SPN fic: If Ever I Cease to Love
Part Four
Genre: gen casefic
Characters: Dean, Sam, various OCs
Rating: R
Word Count: 5,500
Summary: In February of 2008, a hunt takes the Winchesters to New Orleans just in time for Mardi Gras. Dean's plan is to work the job, get elbow-deep in oyster po-boys, and hit the parade route. But what Dean plans and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five]
If Ever I Cease to Love
It was a ten minute drive to West End, the northwestern corner of Orleans Parish on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The whole area-marina, two yacht clubs, restaurants, and condos-had been pretty much wiped out in ’05, and for the most part it was still nothing but ruins and thick shadows. At this time of night, there wasn’t a soul around.
The Broussards had already rebuilt their boat house on the jetty, not twenty yards from the water. It stood alone in a row of gutted shells, freshly painted and summery. No one was going to hear James scream out here.
Sam and Dean hauled him out of the trunk, got him through the door, and dropped him on the dock where a sturdy old Boston Whaler was tied up. A little rearranging, and they carried him up a spiral stairwell and through a cheerful blue door. He had the sense not to struggle; he just watched them through cold, narrowed eyes.
Inside was a swanky kitchen and bar, but no furniture to speak of. In the bedroom a devil’s trap and a thick ring of salt were ruining the carpet. Sam had salted the doorways too-even the sliding doors out to the balcony overlooking the harbor.
“Nice view for an exorcism,” Dean said. There was a sunken sailboat down there, too costly to dredge up after the storm. Its mast jutted up silver in the moonlight. “Cool.”
Sam did the honors binding James’ hands and feet to the chair limbs. Dean checked his knots.
“You probably shouldn’t be here for this,” Sam said softly to Maria, who stood with her arms hugged around her in the doorway.
She just shook her head.
“All right,” Dean said. “Go for it.”
Sam ripped the duct tape from James’ mouth. “Hey, there. Let’s get started.”
A slow, crazed little smirk spread across his face. “You have nothing to threaten me with,” he breathed.
“No?” Sam said. “Crux sancta sit mihi lux non draco…”
It was like they’d shoved a cattle prod into his ribs and let it sear. The spirit twisted and writhed with tendon-popping strength inside its borrowed skin. It cursed them in languages Dean didn’t even recognize, and it hissed and spit like a wild animal.
But it didn’t go anywhere.
James’ head snapped back hard, jaw strained open wide.
“Is that supposed to happen?” Maria murmured behind Dean.
“It’ll probably get a lot worse.”
Sam gave up on the Benedictine text and went for some Rituale Romanum: “Deus caeli, deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate…”
A scream ripped out of James’ throat, loud and sudden enough to make Maria flinch.
Sam kept going. He got to the end, started again. James seized and shuddered, but there were no pyrotechnics. No mysterious winds rose up. The lights didn’t even flicker.
This wasn’t protocol for ghosts or demons. Dean was getting a little pissed off at the lack of professional courtesy here.
“Hold on,” he said as Sam sucked in a breath.
In the sudden silence, James’ head flopped down onto his chest. Maria started for him, and Dean held out a staying hand. He nodded at Sam’s left forearm, where he knew the sleeve hid a messy burn scar. “Binding mark?”
Not likely, Sam’s expression said. “We’ll see.”
He stepped carefully over the salt line, and he reached for James’ shoulder.
“Jesus fuck,” James tried to say, and it came out as more of a whimper. His head lolled back on his neck, and black streaked his cheeks like tear tracks. “You want to just hook me up to a fucking car battery, you sick motherfucker?”
Maria took another step, but this time she glanced over for permission. Dean nodded, and she went to James with a cool cloth and a water bottle. “Small sips,” she said, wiping the black from his face. “And be polite to the professionals, please.”
Meanwhile, Sam rolled up James’ sleeves and opened his shirt. The scattershot gouges of rock salt stood out red on his pale skin, and he had a meat tag tattooed on his ribs and an Army eagle on his chest. There was no binding mark.
“Quit feeling me up and get rid of the fucking thing,” James snapped at Sam.
“James,” Maria said, catching his chin gently. “Say fuck one more time. Maybe it’ll help.”
Sam stepped out of the salt circle and headed through the doorway with a quick, follow-me head jerk. Dean followed him. It was conference time in the kitchen.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sam said, turning around and leaning against the counter. Oh, crap. I’ve been thinking usually ended in we should try something unorthodox and probably unnecessary in order to satisfy my curiosity. Most recently, it ended in fairy tales, and the sooner that weird-ass case was forgotten, the better.
Sam swallowed and said, “Are we sure we want to do this just yet?”
“Meaning what?”
“Think about it, Dean,” Sam said, fidgety with whatever idea he had in his head. “If we’re right about this thing busting out of the gates last May, then what we’ve got in there is a soul that escaped from hell.”
“Yeah. Give it a cookie, send it back.”
But there was something fervent in Sam’s face now. “Think about what it could tell us.”
Oh, yes, because the last time a demon told Dean about hell’s inner workings, it brought sunshine and rainbows into his life. “Sam,” Dean said testily. “It could tell us hell is John Mayer played on loop forever and ever. I don’t need the travel brochure, okay? Just let it go.”
“What if this could help you?”
“I said let it go.”
“Get back in here,” James yelled from the bedroom. “Come on, you sadistic bastards, let’s get this shit done.”
= = = = =
They tried for hours.
Sam read himself hoarse, going through mantras and yajnas from the Vedic and Tantric traditions, verses from the Qur’an, and every rite in Dad’s journal.
Each time, the spirit took over when Sam started saying the words, thrashing and seizing and mocking whatever religion they threw at it. And in the end, James’ body went limp, and the next time he raised his head he was himself. When he caught his breath, it was to call them useless cocksuckers and tell Maria to dry her eyes.
The spirit was more polite.
“They tell stories about you,” he said. Black pooled at the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
“You guys shoot the shit over beers in hell?” Sam said. “That’s nice.”
“Lesser demons fear you,” the spirit went on. “How many have you cast out?”
“About to be one more.”
Grimly, the thing smiled. “How many bodies have you burned in unmarked graves? How many sweet, pretty sisters will never know what happened to their brothers?”
“You’ve burned through more than one since you got out, I’ll bet. Was Sonia Torres the first, or was she just a little fun on the side?”
“He wasn’t kind to me when I wore her,” the spirit said to Maria. “He’s not a kind man, your brother.” With infinite patience, it closed James’ eyes. “Has he told you what it felt like to shoot someone in the head?”
Silence.
“It’s God’s own heroin,” it said in perfect imitation of James’ gruff intonation. Then, with almost religious fervor: “He saw the pink mist.”
Dean made an impatient noise. “As much fun as the armchair psych-“
“You know the feeling.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, leaning into his space. “I do.”
The spirit just smiled, slow and satisfied.
“I’m glad we had this talk,” Sam said. “Enjoy whatever circle of hell you come from.”
“I told you, you have nothing to threaten me with.”
“Why’s that? You think you’ll just crawl back out?”
James leaned forward as far as his bonds allowed. “Yes, and let me tell you exactly how I did it,” he mocked. “Detailed directions to the back door.”
