke up, he was only awake long enough to realize that he had no idea where he was and that someone was screaming shrilly in the background. From another room, he figured, since the sound was kind of muted, like there was at least one wall between him and whatever was making that kind of trapped-animal noise.
There was that cotton ball taste in his mouth he got when he’d been pumped with sedatives. And his head was throbbing in time with his heart.
The last thing he remembered thinking clearly was that tranquillizers and concussions usually weren’t a good thing to mix. And then that cotton ball taste sucked him back under.
:::
The next time he woke up, Dean wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he was awake.
The screaming had stopped. Replaced by someone humming softly a few feet away.
“Sam,” he called out hoarsely. His throat didn’t feel dry, but his voice sounded like it should be. “Sam,” he tried again, forcing his eyes open.
“There’s no one else here,” a voice answered.
Dean glanced over to see who’d spoken to him and saw a woman sitting in a second cage a few feet away. She was running her fingers through the hair of a child sleeping on her lap.
The humming had stopped, leaving silence behind filled only with Dean’s relieved sigh. He tried to move his hands out from behind his back, but couldn’t get them loose from the rope.
“Where’s here?” Dean asked.
“Don’t know,” the woman answered. She didn’t look up from the sleeping kid.
Dean shifted, tugging a little at the ropes binding his wrists. “You remember how you got here? Or who took us?”
“I don’t know who he is,” the woman answered. “But he tore the front wall off my house when he came for us. Killed everyone else there. Except for Charlie. I think he got away.”
“Who’s Charlie?” Dean asked. He gave up trying to get his hands free and just wiggled his body closer to the cage bars so he could sit up instead. If there was someone out there who knew they’d been taken, who might be looking for them even now…
“Charlie’s my familiar.”
The silence after that stretched out between them for a few minutes while Dean just stared at the woman across from him. “You’re a witch,” he stated. Except he didn’t think that was true. His skin wasn’t trying to crawl off his body.
“I’d have been called that at one time,” she told him. “But no, I’m not a witch. At least not in the sense you’re thinking of the word.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m a psychic,” she said. “A nature priestess, actually.”
“So you’ve got some mojo?” Dean asked. “What are you still doing here then?”
She gave a brief, humourless laugh, but still didn’t look at him. “We knew we were going to be asked to offer sacrifice. We didn’t know when or where or how. And it wasn’t for us to question why.” Sighing she added, “But after Jack’s vision, we knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time.”
“So this is your god’s doing?” Dean asked with no little hint of disgust. He knew that there were gods running around. Most of which hadn’t been worshipped in centuries. He’d had the fact that those old gods were real brought to his attention in the past. He’d killed two of them. If this were something like that, Dean knew he could kill it. Whatever it happened to be.
“No,” the woman responded forcefully. “No, my Lord and Lady would never do this to us. They would never break us like this for their own amusement. We were asked to offer sacrifice and we accepted of our own free will. Our blood was spilt for a greater reason, our sacrifices used to burn a new path. I saw that much.”
Dean looked away, looked to the rest of the room. He couldn’t actually see anything beyond their two cages. Everything else was dark and out of focus, but Dean didn’t think too much on it. He knew not all psychics were dangerous; most of them were pretty harmless. Too weak to do more that predict the weather later in the day.
The fact that the one sitting in the cage next to him worshipped some random deity, probably an old world one, didn’t sit too well with Dean. Gods, even demi-gods, were unpredictable and dangerous. They got power from their followers, gained strength from the worship and offerings.
But it wasn’t like Dean had all that many options open to him at the moment. Even if this woman’s god was responsible for the situation he was currently stuck in, Dean just had to deal with it. Sam wasn’t here, he was on his own and he had to get back to his brother.
Dean still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Some mix between relieved and terrified. If Sam wasn’t here, he wasn’t in danger. But then again, Sam wasn’t here, and that meant he could be dead already and Dean wouldn’t know. And after the way he’d stormed out on Sammy… Sam might think Dean had actually left him.
But like so much of what was happening, the panic washed away. He could feel it just under the surface, waiting to break free. But it was as if something was holding everything back, keeping everything just slightly out of focus. And Dean knew he should be more concerned than he was that he didn’t actually mind or care.
The humming started again. This time it wasn’t just meaningless sound to Dean when he heard it. Glancing over, Dean watched as the woman hummed a soft lullaby to the kid sleeping on her lap. It was a reach, a deep stretch, but Dean remembered his own mother singing lullabies to him when he was a kid, sick with a fever. And even though the memory was kind of faded, he remembered she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it had still soothed him then, just like then sound soothed him now.
“I’m Dean,” he said finally, breaking his silence.
“I know who you are, Dean Winchester,” the woman said, looking to him finally. A small smile tugged at her rather plain face, and brought some of the softness she’d been looking at the kid with to bear on him. “I’m Taylor Morgan. And this sleeping beauty,” she told him, turning her attention back to the kid, “is my daughter, Sage.”
Dean looked to the little girl sleeping in her mother's lap. Dean couldn’t make out her features, just that she was small and probably sucking on her thumb. “Do you know how long ago it was you were taken?” Dean asked softly.
“A week,” she said. “Maybe a little longer. I haven’t really been able to keep track of the days. But we’ve been moved twice since he took us.”
Dean opened his mouth to ask another question but Taylor cut him off, motioning him to silence. She turned wide, terrified eyes in his direction, fingers stilling on the little girl. “Tell her that I loved her,” she whispered frantically. “Tell her she was the best thing I ever did. Twenty seven people have died so far to make you, Dean Winchester, don’t you dare let their sacrifices be for nothing!”
She reached through their cages, arms passing through metal bars like they were nothing, grabbing his shoulders. Her fingers gripped him, nails digging into his flesh and shook him hard. “Remember!” she hissed at him.
“Now, wake up!”
:::
Dean jerked awake in his cage, hands numb from being bound behind his back. He was in a basement, light was leaking through the slats that had been nailed over the windows.
His throat was dry and his body ached. He could still taste cotton balls in his mouth. There was dried blood on the side of his face and all Dean could smell was recent death. The burn of spilt blood mixed with the sickly smell of ruptured bowels and intestines. The vaguely sweet smell of the first stages of decay.
Dean gagged when he jerked his head to the side, looking for the other cage. Looking for Taylor. She was there, and so was the little girl, Sage. But that was the only thing that was the same.
Her body had been tossed carelessly onto the floor of her cage. Her chest and abdominal cavity had been torn open filling the room with the stink of recent death. Sightless brown eyes turned toward him, head bent at an unnatural angle.
The kid was asleep, sucking on her thumb in the mess of blood that had begun to congeal on the floor. Covered in blood and thicker things the little girl had curled up next to her mother’s dead body.
:::
Sam went back to the motel room, nearly vibrating with frustration and barely-contained panic. Left with more questions than what he’d had that morning.
Dean had been missing for three days. Three fucking days.
He hadn’t left a note anywhere in the motel room. Hadn’t called or texted Sam’s cell. He wasn’t answering his own cell phone and hadn’t changed his voice mail message.
No one had seen him leave. And the kid at the desk didn’t know when the car had been brought back or by whom.
Jerking the keys out of the ignition, Sam scowled at the steering wheel. Dean would never have left the car behind. Even when they were wanted by the cops and FBI Dean hadn’t dumped the car, even though it made them a little more conspicuous.
It was one of the few things Sam could cling to. He’d have packed his baby up and driven her away, left Sam to find his own way out. That was, of course, if Dean had taken off without telling Sam first.
Something was wrong; Sam knew it in his gut, even thought he hadn’t been surprised when he’d called Bobby and the older man hadn’t known anything about Dean leaving. If Dean wanted to disappear, he could literally fall off the face of the planet and no one would be the wiser.
Except Dean wouldn’t have just left. No matter what happened, Dean wouldn’t have just abandoned him like this. Not without telling Sam first. Climbing out of the car, Sam locked and slammed the door shut. Using enough force that Dean would probably have snapped at him to take better care of the car.
Pushing the door to their motel room open, Sam wasn’t really surprised to see Castiel standing in the middle of the room, looking around with that blankly confused look on his face.
“What do you want?” Sam demanded closing and locking the door behind him. It wasn’t like a locked door was going to keep the angel in the room, or out of it.
“A Seal will be broken tomorrow near here,” Castiel answered. “Where is your brother?”
“Not here,” Sam snapped. “Not anywhere I’ve looked and no one in this stupid town can remember ever seeing him.”
Castiel frowned slightly, head tilted to the side. His gaze slid past Sam as though he were listening to something Sam couldn’t hear. And after everything they’d seen with Anna, Sam wondered if he was listening to the Angel Talk Radio.
“Do you know where my brother is?” Sam asked, nearing the end of his rope. Sam could have cringed at the desperate hope in his voice.
When Castiel glanced back that blank look was back on his face. Sam would never admit it, but after first meeting the angel, Sam was kind of creeped out by him now.
Shaking his head just slightly, Castiel answered. Dean’s not dead. I would know if he’d been killed.”
Sam let out a deep sigh, some of the tension he hadn’t known he was carrying falling away from him. The knot around his heart let lose. He could suddenly take a full breath for the first time since he’d woken up to an empty motel room. Dean being dead was a possibility Sam had tried not to dwell on. Because Dean wouldn’t have just left him like this done this to him. Not unless he couldn’t help it. And there were only a couple of things that would prevent his brother from letting him know that he was alive and well, if only just to annoy the crap out of him.
Sam could do a lot of things, but bringing someone back from the dead wasn’t one of them.
“So he’s alive,” Sam breathed.
“Yes,” Castiel answered.
Sam nodded and turned back to the mess looking for his laptop. “He’s alive,” he repeated, pulling the lumpy laptop from under a pillow on the bed. Hope swelling in his chest, squeezing his heart the same way the knot of suppressed fear had done. “I need to check the hospitals again.”
Castiel shifted in the room, looking around at the mess. There were papers and books strewn all over the room. “Why isn’t your brother here?” the angel asked.
Sam glanced up from the computer screen while he waited for it to boot up. “We got into a fight the other day,” Sam answered simply, skipping over the details. It was no one’s business except his and Dean’s what they had been fighting about. “He left to get some air, I guess. And he just never came back.”
Castiel nodded as though he understood, but his expression clearly said he didn’t have a clue. “When was this?”
“Three days ago,” Sam muttered, typing furiously on the computer. He’d already searched the local hospitals for any of the aliases Dean might have been admitted under. He widened his search this time, looking for any John Doe’s that fit Dean’s description. Because either Dean was hurt and couldn’t get to him or Dean had been taken and couldn’t get to him.
At least now, Sam didn’t have to call coroner offices looking for his brother’s body.
“There is a Seal about to be broken near here,” Castiel said again.
Sam glanced up from his computer, frowning at the angel. “So?” Sam couldn’t understand why the angel was bothering with this. If Dean wasn’t dead then he was alive and he needed to be found. Sam needed to find him.
Castiel blinked at him. “We need you to stop it.”
“And I need to find my brother,” Sam stated.
:::
Once the sedatives had worn off, it only took Dean a few minutes to get the ropes off his hands. Getting out of his cage was a different matter all together. Whoever had built the damn thing hadn’t flinched at spending the money on good materials. Even the fucking lock looked more secure than most of the holding cells he’d visited from time to time.
He was fingering the lock, trying to figure out what he would need to pick it. It didn’t really matter that he didn’t have anything to pick the damn thing with, that his pockets had been emptied of everything - lint included. He just needed something to do. Something to keep his mind busy and away from thinking.
