FIC: - Blind Spot - 12/14
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 12/14
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen will be posted as they are completed. Thanks for your patience, guys. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology, and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologists and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved, SPEEDY betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Twelve
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
~José Narosky
Dean literally ran into Sam as he rounded the first row of shelves in the reference section. The collision was heavy, got a combined ooof! out of them both, and bounced Dean off the shelves to his right. The impact shook the entire aisle, sent a few books to the floor, and lit up a party of white-hot spot fires across his overworked pain receptors.
“Fuck!”
Sam spun on his heel, caught Dean’s arm and steadied him against the shelves. “Ow,” he agreed. “That hurt. You alright?”
Dean sagged against the bookcase, eyes clenched shut. “No. What are you - made of brick?”
Sam bent to retrieve the fallen books, held up an apologetic hand to the librarian who poked her head around the aisle.
“Everything okay?”
“We’re fine, sorry.”
“There’s no running in here.” Her voice was tight with disapproval.
Dean ignored her, palmed his side. “Fuck me. I think you just cracked another rib.”
Sam cringed as he straightened, checked the spines of the books and replaced them carefully on the shelf. “I know. Really. We’re sorry.” His cheeks reddened.
The librarian gave them a lingering look of reproach before she retreated.
“I thought you were waiting in the car.”
“We got a problem. Some dead guy just killed fifteen people over at a hospital in West Haven. And Meg just called me again. This is on.” Dean felt his shoulder, grimaced. “What’s takin’ you guys so long?”
Sam’s face was stricken. “Bobby’s back there on the phone, Dean. He’s had calls from Somerset, Alamo and Tilford. Those bodies are on the move. Hunter in Alamo emptied three clips into the one down there, and it didn’t blink. Somerset and Tilford are both reporting massacres. It’s like a mass slaughter. National Guard’s going through ammo on these dead guys like it’s Charlton Heston Appreciation Day.”
“Jesus.” Dean swiped the flat of his thumb across his lips. “You got the book?”
“Yeah, we got it. But it’s not an easy read. It’s gonna take some time.”
“Okay.” Dean shoved Sam towards the back of the aisle. “Okay, let’s grab these guys and go. We gotta get the fuck out of this city. Right now.”
*********************************************************************************************
Back in the Impala, Dean flicked on the radio and surfed the stations until he found an update. The official death toll at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center now stood at seventeen. The hospital’s emergency department had been closed. A further twenty-one people had been confirmed injured, and were being transported to alternate medical facilities while police investigated.
“Nonononono.” Dean raked a hand through his hair, shook his head at the radio. “Did I just hear that? Tell me I didn’t just hear that.”
Sam twisted in the driver seat, reversed out of the parking space. “Crap. Do we call them? Can we call the hospitals?”
“And tell them what? ‘Do us a favor and pop in a cap in those casualties’? I don’t think that’s gonna go down very well, Sam. Hippocratic Oath?”
“God, they’re gonna spread it around the city.”
At the parking lot exit, Sam hit the brakes. “Where am I headed?”
Dean thumbed through the contacts in his cell. “We need anything at the motel?”
“I don’t think so. Do we?”
It was standard Winchester practice; maintain permanent portability. There was so much potential for disaster in the void between coming and going. You didn’t leave anything in a room you couldn’t live without. Sam had tried to work it out once; the square tonnage of their contribution to landfill via abandoned toothbrushes alone. Dean had actually been mildly curious about the outcome until Sam got his geek on over the math involved, and then any interest had dissolved into an urge for sibling violence.
“Where’s dad’s journal?”
“It’s in the trunk.”
Dean looked around, saw the laptop satchel on the floor near his feet. He worked his way through a hasty mental checklist. Sam, weapons, journal, laptop… figured he had everything he needed. He threw a last call to Bobby in the back seat.
“Are we good, book-wise? Once we get outta here, we’re not comin’ back.”
Bobby tugged on the bill of his cap. “Little hard to tell, Dean. We’re just gonna have to wing it.”
Dean dialed Jo’s cell, brought the phone to his ear.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when she picked up.
Dean dipped his chin, glanced in his side mirror and saw her car pulling up behind them. He could see enough of Marcus’s pale face in the passenger seat to know he wasn’t happy about the latest developments.
“Head for Timber. I’ll find us somewhere to hole up on the way, call you back.” He nearly hung up, then changed his mind. “Wait, hold on…”
He turned his attention to Sam. “Providence St. Vincent… is that the hospital you and Marcus were at the other night?”
“Yeah.”
“How close was that to the highway?” When Sam squinted, trying to recall, Dean repeated the question to Jo. “How close is this hospital to Sunset Highway?”
He waited while she asked Marcus.
“He says it’s like two streets, less than five minutes.”
Dean squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Shit. We got no clue how fast this thing’s movin’. Can we detour, give it a wide berth? Loop ‘round and get back onto Sunset closer to the hills?”
“Uh-huh. I think so. Pull over. Let me get in front.”
Dean relayed the instruction to Sam as his brother maneuvered the Impala out of the lot. “Jo, don’t stop for anything, okay?”
“Got it.”
“I mean it. You gotta go over someone, you do it. Windows up. Anything happens - you get into trouble - stay in the car and wait for Sam. Might not stop this dead guy, but you should be able to hold off anyone infected. These things aren’t like demons. You put a bullet in ‘em, they should drop. You armed?”
The tightness crept back into her voice. “I got it.”
“I’m not pissin’ in your cornflakes, Jo. I’m just askin’.”
“Yeah, okay. And I said: I got it.”
“Keep your eyes open. I’ll call you in a bit.” Dean hung up, dropped the phone into his lap.