“Regna terrae, cantate Deo,” Sam said, and his lip curled angrily. “Psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem Ecce dabit voci Suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo.”
“What’s the last man standing going to do, I wonder? You bought him his life,” he said to Dean, “but that was no great favor. I know what he has to look forward to. It’s only a few months now, isn’t it? Maybe less.”
“Longer than you, douchebag,” Dean said.
“You’ll have the road and the guilt, Sam. It sent Daddy a little sideways. What will it do to you?”
“Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae Tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate-”
“If you like,” the spirit said through gritted teeth, “you can peer into real people’s lives like shop windows. It won’t be enough. You’ll forget the rhythm of small talk. Forget the shape of words in your mouth.”
“That’s poetic,” Dean sneered.
“-laqueo, deceptione et nequitia, omnis fallaciae, libera nos, Domine.”
The spirit gasped, back arched and neck twisted painfully. “Do it long enough,” he choked out, “and you’ll wake up one day with no idea who you are. No one will know well enough to tell you.”
“Vade, Satana,” Sam drowned him out. “Vade, Satana!”
“Long way down the road,” the thing panted with glittering fever eyes, “when you meet a man with black eyes who says he was once your brother, will you cast him back into the pit?”
“That’s enough.” And Sam turned on his heel, shoved Dad’s journal at Dean’s chest, and strode out into the kitchen.
The spirit yelled after him, “How long does he have to burn because of you?”
Dean set him steaming and gasping in holy water. “You, shut up. Sam, what the hell are you-“
Sam burst back through the door with the Colt leveled at James’ center mass. “You have five seconds to tell me how you crawled topside.”
The entire room went very, very still.
“Four,” Sam said.
The spirit breathed in slow and shaky, and its eyes burned madly.
“Three.”
James looked strung out. No, he looked… rapturous. Something was way off here, Dean knew; there was something they were missing, some big piece-
“Two.”
“Maybe he deserves it,” James said quietly.
Sam thumbed back the hammer. Maria threw herself in a stupid direction, and Dean caught her around the waist on instinct. She squirmed and fought and tried to elbow him in the ribs, but that was too damn bad. You didn’t let civilians jump into the line of fire, not even to shield their dumbass brothers.
Besides, Sam was bluffing.
You shot her.
She was a smartass!
…Sam was probably bluffing. And it wasn’t going to work. Holy crap, they’d been going at this wrong from the beginning.
“Sam, he wants you to shoot him.”
Held tight to his body, Maria stopped struggling. And without taking his eyes off James, Sam twitched his head in Dean’s direction. “What?”
“He’s done nothing but talk shit since we grabbed him,” Dean said. “Fucker practically dared us.”
A muscle jumped next to Sam’s nose. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Look at him, man,” Dean insisted, and with the fading light in James’ eyes and the slow curl of his lip, he knew he was right. “It’s suicide by cop.”
For a long moment, Sam held the gun steady.
“My brother’s in there,” Maria said, fingers tight around Dean’s wrist and forearm. “Please, my little brother’s in there.”
James’ face twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. “He dies regardless,” he spat. “You cannot wrench me free.”
“You sure about that?” Dean snarled, flinging holy water across his face.
The spirit bellowed his way through the pain. As it passed, he shook his head, flinging droplets of holy water, and then he tucked his chin to his chest. Muted, his voice rumbled up in a chant as low and rhythmic as a prayer.
“I am the sinner cursed to roam the earth until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” Slowly he looked up at them, hollow-eyed and stripped of everything but hate. “I have lived more lifetimes than you have days, I have walked five continents, sailed every ocean, and bled under banners forgotten by history. I am he who drove the nails at Golgotha, and you will send me to my rest.”
Maria went white, and Sam and Dean glanced at each other.
“Well, shit,” said Dean.
= = = = =
“Of course we couldn’t send it to hell,” Sam seethed, leaning his elbows on the kitchen island and letting his head fall into his hands. “The crux of the curse is that it’s stuck on this plane forever.”
“What does that mean?” Maria asked him stiffly, wrapped in a blanket and keeping the island between her and the Winchesters.
“Wandering souls have supposedly committed some great sin,” Sam explained, gruff with frustration and forty-eight straight hours awake. “They’re cursed by God, forced to roam the earth without rest until Judgment Day.”
“Like the Wandering Jew?”
“That was the anti-Semitic, medieval Catholic version, yeah. This one seems to be a living soul skipping from body to body, unable to move on to any kind of afterlife.”
“Except now he knows we’ve got the Colt,” Dean realized, leaning against the counter. “That’s who’s been asking questions about us-he was doing his homework.”
“He let us capture him,” Sam sighed.
“So what are our options at this point?” said Maria.
“Honestly?” Dean said. “Nothing you’re going to like.”
“I didn’t like the gun pointed at him,” she said sharply, and Sam glanced up from his notes with no kind of apology in his face.
Dean stood up straight, taking a step between Maria and Sam, and he tried to be the practical one here. “Either we kill it while it’s got a body, or we force it out in the open.”
“How do we force it out?”
“We probably don’t,” Sam said, blunt and tired of comforting lies. “I don’t know what another exorcism will do to James. His death might free the thing before the ritual could.”
“The curse,” she said, glancing between them. “What if we break the curse?”
Sure, Dean thought, and after that, we’ll put Humpty-Dumpty back together and make the earth turn backwards. “We can look into it.”
But Maria heard the doubt, not the words, and she tucked the blanket closer around her like she meant to disappear in it.
From the next room, James yelled with his shredded voice, “Who stole my fucking sippy cup? This is bullshit.”
Maria closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she stood up straight and gathered James’ water bottle and bendy straw. She closed the bedroom door behind her.
Left alone, the Winchesters regarded each other across the kitchen.
“Dude,” Dean said, taking up a position leaning against the counter. “You want to tell me what just happened in there?”
“I thought we had a lead,” Sam said unrepentantly.
Dean cocked an eyebrow. “You nearly killed the bastard for mouthing off.”
That earned him a scathing look. “I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable with the way I’m trying to save your life.”
“It’s not that,” Dean said, letting his crossed arms drop. “I mean, it is, but... It’s not like you, man-going off half-cocked. Especially not on a case like this. We’ve been where they are, remember?”
“Yeah, we have,” Sam snapped. “And you didn’t know when to let go then either.”
“The hell does that mean?”
Sam pressed his lips into a thin line. He’d thought he was so fucking close, Dean realized. Just like the last lead, and the one before that. “Dean,” he demanded, “do you seriously believe we can stop this thing without killing the host?”
Dean made a barely audible noise that amounted to No, not really.
Sam glared, and waited.
“Hey, I’ll keep trying,” Dean said, hands spread. “But no.”
“So why do you want me to?”
Because I want you to be my brother again. Just ‘cause.
Dean consciously relaxed his shoulders and let his head drop low. Deep breath. Quick exhale, then he looked Sam in the eyes. “Because you’re the one who might actually figure out how.”
The edge of anger in Sam’s glare slowly softened into resignation. Dean thought they were back on the same page when Sam’s bitchface made a brief appearance, and a second later he knew it when Sam nodded tiredly. “What the hell. It's this or parades, right?”
= = = = =
“You want to break a two thousand year old curse?” Miss Elena said, and even over the phone Dean could hear her raised eyebrows.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said.