Because if he started thinking too much he was going to go back to wondering if he’d actually had a conversation with the dead woman in the cell next to his, or if it had all been some kind of dream. Or possibly both, if it was a real conversation and the woman really were a psychic. But she was dead, had obviously been dead for a few days now. It sort of put the whole experience firmly into the dream category, except it had felt so real.
But even thinking about talking to a dead woman, was still a distraction. Something to keep him from wondering too much about Sam.
There wasn’t that invisible filter, keeping everything just slightly unfocused. And even the smell of the slowly rotting corpse in the other cage wasn’t going to keep his mind from chasing itself in circles just before he’d flinched back from his brother’s touch and stormed out.
Giving up on distracting himself with the lock, Dean took another look around the room he was being kept in. He was in some basement, and a pretty clean one except for the congealed pool of blood in the other cage. There weren’t any cobwebs hanging from the rafters, tools had been put neatly away against the back wall, even the wood slats covering the windows looked new and fresh.
Whoever had taken him had probably just set up this little operation, or else he was more anal and a bigger neat freak than Sammy was. Because, Jesus Christ, even the boxes were neatly labelled - good china, family photos (framed), research journals (2003-2005) - and stacked under the stairs.
Stealing himself, Dean looked back to the other cage. The kid had still been asleep, however long ago it was he’d woken up. He’d wanted to call over to her, wake her up and get her out of that mess, out of the pool of blood she was lying in to snuggle close to the body.
This time when he looked, the kid was looking back at him. Her thumb firmly in her mouth. She was watching him, and Dean felt his gut tighten to recognize the expression in her eyes. He’d never seen it from the outside, but he remembered what it felt like. To watch the world and never actually see it, to only be distantly connected to his own body because he’d taken a little trip outside of it just to escape what had happened.
It might have been over twenty years since he’d felt that, but it wasn’t something he was likely to forget.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Dean rasped. God, he’d kill for a glass of water just then. “You’re awake. My name’s Dean, how ‘bout yours?”
She didn’t answer him, just kept watching him with those empty eyes.
“That your mom in there with you?” Dean tried and still got silence for a response. But there was some light coming back to her, like she was drifting slowly back into the here and now, and Dean felt like an ass for doing that to her. She shouldn’t have to experience this kind of shit. Shouldn’t have to remember it if she didn’t want to.
Shifting so he was sitting cross legged facing the other cage, Dean stifled a groan when his muscles protested the movement. His arms and legs ached, and his back burned when the muscles stretched, but it was his throbbing head that kicked up the biggest stink. He was pretty sure his brain was trying to crawl out one of his ears - concussion, pretty bad one at that - as the world tilted with his movements.
“Don’t feel much like talkin’, do ya? That’s okay,” he reassured her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t wanna.”
Dean rubbed absently at the side of his face, dried blood flaking off under his fingers. He hadn’t heard any sounds coming from upstairs since he woke up. Made him wonder if whoever had taken them was actually living here or just using the place. Or maybe this was just a secondary building on a larger piece of land. Dean had no idea where they were, or how long he’d been gone, so just about anything was possible.
Though, the fact that his stomach didn’t feel like an empty balloon told him that it couldn’t have been that long ago.
“Stranger.”
Dean’s head snapped back around to the other cage. The sudden movement made some of the world droop on one side when he tried to stop his head from spinning right off.
Sitting up, the kid looked worse off then she had lying in that blood. Some of her hair was pulled off to the side, stiff with drying sticky blood, clothes smeared with blood and dirt. There were bruises on her upper arms, and Dean caught sight of what might been scrapes creeping up her right leg.
Ignoring the twist in his gut, Dean leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands held passively in front of him. “Talkin’ ‘bout me?”
When the girl nodded, Dean fought back the smile that wanted to split his face. It would scare the girl and bunch up the cut on his temple. Instead he made a serious face, which pulled the cut and burned and started bleeding a little. “Your mom teach you never to talk to strangers,” he stated, nodding just a little. “That’s a good thing to make sure you don’t do. Can get you into all kinds of trouble.”
She went back to watching him, sucking on her thumb again.
“Me being a stranger’s gonna make it kinda hard for us to talk, ain’t it?” Dean asked. When the kid nodded again Dean went on with a considering tone. “How ‘bout… how ‘bout I tell you about me? That way you’ll get to know me and we won’t be such strangers anymore. That sound good to you?”
She took her time considering his proposal. And Dean had to give the kid’s mother serious credit. Most kids probably would have caved by that point. She looked back at her mother’s body before turning back to Dean, nodding slowly.
“Well, all right then.” And he had no idea where he was supposed to start. Cause he was stuck in a fucking cage God knew where and all he really wanted to do was get the hell out and back to Sam.
Sam.
Sam who was either seriously pissed off that Dean had just upped and disappeared on him, or else freaking the fuck out because Dean had just upped and disappeared on him. It made him fell sick to think that Sam might believe Dean had left him, that Dean might have made good on his threat and just walked away.
And worrying about what Sam might or might not be thinking wasn’t helping him any.
“Well, you know my name’s Dean,” he started. “I got a little brother called Sam. Well, he isn’t really little anymore. He went and got himself stretched or something ‘cause he’s taller than me now, but he’s still younger than me,” Dean rambled, letting the words find their own way out. “My mom died when I was little, probably about your age. And my dad, well, he died a few years ago.” And so did Sammy, but I made a deal with a demon and got him back.
“Let’s see…” Licking his dry lips with an equally dry tongue, Dean struggled with thinking of something else to tell the kid. “I drive a 1967 Impala; she’s the prettiest thing you’ll ever see. Still a total bad ass even though she’s over forty years old.
“Actually, I was born in that car. Grew up in her back seat too,” he added thoughtfully.
Pulling himself back to the present, Dean asked, “That enough about me for you to tell me your name?”
When she shook her head, Dean sighed and smiled at her. “Well hell, what else can I tell you?” Dean thought about it for a minute. What else could he tell her? Most of his past was violence and blood, and what wasn’t was still about hunting or about sex. And he wasn’t going to tell some little kid about how he’d lost his virginity in the back seat of the Impala when he was seventeen. After nearly a dozen false starts.
“I was born January 24, 1979 in Lawrence, Kansas.” I drive around the country killing demons and getting rid of ghosts by digging up the bodies to burn the bones. Got a police record longer than you are tall… And then he just began listing stuff. He wasn’t used to this. Sam would probably have an easier time talking with the kid, even if Sam sucked at dealing with anyone less than half his age. Dean wasn’t used to talking about himself.
“My favourite colour is green, favourite food is pizza, but if coffee weren’t a liquid that would be my favourite.” Dean scratched at his chin and pulled a face. “I’ve traveled all over the country. Seen both oceans a few times actually. I’m pretty good with cars, I had to fix up the Impala a few years go when it got hit by a truck. That was right about the same time that my dad died.”
And Dean was stuck again. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot about him to get to know. Except that he couldn’t tell her about most of it. She wouldn’t understand. Or at least he didn’t think she would. Dean considered the kid staring him with a dirty face. “You know what a Hunter is, sweetheart?” Dean asked carefully. “And not the kind that goes into the forest to shoot at deer and animals.”
She looked at her mother’s body again before turning back to him. When she nodded carefully in response, Dean was left wondering what she’d been told about Hunters from her mother. “That’s what I am. I’m a Hunter,” he told her.
Something came alive in her eyes. She’d been listening to him before, but now it was like he’d become the center of the entire world. Dean remembered Sammy looking at him like that when they were younger. He still looked at Dean like that sometimes, as if the rest of the world just didn’t exist outside of him. Like Dean was something amazing. “Me and my brother, Sammy, we’re both Hunters. We hunt ghosts and demons and evil things that hurt people.”
She pulled her thumb from her mouth and asked, “Like the bad man that’s took us?”
Dean choked on his answer, a bubble of laughter getting tangled up with a lump of tears. “Yeah, honey. Like the bad man that took us.”
When she didn’t stick her thumb right back into her mouth, Dean tried asking another question, “Do you know what the bad man is?”
It was something every Hunter knew.
While adults could give better details about things that had happened, they were useless when it came to accepting or seeing the supernatural around them. Their minds had been so firmly trained to ignore the things that went bump in the night that it usually took something fairly traumatic happening right before their eyes before they might maybe be able to accept it. But kids were different.
Kids could see the world for what it was. Their minds hadn’t been bleached and trained to ignore the things creeping in the dark. Their instincts were sharper, more in tune with the natural world that hides from the light of day.
She shook her head. “Sticky.”
“Sticky?” Dean responded in confusion. “Like he’s all slimy and stuff?”
She shook her head again. “’s face looks sticky.”
Before Dean could ask for further clarification, he heard the outside door open upstairs, feet treading heavily across the floor. Moving towards the door at the top of the stairs.
He was torn between wanting to shout out and draw whoever’s attention to him. Try to get some help and free himself. And keeping his mouth shut tight. It only took one breath to keep his mouth closed. The smell of new death was still sharp in the air. Whatever or whoever was creeping around upstairs was probably the same thing that had killed the kid’s mother.
Dean didn’t want to end up dead.
Not like that.
Except the door was opening, and sun light was spilling down the stairs, pooling on the floor and part way up a wall.
A second later and there were feet tromping quickly down the stairs and a tall man came into sight. He smiled brightly when he saw Dean awake and sitting up in his cage. “Great!” the guy cheerfully greeted. “You’re already awake. I wasn’t sure how much longer you’d be kept under with the amount of tranquilizers I had to give you.”
The guy had a neatly trimmed goatee and short, sort of curly hair. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans that weren’t new but weren’t old either and a blank grey t-shirt. He was neat and clean, not a spot of dirt or dust on him. Even his boots didn’t leave dirt behind.
“Just how long have I been out, anyway?” Dean asked, trying for casual, trying not to draw attention to the fact his hands were no longer bound behind him
The guy grinned brightly in response. Dean wanted to punch that smile off his face. “Assuming you just woke up today, you’ve been out for two days now. I was starting to get worried. But now that you’re awake, we can begin.”
Dean wasn’t given a chance to respond. The guy made a casual flick of his wrist and Dean was suddenly struggling to drag air into his lungs. It felt like something heavy had landed on his chest, keeping him from taking a proper breath. Dimly, Dean heard the guy stepping forward. But it wasn’t until he was standing over the cage that Dean was even really aware that the guy had moved.
“Sorry about that,” the guy said. “But you fought me pretty hard when I took you originally and I don’t want to chance giving you anymore tranquilizers. I didn’t realize I’d given you a concussion when I gave them to you originally,” he continued with what was probably a sincerely apologetic tone. Dean didn’t really give a fuck.
The guy was pulling a small ring of keys from his pocket and was unlocking his cage, still talking.
“You don’t actually have to be awake for the work we need to do,” he was telling Dean. “But the drugs interfere with the rituals. They’d make all the work for nothing if I had to knock you out with them again.”
Dean’s body tensed and coiled, waiting for the moment that the door opened. Because, fuck, even if he couldn’t breathe, there was no way Dean wasn’t going to just not fight the son of a bitch. Besides, except for curses, spells and magic only lasted as long as the caster was still alive. Dean just had to break this bastard’s neck and he’d be able to breathe again.
“Actually, it would probably be better for you to not be awake during the first few parts of the ritual,” the guy was saying. He’d pulled the key from the lock and jammed them back into his pocket before unlatching the cage door. “It’s kind of distracting to me when the subjects are awake, struggling and making a mess of things. And I need to concentrate.”
The guy lifted the door of the cage and Dean launched himself.
He didn’t make it that far.
It was like hitting a wall and getting stuck in it. He couldn’t move forward, and something was keeping him from falling back into his cage. Except he could breathe now. The weight had been lifted from his chest as soon as he’d hit that invisible wall.