He stared out the window for a beat, then he barked an explosive “Fuck!” and thumped the passenger door.
Sam pulled to the curb, glanced over. “Dean…”
“We knew, Sam.”
“We knew what? We couldn’t have stopped this, Dean.” He peeled the Impala back out of the gutter as Jo passed, fell in behind her.
“Burning the body. What the fuck was I thinking? Like that was gonna stop anything.”
“We’ve got the book,” Sam reminded him, eyes flicking from the road back to Dean. “We’ll figure this out.”
Dean groped for the satchel at his feet, pulled it onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” Sam frowned.
“I’m gonna hit Google Maps, see if I can find us someplace to hole up near that symbol.” He shook his head as the notebook booted up. “How many people is this gonna cost us?”
Neither Sam nor Bobby had an answer for that.
Dean rubbed his temple, closed his eyes. “It’s genocide, Sam. They’re killin’ those people off like roaches.”
**********************************************************************************************
The house Dean found was a couple of miles off Lousignant Road, perched back into the heavy forest north of Timber proper. The residents had seen the news. When Sam flipped them a fake ID from the CDC and informed them the quarantine area was being reassessed, they obediently complied with the instruction to get in their car and head west.
Sam hauled half the arsenal from the trunk indoors, brought in the bags. In the dining room, Bobby and Marcus cleared the table, set themselves up with the texts and the laptop and Tristan Bradley’s book. Jo hit the upstairs rooms and salted the windows. Dean handled the access points on the ground floor.
While Sam, Bobby and Marcus hit the books, Jo started making calls to the people she knew in Portland. Dean got to work wearing a line in the carpet between the dining room table and the expansive front windows in the living room. It was a restless canine patrol, and Sam could see his brother was physically and mentally approaching flashpoint. The limp was now pronounced, and Sam knew there was nothing nonchalant about the fist Dean had jammed down the front pocket of his jeans; it was keeping his arm still.
When Sam approached, Dean didn’t turn around. He addressed Sam’s reflection in the darkened living room glass.
“No,” he growled simply.
Sam shoved both hands in the pockets of his hoodie, frowned at the back of Dean’s head. “No, what?”
“You’re about to tell me to get some sleep.”
“Actually, I was about to ask you to check rounds, load some magazines.”
Dean half-turned, tore his eyes away from the window. “Don’t lie, Sam. You’re no good at it.”
“No, really. We need to be ready.” Sam shifted uncomfortably beneath Dean’s scrutiny. “And okay, yeah. I was kinda hoping once you got off your feet, you might just sort of pass out. You’re not looking so great.”
“Half of Portland’s gonna be dead by morning, Sam.”
“Look, I know this is a bad situation, but this is gonna take a while. That book’s almost entirely in Enochian. Marcus is pretty good, and he’s doing the best he can, but we’re looking at hours here. This could be your last chance to get some rest for a while. Down a couple of Vicodin. It’ll take the edge off, help you get some sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. I know you, Dean. The only thing you’ve got on your side right now is momentum. And I know you think you can push on and run to the finish, but dude, physically? I don’t think you’re gonna make it.”
Dean’s expression was guarded, but his silence spoke volumes.
Sam appealed to his practicality. “I need you on deck when this goes down. If the situation were reversed, you’d be going to town on me. You’d kick my ass and you know it. Why’re you doing this to yourself?”
“Now? Really? You’re gonna bust my balls about this now?”
“No. Dean…” Sam shook his head in frustration, took a noisy breath. He needed to tread carefully. Conversations with a wired, strung-out Dean didn’t traditionally end well. The obstinate tenacity that kept him upright drew no distinction between the physical and the mental. “I’m not trying to come down on you, I just… I’m just asking you to cut yourself some slack for two seconds.”
“She’s gonna find us, Sam. Sooner rather than later. If I take those pills, you can write me off for the next four hours. It’s like jamming my head full of cotton wool. I can’t think straight when I’m on that shit.”
“Right,” Sam laid the sarcasm thick, “and the pain’s really enhancing your clarity.”
The look Dean shot him was lethal.
“She’s not getting her hands on you again, Dean. I’m not gonna let that happen.”
“This isn’t about the end of the world for her, Sam. This virus? The seal? It’s all secondary to her.”
Sam’s face scrunched in exasperation. “Why’s it so hard for you to just let me watch your back?”
“Because you can’t!” Dean snapped.
Sam flinched, the accusation like a cool blade to the chest.
Regret swept Dean’s features. He closed his eyes, and the small shake of his head was penitent. “I didn’t mean that.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right. I dropped the ball in that alley. I let you down.” He nodded. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Believe me, I’ve played enough Monday morning quarterback about it. But I can’t undo it. All I can do is make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Sam,” Dean told him wearily. He crossed to the hallway entrance, stooped to scoop up the duffel from the floor. He came back across the room, dumped the bag on the coffee table and eased carefully onto the couch. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, unzipped the duffel and pulled out a box of rounds. He didn’t look up when he spoke.
“Where’s the Vicodin?”
*********************************************************************************************
He stood behind her, so he didn’t see her face. When he brought the blade up against her throat, she raised a reinforcing hand to his wrist, as if she thought he might have faltered.
Dean’s relationship with knives had changed for good. He knew it as he dragged the blade across her neck. When her knees went, he took her weight and folded her on the ground; a bloody, bubbling, leaky doll.
It was the same in the dream. Over and over. He stood behind them all. They all raised that same hand to his wrist. But he didn’t hesitate. Not with Christine, or Shelley, or Meg, or Jo.