“A curse that old, it’s got to be strong and permanent as a mountain to have stuck this long. You don’t break something like that. You satisfy its terms.”
“Well, since we can’t bring on the apocalypse, that’s pretty much out.”
“Then you got to work around it,” she muttered thoughtfully. Dean could picture her fierce frown of concentration, like she was staring down the mildewed remains of her curtains or preparing to bust down a door swollen shut in its frame. “It’s a living soul, which complicates things. It’s going to have its heels dug in good. Ain’t coming free like a spirit, ain’t going to leave polite like the lwa. Now there’s a couple traditions-”
“Miss Elena,” Dean interrupted as delicately as he could. “I’m going to give you to Sam, okay? This is more his department.”
There was a nervous pause. “I don’t know.”
Dean bit back a sigh. “Please.”
She waited long enough to make it clear that she was doing him a favor by talking to his demon king brother, and then she said, “All right.”
Sam took the phone-“Good evening, ma’am”-and he settled on the floor with twenty pounds of paper spread around him. “It wasn’t my idea. I agree, yeah, but all the lore I’ve found says that-yeah. Yeah. No, we’ve tried that already. Okay, let me give you what we’ve got so far.”
Half an hour later, he’d sucked down three cups of coffee, called half his contacts list, and come up with a plan.
It sounded about as promising as luring the cursed soul out with candy.
“We borrow from a tradition that doesn’t cast spirits to hell, it casts them into a solid object,” Sam said, talking too fast with the exaggerated gestures of the over-caffeinated. “Like the legend of Koschi the Deathless, whose life was inside the thing inside the roc’s egg inside the-yeah. But the text would have to be-”
“Sam,” Dean interrupted.
“Some kind of syncretic-”
“Sam.”
“What?”
“Are you talking about a custom ritual?”
“That is exactly what I’m talking about.”
Candy. Candy would be better. “McGyver an exorcism, and you could turn the poor bastard’s head around on his neck.”
“Our other options end the same way.”
Point.
Dean leaned over Sam’s shoulder and toed a few sheets of paper aside.
“No,” Sam snapped, shooing him. “Don’t touch that. Don’t…hover.”
And he went back to sketching symbols and jotting down phrases. Rendered briefly useless, Dean wandered into the bedroom where James sat, mercifully passed out. On the balcony, obscured by the moon’s glare on the sliding glass doors, Maria sat cross-legged, looking out at the harbor. A cigarette glowed in one hand, and her finishing school posture had melted into a slouch.
Dean slid the glass door open and shut it quietly behind him. “How are you holding up?”
He could see she’d been crying-not the patient slide of tears Dean had seen on and off all day, but the kind messy enough to leave a few wisps of hair stuck to her cheek and some lingering sniffles. But she gave him a smile so easy and meaningless he suspected it was reflex. “Have a seat?”
Dean had nothing better to do. He sank down on the smooth, worn wood, facing her with his back to the railing.
“You’re trying very hard to save a man you think is a jackass,” she said, calm and thoughtful as though her interest was purely academic.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You want us to stop?”
“I hated him for a long time,” she whispered. “I think I still do, just a little.” On her exhale Dean caught the sickly sweet scent of cloves. Girl didn’t even smoke real cigarettes.
Dean peered through the glass at James’ bent head. “Ain’t the same as not giving a damn.”
“Maybe not,” she said softly. “I spent years telling my father that the drinking and arrests and rough edges were just bravado. If we ever really needed him, if it ever really mattered, James would come through.” Her free hand curled at the base of her throat. “They say we sleep sound at night because rough men do violence on our behalf.”
George Orwell, likely apocryphal. Dad had liked that quote. “Then you needed him, and it mattered?”
“Then came the storm.” She inspected the cigarette butt, put it out against the railing, and tossed it into the black water below. “The whole family evacuated to my apartment in Raleigh - I was in vet school up there. Two weeks in, we still didn’t even know how badly we’d been hit, and James just… disappeared. Took all of my cash and left his phone.”
“How long?”
“He sent Emma a letter from Fort Benning three months later.”
Dean whistled. But he’d heard worse and seen worse. Besides, she was telling him this for a reason. “You still give a damn.”
Troubled, she murmured, “Why do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you here?” she said. “You don’t even like James. I don’t even like James.”
“We’ve been over this,” he said impatiently. “It’s what my family does.”
She gave him a guarded, sideways look. “You wanted something from the… the wandering soul. And what it said about you burning because of Sam-he nearly shot my brother over it.”
So this was about his nefarious ulterior motives. Fine, then. “Once it started talking, we thought it might know something that could save my skin,” Dean admitted. “It’s moot now.”
She had the decency to look him in the eye when she said, “I’ve seen 'Doctor Faustus' on stage a couple of times. And I know every word of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia.'”
“Then you’re on the right track,” Dean said.
She nodded in Sam’s general direction. “For his life?”
Dean nodded.
The hopeless smile made another appearance. “Who do I talk to about Emma’s eyes?”
He just shook his head, and they smiled bleakly at each other in the darkness.
“So you didn’t come here looking for information,” she said at last. “Why, then?”
“Someone has to.”
“Rough men,” she said quietly. And she looked into his eyes like she'd never seen anything quite like him.
Sam slid the glass door open, held up a handful of fuzzy-edged notebook paper, and announced with frazzled pride: “There is a faint possibility that this might actually work.”
= = = = =
“You’re going to trap the cursed soul in that?” Maria said, standing in the bedroom doorway. “You don’t have something appropriately mystical in your trunk?”
Backlit by the sliding glass doors, Sam passed the porcelain Siamese cat from hand to hand. Its oversized blue eyes stared up at him mournfully. “This works.”
Dean smirked. He’d found the cat on the bathroom sink, and he’d known immediately it was made to house evil.
“I would like to register my doubts about the mission objective, y’all,” James said, swaying glassy-eyed in the chair. “Starting with the fact that it’s retarded.”
“Thank you,” Maria said. “That was constructive.”
“Bullet would be quicker,” he slurred. “Don’t want to die looking like the fuckin’… fuckin’ kid from The Exorcist. You know, puffy.”
“Shut up, James,” she said softly.
He turned his face up earnestly. “Want it to be quick.”
No one answered him.
When everything else had been set up, Maria disappeared briefly and returned to the bedroom with a fresh coat of lipstick.
This time, Dean understood. “War paint, huh?”
She nodded, and she stepped gingerly across the salt lines and kissed James on the cheek.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena,” she murmured to him. “Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus...” When he held his silence, she whispered, “Please.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, hoarse with exhausted fear. “Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesu. Fucking hell. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”
“Amen,” they said together.
She stepped back to Dean’s side, and James’ lips kept moving silently. Ave, ave.
“Sancte Michael Archangele,” Sam began. “Defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium.”
Good call, Dean thought. Ease into it with a deprecatory exorcism; get bossy with the bad guy later.
Sam’s voice rose in a slow crescendo of Latin, warning and threatening and finally commanding, and James clenched his fists until veins showed in his arms. Deep breath and a refrain-Sancte Michael Archangele-and Sam switched to unfamiliar words in what Dean thought was Aramaic, loud and deliberate.