“Telekinesis,” the guy chirped. Honest to god, he fucking chirped. “Picked up that little talent in New Mexico.” Still smiling, the guy backed away from Dean’s cage a few steps. “Had it long enough now that I don’t even have to point at the things I want to move. Can even lift and move things three or four times heavier than I am.
“Come on,” the guy said, like Dean really had a choice in the matter as it was. “Now that the drugs have worn off, I want to get started. No time to waste, you know!”
They stopped in the middle of the room, before they reached the door in the wall that obviously led to another room. Dean forced his jaw and lips and tongue to work together to form words, practically squeezing them out his mouth. “What’s the hold up? Thought we were workin’ on a schedule or somethin’.”
“Oh, we are,” the other man answered in that same cheerful voice. “But I’m thinking that you shouldn’t be awake for the first few parts of this ritual. Don’t want you to distract me while I’m working. We’d have to start all over again.”
“Promise not to make noise,” Dean rasped. The longer he was hanging there the tighter a hold seemed to be. Like the guy was being forced to exert more effort into keeping Dean floating and under his control. Dean watched as sweat started to break out on the other man’s upper lip.
“That’s mighty helpful of you,” he told Dean, smiling. “But it’s not really the noises and the wriggling that are going to distract me. It’s how loud your mind’s going to get when we start.” Nodding as if he’d come to some kind of decision, he smiled apologetically at Dean. “Think I’m going to make you sleep through the first few parts,” he added.
Between one heart beat and the next, the world went dark again.
:::
Dean was getting really sick of getting knocked out and then waking up trapped some place new.
This time he was in the other room. Or what Dean assumed was the other room. He couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out this time.
Candles were the only source of light in the room. There must have been over a hundred of them in the room, but Dean couldn’t see all of them. Just the ones lining the wall in front of him. He was bound to a tilting table, strapped securely enough that even twitching was out of the question. The gag in his mouth tasted like new leather though.
So thoughtful of the bastard.
Dean struggled a little against his bindings. Moving brought three things to his attention. One, he couldn’t really move because there wasn’t any give in the straps holding him to the table; two, he had about a dozen shallow cuts on his abdomen and a couple dozen acupuncture needles with little bits of incense burning on them scattered all over his body; and three, he was completely naked under the leather straps.
Someone started chanting behind him. And for a moment Dean stopped trying to get free, listening for words he might understand so he could figure out what the fuck was happening to him. That was right about the time a low grade panic started in his chest, because he didn’t recognize the language. None of the words sounded familiar. And Dean might not have had Sam’s talent with dead languages, but even Dean could pick out most dead or ancient languages when he heard them.
The bastard came back into view, cradling a shallow wooden bowl in his hands. He was just as naked as Dean was under the open cloak he was wearing. He raised the bowl over his head and then lowered it back down so he could dip fingers into the clear, thick liquid inside.
Dean flinched a little when the other man touched him with his slick fingers, drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, catching the sent of oil under the smell of melting wax - olive oil mixed with herbs and some kind of spice. The guy drew some kind of pattern on his forehead, another over his heart, and a third just above his belly button but between the shallow cuts.
The chanting continued even when the guy stepped away from Dean, moving behind him again. Probably to his alter, Dean decided, because he came back around with something clutched tightly in his fist.
The chanting got louder, the unfamiliar words coming faster. And Dean could feel his heart racing to catch up to the rhythm and beat of words. His body straining a little against the straps holding him in place, except he wasn’t actually moving. He was holding himself so very still, waiting to see what was going to happen when the chanting stopped.
The other man raised his closed fist, opening it so Dean could see what he was holding.
Bone ashes.
He was holding bone ashes.
Dean started to struggle in earnest then. Because whatever kind of ritual needed bone ash was the kind of ritual Dean didn’t want touching him. That was old magic, something older and darker than the shit most witches used. This was the kind of shit even demons didn’t fuck around with, on the same level as blood magic.
Dean had no idea what ritual was being used on him or against him, and he didn’t give a fuck. Because his gut told, fucking shouted at him, that something bad was going to happen when that little pile of ash touched him, touched the oil on his skin, got into the shallow cuts on his stomach. And whatever bad thing happened, there wouldn’t be any taking it away.
Shouting around his gag, Dean tried cursing, the muffled name of Christ, called on God and the Devil. Screamed for Sam under the gag when those didn’t work.
And then the chanting stopped and he blew the ashes on Dean.
For a second Dean’s heart stopped and he waited for whatever was going to happen. And for that one second, Dean thought it hadn’t worked. Whatever the guy had done had failed, he’d fucked something up and Dean wasn’t going to -
Every nerve in his body sang with agony.
Pain lacing through him with no staring point and no end. It was everywhere - stretching in his bones, creeping through his muscles, racing in his blood, washing over his skin.
Dean couldn’t think around it.
Couldn’t see anything beyond the flashes of white bursting in front of his eyes.
Couldn’t get air in past the pain.
And then merciful darkness took him back into her sweet embrace.
:::
He was back in his clothes when he woke up next. The blood and oil washed off.
He wasn’t alone in his cage either.
There was a warm and bony bundle tucked tightly against his side.
Dean raised his head enough to see that the kid was dressed in clean clothing and the blood had been washed out of her hair and off her body. There was a sick twist in his gut when he realized that the bastard must have been the one to wash her, and touch her.
Taking in a sharp breath when he tried to move Dean noticed that the mess of blood and death were missing. Rolling his head, Dean looked to the other cage to see what had been done.
The body was gone and the floor had been scrubbed clean.
Dean wondered how long he’d been passed out this time. Because it would have taken more than just a few hours to get all that blood off the floor. Not to mention getting the body out of the cage and up the stairs.
And he’d slept through all of it.
Sighing, Dean felt sleep tugging at him again.
Turning his body, Dean wrapped himself around the little girl sleeping next to him. Made his body a shield before fighting back the need to sleep.
Moving that much made some of the shallow cuts on his stomach open again. His chest felt tight, like it was suddenly two sizes too small.
Ignoring the discomforts, Dean glanced down at the little girl to see that she was now awake and staring up at him with her thumb back in her mouth.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly. His voice rasping from his raw throat. “You know how long ago it was that the bas- bad man took me outta my cage?”
“Yesterday,” she told him. Though it sounded more like yath-er-ay around her thumb. And it took Dean a moment to figure out what she’d said. Ever since Sammy had stopped sucking his thumb Dean hadn’t needed to translate words like that.
Dean hummed absently and tried to figure out how many days he’d been missing now. Three days at least, he decided, possibly four.
“Think it’d be all right to tell me your name now?” Dean asked next, trying to distract himself from wondering what Sam was doing now. What he’d been doing since Dean had left. Had he gone looking for Dean when he didn’t come back the next morning? Or had Sam assumed that Dean had done exactly what he said he might do and simply left him there? Because Dean refused to think that Sam might be dead.
“Sage,” she said, drawing Dean’s attention back to her.
“Sage, huh? That’s a pretty name.” When she didn’t move away from him, but actually snuggled in closer to his chest, Dean closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around her little body. "How old are you?"
“Four,” she spoke into his chest.
They were quiet after that. Dean stuck on the idea that the little girl tucked against his chest was had been cuddling against her mother’s dead body the day before. He didn’t really want to think about what else might have happened to her in the few weeks since she’d been taken from her home. But his mind wandered down that path anyway.
Anything could have happened to her. Whatever the bastard had done to Dean, he might already have done to her. Had obviously already been done to her mother. And Dean couldn’t help but wonder if Sage had seen that. If she’d been taken into that other room and forced to watch as her mother was tortured and then killed.
She poked his belly button, causing Dean’s entire body to jerk in response, when his stomach growled at him. She’d been quiet for so long, Dean had thought she’d gone back to sleep. She poked his belly button again forcing a small huff of laughter from him - and fuck it wasn’t fair that he was ticklish like that… he was an adult, he should have grown out of ticklishness the same way he finally left puberty behind.
“Yeah, I’m kinda hungry,” Dean admitted since that seemed to be the question she was asking. “Haven’t eaten in a few days. And the last meal I had was half a bag of chips with Sammy.”
Sage was wiggling out of his hold then. Pushing at his arm and getting to her feet before moving to the other end of the cage and picking something up. When she turned around, Dean saw she was holding a Tupperware container in her hands.
She held the container out to him when she came back. “Food,” she announced, thrusting it at him again.
Dean struggled to sit up and reach for the container. “Where’d this come from?” he asked her, eying the plastic in his hands.
“Bad man,” she answered, crawling on to his lap and resting against his chest.
Dean suppressed the hiss of breath and wince when she rubbed his t-shirt against the cuts on his stomach. It hurt, but not enough to make him push her away. If she felt safe with him, then he’d give her the comfort she needed.
He considered the Tupperware container in his hands another moment before saying, more to himself than to the kid, “Don’t know that I’d trust whatever the bastard made to eat.”
Dean pulled the lid off and looked inside. It was cold, plain oatmeal.
Good and healthy food that would help build up strength and easy to disguise poisons and drugs. “Did you eat any of this, Sage?”
She nodded against his chest.
“And the bad man didn’t put anything in it?”
“Let me make it,” she told him, sleep thick in her voice.
When his stomach growled again, Dean sighed and used his fingers to scoop some of the cold food into his mouth. It tasted like shit, but it was still food in his stomach.
:::
Sage was gone.
It was the first thing he thought when he woke up the next morning.
Sitting up, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there under a pillow he didn’t have, Dean looked frantically around the room for the missing girl, shouting, “Sage!”
He caught sight of her standing on a chair which had been moved up against a post, reaching for his leather coat that was hanging there. She wobbled a little and turned to shush him before reaching up again to tug at his coat.
Dean swallowed his heart back down into his chest and waited for her to pull his coat down and climb off the chair. Watched as she pushed it back across the floor under the stairs where she’d probably gotten it from in the first place. When she came back to the cage, dragging the coat behind her, Dean watched as she slipped between the bars of the cage.
“Does the he know you can get out of the cage like that?” Dean asked, accepting his coat when she handed it to him.
She shook her head and crawled back into his lap, shivering a little against him. Dean wrapped his coat around her, rubbing his hands over her back and arms. The basement was warm; there was no reason for her to be cold unless she was in shock. Delayed shock, probably from her mother’s death, or whatever the bastard might have done to her while Dean had been passed out.
“Have you tired to run away?” he asked her.
“Can’t reach,” was all she said.
Glancing over to the work table with all the tools hanging from pegs on the wall, Dean considered getting Sage to sneak over and see if she could find him something to pick the lock with. Except Dean couldn’t see anything that would be helpful. Needle nose pliers and a slotted screwdriver just weren’t going to cut it. And it would be a little obvious what he was doing if he tried to file some of the bars loose on his cage.
He was stuck there. No way out, no way to get word to Sam that he was alive, and no way to find out if Sam was even looking for him. Fuck, he hated this. Hated feeling this helpless. Because the bastard would come back and use his mojo on Dean and Dean wouldn’t be able to stop him.
He didn’t want to die in a fucking cage.
Once was plenty enough for him.
Shifting, Dean wrapped his arms more comfortably around the kid on his lap. “Did the bad man get your dad when he took you from your home?” Dean asked as gently as he could.
Sage shook her head against his chest. “Dead b’fore that.”
“You got any family waiting for you back home?”
“All dead,” Sage whispered, muffled by the leather of his coat.
Dean closed his eyes and banged his head against the bars behind him. The kid was alone in this. She had no one waiting for her, no one to go home to. No home left now that the bastard had taken it away. At least Dean would still have Sam if he got out of this. Wouldn’t matter if his brother thought Dean had taken off, he’d take Dean back once he knew what had happened.