*********************************************************************************************
Jo sat Indian style on the carpet in front of the coffee table and finished loading the magazines. From where he sat at the dining room table beside Marcus, Sam had a clear line of sight to both her, and his brother sprawled on the couch behind her. Dean’d hit the deck fast and hard; hadn’t moved a muscle since Sam had taken the ammunition from his drug-clumsy hands and tipped him out of the upright position. In between the sporadic conversation at the table around him, Sam could hear his brother’s quiet snoring. When she was done with the rounds, Jo got started on a weapons check. She worked quickly, her level of comfort with the firearms as much a surprise to Marcus as it was to Sam.
It was just after midnight when they hit the first jackpot.
“Okay, I think I got something about the knife.”
Sam blinked smarting eyes at Marcus. “What about it?”
Marcus ceased his frantic scribbling, swiveled the book around and tapped the diagram on the page with his finger. “Look familiar?”
Sam squinted, saw the serpent engraving winding up the handle. “Very. What does it say?”
“It’s called the Dagger of Andromalius.”
Sam frowned. “Why do I know that name?”
“Legemeton Vel Calvicula Salomonis Regis.” Bobby downed the last of his coffee, cracked the mug onto the table. “Andromalius’s the last demon listed in The Goetia. Dagger’s news to me, though. Never heard of it.”
“So, what’s his deal?”
Bobby shrugged. “According to King Solomon, his office was a kind of underworld regulatory facility. You can read it a few ways, but essentially he’s supposed to have maintained honor amongst demons. If there is such a thing.”
“With the Dagger? Like a demonic cleaner?”
“I dunno. Like I said, I never heard of it before.” Bobby rifled through the texts on the table. It took him a while to find what he was after, but finally he threw an open book down the length of the table. Sam caught it on the slide, found himself staring at a drawing of a large-headed man, a serpent snaking around his arm and rearing out of his hand.
“There’s not a lot of pictorial representations of Andromalius around,” Bobby explained. “He’s a bit of a dark horse. Supposedly he appears in human form, holding a serpent.”
“Or a dagger with a serpent handle.”
“Startin’ to look like. Yeah.”
“So, how did Christine Picoult end up with this thing?”
Marcus popped his pen between his lips and turned his attention back to his notes. “According to Bradley, Gaap gave him the knife.” He shuffled the papers. “Back in one of the first entries, mid-November 2003, there’s an entry referencing the ‘cracking of the seal’. It says right here, Gaap came to him with ‘things to come, and the means by which balance would be restored’.”
Sam shook his head, confused. “So, they’re sitting on the seal about to unleash unholy hell, and Gaap just… what? Shows up and saves humankind? I don’t get it. Gaap’s this major league figure in demonology. It’s like saying you had one of the three wise men show up at your office Christmas party and spike the punch.”
Bobby nodded slowly, rubbed his beard. “It’s weird, I’ll give you that.”
“Things to come? What does that mean?”
“Supposedly, you can summon Gaap to tell the future. If you ask him a question, he’ll answer truthfully about things ‘Past, Present and to Come’.” Bobby hung some quotations in the air with his fingers around his last words.
Sam face creased in disbelief. “What, cause he’s just really helpful like that?”
Marcus shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no. Those priests in Prague? Gaap predicted three bloody battles between mankind and the demon world, all starting with this plague. When they couldn’t destroy the seal, he offered them a deal. He agreed to put a stop to all three wars, but he took three of the priests’s souls back to hell with him in return.” Marcus looked up, stricken. “Christ, imagine pulling those straws. No, thank you. The surviving priest goes back to the Vatican with the summoning ritual. Bradley uses it again in 2003, thinks he’s summoning Gaap to open the seal, finds out he’s smack in the middle of a business transaction from way back in 1349.”
“So, what? This is the third get-out-of-jail-free card? We summon Gaap and he does the rest?” Sam looked from Bobby to Marcus. “Sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? And what’s the deal with this knife? Restoring balance to what?”
Marcus scratched his cheek, flicked back to the picture of the knife. “I don’t know yet. There’s more about the dagger, though. This thing sounds pretty heavy duty. Says it’s indestructible, can’t be broken, blah blah blah… but here, look: it’s ‘bound and linked’ to the holder.” Marcus grimaced, looked up at Sam. “When it changes hands, it has to be consecrated to preserve its power.”
“Of course, it does. Great. We have to consecrate it.” Sam rubbed his stinging eyes. “Consecrate it how?”
Marcus flipped the page, tracked a finger along the text and flicked through his references with his spare hand. He toggled his head, lips moving as he read, and then he paused.
“Oh.” Marcus glanced up at Sam nervously. “It has to be consecrated with demon blood.”
Sam froze, the flat of his fingers midway through a tight circuit at his temple. He dropped the hand to his lips, closed his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he sighed.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed into the living room at Dean.
I had to. She asked me to.
“Okay,” he said finally, turning his attention back to the books. “What else?”
**********************************************************************************************
John sat on a chair in the corner of the room - hunched - his face lost in the warehouse shadows. Dark and inscrutable. His eyes glistened.
“It’s like losing your mind every day down there.” His voice was a ragged rumble; rose and ebbed and broke like a wave.
Dean licked his cracked lips, tasted the cold copper of his blood. His jaw creaked on abused hinges. “Lemme loose.”
“It all goes.”
“Dad, cut me loose. Please.” Dean shifted, woke brutal channels and tracts deep in the terrain of his internal geography. He clamped his teeth together, clenched his eyes shut.
When he cracked his lids again, John was leaning forward into the light, his face still half-drenched in dark. He had his elbows on his knees, eyes dipped to his open hands. “Everything you try to keep hold of,” he uttered thickly.
Dean realized with a cold flash of horror that his dad was weeping.
“It all goes.”