There was a sound like indrawn breath, and a rush of cold air swept the room. Sam shook his stupid hair out of his eyes and slipped smoothly into another language-Greek this time. James strained against the ropes, and Dean heard the chair creak with the pressure.
“Sancte Michael Archangele,” Sam repeated. And then he started carefully pronouncing words Dean didn’t even recognize.
James’ head snapped back, his mouth open and gasping. The line of his throat undulated once, and an agonized keening escaped him. The chair’s joints squealed, and Dean wrapped a cautious hand around the grip of the Colt.
Sam kept talking.
Chill fingers of air crept into Dean’s three layers of clothing, and next to him, Maria shivered uncontrollably. Salt grains scattered in the wind.
“Fuck!”
James arched up impossibly, anchored only at his wrists and ankles. The thing was coming up, coming out-riding a great, bellowing scream like a war cry. Keep talking, Sammy.
“Adjuramus te!” Sam shouted. “Adjuramus te!”
The sliding doors blew inward in an explosion of glass.
Dean hit the floor, dragging Maria down to the lee of him. He felt quick, stinging cuts in the hands covering his head; he hunched his shoulders, curled his legs up. With a pretty noise like a disturbed chandelier, the glass settled around him.
“Sam?”
A force tugged Dean sideways and dragged him across the glass shards. He hit the wall hard enough to knock him breathless. He heard another thud across the room-Sam.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean gasped out, and through a burst of pain he rolled to his knees with the Colt drawn.
In the ruined devil’s trap, James stood over the wreckage of the chair, one armrest still swinging from his wrist. Pinned close to his body, Maria strained on tiptoe. His forearm was levered hard against her throat.
“There she is,” James said. His eyes were fixed lovingly on the Colt. “No, don’t move,” he added, levering Maria’s chin to a painful angle.
On his knees by the opposite wall, Sam stopped in mid-scramble for his journal.
“I told you it would come to this,” James said, eyes alight. “You will give me what I want.”
He had Maria in a classic lock. He could snap her neck whenever he felt like it.
“Great, fine, you win,” Dean said. Carefully, he got to his feet, and he kept the Colt pointed right between James' eyes. “Tell you what, you let the lady go and we’ll trade you a nice bullet in the head.”
Maria pressed her eyes shut tight.
“Do it,” the cursed soul hissed at Dean. “You have your shot. Take it.”
It was the smart thing, even if it wouldn’t be pretty. The cursed soul had no compelling reason not to kill Maria, who was probably eighty percent of the reason no one had shot James yet.
“She’s having trouble breathing,” the thing reminded him quietly.
And that settled it, right there. Dean couldn’t let him win.
“You take me,” he said. “Take me and we’ll go.”
Everyone else in the room nearly had an aneurysm.
“Dean, what the hell are you-”
“Shut up, Sam,” Dean barked.
“Why would you offer me that?” James hissed, tightening his grip on Maria. He looked suspicious, but very definitely interested. Oh, this was going to be easy.
“What’s another three months?” Dean said, smiling darkly.
“You’re not seriously-”
“Sam, shut up, or I will shut you up.” Dean was aware he probably looked manic and a little unhinged, which was going to get him exactly what he wanted, but wasn’t helping his case with Sam. Buzzed on the exhilaration of Holy fuck, I might pull this mother off, he fixed a pained smile just below Sam’s collarbone, far too low to meet his eyes, and said, “At least it’ll mean something this way.”
Saving throw. He just had to hope Sam would go long for it.
Sam followed his gaze, and Dean saw the moment when he figured out what this shiny new plan hinged on. His expression melted into something even more incensed.
Good. Message received. Let’s roll.
“Your word is worth nothing,” the cursed soul said.
“You’ve got a hostage,” Dean pointed out with a shrug. “What do you need my word for?”
“But why?” James breathed, ecstatic and disturbingly childlike.
Dean gave him a flat look. “Going once.”
“Why?” he whined.
“Going twice.”
“Yes!” James shouted. “I accept, yes!”
“Lovely.” Dean lowered the gun. “How do we do this?”
Impatient, James snapped, “You’ve dealt with devils before.”
That stopped Dean in his tracks for a good two seconds. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It’s the only way,” James said feverishly. “Only way.”
“Of course it is,” Dean muttered to himself.
“Come to me.”
Dean motioned to Maria, who was still pinned close to James’ body and very much in the way. “Logistical problem there.”
“I won’t let her go,” James said immediately. “Come here.”
Fuck it. No backing out now.
Dean lowered the Colt, took a step forward, and came close enough to Maria to hear her choked litany of “Please. Please. Please.”
He leaned past her, felt her breath on his skin, and then he was breathing James’ air-close enough to see the fine details of the lipstick print on his cheek. His stomach turned over at the way the bastard’s eyes stayed resolutely open.
“This plan was not nearly as gay in my head,” Dean muttered.
And he kissed him.
Intense cold wrapped around his entire body like chains coiling and squeezing. His nerve endings went off like fireworks, every hair stood on end with crackling energy, and his nose and mouth filled with ash. It choked him, trying to force its way down his throat. A low whine in his ears amped up to a wail, then louder, until it felt like blood vessels were bursting in his head.
Piercing through the pain, crippling in its clarity, his anti-possession tattoo burned on his chest.
He couldn’t breathe through it, he was a moron, this was a bad fucking idea, sign him up for a Darwin award this second, please God let it end already-
His eyes opened.
He lay aching on the floor next to Sam, who was crouched on one knee and yelling words against a whirlwind of black smoke. Salt grains on the air whipped by and scored their faces. The lights flickered crazily, and then blew out in crackling showers of glass slivers.
Maria lay prone nearby, catching her breath in gasps and holding onto Dean’s wrist like a lifeline. On his other side, Sam had a mean grip on his shoulder with one hand and that stupid cat figurine with the other.
A wordless shriek rode the whirlwind, echoing around and around and then down into Sam’s outstretched hand.
Everything stopped.
The lights buzzed back to steady yellow life.
Sam stared at the fading glow of the porcelain cat in his palm.
“Holy shit,” Dean croaked. “Is it just me, or am I not dead?”
Sam glared at him. “Don’t get too excited. I might still kill you.”
Fingernails dug into Dean’s wrist and then released. Maria crawled on her hands and knees to James, who was laid out on the floor like some kid’s discarded G.I. Joe. Dean pushed himself to sitting crabwise and watched as she put two fingers to James’ neck. After a few seconds of silence, she started shuddering with held-in sobs.
Fuck. All for nothing. Fuck.
“He’s alive,” she gasped out, and a hysterical giggle escaped her. “Oh, my God, he’s alive.”
“Fantastic,” Dean said, rolling sideways and making to get up. Sam rose with him, offering a hand, and they pulled each other to their feet.
Sam gave him a once-over and said, “You good?”
Dean took a second to think about it. His lungs had a scorched feel to them, but that was fading with every fresh breath. His muscles ached like a son of a bitch, but hey-nothing new. All in all, no permanent damage.
“I’m good.”
“Good.”
And Sam popped him one in the jaw.