Dean was once more interrupted from his thoughts when the outer door upstairs crashed open, and the heavy tread of foot steps tromped over the floor. Sage tensed up in his arms, little fingers curling into the material of his t-shirt, gripped tightly in a little fist.
He rubbed useless soothing circles on her back and arms. It did little good when Dean’s entire body was tensed and coiled, ready for a fight, adrenaline kicking through his system.
Dean watched passively as the bastard came down the basement stairs. He was wearing the same boots, another pair of blue jeans, and this time he had on a plain navy t-shirt.
“Hey there,” the man greeted them in his sickly cheerful tone. “Glad to see you’re already up. Did you sleep well last night?”
Dean could never understand why crazy people always wanted to have a conversation with the people they kidnapped. It wasn’t like Dean was grateful for being taken, or like they were going to best buds when this was all over. One of them would be dead and Dean was determined that he wasn’t going to end up in a little pot of ashes or a shallow grave.
“’Bout as well as can be expected,” Dean answered conversationally. This wouldn’t be the first crazy person he’d humoured. “Would have been better with a real bed, you know.”
The other guy chuckled a little, moving towards the other room. “Yeah, the floor doesn’t have much give to it. Sorry about that,” he called when he disappeared into the other room. “There wasn’t really enough room in this place for me to build some larger cages.”
Dean waited for the other guy to come out of the other room. But when a few minutes passed and he didn’t come back out, Dean raised his voice. “So, I never did catch your name, man.”
A second later the bastard stuck his head out the door, grinning. “Well, damn. I forgot about the introductions. Clayton Reynolds. Nice to meet you.”
“Like wise,” Dean responded pulling a smile out from somewhere. Fucker. “I’m Dean, by the way.”
The guy laughed and disappeared into the other room again. “Oh, I already know that!” he called back. “Got your wallet from your pocket when I picked you up. Course, the question is more what your last name is. There were a bunch of cards with different names on them. Thought for a little while that you’d grabbed the wrong wallet when you left that bar. Until I found your driver’s license in it.”
“You got my necklace with my wallet up there?” Dean asked, trying to keep his tone conversational.
“Sure do!” Clayton called back. “Same with your ring, bracelets, and watch. Even that flask you had the water in. Though, I don’t know what you were doing with all those weapons on you, man. Seriously, six knives and a gun with two spare clips?”
“Got a dangerous job,” Dean answered. “Don’t go anywhere unarmed. Be like tempting fate."
Clayton came out of the other room a smiled a little. “Fair enough. Every job has its share of risks. But I still can’t figure out what the bag of salt was for. That’s what’s really stumping me.” Dean watched as the other man leaned casually against the wall next to the door. “See, I understand the two decks of matches and the lighter, the condoms, and even the little packets of lube. But what were you going to use the salt for?”
“All part of the job, man,” Dean explained. “I’m a Hunter, see. Salt, fire, and pure iron are the best stuff for dealing with just about any supernatural creepy crawly that tries to pick a fight.”
“Huh,” he said, considering Dean’s words. “Never heard of Hunters before. But then again, up until a few years ago, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. So what’s a Hunter do?”
Dean shrugged a little, felt Sage press a little tighter to his chest. He tried to make his movements just as casual as his words, not wanting to draw Clayton’s attention to the little girl hiding under his coat. “Hunt and kill evil things mostly. You know, ghosts and demons, werewolves, fey creatures… Stuff like that.”
Clayton nodded and something shifted in his expression before he pushed away from the wall. “Well, enough with the conversation now. We’ve got some work to get done.”
Dean tensed when he felt that invisible hold tighten around him. “Don’t trust me to go quietly?” Dean forced out.
Clayton shrugged again, pulling the keys from his pocket. “You seem like a nice guy, Dean. But remember I found you with six knives and a gun. If you know how to use them, I’ve gotta assume you know how to use your fists.”
Dean waited until Clayton had gotten him out of the cage before he started to push against that invisible hold. “Mind if I ask what it is we’re doing?”
“Don’t see the harm in it,” Clayton told him. Dean felt the hold get a little tighter as he tried to move against it. “Like I said, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. Wasn’t until I stumbled into a psychic’s little tea shop in North Carolina that I found someone else like me.” Sweat was starting to bead on Clayton’s upper lip as they moved into the other room. “Didn’t take much longer before I figured out how to find others like me and then take their gifts. Found this ritual in an Occult shop in California and found out I could make myself stronger by binding the souls of other gifted people to me.”
The hold on Dean got even tighter on him, cutting off his ability to speak, fighting to just keep his ribs expanding. “That was almost four years ago now.” Dean kept pushing, kept struggling against the hold Clayton had on him, and watched as the other man’s face became flushed and sweat was popping up on his forehead. “All I had to do was strip away the barriers between the mind and the soul, and there was suddenly this impossibly deep well of power I could touch.
“And that’s what we’re doing; I’m stripping away the last of the barriers between you and your soul. Once they’re gone, I’ll perform the last ritual, bind your soul to me, and then kill you.”
:::
Dean ended up back in his cage again.
There weren’t any black holes in his memory this time. Dean knew what had happened, could remember in vivid detail what had been done to him and how it had felt. Aside from the slight burn of fresh shallow cuts on his chest everything in him felt like it had been twisted and knotted, stretched and pulled near the breaking point.
The tight feeling in his chest had stretched to encompass most of his body, like his skin shrunk in the wash, too small for everything, pushing the seams.
Curled up on his side, Dean could still feel the oils on his skin mixing with the fresh blood. Clayton hadn’t bothered to clean him up this time. Instead, just tossed him back into the cage and took the stairs two at a time when he went back up.
Sage was sitting in the corner of the cage, huddled inside his jacket, just watching him.
He wanted to sleep. To close his eyes and open them again with Sammy wrapped around him, breathing into the back of his neck. He just wanted to get back to Sam.
He was tired of constantly having to be rescued from situations like this. He shouldn’t need to be saved. There wasn’t another soul worried about where he’d gone off. No one was going to come riding to his rescue.
Dean wasn’t sure when he’d actually fallen asleep, only that when he opened his eyes again, Clayton was coming back into the basement, keys dangling from his fingers.
When he saw that Dean was awake, he smiled to him. “Thought I’d give you a bit of a rest today, Dean. You’ve surpassed my expectations, enduring the first two rituals so close together like that.”
“So what are you doing here then?” Dean asked, his throat throbbing. “Hey, can I get some water?”
“Oh! Sure,” Clayton said, moving towards the other room.
He came back with a couple bottles of water. Setting them just outside the cage, Clayton kept just out of reach. Not that Dean could have willed his body to do much of anything at the moment. Just reaching for the bottles of water left him feeling exhausted.
“If we’re taking a break, what are you doing down here?” Dean asked once he’d finished half of the first bottle of water.
“Just came down to see if I could get the girl to come upstairs and play outside a little,” Clayton told him. “It’s not good for a kid her age to be locked up inside like this. Children need lots of sunlight and space to run around and grow up.”
Dean frowned a little. The crazy son of a bitch sounded honestly concerned and worried about Sage. “She slept in a pool of her mother’s blood after you killed her, man,” Dean told him. “I don’t think she’s really going to want to go anywhere with you after that.”
Clayton shrugged a little. “She’s going to have to get used to it,” he said matter of factly. “I’m not giving her up. I’ve already started the rituals with her, but they have to be done more slowly because of her age. But she’s going to be a very sweet addition.”
“How long you planning to keep her around?” Dean asked around the lip of the bottle of water. The tightness in his chest finally stopped trying to push out, instead it was like something was slithering just under his skin while he waited for Clayton to answer him.
“A few more weeks, maybe a few months,” was the offhanded response. All of his attention was for Sage, who was sleeping curled up in the far corner of the cage buried under Dean’s coat. “I have to do the ritual more slowly. But once I’ve killed you, I can use your ashes to finish the ritual with her.”
The slithering stopped, coiled deep in the center of Dean’s chest at that. Clayton stepped towards the cage, and Dean felt that invisible hold close around him. Except this time Dean knew how to beat it. His body might be one giant source of pain, but hunting had taught him how to ignore it.
Dean waited until the lock clicked open. Waiting until Clayton had started to pull the door up before he threw everything into breaking the hold on him - there was no fucking way Dean was going to let himself be killed, get himself bound into oblivion and have his body used to destroy some kid - threw his body and mind at those invisible bonds, forcing them to stretch and move and accommodate him. White spots exploded in his field of vision when Clayton focused his energies back to Dean.
When that hold threatened to crush him, Dean reached inside of himself, going as deep as he could get, reached into that dark cold place with hands he couldn’t actually feel and grabbed hold of the slithering, stretching mass in his chest and dragged it up into the light.
He had no idea what the fuck he was doing, if it would work. No idea what it was he was calling upon, drawing on every reserve of strength and will that he had, forced it into being and fucking owned it. And for a moment Dean didn’t think it was going to be enough. There were shades of grey blurring his peripheral vision, shifting and moving against the back drop of the too clean basement.
And then Clayton was backing away from the cage, his eyes wide and terrified and Dean could suddenly breathe and move again. Taking a quick glance around to clear his vision, he realized that those grey spots he’d seen creeping in towards him hadn’t just been his mind losing consciousness but actual ghosts. Except not really.
He watched them a moment longer, wondering if they were going to turn on him. Watched until he realized that they were all heading towards Clayton. Creeping closer and gaining substance with each beat of his heart.
“You need to leave,” someone said behind him.
Dean’s head snapped around to catch sight of Sage’s mother, the woman from his dream, and the dead body from the other cage. And she looked very much alive to Dean.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
Taylor looked down to him, tilting her head to one side. “You called us, Dean. You broke his hold over us.” She looked away from Dean, back to Clayton who’d been back up against a wall and was batting uselessly at the shades.
“This is the reason why we accepted our deaths, Dean,” Taylor whispered. And it took a moment for Dean to realize that her lips weren’t moving. “We knew what was going to happen to us. We let our blood be spilt to make you.”
Dean’s head began to throb just before Clayton started screaming. Looking over, Dean couldn’t see through the shades anymore. They were no longer transparent and Dean couldn’t see what they were doing.
“Remember, Dean,” Taylor told him, stepping through to cage, stepping through him. “You don’t need to believe in a deity to become a piece on the game board. Now take Sage and run. We’ll hold him for as long as we can, but we’re running out of time.”
Dean didn’t hesitate once Taylor’s shade joined the others surrounding Clayton. Just reached over to the kid huddled in the corner of the cage and snatched her up.
She grabbed hold of him, little fingers clutching the material of his t-shirt. Dean pressed her head into his shoulder and climbed out of the cage and made for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he burst through the door at the top into a sun lit hallway.
The outside door was just down the hall. Freedom a couple dozen feet away. Clayton’s scream grew louder and more frantic behind them when Dean spotted his stuff sitting on a side table near the door. He grabbed his wallet, gun, the switch blade, and his jewellery from the table, shoving everything into pockets.
He could still hear Clayton screaming behind them when he pushed the front door open and stepped out into the sun light, running down the porch steps and tearing down the driveway.
He pushed the aches and pains his body sent up to the back of his mind, but he couldn’t really ignore the way his head throbbed, the way it felt like some part of him were stretching out behind him. Like he’d left some part of himself behind in that basement and he could feel it pulling at him the further away he ran from it. But he didn’t have time to give it much thought. Just forced it as far back as he could and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
++++
Go to: Part 2
He flinched when the door slammed shut.