**********************************************************************************************
It was quarter to six in the morning when Dean woke. He was cold and uncomfortable, and his spine cracked in protest as he rolled onto his back. He got his watch up close enough to his face to determine the time, eased his forearm gently to his chest when the stab and throb of his shoulder discouraged any further movement.
“Morning.”
Dean shifted, saw Jo standing beside the coffee table. He grunted a reply while the current state of affairs slotted slide by terrible slide into an internal projector, bounced a fifty-foot warning off his mental screens. “What’s goin’ on?”
He elbowed the couch beneath him, got stalled by the impromptu fireworks display in his shoulder halfway into the sitting position. Jo offered a hand and he clapped his palm into hers, let her lean back and haul him up onto this feet.
The sudden change of altitude was a mistake. Dean snapped his mouth shut on a bark of pain, dipped his chin to his chest.
“You alright?” Jo’s fingers closed around his upper arm.
“No,” he admitted. For a few long seconds he blinked his way through a smattering of silver flecks behind his eyes. His vision tunneled, then slowly cleared.
“Jesus. You’re a mess, Dean.”
“Yeah, some bitch kneed me in the balls. Really finished me.” He gave her a sideways glance that lacked any real umbrage, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Well, some jackass really deserved it. If I let go, are you gonna keel over?”
He gave the matter due consideration. “No,” he decided finally.
“You’re alright?”
“Yes.” Dean rubbed his sleep-crusted eyes, then sent his fingers through the untidy bristle of his hair as he got his bearings.
Sam was passed out in the armchair beside the couch, an exercise in spatial incongruity that should have made sleep impossible. There was something earnest and desperate about his contortionist’s slumber, and Dean’s attention lingered on his brother. He let the familiar tug of protective guardianship resolve and organize, the way it always did: define, center, engage, direct.
It set Dean outside himself, outside the groan and flash-fire of his body. Put him where he needed to be.
He half-turned towards Jo, eyes still on Sam. “Where’s Bobby?”
“He went to dig up some stuff we need for this ritual.”
“By himself?” Dean’s brow furrowed.
“Marcus went with him.”
Dean threw a palm up. “Awesome. They run into any trouble, he can translate their way out of it.”
“Why do you have to be such an asshole?”
“Because I am an asshole,” he snarled.
“No, actually, you’re not,” Jo snapped, arms folded.
Dean squinted at her. He’d forgotten how mouthy she was. How he always occupied the space equidistant between violence and affection in her company. The triggers she tripped weren’t all that dissimilar to Sam’s infuriating repertoire.
“What is that, a character reference?” He hobbled through to the dining room, headed for the kitchen. “Where’s the coffee? I need coffee.”
Jo followed him through the back door onto the verandah when Dean took his brew out there. He swept a militant eye over the trees where the forest floor butted up against the backyard, leaned a hip against the porch rail. When he was satisfied no unseen danger lurked, he turned some serious attention to the coffee in his hand.
“So, we’ve got this ritual or what?” he asked around his mug. “Translation’s done?”
“Uh-huh. Well, not all of it, but enough. From what they’ve dug up, it looks like we got about twenty-four hours before the shit hits the fan. The timing sounds pretty specific.”
Dean winced. “Twenty-four hours? We heard anything about what’s goin’ on back in Portland?”
Jo hesitated. “There’ve been some news reports, yeah. It’s not pretty. But so far, it’s still just Portland, so that’s something, I guess.”
Dean sipped his coffee, showed Jo his teeth. “This just gets worse and worse, the more I think about it. What about the other cities?”
“Same as here. Feels like a whole new world. I mean, even if we stop this…”
“Don’t bet on it, Jo. People make things into what they need ‘em to be. If it comes to it, they’ll find some way to explain it.”
“I guess.”
“Trust me, it’s what people do. Speaking of which, is Marcus still freakin’ out?”
“What?”
“Your boyfriend, Jo. Is he still freakin’ out about Sam? ‘Cause if he tries anything stupid, I’m gonna beat the living shit out of him. Just so we’re clear.”
“This isn’t easy for him, Dean. He’s scared. We all are.”
It was an honest enough confession, but Dean was low on caffeine, short on time and in a fair amount of pain. It was a trifecta that showcased why the vast majority of clients found him offensive.
He scowled. “What are you doin’ with that fuckin’ pussy, anyway?”
Jo shot him down with both barrels, eyes and voice like ice. “Watch your mouth.”
Dean wrapped his lips around the edge of his coffee before he said anything else to endanger his testicles.
“He didn’t run,” Jo said.
“What?”
“You asked me what I’m doing with such a fucking pussy. I’m telling you. He didn’t run. Not when he found out what I do, and not now. And that fucking pussy just spent the better part of last night translating a text that, for all intents and purposes, could get every one of us killed in the next twenty-four hours. So, yeah, he’s freaking out a little. He’s having a hard time with this news about Sam. But he’s still here. He’s a good guy, Dean. He cares about people. Maybe he doesn’t know his way around a shotgun, and maybe he’s not winning any boxing contests. Both very good reasons for him to stay as far away from this mess as he can possibly get. But he hasn’t run.” She crossed her arms. “Why the hell should you care, anyway?”
“‘Cause you’re my friend,” Dean clipped. “You start fuckin’ around on the job, that’s how you get yourself hurt.”
Jo gave him an exasperated shrug of her shoulders. “You honestly think you’re my friend, Dean? Then what the hell was that bullshit at my apartment the other night?”
Dean tilted his chin, lips tugging downward. “Actually, no. I take it back. Sam’s right. I’m incapable. Forget it.” He gave her a tight humorless smile, pushed off from the porch railing and headed for the door.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Dean knew he should keep moving. Let it go and just head inside. But he snapped around like a quarterhorse, one eyebrow arching.