[Part Five]
Genre: gen casefic
Characters: Dean, Sam, various OCs
Rating: R
Word Count: 5,500
Summary: In February of 2008, a hunt takes the Winchesters to New Orleans just in time for Mardi Gras. Dean's plan is to work the job, get elbow-deep in oyster po-boys, and hit the parade route. But what Dean plans and what takes place ain't ever exactly been similar.
[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five]
If Ever I Cease to Love
It was a ten minute drive to West End, the northwestern corner of Orleans Parish on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The whole area-marina, two yacht clubs, restaurants, and condos-had been pretty much wiped out in ’05, and for the most part it was still nothing but ruins and thick shadows. At this time of night, there wasn’t a soul around.
The Broussards had already rebuilt their boat house on the jetty, not twenty yards from the water. It stood alone in a row of gutted shells, freshly painted and summery. No one was going to hear James scream out here.
Sam and Dean hauled him out of the trunk, got him through the door, and dropped him on the dock where a sturdy old Boston Whaler was tied up. A little rearranging, and they carried him up a spiral stairwell and through a cheerful blue door. He had the sense not to struggle; he just watched them through cold, narrowed eyes.
Inside was a swanky kitchen and bar, but no furniture to speak of. In the bedroom a devil’s trap and a thick ring of salt were ruining the carpet. Sam had salted the doorways too-even the sliding doors out to the balcony overlooking the harbor.
“Nice view for an exorcism,” Dean said. There was a sunken sailboat down there, too costly to dredge up after the storm. Its mast jutted up silver in the moonlight. “Cool.”
Sam did the honors binding James’ hands and feet to the chair limbs. Dean checked his knots.
“You probably shouldn’t be here for this,” Sam said softly to Maria, who stood with her arms hugged around her in the doorway.
She just shook her head.
“All right,” Dean said. “Go for it.”
Sam ripped the duct tape from James’ mouth. “Hey, there. Let’s get started.”
A slow, crazed little smirk spread across his face. “You have nothing to threaten me with,” he breathed.
“No?” Sam said. “Crux sancta sit mihi lux non draco…”
It was like they’d shoved a cattle prod into his ribs and let it sear. The spirit twisted and writhed with tendon-popping strength inside its borrowed skin. It cursed them in languages Dean didn’t even recognize, and it hissed and spit like a wild animal.
But it didn’t go anywhere.
James’ head snapped back hard, jaw strained open wide.
“Is that supposed to happen?” Maria murmured behind Dean.
“It’ll probably get a lot worse.”
Sam gave up on the Benedictine text and went for some Rituale Romanum: “Deus caeli, deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate…”
A scream ripped out of James’ throat, loud and sudden enough to make Maria flinch.
Sam kept going. He got to the end, started again. James seized and shuddered, but there were no pyrotechnics. No mysterious winds rose up. The lights didn’t even flicker.
This wasn’t protocol for ghosts or demons. Dean was getting a little pissed off at the lack of professional courtesy here.
“Hold on,” he said as Sam sucked in a breath.
In the sudden silence, James’ head flopped down onto his chest. Maria started for him, and Dean held out a staying hand. He nodded at Sam’s left forearm, where he knew the sleeve hid a messy burn scar. “Binding mark?”
Not likely, Sam’s expression said. “We’ll see.”
He stepped carefully over the salt line, and he reached for James’ shoulder.
“Jesus fuck,” James tried to say, and it came out as more of a whimper. His head lolled back on his neck, and black streaked his cheeks like tear tracks. “You want to just hook me up to a fucking car battery, you sick motherfucker?”
Maria took another step, but this time she glanced over for permission. Dean nodded, and she went to James with a cool cloth and a water bottle. “Small sips,” she said, wiping the black from his face. “And be polite to the professionals, please.”
Meanwhile, Sam rolled up James’ sleeves and opened his shirt. The scattershot gouges of rock salt stood out red on his pale skin, and he had a meat tag tattooed on his ribs and an Army eagle on his chest. There was no binding mark.
“Quit feeling me up and get rid of the fucking thing,” James snapped at Sam.
“James,” Maria said, catching his chin gently. “Say fuck one more time. Maybe it’ll help.”
Sam stepped out of the salt circle and headed through the doorway with a quick, follow-me head jerk. Dean followed him. It was conference time in the kitchen.
“I’ve been thinking,” Sam said, turning around and leaning against the counter. Oh, crap. I’ve been thinking usually ended in we should try something unorthodox and probably unnecessary in order to satisfy my curiosity. Most recently, it ended in fairy tales, and the sooner that weird-ass case was forgotten, the better.
Sam swallowed and said, “Are we sure we want to do this just yet?”
“Meaning what?”
“Think about it, Dean,” Sam said, fidgety with whatever idea he had in his head. “If we’re right about this thing busting out of the gates last May, then what we’ve got in there is a soul that escaped from hell.”
“Yeah. Give it a cookie, send it back.”
But there was something fervent in Sam’s face now. “Think about what it could tell us.”
Oh, yes, because the last time a demon told Dean about hell’s inner workings, it brought sunshine and rainbows into his life. “Sam,” Dean said testily. “It could tell us hell is John Mayer played on loop forever and ever. I don’t need the travel brochure, okay? Just let it go.”
“What if this could help you?”
“I said let it go.”
“Get back in here,” James yelled from the bedroom. “Come on, you sadistic bastards, let’s get this shit done.”
= = = = =
They tried for hours.
Sam read himself hoarse, going through mantras and yajnas from the Vedic and Tantric traditions, verses from the Qur’an, and every rite in Dad’s journal.
Each time, the spirit took over when Sam started saying the words, thrashing and seizing and mocking whatever religion they threw at it. And in the end, James’ body went limp, and the next time he raised his head he was himself. When he caught his breath, it was to call them useless cocksuckers and tell Maria to dry her eyes.
The spirit was more polite.
“They tell stories about you,” he said. Black pooled at the corners of his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
“You guys shoot the shit over beers in hell?” Sam said. “That’s nice.”
“Lesser demons fear you,” the spirit went on. “How many have you cast out?”
“About to be one more.”
Grimly, the thing smiled. “How many bodies have you burned in unmarked graves? How many sweet, pretty sisters will never know what happened to their brothers?”
“You’ve burned through more than one since you got out, I’ll bet. Was Sonia Torres the first, or was she just a little fun on the side?”
“He wasn’t kind to me when I wore her,” the spirit said to Maria. “He’s not a kind man, your brother.” With infinite patience, it closed James’ eyes. “Has he told you what it felt like to shoot someone in the head?”
Silence.
“It’s God’s own heroin,” it said in perfect imitation of James’ gruff intonation. Then, with almost religious fervor: “He saw the pink mist.”
Dean made an impatient noise. “As much fun as the armchair psych-“
“You know the feeling.”
“Yeah,” Dean said, leaning into his space. “I do.”
The spirit just smiled, slow and satisfied.
“I’m glad we had this talk,” Sam said. “Enjoy whatever circle of hell you come from.”
“I told you, you have nothing to threaten me with.”
“Why’s that? You think you’ll just crawl back out?”
James leaned forward as far as his bonds allowed. “Yes, and let me tell you exactly how I did it,” he mocked. “Detailed directions to the back door.”