:::
The first time Dean woke up, he was only awake long enough to realize that he had no idea where he was and that someone was screaming shrilly in the background. From another room, he figured, since the sound was kind of muted, like there was at least one wall between him and whatever was making that kind of trapped-animal noise.
There was that cotton ball taste in his mouth he got when he’d been pumped with sedatives. And his head was throbbing in time with his heart.
The last thing he remembered thinking clearly was that tranquillizers and concussions usually weren’t a good thing to mix. And then that cotton ball taste sucked him back under.
:::
The next time he woke up, Dean wasn’t even a hundred percent sure he was awake.
The screaming had stopped. Replaced by someone humming softly a few feet away.
“Sam,” he called out hoarsely. His throat didn’t feel dry, but his voice sounded like it should be. “Sam,” he tried again, forcing his eyes open.
“There’s no one else here,” a voice answered.
Dean glanced over to see who’d spoken to him and saw a woman sitting in a second cage a few feet away. She was running her fingers through the hair of a child sleeping on her lap.
The humming had stopped, leaving silence behind filled only with Dean’s relieved sigh. He tried to move his hands out from behind his back, but couldn’t get them loose from the rope.
“Where’s here?” Dean asked.
“Don’t know,” the woman answered. She didn’t look up from the sleeping kid.
Dean shifted, tugging a little at the ropes binding his wrists. “You remember how you got here? Or who took us?”
“I don’t know who he is,” the woman answered. “But he tore the front wall off my house when he came for us. Killed everyone else there. Except for Charlie. I think he got away.”
“Who’s Charlie?” Dean asked. He gave up trying to get his hands free and just wiggled his body closer to the cage bars so he could sit up instead. If there was someone out there who knew they’d been taken, who might be looking for them even now…
“Charlie’s my familiar.”
The silence after that stretched out between them for a few minutes while Dean just stared at the woman across from him. “You’re a witch,” he stated. Except he didn’t think that was true. His skin wasn’t trying to crawl off his body.
“I’d have been called that at one time,” she told him. “But no, I’m not a witch. At least not in the sense you’re thinking of the word.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m a psychic,” she said. “A nature priestess, actually.”
“So you’ve got some mojo?” Dean asked. “What are you still doing here then?”
She gave a brief, humourless laugh, but still didn’t look at him. “We knew we were going to be asked to offer sacrifice. We didn’t know when or where or how. And it wasn’t for us to question why.” Sighing she added, “But after Jack’s vision, we knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time.”
“So this is your god’s doing?” Dean asked with no little hint of disgust. He knew that there were gods running around. Most of which hadn’t been worshipped in centuries. He’d had the fact that those old gods were real brought to his attention in the past. He’d killed two of them. If this were something like that, Dean knew he could kill it. Whatever it happened to be.
“No,” the woman responded forcefully. “No, my Lord and Lady would never do this to us. They would never break us like this for their own amusement. We were asked to offer sacrifice and we accepted of our own free will. Our blood was spilt for a greater reason, our sacrifices used to burn a new path. I saw that much.”
Dean looked away, looked to the rest of the room. He couldn’t actually see anything beyond their two cages. Everything else was dark and out of focus, but Dean didn’t think too much on it. He knew not all psychics were dangerous; most of them were pretty harmless. Too weak to do more that predict the weather later in the day.
The fact that the one sitting in the cage next to him worshipped some random deity, probably an old world one, didn’t sit too well with Dean. Gods, even demi-gods, were unpredictable and dangerous. They got power from their followers, gained strength from the worship and offerings.
But it wasn’t like Dean had all that many options open to him at the moment. Even if this woman’s god was responsible for the situation he was currently stuck in, Dean just had to deal with it. Sam wasn’t here, he was on his own and he had to get back to his brother.
Dean still wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Some mix between relieved and terrified. If Sam wasn’t here, he wasn’t in danger. But then again, Sam wasn’t here, and that meant he could be dead already and Dean wouldn’t know. And after the way he’d stormed out on Sammy… Sam might think Dean had actually left him.
But like so much of what was happening, the panic washed away. He could feel it just under the surface, waiting to break free. But it was as if something was holding everything back, keeping everything just slightly out of focus. And Dean knew he should be more concerned than he was that he didn’t actually mind or care.
The humming started again. This time it wasn’t just meaningless sound to Dean when he heard it. Glancing over, Dean watched as the woman hummed a soft lullaby to the kid sleeping on her lap. It was a reach, a deep stretch, but Dean remembered his own mother singing lullabies to him when he was a kid, sick with a fever. And even though the memory was kind of faded, he remembered she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but it had still soothed him then, just like then sound soothed him now.
“I’m Dean,” he said finally, breaking his silence.
“I know who you are, Dean Winchester,” the woman said, looking to him finally. A small smile tugged at her rather plain face, and brought some of the softness she’d been looking at the kid with to bear on him. “I’m Taylor Morgan. And this sleeping beauty,” she told him, turning her attention back to the kid, “is my daughter, Sage.”
Dean looked to the little girl sleeping in her mother's lap. Dean couldn’t make out her features, just that she was small and probably sucking on her thumb. “Do you know how long ago it was you were taken?” Dean asked softly.
“A week,” she said. “Maybe a little longer. I haven’t really been able to keep track of the days. But we’ve been moved twice since he took us.”
Dean opened his mouth to ask another question but Taylor cut him off, motioning him to silence. She turned wide, terrified eyes in his direction, fingers stilling on the little girl. “Tell her that I loved her,” she whispered frantically. “Tell her she was the best thing I ever did. Twenty seven people have died so far to make you, Dean Winchester, don’t you dare let their sacrifices be for nothing!”
She reached through their cages, arms passing through metal bars like they were nothing, grabbing his shoulders. Her fingers gripped him, nails digging into his flesh and shook him hard. “Remember!” she hissed at him.
“Now, wake up!”
:::
Dean jerked awake in his cage, hands numb from being bound behind his back. He was in a basement, light was leaking through the slats that had been nailed over the windows.
His throat was dry and his body ached. He could still taste cotton balls in his mouth. There was dried blood on the side of his face and all Dean could smell was recent death. The burn of spilt blood mixed with the sickly smell of ruptured bowels and intestines. The vaguely sweet smell of the first stages of decay.
Dean gagged when he jerked his head to the side, looking for the other cage. Looking for Taylor. She was there, and so was the little girl, Sage. But that was the only thing that was the same.
Her body had been tossed carelessly onto the floor of her cage. Her chest and abdominal cavity had been torn open filling the room with the stink of recent death. Sightless brown eyes turned toward him, head bent at an unnatural angle.
The kid was asleep, sucking on her thumb in the mess of blood that had begun to congeal on the floor. Covered in blood and thicker things the little girl had curled up next to her mother’s dead body.
:::
Sam went back to the motel room, nearly vibrating with frustration and barely-contained panic. Left with more questions than what he’d had that morning.
Dean had been missing for three days. Three fucking days.
He hadn’t left a note anywhere in the motel room. Hadn’t called or texted Sam’s cell. He wasn’t answering his own cell phone and hadn’t changed his voice mail message.
No one had seen him leave. And the kid at the desk didn’t know when the car had been brought back or by whom.
Jerking the keys out of the ignition, Sam scowled at the steering wheel. Dean would never have left the car behind. Even when they were wanted by the cops and FBI Dean hadn’t dumped the car, even though it made them a little more conspicuous.
It was one of the few things Sam could cling to. He’d have packed his baby up and driven her away, left Sam to find his own way out. That was, of course, if Dean had taken off without telling Sam first.
Something was wrong; Sam knew it in his gut, even thought he hadn’t been surprised when he’d called Bobby and the older man hadn’t known anything about Dean leaving. If Dean wanted to disappear, he could literally fall off the face of the planet and no one would be the wiser.
Except Dean wouldn’t have just left. No matter what happened, Dean wouldn’t have just abandoned him like this. Not without telling Sam first. Climbing out of the car, Sam locked and slammed the door shut. Using enough force that Dean would probably have snapped at him to take better care of the car.
Pushing the door to their motel room open, Sam wasn’t really surprised to see Castiel standing in the middle of the room, looking around with that blankly confused look on his face.
“What do you want?” Sam demanded closing and locking the door behind him. It wasn’t like a locked door was going to keep the angel in the room, or out of it.
“A Seal will be broken tomorrow near here,” Castiel answered. “Where is your brother?”
“Not here,” Sam snapped. “Not anywhere I’ve looked and no one in this stupid town can remember ever seeing him.”
Castiel frowned slightly, head tilted to the side. His gaze slid past Sam as though he were listening to something Sam couldn’t hear. And after everything they’d seen with Anna, Sam wondered if he was listening to the Angel Talk Radio.
“Do you know where my brother is?” Sam asked, nearing the end of his rope. Sam could have cringed at the desperate hope in his voice.
When Castiel glanced back that blank look was back on his face. Sam would never admit it, but after first meeting the angel, Sam was kind of creeped out by him now.
Shaking his head just slightly, Castiel answered. Dean’s not dead. I would know if he’d been killed.”
Sam let out a deep sigh, some of the tension he hadn’t known he was carrying falling away from him. The knot around his heart let lose. He could suddenly take a full breath for the first time since he’d woken up to an empty motel room. Dean being dead was a possibility Sam had tried not to dwell on. Because Dean wouldn’t have just left him like this done this to him. Not unless he couldn’t help it. And there were only a couple of things that would prevent his brother from letting him know that he was alive and well, if only just to annoy the crap out of him.
Sam could do a lot of things, but bringing someone back from the dead wasn’t one of them.
“So he’s alive,” Sam breathed.
“Yes,” Castiel answered.
Sam nodded and turned back to the mess looking for his laptop. “He’s alive,” he repeated, pulling the lumpy laptop from under a pillow on the bed. Hope swelling in his chest, squeezing his heart the same way the knot of suppressed fear had done. “I need to check the hospitals again.”
Castiel shifted in the room, looking around at the mess. There were papers and books strewn all over the room. “Why isn’t your brother here?” the angel asked.
Sam glanced up from the computer screen while he waited for it to boot up. “We got into a fight the other day,” Sam answered simply, skipping over the details. It was no one’s business except his and Dean’s what they had been fighting about. “He left to get some air, I guess. And he just never came back.”
Castiel nodded as though he understood, but his expression clearly said he didn’t have a clue. “When was this?”
“Three days ago,” Sam muttered, typing furiously on the computer. He’d already searched the local hospitals for any of the aliases Dean might have been admitted under. He widened his search this time, looking for any John Doe’s that fit Dean’s description. Because either Dean was hurt and couldn’t get to him or Dean had been taken and couldn’t get to him.
At least now, Sam didn’t have to call coroner offices looking for his brother’s body.
“There is a Seal about to be broken near here,” Castiel said again.
Sam glanced up from his computer, frowning at the angel. “So?” Sam couldn’t understand why the angel was bothering with this. If Dean wasn’t dead then he was alive and he needed to be found. Sam needed to find him.
Castiel blinked at him. “We need you to stop it.”
“And I need to find my brother,” Sam stated.
:::
Once the sedatives had worn off, it only took Dean a few minutes to get the ropes off his hands. Getting out of his cage was a different matter all together. Whoever had built the damn thing hadn’t flinched at spending the money on good materials. Even the fucking lock looked more secure than most of the holding cells he’d visited from time to time.
He was fingering the lock, trying to figure out what he would need to pick it. It didn’t really matter that he didn’t have anything to pick the damn thing with, that his pockets had been emptied of everything - lint included. He just needed something to do. Something to keep his mind busy and away from thinking.