“S’cuse me?”
“The minute the conversation goes anywhere you don’t want it to go, you just shut down and take off. It’s like Pavlov rang a bell somewhere.”
“Spare me the Psych 101.”
“You know, Marcus told me about your little conversation in his office. I don’t think this has anything to do with you not trusting people. I think this has to do with you being trusted.”
Dean shook his head, chuffed out a laugh, but Jo ignored him.
“You’re afraid to have people trust you, because the minute your interests cross, Sam comes first. Sam is always going to come first. You’ve got no boundaries when it comes to your brother and you know it. You’re not just afraid of letting people down. You know you’re going to. So, it’s just easier to be a jackass. That way you can make it okay that you don’t have anyone or anything in your life outside Sam-fucking-Winchester.”
Dean caught movement in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t know how long Sam had been standing there, but he didn’t suppose it mattered very much. He’d sure as hell heard the closing argument.
Sam turned back in to the house, cheeks flushing.
“Sam, wait.” Dean shook his head at Jo, gave her a hard reproachful stare. “Nice. Thank you.”
He caught up with his brother in the hallway.
“Hey.”
Sam didn’t stop. He smacked open the door at the end of hall, headed out on to the front porch.
Dean followed. “Dude, wait up.” He grabbed Sam’s arm, and that was it.
Sam spun like a top. He flashed out a hand and caught Dean by the throat, pinned him hard against the wall. Dean yelped, a sharp outburst of surprise as he jolted against the front of the house. He bit back a groan, shut his eyes while the throb in his shoulder flared, then abated. When he blinked, he found himself a few inches from Sam’s expressionless face, eyes dark and rippling.
Dean’s gut clenched, a thousand tiny knives of adrenalin prickled his extremities. The hand he got up around Sam’s wrist was quaking. He felt like he was filling up with ice, the sensation countered by the sweat that broke across his scalp.
You were gonna let me kill a lot of people, weren’t you, Dean?
“Sam, let go,” he wheezed. The grip on his throat neither tightened nor loosened. He tried again. “Sam, stop.”
Dean heard the front screen door slap shut, and then Jo was shouting.
“Sam, get off him!” She grappled at his arm, faltered when she looked up and saw Sam’s face. “Oh, my God.”
Dean wrenched on Sam’s wrist, and the fingers at his neck squeezed.
“Holy water.” He strained the request to Jo through his teeth. Heard the snap of her boot heels on wood as she ran back into the house. He tugged on his brother’s arm again, knew he was down to what air was left in his screaming lungs.
“Sammy, please.”
Dean got some purchase off the porch beneath him and kicked out hard, boot glancing off Sam’s shin. Sam regarded him with the same blank expression, cocked his head a little in confusion.
“What are you doing?”
It was Sam’s voice, but the fidelity was off. There was honest inquiry in his tone, and the realization cut through the ringing in Dean’s skull, punched a hard line of clarity through the buzz.
He doesn’t know. Holy fuck, he’s got no clue.
He tried to get something out - reason with him - but there wasn’t any travel on the air in and out of him. The edges of his vision began to dot and sparkle.
He heard Jo shouting, felt the cold spray on his face as the holy water hissed off his brother. The confusion in Sam’s face deepened as he half-turned, dragged Dean two feet along the wall with impossible ease. Jo backed up in a hurry. Dean wanted to tell her: Hit him again with the water. Couldn’t get the words out. Then he saw movement to his right, and Sam’s head snapped back around too. Marcus lunged forward, jacked the butt of Bobby’s shotgun hard into Sam’s smoking face.
Sam let go, and they both dropped like stones.
*********************************************************************************************
Dean puked the coffee all over the porch. Choked and spat an ominous river of black onto the boards. He rolled, rode out a few violent coughs and hiccups while his heaving lungs overcompensated for the lack of oxygen.
Bobby squatted silently at his shoulder, hand fisted in the collar of his jacket.
There was a loud scraping down past his feet, and Dean heard Jo and Marcus’s tense, lowered voices. He lifted his head, tried to see where Sam lay.
“Where is he?” The question caught in his burning throat, spluttered up and out of his mouth inside a hacking cough.
Bobby’s face came into view above him. “Jo’s got him, just relax.” He twisted away. Dean didn’t hear the specifics of his exchange with Marcus but he understood the panicked tone well enough. There was the jingle of thrown keys and then Bobby’s attention was back in his face, hand to his cheek. “Dean, you need to calm down, you hear me? In and out. Slow it down.”
Dean dropped his head back to the wooden slats. He blinked up at the verandah roof, tried to regulate his breathing. Bobby was right. He was having an ear-buzzing, mind-stalling, teeth-chattering, hands-shaking freak-out. An icy sensory echo plumbed bone-deep at the wound in his cheek, drilled down beneath the older jagged scar at his shoulder. Dean closed his eyes, grappled for something concrete - something solid and known - against which he could steady himself.
“That wasn’t Sam.” It could have been a shout or a whisper that left his lips, for all Dean knew.
Bobby’s hand uncurled from his collar, thick fingers gingerly exploring beneath Dean’s jaw.
“No,” he agreed grimly. “It wasn’t.”
**********************************************************************************************
The office wasn’t extravagant. Bobby had moved a simple wooden desk, a pedestal filing unit and two chairs out of the way to make room for the Devil’s Trap he had marked on the polished boards. Dean gave the room a visual once over as he quietly closed the door behind him. He took his time arriving at Sam, handcuffed to a chair in the center of the sigil. His brother cut eyes to the floor when Dean’s gaze finally settled on him.
