Storm Surge 4/?
Title: Storm Surge
Series: The Elements
Characters: Dean and Sam; Craven and OC’s
Author: mlebayre
Rating: R
Spoilers: Little or none
Summary: Following the trail south, Dean and Sam find out the demon they’re tracking wants them as much as they want it. Other hunters may want the brothers even more. Takes place immediately after Gale Warnings.
Many thanks to
maygin80 and Noelani618 for being such awesome betas! Spectacular banner by Neolani618
Water ran down Dean’s face, coursed the crease between his nose and cheek. It slipped over his lips to drip down his chin, finding its way under his shirt, continuing on a path between the muscles of his chest and abdomen, finally rolling off his side.
It was damn annoying.
He managed to move one hand. His fingers felt sluggish, as if they didn’t really belong to him. His hand and arm throbbed in time with the pounding of his pulse in his ears. Low moans interrupted his already fractured thoughts. It took a few seconds for his brain to process it was his voice, his moans. Shifting his weight, rolling to one side, Dean knew for sure the sharp groan was his.
“Oww…crap…” He rolled a bit farther, pulled on the duffel wedged between him and the ground, not really wanting to know what poked his back and between his ribs. “Shit.” Panting, jerking on the straps, he finally managed to wrench it free and drop flat on the ground.
Ground. Not wooden flooring. Ground. Wet, soggy, ground.
It was raining…on him.
Outside. He was outside, on the ground, in the rain.
“Isn’t that just delightful.”
Closing his eyes for a few minutes, Dean tried to collect his very scattered thoughts. Why exactly again was he flat on his back in the rain? Outside…in the rain? Gingerly turning his head left, then right, Dean scanned the area. He was behind the orphanage, which completely confused him for a few seconds.
“Sam! SAMMY!”
Trying to push up onto his elbows for a better look around…where the hell is Sam?
As he moved, something shifted over his legs, creaked and pressed against him with sudden pressure. His brain kicked in and everything came crashing back to him with enough force it nearly knocked the breath from his chest. It was then he realized what was more likely the culprit were the boards and debris across him, shifting with his movements. Shifting down. Pressing and holding him to the ground.
Inside, he’d been inside with Sam, clinging desperately to him. In the blink of an eye he’d been outside, trapped under debris, in the rain.
“Crap.” Struggling to move his legs and push himself upright, Dean managed to dislodge some of the planks scattered across his lower torso and legs.
He stared at the back of the orphanage. It was slightly uphill now. Getting one elbow under his shoulder, Dean pushed against the soggy ground. He’d been dumped in what might have been a storage building, or small barn at one time. Now, it was a pile of rubble. Heavy boards and metal trusses, some with sharp edges, or possibly nails sticking out, covered him, had partially buried him.
Wet grass at his back made it impossible for him to move without sliding, causing the debris to shift with him. Pushing free hand against anything he could, Dean tried forcing it away. The pile moved. When he wiggled his legs, trying to get out from under the debris, the entire thing shifted on the wet ground, water allowing wood and metal to slip, pressing in at him.
“God-damn!” He shouted through clenched teeth, shoving and kicking again, which only brought more debris at him.
Something flickering just inside his periphery caused him to start, reaching behind him for his gun. He pulled the duffel around, hoping to reach other weapons hidden inside. Vision swimming, then clearing when he realized it was the air around him, not his vision that rippled.
“Sam.” He bit out, panting and pushing at the debris again. “He’s in there. That thing is in there with Sam.”
“I can’t-”
“Craven, please. He’s in there; find him. Help him.”
Leaning down, solidifying more, Craven helped Dean shove some planks to one side, freeing him enough to sit upright. “You really don’t listen well, do you? I can’t fight it. You can. You’re the only one who can.”
Dean stopped and blinked at Craven for a few beats, letting the information sink in. Shoving another board to one side, Dean snarled, “Could you help me out here? I can’t do a damn thing stuck here.”
“I think we’ve got other problems.”
“We? WE? We do not have problems. Sam has problems, I have problems, you are a friggin’ ghost. You can’t possibly have problems.”
“Ethereal entity.”
Dean growled and Craven helped move a long, twisted steel truss, shoving it away. He followed Craven’s line of sight. “Goddamn!”
“Maybe you could be louder, shoot off your gun and really tell them you’re here,” Craven snapped.