Because if he started thinking too much he was going to go back to wondering if he’d actually had a conversation with the dead woman in the cell next to his, or if it had all been some kind of dream. Or possibly both, if it was a real conversation and the woman really were a psychic. But she was dead, had obviously been dead for a few days now. It sort of put the whole experience firmly into the dream category, except it had felt so real.
But even thinking about talking to a dead woman, was still a distraction. Something to keep him from wondering too much about Sam.
There wasn’t that invisible filter, keeping everything just slightly unfocused. And even the smell of the slowly rotting corpse in the other cage wasn’t going to keep his mind from chasing itself in circles just before he’d flinched back from his brother’s touch and stormed out.
Giving up on distracting himself with the lock, Dean took another look around the room he was being kept in. He was in some basement, and a pretty clean one except for the congealed pool of blood in the other cage. There weren’t any cobwebs hanging from the rafters, tools had been put neatly away against the back wall, even the wood slats covering the windows looked new and fresh.
Whoever had taken him had probably just set up this little operation, or else he was more anal and a bigger neat freak than Sammy was. Because, Jesus Christ, even the boxes were neatly labelled - good china, family photos (framed), research journals (2003-2005) - and stacked under the stairs.
Stealing himself, Dean looked back to the other cage. The kid had still been asleep, however long ago it was he’d woken up. He’d wanted to call over to her, wake her up and get her out of that mess, out of the pool of blood she was lying in to snuggle close to the body.
This time when he looked, the kid was looking back at him. Her thumb firmly in her mouth. She was watching him, and Dean felt his gut tighten to recognize the expression in her eyes. He’d never seen it from the outside, but he remembered what it felt like. To watch the world and never actually see it, to only be distantly connected to his own body because he’d taken a little trip outside of it just to escape what had happened.
It might have been over twenty years since he’d felt that, but it wasn’t something he was likely to forget.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Dean rasped. God, he’d kill for a glass of water just then. “You’re awake. My name’s Dean, how ‘bout yours?”
She didn’t answer him, just kept watching him with those empty eyes.
“That your mom in there with you?” Dean tried and still got silence for a response. But there was some light coming back to her, like she was drifting slowly back into the here and now, and Dean felt like an ass for doing that to her. She shouldn’t have to experience this kind of shit. Shouldn’t have to remember it if she didn’t want to.
Shifting so he was sitting cross legged facing the other cage, Dean stifled a groan when his muscles protested the movement. His arms and legs ached, and his back burned when the muscles stretched, but it was his throbbing head that kicked up the biggest stink. He was pretty sure his brain was trying to crawl out one of his ears - concussion, pretty bad one at that - as the world tilted with his movements.
“Don’t feel much like talkin’, do ya? That’s okay,” he reassured her. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t wanna.”
Dean rubbed absently at the side of his face, dried blood flaking off under his fingers. He hadn’t heard any sounds coming from upstairs since he woke up. Made him wonder if whoever had taken them was actually living here or just using the place. Or maybe this was just a secondary building on a larger piece of land. Dean had no idea where they were, or how long he’d been gone, so just about anything was possible.
Though, the fact that his stomach didn’t feel like an empty balloon told him that it couldn’t have been that long ago.
“Stranger.”
Dean’s head snapped back around to the other cage. The sudden movement made some of the world droop on one side when he tried to stop his head from spinning right off.
Sitting up, the kid looked worse off then she had lying in that blood. Some of her hair was pulled off to the side, stiff with drying sticky blood, clothes smeared with blood and dirt. There were bruises on her upper arms, and Dean caught sight of what might been scrapes creeping up her right leg.
Ignoring the twist in his gut, Dean leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, hands held passively in front of him. “Talkin’ ‘bout me?”
When the girl nodded, Dean fought back the smile that wanted to split his face. It would scare the girl and bunch up the cut on his temple. Instead he made a serious face, which pulled the cut and burned and started bleeding a little. “Your mom teach you never to talk to strangers,” he stated, nodding just a little. “That’s a good thing to make sure you don’t do. Can get you into all kinds of trouble.”
She went back to watching him, sucking on her thumb again.
“Me being a stranger’s gonna make it kinda hard for us to talk, ain’t it?” Dean asked. When the kid nodded again Dean went on with a considering tone. “How ‘bout… how ‘bout I tell you about me? That way you’ll get to know me and we won’t be such strangers anymore. That sound good to you?”
She took her time considering his proposal. And Dean had to give the kid’s mother serious credit. Most kids probably would have caved by that point. She looked back at her mother’s body before turning back to Dean, nodding slowly.
“Well, all right then.” And he had no idea where he was supposed to start. Cause he was stuck in a fucking cage God knew where and all he really wanted to do was get the hell out and back to Sam.
Sam.
Sam who was either seriously pissed off that Dean had just upped and disappeared on him, or else freaking the fuck out because Dean had just upped and disappeared on him. It made him fell sick to think that Sam might believe Dean had left him, that Dean might have made good on his threat and just walked away.
And worrying about what Sam might or might not be thinking wasn’t helping him any.
“Well, you know my name’s Dean,” he started. “I got a little brother called Sam. Well, he isn’t really little anymore. He went and got himself stretched or something ‘cause he’s taller than me now, but he’s still younger than me,” Dean rambled, letting the words find their own way out. “My mom died when I was little, probably about your age. And my dad, well, he died a few years ago.” And so did Sammy, but I made a deal with a demon and got him back.
“Let’s see…” Licking his dry lips with an equally dry tongue, Dean struggled with thinking of something else to tell the kid. “I drive a 1967 Impala; she’s the prettiest thing you’ll ever see. Still a total bad ass even though she’s over forty years old.
“Actually, I was born in that car. Grew up in her back seat too,” he added thoughtfully.
Pulling himself back to the present, Dean asked, “That enough about me for you to tell me your name?”
When she shook her head, Dean sighed and smiled at her. “Well hell, what else can I tell you?” Dean thought about it for a minute. What else could he tell her? Most of his past was violence and blood, and what wasn’t was still about hunting or about sex. And he wasn’t going to tell some little kid about how he’d lost his virginity in the back seat of the Impala when he was seventeen. After nearly a dozen false starts.
“I was born January 24, 1979 in Lawrence, Kansas.” I drive around the country killing demons and getting rid of ghosts by digging up the bodies to burn the bones. Got a police record longer than you are tall… And then he just began listing stuff. He wasn’t used to this. Sam would probably have an easier time talking with the kid, even if Sam sucked at dealing with anyone less than half his age. Dean wasn’t used to talking about himself.
“My favourite colour is green, favourite food is pizza, but if coffee weren’t a liquid that would be my favourite.” Dean scratched at his chin and pulled a face. “I’ve traveled all over the country. Seen both oceans a few times actually. I’m pretty good with cars, I had to fix up the Impala a few years go when it got hit by a truck. That was right about the same time that my dad died.”
And Dean was stuck again. There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot about him to get to know. Except that he couldn’t tell her about most of it. She wouldn’t understand. Or at least he didn’t think she would. Dean considered the kid staring him with a dirty face. “You know what a Hunter is, sweetheart?” Dean asked carefully. “And not the kind that goes into the forest to shoot at deer and animals.”
She looked at her mother’s body again before turning back to him. When she nodded carefully in response, Dean was left wondering what she’d been told about Hunters from her mother. “That’s what I am. I’m a Hunter,” he told her.
Something came alive in her eyes. She’d been listening to him before, but now it was like he’d become the center of the entire world. Dean remembered Sammy looking at him like that when they were younger. He still looked at Dean like that sometimes, as if the rest of the world just didn’t exist outside of him. Like Dean was something amazing. “Me and my brother, Sammy, we’re both Hunters. We hunt ghosts and demons and evil things that hurt people.”
She pulled her thumb from her mouth and asked, “Like the bad man that’s took us?”
Dean choked on his answer, a bubble of laughter getting tangled up with a lump of tears. “Yeah, honey. Like the bad man that took us.”
When she didn’t stick her thumb right back into her mouth, Dean tried asking another question, “Do you know what the bad man is?”
It was something every Hunter knew.
While adults could give better details about things that had happened, they were useless when it came to accepting or seeing the supernatural around them. Their minds had been so firmly trained to ignore the things that went bump in the night that it usually took something fairly traumatic happening right before their eyes before they might maybe be able to accept it. But kids were different.
Kids could see the world for what it was. Their minds hadn’t been bleached and trained to ignore the things creeping in the dark. Their instincts were sharper, more in tune with the natural world that hides from the light of day.
She shook her head. “Sticky.”
“Sticky?” Dean responded in confusion. “Like he’s all slimy and stuff?”
She shook her head again. “’s face looks sticky.”
Before Dean could ask for further clarification, he heard the outside door open upstairs, feet treading heavily across the floor. Moving towards the door at the top of the stairs.
He was torn between wanting to shout out and draw whoever’s attention to him. Try to get some help and free himself. And keeping his mouth shut tight. It only took one breath to keep his mouth closed. The smell of new death was still sharp in the air. Whatever or whoever was creeping around upstairs was probably the same thing that had killed the kid’s mother.
Dean didn’t want to end up dead.
Not like that.
Except the door was opening, and sun light was spilling down the stairs, pooling on the floor and part way up a wall.
A second later and there were feet tromping quickly down the stairs and a tall man came into sight. He smiled brightly when he saw Dean awake and sitting up in his cage. “Great!” the guy cheerfully greeted. “You’re already awake. I wasn’t sure how much longer you’d be kept under with the amount of tranquilizers I had to give you.”
The guy had a neatly trimmed goatee and short, sort of curly hair. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans that weren’t new but weren’t old either and a blank grey t-shirt. He was neat and clean, not a spot of dirt or dust on him. Even his boots didn’t leave dirt behind.
“Just how long have I been out, anyway?” Dean asked, trying for casual, trying not to draw attention to the fact his hands were no longer bound behind him
The guy grinned brightly in response. Dean wanted to punch that smile off his face. “Assuming you just woke up today, you’ve been out for two days now. I was starting to get worried. But now that you’re awake, we can begin.”
Dean wasn’t given a chance to respond. The guy made a casual flick of his wrist and Dean was suddenly struggling to drag air into his lungs. It felt like something heavy had landed on his chest, keeping him from taking a proper breath. Dimly, Dean heard the guy stepping forward. But it wasn’t until he was standing over the cage that Dean was even really aware that the guy had moved.
“Sorry about that,” the guy said. “But you fought me pretty hard when I took you originally and I don’t want to chance giving you anymore tranquilizers. I didn’t realize I’d given you a concussion when I gave them to you originally,” he continued with what was probably a sincerely apologetic tone. Dean didn’t really give a fuck.
The guy was pulling a small ring of keys from his pocket and was unlocking his cage, still talking.
“You don’t actually have to be awake for the work we need to do,” he was telling Dean. “But the drugs interfere with the rituals. They’d make all the work for nothing if I had to knock you out with them again.”
Dean’s body tensed and coiled, waiting for the moment that the door opened. Because, fuck, even if he couldn’t breathe, there was no way Dean wasn’t going to just not fight the son of a bitch. Besides, except for curses, spells and magic only lasted as long as the caster was still alive. Dean just had to break this bastard’s neck and he’d be able to breathe again.
“Actually, it would probably be better for you to not be awake during the first few parts of the ritual,” the guy was saying. He’d pulled the key from the lock and jammed them back into his pocket before unlatching the cage door. “It’s kind of distracting to me when the subjects are awake, struggling and making a mess of things. And I need to concentrate.”
The guy lifted the door of the cage and Dean launched himself.
He didn’t make it that far.
It was like hitting a wall and getting stuck in it. He couldn’t move forward, and something was keeping him from falling back into his cage. Except he could breathe now. The weight had been lifted from his chest as soon as he’d hit that invisible wall.