Bobby had cuffed Sam’s wrists behind the chair. Dean knew it was the most practical way to do the job, but it bothered him. It made his teeth tingle in the way an accidental hammer to the fingertip made them sing.
Dean hooked the backrest of a nearby chair, dragged it about halfway between the door and Sam. He waggled the water bottle in his free hand, moved it into Sam’s line of sight. Sam shook his head, no.
“There’s aspirin, if you need it.”
Dean knew Sam had to have a thumper of a headache; the right side of his face was dark and swollen, one eye almost shut. But Sam shook his head again.
“Okay.” Little pot on kettle action, eh, Sam? The old martyr boomerang.
He turned his chair around, straddled the seat and got his right elbow up on the backrest. He dropped the water bottle down to the floor beside his boot and sniffed off a laugh. “So, I guess the historian isn’t such a pacifist after all.” When Sam didn’t answer, he added: “Guy’s got an arm on him for a fuckin’ librarian.”
The corner of Sam’s good eye twitched, pulled at his cheek. Dean scratched the back of his neck, winced, and didn’t say anything else for a while.
The year Sam turned sixteen, they’d spent three months in a shithole hick town in Indiana. Their Dad must have been either really tired, or really hard up, because he’d dropped his bundle and taken a few weeks work at the local auto repair shop. Sam had got a decent run at a high school and a girl. And Dean had actually held down a job behind the local bar for longer than two weeks. It was something of a personal record at the time. Still was, come to think of it. It was a taste of stability that Dean tolerated the way a generous Alsatian allows tethering. But for Sam, it had been a cataclysmic pit stop. Their last night in town, Sam snapped and belted their dad on the front lawn of their rented house. Dean had got between them - busted it up - feeling sick and scared and full of unwanted knowledge.
He hadn’t thought about that night in years. But he was thinking about it now. Dean ached for his father in a way he hadn’t since Wyoming. Not the cryptic, vaguely menacing John Winchester who inhabited his blood-drenched dreams of late. Dean desperately wanted the sanctuary of his dad.
Dad’s dead.
“Did I hurt anyone?” Sam narrowed his eyes, sent the question quietly to the floorboards.
Dean shook his head, screwed up his nose dismissively. “No,” he clipped. “We’re all okay.”
Sam frowned. “I was going to….You were--”
“I’m okay, Sam.” Dean passed a finger under his nose, looked around the walls of the study. “How much do you remember?”
The question deepened Sam’s frown. “I don’t know. All of it? It’s like I’m there, but I’m not. It’s hard to explain.”
That arched Dean’s eyebrow. He wasn’t really sure what to make of that. “I’ll bet.”
“Are they…?”
“They’re pretty freaked. Yeah. I’d get used to the cuffs for the time being.”
Dean dipped his eyes. He’d agreed to this. His brother handcuffed to a chair. The room reeked of Bobby’s place after Duluth, the air as thick and unpalatable as harbor water. “Be glad Marcus doesn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other. Coulda gone a whole other way.”
A quarter of a century defending his brother’s liberty and it came down to this. He’d made a career out of protecting Sam’s freedom; safeguarded him from a thousand nameless horrors they had hunted, a thousand more homegrown. It grated against the very core of his being, Sam’s hands bound while his own were free.
“You never should have--”
“Shut up, Sam.” Dean said it quietly, but his tone invited no debate. He inhaled deeply through his nose, let it out slow through his lips. “So, I’ve been catchin’ up on some reading, while you’ve been in here.”
“Yeah, well, unless I missed the tutorial on removing your unwanted demon half, I didn’t see anything very helpful in there last night.” Sam’s eyes were bitter, dull and resigned. It made Dean want to shake Sam and slit Meg’s throat, not necessarily in that order.
“Christine Picoult told me we were looking at this problem from the wrong angle.”
“So?”
“So, I think she was right.” Dean scratched at his eyebrow. “She also told me it was gonna be a while before I figured out the kind of trouble she’d gone to, to help us out.”
“Six months ago you never would have listened to her.”
There was a question in there somewhere, but Dean wasn’t sure exactly what it was. He arched an eyebrow, responded with a general deflection. “Yeah. Well, recent events have forced me to re-evaluate my shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy on demons.” He paused. “This ritual. It’s not about destroying the seal. It’s a summoning ritual.”
“Yeah. I know.” Sam kept his eyes on his knees.
“So, I figure, better the devil I know, right? If I’m gonna summon this Gaap guy, ask him to hit the brakes on his own demon-works, I should get to know him a little.” He stopped, but when Sam didn’t interject, he continued. “And you know what keeps stickin’ in my mind? I mean, apart from the awesome Nostradamus shit this guy’s supposed to be capable of…” He sniffed, squinted up at the ceiling while he recited from the text. “ ‘He can deliver Familiars out of the Custody of other Magicians’. Sounds like that might be a handy little skill, doesn’t it?”
They volleyed a steady, penetrating stare back and forth between them, long enough for Sam’s unvoiced suspicion to be silently confirmed. It sparked a lightning quick flash of fear up behind Sam’s eyes, and Dean was glad to see something back there. Glad to see something wanting in his brother for the first time since he’d entered the room.
“And if you’d read Bradley’s stuff about those priests in Prague,” Sam countered sharply, “you’d know Gaap’s services aren’t free.”
“No, I read it.” Dean nodded, pouted a little. “Well, okay, I skimmed it.”
Sam cocked his head incredulously, and Dean gave him a hesitant smile. It felt odd on his lips, like it was the first one in a long time. He couldn’t really remember. Maybe it was.
“Oh, come on. Fifty pages later. Fuck, get to the point already.” Dean rolled his hand, leaned forward onto the front legs of his chair. “I got the general gist. Gaap foretold three wars. Three deals. Three dead priests. Guy doesn’t take IOUs. Lemme tell ya, Sammy, I’m startin’ to see the advantages of an upfront payment scheme.”