Pulling his eyes back to Craven, Dean gaped at him for a few seconds before slapping his mouth shut. “They were in a diner we stopped at last night. I see four, how about you?”
Craven nodded.
“There were six.”
“So two more are around here somewhere?”
“Or just not here, maybe they split up for some reason.”
With a nod Craven agreed. “Will you be okay for a few minutes? I’ll go do some recon.”
“Yeah, go.” Dean huffed a loud breath. “That’s what I asked you to do in the first place.”
“Try and stay out of trouble for a few minutes.”
Before Dean could sling a retort at him, Craven was gone. How far he was able to go from the spotting scope Dean carried in his duffel, and from Dean himself, he had no idea. Though Sam was the official student, it was Dean Craven was bound to.
Shoving more debris to the side, he finally was able to drag himself free. Pushing to his feet, Dean clenched his teeth against the groan wanting out. Warm wet mixed with the cool wet of the rain and slid down his left calf. As if on cue his leg started to throb. “Great, I’ll have Tetanus by tomorrow.” Fishing through the duffel, Dean pulled out a bottle of peroxide and one of holy water.
His jeans were already ripped, right over where his flesh was ripped. Dean grabbed the material and yanked, opening the leg of his jeans up to his knee. First he dowsed the jagged wound along his calf with peroxide, then the holy water. Panting through clenched teeth, eyes scrunched shut, Dean wavered for a few seconds before regaining his balance. The burn and sting shot up and down his leg then faded away as quickly as Dean had created it. He pulled a few of the strips of cloth he kept in the duffel out, winding them snuggly around his leg. That would have to do until he could get it properly cleaned and bandaged.
Taking a minute to catch his breath, find a way to balance on less than two legs, Dean scanned the area. It figured he’d have to have landed downhill from where he wanted to be. Moving as fast as possible while keeping his weight more on his right leg, Dean ran, gate stilted, up the hill, panting through the pain brought on by each step.
+++++
Sam coughed; blowing spit and dust from his mouth. Shifting to one side he groaned, pushed against his elbows to sit up. “Dean? DEAN?”
He was surrounded by dark, swirls of dust and debris kicked up from his rather ungraceful landing were nothing but a shade or two lighter than the dark around him, twisting and settling as gravity tugged them down. Normal dark, for now at least. Something tickled at the back of Sam’s mind, making the hairs along his neck, the skin of his arms prickle and stand.
Sitting up straighter, shaking dust and cobwebs from his hair, he peered into the dark, arched his neck to look up. A shaft of light glinted through the hole Sam made when he crashed through the floor. His fingers ached from the strain of trying to hold onto his brother, pull Dean to him, and keep him from being flung away.
He’d failed miserably.
He’d crashed down maybe fifteen feet, it was a small miracle he hadn’t broken anything. Flexing and bending his legs, twisting his torso and stretching his arms confirmed bruised and battered, but not broken. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere. Standing gingerly, brushing dirt from his jeans Sam looked around. He was in what appeared to be some sort of storage area; maybe it’d been a cellar at one time. One room dug out of the ground. There were wooden walls, shoring up the earth, but no apparent doors.
A few feet from the hole he’d made, in a corner, was a decayed wooden ladder. Just a few rungs clung to the wall leading up. There was no way to reach it, and even if he could Sam doubted it would hold his weight.
A shiver ripped down his back, gooseflesh rose in earnest along his arms and neck like tiny feet stampeding over his skin. What they’d come looking for, what he and Dean had come here to hunt was close.
Sam feared the hunters had become the hunted.
Voices above drew his attention there. The black encroaching in from the walls divided that attention. “Hey! Can you throw me some rope? I’m stuck down here!”
His answer was a spray of gunfire that bounced more dirt into the air. Ducking, Sam covered his head, crouched down and back. “What the-”
The black slithered at him, filling the space around him, pressing in at him.
He heard the conversation from above, more background noise. They weren’t talking to him, but about him, Sam suddenly realized.
“Which one is that?” Voice one asked.
“The younger one, Sam.” That voice was older, gruffer.
Great, more people who knew him, but he didn’t have a clue about. Pushing away thoughts of where Dean was and that he was trapped, Sam skimmed the area again, looking for an escape route.
“Let’s kill him, then get the other one.” A third voice.
Sam froze, shifting his eyes up to the dim light of the opening above. He had to find Dean, knowing that if his brother was capable of it, he was already scouring the area for Sam. He’d walk right into an ambush, not even aware these men were here. Pressing his lips together, Sam fought to control his breathing, keep quiet, stay calm.