“Telekinesis,” the guy chirped. Honest to god, he fucking chirped. “Picked up that little talent in New Mexico.” Still smiling, the guy backed away from Dean’s cage a few steps. “Had it long enough now that I don’t even have to point at the things I want to move. Can even lift and move things three or four times heavier than I am.
“Come on,” the guy said, like Dean really had a choice in the matter as it was. “Now that the drugs have worn off, I want to get started. No time to waste, you know!”
They stopped in the middle of the room, before they reached the door in the wall that obviously led to another room. Dean forced his jaw and lips and tongue to work together to form words, practically squeezing them out his mouth. “What’s the hold up? Thought we were workin’ on a schedule or somethin’.”
“Oh, we are,” the other man answered in that same cheerful voice. “But I’m thinking that you shouldn’t be awake for the first few parts of this ritual. Don’t want you to distract me while I’m working. We’d have to start all over again.”
“Promise not to make noise,” Dean rasped. The longer he was hanging there the tighter a hold seemed to be. Like the guy was being forced to exert more effort into keeping Dean floating and under his control. Dean watched as sweat started to break out on the other man’s upper lip.
“That’s mighty helpful of you,” he told Dean, smiling. “But it’s not really the noises and the wriggling that are going to distract me. It’s how loud your mind’s going to get when we start.” Nodding as if he’d come to some kind of decision, he smiled apologetically at Dean. “Think I’m going to make you sleep through the first few parts,” he added.
Between one heart beat and the next, the world went dark again.
:::
Dean was getting really sick of getting knocked out and then waking up trapped some place new.
This time he was in the other room. Or what Dean assumed was the other room. He couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out this time.
Candles were the only source of light in the room. There must have been over a hundred of them in the room, but Dean couldn’t see all of them. Just the ones lining the wall in front of him. He was bound to a tilting table, strapped securely enough that even twitching was out of the question. The gag in his mouth tasted like new leather though.
So thoughtful of the bastard.
Dean struggled a little against his bindings. Moving brought three things to his attention. One, he couldn’t really move because there wasn’t any give in the straps holding him to the table; two, he had about a dozen shallow cuts on his abdomen and a couple dozen acupuncture needles with little bits of incense burning on them scattered all over his body; and three, he was completely naked under the leather straps.
Someone started chanting behind him. And for a moment Dean stopped trying to get free, listening for words he might understand so he could figure out what the fuck was happening to him. That was right about the time a low grade panic started in his chest, because he didn’t recognize the language. None of the words sounded familiar. And Dean might not have had Sam’s talent with dead languages, but even Dean could pick out most dead or ancient languages when he heard them.
The bastard came back into view, cradling a shallow wooden bowl in his hands. He was just as naked as Dean was under the open cloak he was wearing. He raised the bowl over his head and then lowered it back down so he could dip fingers into the clear, thick liquid inside.
Dean flinched a little when the other man touched him with his slick fingers, drawing in a sharp breath through his nose, catching the sent of oil under the smell of melting wax - olive oil mixed with herbs and some kind of spice. The guy drew some kind of pattern on his forehead, another over his heart, and a third just above his belly button but between the shallow cuts.
The chanting continued even when the guy stepped away from Dean, moving behind him again. Probably to his alter, Dean decided, because he came back around with something clutched tightly in his fist.
The chanting got louder, the unfamiliar words coming faster. And Dean could feel his heart racing to catch up to the rhythm and beat of words. His body straining a little against the straps holding him in place, except he wasn’t actually moving. He was holding himself so very still, waiting to see what was going to happen when the chanting stopped.
The other man raised his closed fist, opening it so Dean could see what he was holding.
Bone ashes.
He was holding bone ashes.
Dean started to struggle in earnest then. Because whatever kind of ritual needed bone ash was the kind of ritual Dean didn’t want touching him. That was old magic, something older and darker than the shit most witches used. This was the kind of shit even demons didn’t fuck around with, on the same level as blood magic.
Dean had no idea what ritual was being used on him or against him, and he didn’t give a fuck. Because his gut told, fucking shouted at him, that something bad was going to happen when that little pile of ash touched him, touched the oil on his skin, got into the shallow cuts on his stomach. And whatever bad thing happened, there wouldn’t be any taking it away.
Shouting around his gag, Dean tried cursing, the muffled name of Christ, called on God and the Devil. Screamed for Sam under the gag when those didn’t work.
And then the chanting stopped and he blew the ashes on Dean.
For a second Dean’s heart stopped and he waited for whatever was going to happen. And for that one second, Dean thought it hadn’t worked. Whatever the guy had done had failed, he’d fucked something up and Dean wasn’t going to -
Every nerve in his body sang with agony.
Pain lacing through him with no staring point and no end. It was everywhere - stretching in his bones, creeping through his muscles, racing in his blood, washing over his skin.
Dean couldn’t think around it.
Couldn’t see anything beyond the flashes of white bursting in front of his eyes.
Couldn’t get air in past the pain.
And then merciful darkness took him back into her sweet embrace.
:::
He was back in his clothes when he woke up next. The blood and oil washed off.
He wasn’t alone in his cage either.
There was a warm and bony bundle tucked tightly against his side.
Dean raised his head enough to see that the kid was dressed in clean clothing and the blood had been washed out of her hair and off her body. There was a sick twist in his gut when he realized that the bastard must have been the one to wash her, and touch her.
Taking in a sharp breath when he tried to move Dean noticed that the mess of blood and death were missing. Rolling his head, Dean looked to the other cage to see what had been done.
The body was gone and the floor had been scrubbed clean.
Dean wondered how long he’d been passed out this time. Because it would have taken more than just a few hours to get all that blood off the floor. Not to mention getting the body out of the cage and up the stairs.
And he’d slept through all of it.
Sighing, Dean felt sleep tugging at him again.
Turning his body, Dean wrapped himself around the little girl sleeping next to him. Made his body a shield before fighting back the need to sleep.
Moving that much made some of the shallow cuts on his stomach open again. His chest felt tight, like it was suddenly two sizes too small.
Ignoring the discomforts, Dean glanced down at the little girl to see that she was now awake and staring up at him with her thumb back in her mouth.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said softly. His voice rasping from his raw throat. “You know how long ago it was that the bas- bad man took me outta my cage?”
“Yesterday,” she told him. Though it sounded more like yath-er-ay around her thumb. And it took Dean a moment to figure out what she’d said. Ever since Sammy had stopped sucking his thumb Dean hadn’t needed to translate words like that.
Dean hummed absently and tried to figure out how many days he’d been missing now. Three days at least, he decided, possibly four.
“Think it’d be all right to tell me your name now?” Dean asked next, trying to distract himself from wondering what Sam was doing now. What he’d been doing since Dean had left. Had he gone looking for Dean when he didn’t come back the next morning? Or had Sam assumed that Dean had done exactly what he said he might do and simply left him there? Because Dean refused to think that Sam might be dead.
“Sage,” she said, drawing Dean’s attention back to her.
“Sage, huh? That’s a pretty name.” When she didn’t move away from him, but actually snuggled in closer to his chest, Dean closed his eyes and wrapped an arm around her little body. "How old are you?"
“Four,” she spoke into his chest.
They were quiet after that. Dean stuck on the idea that the little girl tucked against his chest was had been cuddling against her mother’s dead body the day before. He didn’t really want to think about what else might have happened to her in the few weeks since she’d been taken from her home. But his mind wandered down that path anyway.
Anything could have happened to her. Whatever the bastard had done to Dean, he might already have done to her. Had obviously already been done to her mother. And Dean couldn’t help but wonder if Sage had seen that. If she’d been taken into that other room and forced to watch as her mother was tortured and then killed.
She poked his belly button, causing Dean’s entire body to jerk in response, when his stomach growled at him. She’d been quiet for so long, Dean had thought she’d gone back to sleep. She poked his belly button again forcing a small huff of laughter from him - and fuck it wasn’t fair that he was ticklish like that… he was an adult, he should have grown out of ticklishness the same way he finally left puberty behind.
“Yeah, I’m kinda hungry,” Dean admitted since that seemed to be the question she was asking. “Haven’t eaten in a few days. And the last meal I had was half a bag of chips with Sammy.”
Sage was wiggling out of his hold then. Pushing at his arm and getting to her feet before moving to the other end of the cage and picking something up. When she turned around, Dean saw she was holding a Tupperware container in her hands.
She held the container out to him when she came back. “Food,” she announced, thrusting it at him again.
Dean struggled to sit up and reach for the container. “Where’d this come from?” he asked her, eying the plastic in his hands.
“Bad man,” she answered, crawling on to his lap and resting against his chest.
Dean suppressed the hiss of breath and wince when she rubbed his t-shirt against the cuts on his stomach. It hurt, but not enough to make him push her away. If she felt safe with him, then he’d give her the comfort she needed.
He considered the Tupperware container in his hands another moment before saying, more to himself than to the kid, “Don’t know that I’d trust whatever the bastard made to eat.”
Dean pulled the lid off and looked inside. It was cold, plain oatmeal.
Good and healthy food that would help build up strength and easy to disguise poisons and drugs. “Did you eat any of this, Sage?”
She nodded against his chest.
“And the bad man didn’t put anything in it?”
“Let me make it,” she told him, sleep thick in her voice.
When his stomach growled again, Dean sighed and used his fingers to scoop some of the cold food into his mouth. It tasted like shit, but it was still food in his stomach.
:::
Sage was gone.
It was the first thing he thought when he woke up the next morning.
Sitting up, reaching for a knife that wasn’t there under a pillow he didn’t have, Dean looked frantically around the room for the missing girl, shouting, “Sage!”
He caught sight of her standing on a chair which had been moved up against a post, reaching for his leather coat that was hanging there. She wobbled a little and turned to shush him before reaching up again to tug at his coat.
Dean swallowed his heart back down into his chest and waited for her to pull his coat down and climb off the chair. Watched as she pushed it back across the floor under the stairs where she’d probably gotten it from in the first place. When she came back to the cage, dragging the coat behind her, Dean watched as she slipped between the bars of the cage.
“Does the he know you can get out of the cage like that?” Dean asked, accepting his coat when she handed it to him.
She shook her head and crawled back into his lap, shivering a little against him. Dean wrapped his coat around her, rubbing his hands over her back and arms. The basement was warm; there was no reason for her to be cold unless she was in shock. Delayed shock, probably from her mother’s death, or whatever the bastard might have done to her while Dean had been passed out.
“Have you tired to run away?” he asked her.
“Can’t reach,” was all she said.
Glancing over to the work table with all the tools hanging from pegs on the wall, Dean considered getting Sage to sneak over and see if she could find him something to pick the lock with. Except Dean couldn’t see anything that would be helpful. Needle nose pliers and a slotted screwdriver just weren’t going to cut it. And it would be a little obvious what he was doing if he tried to file some of the bars loose on his cage.
He was stuck there. No way out, no way to get word to Sam that he was alive, and no way to find out if Sam was even looking for him. Fuck, he hated this. Hated feeling this helpless. Because the bastard would come back and use his mojo on Dean and Dean wouldn’t be able to stop him.
He didn’t want to die in a fucking cage.
Once was plenty enough for him.
Shifting, Dean wrapped his arms more comfortably around the kid on his lap. “Did the bad man get your dad when he took you from your home?” Dean asked as gently as he could.
Sage shook her head against his chest. “Dead b’fore that.”
“You got any family waiting for you back home?”
“All dead,” Sage whispered, muffled by the leather of his coat.
Dean closed his eyes and banged his head against the bars behind him. The kid was alone in this. She had no one waiting for her, no one to go home to. No home left now that the bastard had taken it away. At least Dean would still have Sam if he got out of this. Wouldn’t matter if his brother thought Dean had taken off, he’d take Dean back once he knew what had happened.