They stared at each other some more. Sam shook his head slowly. “I won’t let you do this.”
Dean sighed, dropped his chair back onto all fours. “Well, you’re handcuffed to a chair, buddy. Not really in a position to be callin’ the shots around here. Listen to me. In a little over five months, I’m dead. We do nothing here, then maybe we’re all dead tomorrow, maybe we’re not. But whether I go now or I go in five months time, I’m still fucked, Sam. I got nothin’ to lose by askin’.”
“What about me, Dean?” Sam’s lips quavered around the words. He shook his head. “I’m not ready to lose you.”
It was equal parts affection and pity that twitched up the corner of Dean’s lip, tightened his chest. “Newsflash, Sam: You’re not gonna be ready.”
“You can’t just--”
Dean cut him off. “I am.”
“What?”
“I’m ready.”
Dean saw it in his brother’s face, the thousand ways it broke him to hear it. And it ratcheted up the vice-grip in Dean’s own chest. He didn’t want to be the cause of the shiny slide Sam failed to keep from spilling down his cheek. This wasn’t about hurting Sam. It was about saving him.
And Sam didn’t know all the thousand ways Meg had brought Hell to Dean’s door early. Why this was easy now.
Dean got to his feet. “Okay, I’ll be back in a bit.” He paused when he got to the door. “How tight are those cuffs?”
Sam swallowed hard, kept his eyes on the floor and didn’t answer.
“It’s gonna get long, sittin’ there like that. I just don’t wantcha to be uncomfortable.”
Sam’s face crumpled. He closed his eyes; blinked another glistening, slick streak to his jaw as he turned away.
Chapter Thirteen
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters Thirteen and Fourteen will be posted as they are completed. Thanks for your patience, guys. Some liberties have been taken with locations, mythology, and demonology. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians, mythologists and/or demons. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved, SPEEDY betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10 Ch 11
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Twelve
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
~José Narosky
Dean literally ran into Sam as he rounded the first row of shelves in the reference section. The collision was heavy, got a combined ooof! out of them both, and bounced Dean off the shelves to his right. The impact shook the entire aisle, sent a few books to the floor, and lit up a party of white-hot spot fires across his overworked pain receptors.
“Fuck!”
Sam spun on his heel, caught Dean’s arm and steadied him against the shelves. “Ow,” he agreed. “That hurt. You alright?”
Dean sagged against the bookcase, eyes clenched shut. “No. What are you - made of brick?”
Sam bent to retrieve the fallen books, held up an apologetic hand to the librarian who poked her head around the aisle.
“Everything okay?”
“We’re fine, sorry.”
“There’s no running in here.” Her voice was tight with disapproval.
Dean ignored her, palmed his side. “Fuck me. I think you just cracked another rib.”
Sam cringed as he straightened, checked the spines of the books and replaced them carefully on the shelf. “I know. Really. We’re sorry.” His cheeks reddened.
The librarian gave them a lingering look of reproach before she retreated.
“I thought you were waiting in the car.”
“We got a problem. Some dead guy just killed fifteen people over at a hospital in West Haven. And Meg just called me again. This is on.” Dean felt his shoulder, grimaced. “What’s takin’ you guys so long?”
Sam’s face was stricken. “Bobby’s back there on the phone, Dean. He’s had calls from Somerset, Alamo and Tilford. Those bodies are on the move. Hunter in Alamo emptied three clips into the one down there, and it didn’t blink. Somerset and Tilford are both reporting massacres. It’s like a mass slaughter. National Guard’s going through ammo on these dead guys like it’s Charlton Heston Appreciation Day.”
“Jesus.” Dean swiped the flat of his thumb across his lips. “You got the book?”
“Yeah, we got it. But it’s not an easy read. It’s gonna take some time.”
“Okay.” Dean shoved Sam towards the back of the aisle. “Okay, let’s grab these guys and go. We gotta get the fuck out of this city. Right now.”
*********************************************************************************************
Back in the Impala, Dean flicked on the radio and surfed the stations until he found an update. The official death toll at Providence St. Vincent Medical Center now stood at seventeen. The hospital’s emergency department had been closed. A further twenty-one people had been confirmed injured, and were being transported to alternate medical facilities while police investigated.
“Nonononono.” Dean raked a hand through his hair, shook his head at the radio. “Did I just hear that? Tell me I didn’t just hear that.”
Sam twisted in the driver seat, reversed out of the parking space. “Crap. Do we call them? Can we call the hospitals?”
“And tell them what? ‘Do us a favor and pop in a cap in those casualties’? I don’t think that’s gonna go down very well, Sam. Hippocratic Oath?”
“God, they’re gonna spread it around the city.”
At the parking lot exit, Sam hit the brakes. “Where am I headed?”
Dean thumbed through the contacts in his cell. “We need anything at the motel?”
“I don’t think so. Do we?”
It was standard Winchester practice; maintain permanent portability. There was so much potential for disaster in the void between coming and going. You didn’t leave anything in a room you couldn’t live without. Sam had tried to work it out once; the square tonnage of their contribution to landfill via abandoned toothbrushes alone. Dean had actually been mildly curious about the outcome until Sam got his geek on over the math involved, and then any interest had dissolved into an urge for sibling violence.
“Where’s dad’s journal?”
“It’s in the trunk.”
Dean looked around, saw the laptop satchel on the floor near his feet. He worked his way through a hasty mental checklist. Sam, weapons, journal, laptop… figured he had everything he needed. He threw a last call to Bobby in the back seat.