Moveingd back until he was pressed against the farthest wall, Sam’s eyes flicked back and forth between the conversation above and the thing flowing at him. The air around him crackled with energy, and not in the good way. His skin crawled over itself, lines of sweat oozed down his back.
The older, gruffer voice spoke, moving closer to the opening above Sam. “No. The older one is more dangerous, we need this kid to catch him, then we finish them both. We don’t leave either one.”
Sam was starting to get that royally screwed feeling.
Attention pulled away from the men above, Sam focused on what shared the small space with him. As before, it flowed around his feet, pooled there, blocking out all light, surrounding Sam with a dense black abyss. Sam jerked in a few quick breaths, trying to stay calm. The fingers of one hand slipped into his jeans pocket, wound around and gripped the two items he carried. A stone with a sigil carved in it, and the packet of herbs Dean insisted they both carry.
It hovered, then slithered along his leg, winding up his torso. There it stopped. Dean wasn’t there to watch, to be tortured along with Sam. It taunted Sam, showed him what it could do to those unloved, unprotected. Turning his head to one side, pressing his cheek to the damp walls, Sam closed his eyes to the pain, desperation of unknown, unnamed children whose faces and fears were shown to him by this thing. Reminding himself again, he had been loved, protected. So had Dean. They’d escaped this fate simply because they gave each other the weapons, the means to resist, even before they knew how.
This thing can’t come take us in our sleep or anything, or it would have by now Sam.
Dean had spoken those words just a over a week before, yet it had come, taken Sam’s brother, enveloped and swallowed him in a cloud of black and taken him.
“What the hell?” One of the voices from above got through to Sam. “We’ve got to put him down. Look, that thing, it’s attracted to him.”
Sam heard movement, one body being moved away by another. “No.” It was the older, gruffer one.
“You wanna mess with that kid while he’s possessed?”
“It’s not going to possess him. I don’t think this type works that way. We can use him.” More rustling of clothes. “Hey, kid.”
Sam looked up in time to see a string of dark beads sail through the air at him. Snatching it just before it smacked his face, Sam stared at what hung over his hand. “Get me outa here!” He shouted, knowing as he did so it was useless.
The older, gruffer voice laughed, a face came into view. He was a thin man, covered with a scruffy gray beard, equally gray hair stuck out at odd, short angles. “You’re lucky I gave you that Rosary. You know how to use it. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel, you bring those things here, and we pick them off. Let you make up for what you did to Steve before I let it just tear you apart.”
Clutching the Rosary to his chest, Sam tried turning away from the black evil surrounding him, tried slinking farther into the shadows. There was no escape. No help.
Assaulted by images of the cold-hearted killer of innocents Dean would become, the evil Sam would become, he tried desperately to convince himself it wasn’t true, would never be true.
Cold, bone chilling and coming from everywhere at once surrounded Sam. He edged away from the black thing settling around him, it was a useless act he knew, but tried anyway.
Motion in the corner near the ladder caught his attention. A faint flicker. Sam turned to watch, it grew stronger, took more shape. The black lashed out at it, making it cringe away. Sam felt its fear, its horrible all encompassing fear. Something Sam swore looked like fingers reached out from the flicker, waggled at him in a follow motion.
Inching along the wall, trying to get away from the boogeyman demon, Sam moved toward the flicker. The black flowed along with his feet. Fumbling in his jacket pocket, Sam found a small bottle of water, holy water. Opening it, he tossed some at the black. It hissed. Steam rose for a few seconds from it, then it was as black and frightening as before, though it slowed its movement.
The flicker took more shape. A little boy, phantom eyes shifted from Sam to the black evil puddling near his feet. He had wide pale brown eyes, dark, curly hair. Ducking into a small hole in the wall, he poked his head back through, then a hand, again motioning for Sam to follow.
“You’re a tiny little ghost boy. I’m a big, grown up solid boy.” Sam grumbled.
Creeping across the floor, back to the wall, painstaking inch after inch, Sam kept the black evil in sight. He froze when it swirled up creating for a few seconds a vortex, black reflecting nothing.
Then it was gone.
As quietly as possible, Sam pried boards near the hole loose, made an opening he was barely able to squeeze his shoulders through and followed a ghost child into the walls.
Chapter 5