“Regna terrae, cantate Deo,” Sam said, and his lip curled angrily. “Psallite Domino qui fertis super caelum caeli ad Orientem Ecce dabit voci Suae vocem virtutis, tribuite virtutem Deo.”
“What’s the last man standing going to do, I wonder? You bought him his life,” he said to Dean, “but that was no great favor. I know what he has to look forward to. It’s only a few months now, isn’t it? Maybe less.”
“Longer than you, douchebag,” Dean said.
“You’ll have the road and the guilt, Sam. It sent Daddy a little sideways. What will it do to you?”
“Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae Tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate-”
“If you like,” the spirit said through gritted teeth, “you can peer into real people’s lives like shop windows. It won’t be enough. You’ll forget the rhythm of small talk. Forget the shape of words in your mouth.”
“That’s poetic,” Dean sneered.
“-laqueo, deceptione et nequitia, omnis fallaciae, libera nos, Domine.”
The spirit gasped, back arched and neck twisted painfully. “Do it long enough,” he choked out, “and you’ll wake up one day with no idea who you are. No one will know well enough to tell you.”
“Vade, Satana,” Sam drowned him out. “Vade, Satana!”
“Long way down the road,” the thing panted with glittering fever eyes, “when you meet a man with black eyes who says he was once your brother, will you cast him back into the pit?”
“That’s enough.” And Sam turned on his heel, shoved Dad’s journal at Dean’s chest, and strode out into the kitchen.
The spirit yelled after him, “How long does he have to burn because of you?”
Dean set him steaming and gasping in holy water. “You, shut up. Sam, what the hell are you-“
Sam burst back through the door with the Colt leveled at James’ center mass. “You have five seconds to tell me how you crawled topside.”
The entire room went very, very still.
“Four,” Sam said.
The spirit breathed in slow and shaky, and its eyes burned madly.
“Three.”
James looked strung out. No, he looked… rapturous. Something was way off here, Dean knew; there was something they were missing, some big piece-
“Two.”
“Maybe he deserves it,” James said quietly.
Sam thumbed back the hammer. Maria threw herself in a stupid direction, and Dean caught her around the waist on instinct. She squirmed and fought and tried to elbow him in the ribs, but that was too damn bad. You didn’t let civilians jump into the line of fire, not even to shield their dumbass brothers.
Besides, Sam was bluffing.
You shot her.
She was a smartass!
…Sam was probably bluffing. And it wasn’t going to work. Holy crap, they’d been going at this wrong from the beginning.
“Sam, he wants you to shoot him.”
Held tight to his body, Maria stopped struggling. And without taking his eyes off James, Sam twitched his head in Dean’s direction. “What?”
“He’s done nothing but talk shit since we grabbed him,” Dean said. “Fucker practically dared us.”
A muscle jumped next to Sam’s nose. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Look at him, man,” Dean insisted, and with the fading light in James’ eyes and the slow curl of his lip, he knew he was right. “It’s suicide by cop.”
For a long moment, Sam held the gun steady.
“My brother’s in there,” Maria said, fingers tight around Dean’s wrist and forearm. “Please, my little brother’s in there.”
James’ face twisted into something ugly and unrecognizable. “He dies regardless,” he spat. “You cannot wrench me free.”
“You sure about that?” Dean snarled, flinging holy water across his face.
The spirit bellowed his way through the pain. As it passed, he shook his head, flinging droplets of holy water, and then he tucked his chin to his chest. Muted, his voice rumbled up in a chant as low and rhythmic as a prayer.
“I am the sinner cursed to roam the earth until He comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” Slowly he looked up at them, hollow-eyed and stripped of everything but hate. “I have lived more lifetimes than you have days, I have walked five continents, sailed every ocean, and bled under banners forgotten by history. I am he who drove the nails at Golgotha, and you will send me to my rest.”
Maria went white, and Sam and Dean glanced at each other.
“Well, shit,” said Dean.
= = = = =
“Of course we couldn’t send it to hell,” Sam seethed, leaning his elbows on the kitchen island and letting his head fall into his hands. “The crux of the curse is that it’s stuck on this plane forever.”
“What does that mean?” Maria asked him stiffly, wrapped in a blanket and keeping the island between her and the Winchesters.
“Wandering souls have supposedly committed some great sin,” Sam explained, gruff with frustration and forty-eight straight hours awake. “They’re cursed by God, forced to roam the earth without rest until Judgment Day.”
“Like the Wandering Jew?”
“That was the anti-Semitic, medieval Catholic version, yeah. This one seems to be a living soul skipping from body to body, unable to move on to any kind of afterlife.”
“Except now he knows we’ve got the Colt,” Dean realized, leaning against the counter. “That’s who’s been asking questions about us-he was doing his homework.”
“He let us capture him,” Sam sighed.
“So what are our options at this point?” said Maria.
“Honestly?” Dean said. “Nothing you’re going to like.”
“I didn’t like the gun pointed at him,” she said sharply, and Sam glanced up from his notes with no kind of apology in his face.
Dean stood up straight, taking a step between Maria and Sam, and he tried to be the practical one here. “Either we kill it while it’s got a body, or we force it out in the open.”
“How do we force it out?”
“We probably don’t,” Sam said, blunt and tired of comforting lies. “I don’t know what another exorcism will do to James. His death might free the thing before the ritual could.”
“The curse,” she said, glancing between them. “What if we break the curse?”
Sure, Dean thought, and after that, we’ll put Humpty-Dumpty back together and make the earth turn backwards. “We can look into it.”
But Maria heard the doubt, not the words, and she tucked the blanket closer around her like she meant to disappear in it.
From the next room, James yelled with his shredded voice, “Who stole my fucking sippy cup? This is bullshit.”
Maria closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she stood up straight and gathered James’ water bottle and bendy straw. She closed the bedroom door behind her.
Left alone, the Winchesters regarded each other across the kitchen.
“Dude,” Dean said, taking up a position leaning against the counter. “You want to tell me what just happened in there?”
“I thought we had a lead,” Sam said unrepentantly.
Dean cocked an eyebrow. “You nearly killed the bastard for mouthing off.”
That earned him a scathing look. “I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable with the way I’m trying to save your life.”
“It’s not that,” Dean said, letting his crossed arms drop. “I mean, it is, but... It’s not like you, man-going off half-cocked. Especially not on a case like this. We’ve been where they are, remember?”
“Yeah, we have,” Sam snapped. “And you didn’t know when to let go then either.”
“The hell does that mean?”
Sam pressed his lips into a thin line. He’d thought he was so fucking close, Dean realized. Just like the last lead, and the one before that. “Dean,” he demanded, “do you seriously believe we can stop this thing without killing the host?”
Dean made a barely audible noise that amounted to No, not really.
Sam glared, and waited.
“Hey, I’ll keep trying,” Dean said, hands spread. “But no.”
“So why do you want me to?”
Because I want you to be my brother again. Just ‘cause.
Dean consciously relaxed his shoulders and let his head drop low. Deep breath. Quick exhale, then he looked Sam in the eyes. “Because you’re the one who might actually figure out how.”
The edge of anger in Sam’s glare slowly softened into resignation. Dean thought they were back on the same page when Sam’s bitchface made a brief appearance, and a second later he knew it when Sam nodded tiredly. “What the hell. It's this or parades, right?”