Dean was once more interrupted from his thoughts when the outer door upstairs crashed open, and the heavy tread of foot steps tromped over the floor. Sage tensed up in his arms, little fingers curling into the material of his t-shirt, gripped tightly in a little fist.
He rubbed useless soothing circles on her back and arms. It did little good when Dean’s entire body was tensed and coiled, ready for a fight, adrenaline kicking through his system.
Dean watched passively as the bastard came down the basement stairs. He was wearing the same boots, another pair of blue jeans, and this time he had on a plain navy t-shirt.
“Hey there,” the man greeted them in his sickly cheerful tone. “Glad to see you’re already up. Did you sleep well last night?”
Dean could never understand why crazy people always wanted to have a conversation with the people they kidnapped. It wasn’t like Dean was grateful for being taken, or like they were going to best buds when this was all over. One of them would be dead and Dean was determined that he wasn’t going to end up in a little pot of ashes or a shallow grave.
“’Bout as well as can be expected,” Dean answered conversationally. This wouldn’t be the first crazy person he’d humoured. “Would have been better with a real bed, you know.”
The other guy chuckled a little, moving towards the other room. “Yeah, the floor doesn’t have much give to it. Sorry about that,” he called when he disappeared into the other room. “There wasn’t really enough room in this place for me to build some larger cages.”
Dean waited for the other guy to come out of the other room. But when a few minutes passed and he didn’t come back out, Dean raised his voice. “So, I never did catch your name, man.”
A second later the bastard stuck his head out the door, grinning. “Well, damn. I forgot about the introductions. Clayton Reynolds. Nice to meet you.”
“Like wise,” Dean responded pulling a smile out from somewhere. Fucker. “I’m Dean, by the way.”
The guy laughed and disappeared into the other room again. “Oh, I already know that!” he called back. “Got your wallet from your pocket when I picked you up. Course, the question is more what your last name is. There were a bunch of cards with different names on them. Thought for a little while that you’d grabbed the wrong wallet when you left that bar. Until I found your driver’s license in it.”
“You got my necklace with my wallet up there?” Dean asked, trying to keep his tone conversational.
“Sure do!” Clayton called back. “Same with your ring, bracelets, and watch. Even that flask you had the water in. Though, I don’t know what you were doing with all those weapons on you, man. Seriously, six knives and a gun with two spare clips?”
“Got a dangerous job,” Dean answered. “Don’t go anywhere unarmed. Be like tempting fate."
Clayton came out of the other room a smiled a little. “Fair enough. Every job has its share of risks. But I still can’t figure out what the bag of salt was for. That’s what’s really stumping me.” Dean watched as the other man leaned casually against the wall next to the door. “See, I understand the two decks of matches and the lighter, the condoms, and even the little packets of lube. But what were you going to use the salt for?”
“All part of the job, man,” Dean explained. “I’m a Hunter, see. Salt, fire, and pure iron are the best stuff for dealing with just about any supernatural creepy crawly that tries to pick a fight.”
“Huh,” he said, considering Dean’s words. “Never heard of Hunters before. But then again, up until a few years ago, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. So what’s a Hunter do?”
Dean shrugged a little, felt Sage press a little tighter to his chest. He tried to make his movements just as casual as his words, not wanting to draw Clayton’s attention to the little girl hiding under his coat. “Hunt and kill evil things mostly. You know, ghosts and demons, werewolves, fey creatures… Stuff like that.”
Clayton nodded and something shifted in his expression before he pushed away from the wall. “Well, enough with the conversation now. We’ve got some work to get done.”
Dean tensed when he felt that invisible hold tighten around him. “Don’t trust me to go quietly?” Dean forced out.
Clayton shrugged again, pulling the keys from his pocket. “You seem like a nice guy, Dean. But remember I found you with six knives and a gun. If you know how to use them, I’ve gotta assume you know how to use your fists.”
Dean waited until Clayton had gotten him out of the cage before he started to push against that invisible hold. “Mind if I ask what it is we’re doing?”
“Don’t see the harm in it,” Clayton told him. Dean felt the hold get a little tighter as he tried to move against it. “Like I said, I thought I was the only one who could do magic and stuff. Wasn’t until I stumbled into a psychic’s little tea shop in North Carolina that I found someone else like me.” Sweat was starting to bead on Clayton’s upper lip as they moved into the other room. “Didn’t take much longer before I figured out how to find others like me and then take their gifts. Found this ritual in an Occult shop in California and found out I could make myself stronger by binding the souls of other gifted people to me.”
The hold on Dean got even tighter on him, cutting off his ability to speak, fighting to just keep his ribs expanding. “That was almost four years ago now.” Dean kept pushing, kept struggling against the hold Clayton had on him, and watched as the other man’s face became flushed and sweat was popping up on his forehead. “All I had to do was strip away the barriers between the mind and the soul, and there was suddenly this impossibly deep well of power I could touch.
“And that’s what we’re doing; I’m stripping away the last of the barriers between you and your soul. Once they’re gone, I’ll perform the last ritual, bind your soul to me, and then kill you.”
:::
Dean ended up back in his cage again.
There weren’t any black holes in his memory this time. Dean knew what had happened, could remember in vivid detail what had been done to him and how it had felt. Aside from the slight burn of fresh shallow cuts on his chest everything in him felt like it had been twisted and knotted, stretched and pulled near the breaking point.
The tight feeling in his chest had stretched to encompass most of his body, like his skin shrunk in the wash, too small for everything, pushing the seams.
Curled up on his side, Dean could still feel the oils on his skin mixing with the fresh blood. Clayton hadn’t bothered to clean him up this time. Instead, just tossed him back into the cage and took the stairs two at a time when he went back up.
Sage was sitting in the corner of the cage, huddled inside his jacket, just watching him.
He wanted to sleep. To close his eyes and open them again with Sammy wrapped around him, breathing into the back of his neck. He just wanted to get back to Sam.
He was tired of constantly having to be rescued from situations like this. He shouldn’t need to be saved. There wasn’t another soul worried about where he’d gone off. No one was going to come riding to his rescue.
Dean wasn’t sure when he’d actually fallen asleep, only that when he opened his eyes again, Clayton was coming back into the basement, keys dangling from his fingers.
When he saw that Dean was awake, he smiled to him. “Thought I’d give you a bit of a rest today, Dean. You’ve surpassed my expectations, enduring the first two rituals so close together like that.”
“So what are you doing here then?” Dean asked, his throat throbbing. “Hey, can I get some water?”
“Oh! Sure,” Clayton said, moving towards the other room.
He came back with a couple bottles of water. Setting them just outside the cage, Clayton kept just out of reach. Not that Dean could have willed his body to do much of anything at the moment. Just reaching for the bottles of water left him feeling exhausted.
“If we’re taking a break, what are you doing down here?” Dean asked once he’d finished half of the first bottle of water.
“Just came down to see if I could get the girl to come upstairs and play outside a little,” Clayton told him. “It’s not good for a kid her age to be locked up inside like this. Children need lots of sunlight and space to run around and grow up.”
Dean frowned a little. The crazy son of a bitch sounded honestly concerned and worried about Sage. “She slept in a pool of her mother’s blood after you killed her, man,” Dean told him. “I don’t think she’s really going to want to go anywhere with you after that.”
Clayton shrugged a little. “She’s going to have to get used to it,” he said matter of factly. “I’m not giving her up. I’ve already started the rituals with her, but they have to be done more slowly because of her age. But she’s going to be a very sweet addition.”
“How long you planning to keep her around?” Dean asked around the lip of the bottle of water. The tightness in his chest finally stopped trying to push out, instead it was like something was slithering just under his skin while he waited for Clayton to answer him.
“A few more weeks, maybe a few months,” was the offhanded response. All of his attention was for Sage, who was sleeping curled up in the far corner of the cage buried under Dean’s coat. “I have to do the ritual more slowly. But once I’ve killed you, I can use your ashes to finish the ritual with her.”
The slithering stopped, coiled deep in the center of Dean’s chest at that. Clayton stepped towards the cage, and Dean felt that invisible hold close around him. Except this time Dean knew how to beat it. His body might be one giant source of pain, but hunting had taught him how to ignore it.
Dean waited until the lock clicked open. Waiting until Clayton had started to pull the door up before he threw everything into breaking the hold on him - there was no fucking way Dean was going to let himself be killed, get himself bound into oblivion and have his body used to destroy some kid - threw his body and mind at those invisible bonds, forcing them to stretch and move and accommodate him. White spots exploded in his field of vision when Clayton focused his energies back to Dean.
When that hold threatened to crush him, Dean reached inside of himself, going as deep as he could get, reached into that dark cold place with hands he couldn’t actually feel and grabbed hold of the slithering, stretching mass in his chest and dragged it up into the light.
He had no idea what the fuck he was doing, if it would work. No idea what it was he was calling upon, drawing on every reserve of strength and will that he had, forced it into being and fucking owned it. And for a moment Dean didn’t think it was going to be enough. There were shades of grey blurring his peripheral vision, shifting and moving against the back drop of the too clean basement.
And then Clayton was backing away from the cage, his eyes wide and terrified and Dean could suddenly breathe and move again. Taking a quick glance around to clear his vision, he realized that those grey spots he’d seen creeping in towards him hadn’t just been his mind losing consciousness but actual ghosts. Except not really.
He watched them a moment longer, wondering if they were going to turn on him. Watched until he realized that they were all heading towards Clayton. Creeping closer and gaining substance with each beat of his heart.
“You need to leave,” someone said behind him.
Dean’s head snapped around to catch sight of Sage’s mother, the woman from his dream, and the dead body from the other cage. And she looked very much alive to Dean.
“What’s happening?” he demanded.
Taylor looked down to him, tilting her head to one side. “You called us, Dean. You broke his hold over us.” She looked away from Dean, back to Clayton who’d been back up against a wall and was batting uselessly at the shades.
“This is the reason why we accepted our deaths, Dean,” Taylor whispered. And it took a moment for Dean to realize that her lips weren’t moving. “We knew what was going to happen to us. We let our blood be spilt to make you.”
Dean’s head began to throb just before Clayton started screaming. Looking over, Dean couldn’t see through the shades anymore. They were no longer transparent and Dean couldn’t see what they were doing.
“Remember, Dean,” Taylor told him, stepping through to cage, stepping through him. “You don’t need to believe in a deity to become a piece on the game board. Now take Sage and run. We’ll hold him for as long as we can, but we’re running out of time.”
Dean didn’t hesitate once Taylor’s shade joined the others surrounding Clayton. Just reached over to the kid huddled in the corner of the cage and snatched her up.
She grabbed hold of him, little fingers clutching the material of his t-shirt. Dean pressed her head into his shoulder and climbed out of the cage and made for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he burst through the door at the top into a sun lit hallway.
The outside door was just down the hall. Freedom a couple dozen feet away. Clayton’s scream grew louder and more frantic behind them when Dean spotted his stuff sitting on a side table near the door. He grabbed his wallet, gun, the switch blade, and his jewellery from the table, shoving everything into pockets.
He could still hear Clayton screaming behind them when he pushed the front door open and stepped out into the sun light, running down the porch steps and tearing down the driveway.
He pushed the aches and pains his body sent up to the back of his mind, but he couldn’t really ignore the way his head throbbed, the way it felt like some part of him were stretching out behind him. Like he’d left some part of himself behind in that basement and he could feel it pulling at him the further away he ran from it. But he didn’t have time to give it much thought. Just forced it as far back as he could and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
++++
Go to: Part 2