= = = = =
“You want to break a two thousand year old curse?” Miss Elena said, and even over the phone Dean could hear her raised eyebrows.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he said.
“A curse that old, it’s got to be strong and permanent as a mountain to have stuck this long. You don’t break something like that. You satisfy its terms.”
“Well, since we can’t bring on the apocalypse, that’s pretty much out.”
“Then you got to work around it,” she muttered thoughtfully. Dean could picture her fierce frown of concentration, like she was staring down the mildewed remains of her curtains or preparing to bust down a door swollen shut in its frame. “It’s a living soul, which complicates things. It’s going to have its heels dug in good. Ain’t coming free like a spirit, ain’t going to leave polite like the lwa. Now there’s a couple traditions-”
“Miss Elena,” Dean interrupted as delicately as he could. “I’m going to give you to Sam, okay? This is more his department.”
There was a nervous pause. “I don’t know.”
Dean bit back a sigh. “Please.”
She waited long enough to make it clear that she was doing him a favor by talking to his demon king brother, and then she said, “All right.”
Sam took the phone-“Good evening, ma’am”-and he settled on the floor with twenty pounds of paper spread around him. “It wasn’t my idea. I agree, yeah, but all the lore I’ve found says that-yeah. Yeah. No, we’ve tried that already. Okay, let me give you what we’ve got so far.”
Half an hour later, he’d sucked down three cups of coffee, called half his contacts list, and come up with a plan.
It sounded about as promising as luring the cursed soul out with candy.
“We borrow from a tradition that doesn’t cast spirits to hell, it casts them into a solid object,” Sam said, talking too fast with the exaggerated gestures of the over-caffeinated. “Like the legend of Koschi the Deathless, whose life was inside the thing inside the roc’s egg inside the-yeah. But the text would have to be-”
“Sam,” Dean interrupted.
“Some kind of syncretic-”
“Sam.”
“What?”
“Are you talking about a custom ritual?”
“That is exactly what I’m talking about.”
Candy. Candy would be better. “McGyver an exorcism, and you could turn the poor bastard’s head around on his neck.”
“Our other options end the same way.”
Point.
Dean leaned over Sam’s shoulder and toed a few sheets of paper aside.
“No,” Sam snapped, shooing him. “Don’t touch that. Don’t…hover.”
And he went back to sketching symbols and jotting down phrases. Rendered briefly useless, Dean wandered into the bedroom where James sat, mercifully passed out. On the balcony, obscured by the moon’s glare on the sliding glass doors, Maria sat cross-legged, looking out at the harbor. A cigarette glowed in one hand, and her finishing school posture had melted into a slouch.
Dean slid the glass door open and shut it quietly behind him. “How are you holding up?”
He could see she’d been crying-not the patient slide of tears Dean had seen on and off all day, but the kind messy enough to leave a few wisps of hair stuck to her cheek and some lingering sniffles. But she gave him a smile so easy and meaningless he suspected it was reflex. “Have a seat?”
Dean had nothing better to do. He sank down on the smooth, worn wood, facing her with his back to the railing.
“You’re trying very hard to save a man you think is a jackass,” she said, calm and thoughtful as though her interest was purely academic.
Dean raised an eyebrow. “You want us to stop?”
“I hated him for a long time,” she whispered. “I think I still do, just a little.” On her exhale Dean caught the sickly sweet scent of cloves. Girl didn’t even smoke real cigarettes.
Dean peered through the glass at James’ bent head. “Ain’t the same as not giving a damn.”
“Maybe not,” she said softly. “I spent years telling my father that the drinking and arrests and rough edges were just bravado. If we ever really needed him, if it ever really mattered, James would come through.” Her free hand curled at the base of her throat. “They say we sleep sound at night because rough men do violence on our behalf.”
George Orwell, likely apocryphal. Dad had liked that quote. “Then you needed him, and it mattered?”
“Then came the storm.” She inspected the cigarette butt, put it out against the railing, and tossed it into the black water below. “The whole family evacuated to my apartment in Raleigh - I was in vet school up there. Two weeks in, we still didn’t even know how badly we’d been hit, and James just… disappeared. Took all of my cash and left his phone.”
“How long?”
“He sent Emma a letter from Fort Benning three months later.”
Dean whistled. But he’d heard worse and seen worse. Besides, she was telling him this for a reason. “You still give a damn.”
Troubled, she murmured, “Why do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you here?” she said. “You don’t even like James. I don’t even like James.”
“We’ve been over this,” he said impatiently. “It’s what my family does.”
She gave him a guarded, sideways look. “You wanted something from the… the wandering soul. And what it said about you burning because of Sam-he nearly shot my brother over it.”
So this was about his nefarious ulterior motives. Fine, then. “Once it started talking, we thought it might know something that could save my skin,” Dean admitted. “It’s moot now.”
She had the decency to look him in the eye when she said, “I’ve seen 'Doctor Faustus' on stage a couple of times. And I know every word of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia.'”
“Then you’re on the right track,” Dean said.
She nodded in Sam’s general direction. “For his life?”
Dean nodded.
The hopeless smile made another appearance. “Who do I talk to about Emma’s eyes?”
He just shook his head, and they smiled bleakly at each other in the darkness.
“So you didn’t come here looking for information,” she said at last. “Why, then?”
“Someone has to.”
“Rough men,” she said quietly. And she looked into his eyes like she'd never seen anything quite like him.
Sam slid the glass door open, held up a handful of fuzzy-edged notebook paper, and announced with frazzled pride: “There is a faint possibility that this might actually work.”
= = = = =
“You’re going to trap the cursed soul in that?” Maria said, standing in the bedroom doorway. “You don’t have something appropriately mystical in your trunk?”
Backlit by the sliding glass doors, Sam passed the porcelain Siamese cat from hand to hand. Its oversized blue eyes stared up at him mournfully. “This works.”
Dean smirked. He’d found the cat on the bathroom sink, and he’d known immediately it was made to house evil.
“I would like to register my doubts about the mission objective, y’all,” James said, swaying glassy-eyed in the chair. “Starting with the fact that it’s retarded.”
“Thank you,” Maria said. “That was constructive.”
“Bullet would be quicker,” he slurred. “Don’t want to die looking like the fuckin’… fuckin’ kid from The Exorcist. You know, puffy.”
“Shut up, James,” she said softly.
He turned his face up earnestly. “Want it to be quick.”
No one answered him.
When everything else had been set up, Maria disappeared briefly and returned to the bedroom with a fresh coat of lipstick.
This time, Dean understood. “War paint, huh?”
She nodded, and she stepped gingerly across the salt lines and kissed James on the cheek.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena,” she murmured to him. “Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus...” When he held his silence, she whispered, “Please.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, hoarse with exhausted fear. “Et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesu. Fucking hell. Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae.”
“Amen,” they said together.
She stepped back to Dean’s side, and James’ lips kept moving silently. Ave, ave.
“Sancte Michael Archangele,” Sam began. “Defende nos in proelio contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium.”
Good call, Dean thought. Ease into it with a deprecatory exorcism; get bossy with the bad guy later.
Sam’s voice rose in a slow crescendo of Latin, warning and threatening and finally commanding, and James clenched his fists until veins showed in his arms. Deep breath and a refrain-Sancte Michael Archangele-and Sam switched to unfamiliar words in what Dean thought was Aramaic, loud and deliberate.
There was a sound like indrawn breath, and a rush of cold air swept the room. Sam shook his stupid hair out of his eyes and slipped smoothly into another language-Greek this time. James strained against the ropes, and Dean heard the chair creak with the pressure.
“Sancte Michael Archangele,” Sam repeated. And then he started carefully pronouncing words Dean didn’t even recognize.
James’ head snapped back, his mouth open and gasping. The line of his throat undulated once, and an agonized keening escaped him. The chair’s joints squealed, and Dean wrapped a cautious hand around the grip of the Colt.
Sam kept talking.
Chill fingers of air crept into Dean’s three layers of clothing, and next to him, Maria shivered uncontrollably. Salt grains scattered in the wind.
“Fuck!”
James arched up impossibly, anchored only at his wrists and ankles. The thing was coming up, coming out-riding a great, bellowing scream like a war cry. Keep talking, Sammy.
“Adjuramus te!” Sam shouted. “Adjuramus te!”
The sliding doors blew inward in an explosion of glass.
Dean hit the floor, dragging Maria down to the lee of him. He felt quick, stinging cuts in the hands covering his head; he hunched his shoulders, curled his legs up. With a pretty noise like a disturbed chandelier, the glass settled around him.
“Sam?”
A force tugged Dean sideways and dragged him across the glass shards. He hit the wall hard enough to knock him breathless. He heard another thud across the room-Sam.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean gasped out, and through a burst of pain he rolled to his knees with the Colt drawn.
In the ruined devil’s trap, James stood over the wreckage of the chair, one armrest still swinging from his wrist. Pinned close to his body, Maria strained on tiptoe. His forearm was levered hard against her throat.
“There she is,” James said. His eyes were fixed lovingly on the Colt. “No, don’t move,” he added, levering Maria’s chin to a painful angle.
On his knees by the opposite wall, Sam stopped in mid-scramble for his journal.
“I told you it would come to this,” James said, eyes alight. “You will give me what I want.”
He had Maria in a classic lock. He could snap her neck whenever he felt like it.
“Great, fine, you win,” Dean said. Carefully, he got to his feet, and he kept the Colt pointed right between James' eyes. “Tell you what, you let the lady go and we’ll trade you a nice bullet in the head.”
Maria pressed her eyes shut tight.
“Do it,” the cursed soul hissed at Dean. “You have your shot. Take it.”
It was the smart thing, even if it wouldn’t be pretty. The cursed soul had no compelling reason not to kill Maria, who was probably eighty percent of the reason no one had shot James yet.
“She’s having trouble breathing,” the thing reminded him quietly.
And that settled it, right there. Dean couldn’t let him win.
“You take me,” he said. “Take me and we’ll go.”
Everyone else in the room nearly had an aneurysm.
“Dean, what the hell are you-”
“Shut up, Sam,” Dean barked.
“Why would you offer me that?” James hissed, tightening his grip on Maria. He looked suspicious, but very definitely interested. Oh, this was going to be easy.
“What’s another three months?” Dean said, smiling darkly.
“You’re not seriously-”
“Sam, shut up, or I will shut you up.” Dean was aware he probably looked manic and a little unhinged, which was going to get him exactly what he wanted, but wasn’t helping his case with Sam. Buzzed on the exhilaration of Holy fuck, I might pull this mother off, he fixed a pained smile just below Sam’s collarbone, far too low to meet his eyes, and said, “At least it’ll mean something this way.”
Saving throw. He just had to hope Sam would go long for it.
Sam followed his gaze, and Dean saw the moment when he figured out what this shiny new plan hinged on. His expression melted into something even more incensed.
Good. Message received. Let’s roll.
“Your word is worth nothing,” the cursed soul said.
“You’ve got a hostage,” Dean pointed out with a shrug. “What do you need my word for?”
“But why?” James breathed, ecstatic and disturbingly childlike.
Dean gave him a flat look. “Going once.”
“Why?” he whined.
“Going twice.”
“Yes!” James shouted. “I accept, yes!”
“Lovely.” Dean lowered the gun. “How do we do this?”
Impatient, James snapped, “You’ve dealt with devils before.”
That stopped Dean in his tracks for a good two seconds. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It’s the only way,” James said feverishly. “Only way.”
“Of course it is,” Dean muttered to himself.
“Come to me.”
Dean motioned to Maria, who was still pinned close to James’ body and very much in the way. “Logistical problem there.”
“I won’t let her go,” James said immediately. “Come here.”
Fuck it. No backing out now.
Dean lowered the Colt, took a step forward, and came close enough to Maria to hear her choked litany of “Please. Please. Please.”
He leaned past her, felt her breath on his skin, and then he was breathing James’ air-close enough to see the fine details of the lipstick print on his cheek. His stomach turned over at the way the bastard’s eyes stayed resolutely open.
“This plan was not nearly as gay in my head,” Dean muttered.
And he kissed him.
Intense cold wrapped around his entire body like chains coiling and squeezing. His nerve endings went off like fireworks, every hair stood on end with crackling energy, and his nose and mouth filled with ash. It choked him, trying to force its way down his throat. A low whine in his ears amped up to a wail, then louder, until it felt like blood vessels were bursting in his head.
Piercing through the pain, crippling in its clarity, his anti-possession tattoo burned on his chest.
He couldn’t breathe through it, he was a moron, this was a bad fucking idea, sign him up for a Darwin award this second, please God let it end already-
His eyes opened.
He lay aching on the floor next to Sam, who was crouched on one knee and yelling words against a whirlwind of black smoke. Salt grains on the air whipped by and scored their faces. The lights flickered crazily, and then blew out in crackling showers of glass slivers.
Maria lay prone nearby, catching her breath in gasps and holding onto Dean’s wrist like a lifeline. On his other side, Sam had a mean grip on his shoulder with one hand and that stupid cat figurine with the other.
A wordless shriek rode the whirlwind, echoing around and around and then down into Sam’s outstretched hand.
Everything stopped.
The lights buzzed back to steady yellow life.
Sam stared at the fading glow of the porcelain cat in his palm.
“Holy shit,” Dean croaked. “Is it just me, or am I not dead?”
Sam glared at him. “Don’t get too excited. I might still kill you.”
Fingernails dug into Dean’s wrist and then released. Maria crawled on her hands and knees to James, who was laid out on the floor like some kid’s discarded G.I. Joe. Dean pushed himself to sitting crabwise and watched as she put two fingers to James’ neck. After a few seconds of silence, she started shuddering with held-in sobs.
Fuck. All for nothing. Fuck.
“He’s alive,” she gasped out, and a hysterical giggle escaped her. “Oh, my God, he’s alive.”
“Fantastic,” Dean said, rolling sideways and making to get up. Sam rose with him, offering a hand, and they pulled each other to their feet.
Sam gave him a once-over and said, “You good?”
Dean took a second to think about it. His lungs had a scorched feel to them, but that was fading with every fresh breath. His muscles ached like a son of a bitch, but hey-nothing new. All in all, no permanent damage.
“I’m good.”
“Good.”
And Sam popped him one in the jaw.
[Part Five]