“Are we good, book-wise? Once we get outta here, we’re not comin’ back.”
Bobby tugged on the bill of his cap. “Little hard to tell, Dean. We’re just gonna have to wing it.”
Dean dialed Jo’s cell, brought the phone to his ear.
“Where are we going?” she asked, when she picked up.
Dean dipped his chin, glanced in his side mirror and saw her car pulling up behind them. He could see enough of Marcus’s pale face in the passenger seat to know he wasn’t happy about the latest developments.
“Head for Timber. I’ll find us somewhere to hole up on the way, call you back.” He nearly hung up, then changed his mind. “Wait, hold on…”
He turned his attention to Sam. “Providence St. Vincent… is that the hospital you and Marcus were at the other night?”
“Yeah.”
“How close was that to the highway?” When Sam squinted, trying to recall, Dean repeated the question to Jo. “How close is this hospital to Sunset Highway?”
He waited while she asked Marcus.
“He says it’s like two streets, less than five minutes.”
Dean squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Shit. We got no clue how fast this thing’s movin’. Can we detour, give it a wide berth? Loop ‘round and get back onto Sunset closer to the hills?”
“Uh-huh. I think so. Pull over. Let me get in front.”
Dean relayed the instruction to Sam as his brother maneuvered the Impala out of the lot. “Jo, don’t stop for anything, okay?”
“Got it.”
“I mean it. You gotta go over someone, you do it. Windows up. Anything happens - you get into trouble - stay in the car and wait for Sam. Might not stop this dead guy, but you should be able to hold off anyone infected. These things aren’t like demons. You put a bullet in ‘em, they should drop. You armed?”
The tightness crept back into her voice. “I got it.”
“I’m not pissin’ in your cornflakes, Jo. I’m just askin’.”
“Yeah, okay. And I said: I got it.”
“Keep your eyes open. I’ll call you in a bit.” Dean hung up, dropped the phone into his lap.
He stared out the window for a beat, then he barked an explosive “Fuck!” and thumped the passenger door.
Sam pulled to the curb, glanced over. “Dean…”
“We knew, Sam.”
“We knew what? We couldn’t have stopped this, Dean.” He peeled the Impala back out of the gutter as Jo passed, fell in behind her.
“Burning the body. What the fuck was I thinking? Like that was gonna stop anything.”
“We’ve got the book,” Sam reminded him, eyes flicking from the road back to Dean. “We’ll figure this out.”
Dean groped for the satchel at his feet, pulled it onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” Sam frowned.
“I’m gonna hit Google Maps, see if I can find us someplace to hole up near that symbol.” He shook his head as the notebook booted up. “How many people is this gonna cost us?”
Neither Sam nor Bobby had an answer for that.
Dean rubbed his temple, closed his eyes. “It’s genocide, Sam. They’re killin’ those people off like roaches.”
**********************************************************************************************
The house Dean found was a couple of miles off Lousignant Road, perched back into the heavy forest north of Timber proper. The residents had seen the news. When Sam flipped them a fake ID from the CDC and informed them the quarantine area was being reassessed, they obediently complied with the instruction to get in their car and head west.
Sam hauled half the arsenal from the trunk indoors, brought in the bags. In the dining room, Bobby and Marcus cleared the table, set themselves up with the texts and the laptop and Tristan Bradley’s book. Jo hit the upstairs rooms and salted the windows. Dean handled the access points on the ground floor.
While Sam, Bobby and Marcus hit the books, Jo started making calls to the people she knew in Portland. Dean got to work wearing a line in the carpet between the dining room table and the expansive front windows in the living room. It was a restless canine patrol, and Sam could see his brother was physically and mentally approaching flashpoint. The limp was now pronounced, and Sam knew there was nothing nonchalant about the fist Dean had jammed down the front pocket of his jeans; it was keeping his arm still.
When Sam approached, Dean didn’t turn around. He addressed Sam’s reflection in the darkened living room glass.
“No,” he growled simply.
Sam shoved both hands in the pockets of his hoodie, frowned at the back of Dean’s head. “No, what?”
“You’re about to tell me to get some sleep.”
“Actually, I was about to ask you to check rounds, load some magazines.”
Dean half-turned, tore his eyes away from the window. “Don’t lie, Sam. You’re no good at it.”
“No, really. We need to be ready.” Sam shifted uncomfortably beneath Dean’s scrutiny. “And okay, yeah. I was kinda hoping once you got off your feet, you might just sort of pass out. You’re not looking so great.”
“Half of Portland’s gonna be dead by morning, Sam.”
“Look, I know this is a bad situation, but this is gonna take a while. That book’s almost entirely in Enochian. Marcus is pretty good, and he’s doing the best he can, but we’re looking at hours here. This could be your last chance to get some rest for a while. Down a couple of Vicodin. It’ll take the edge off, help you get some sleep.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. I know you, Dean. The only thing you’ve got on your side right now is momentum. And I know you think you can push on and run to the finish, but dude, physically? I don’t think you’re gonna make it.”
Dean’s expression was guarded, but his silence spoke volumes.
Sam appealed to his practicality. “I need you on deck when this goes down. If the situation were reversed, you’d be going to town on me. You’d kick my ass and you know it. Why’re you doing this to yourself?”
“Now? Really? You’re gonna bust my balls about this now?”
“No. Dean…” Sam shook his head in frustration, took a noisy breath. He needed to tread carefully. Conversations with a wired, strung-out Dean didn’t traditionally end well. The obstinate tenacity that kept him upright drew no distinction between the physical and the mental. “I’m not trying to come down on you, I just… I’m just asking you to cut yourself some slack for two seconds.”
“She’s gonna find us, Sam. Sooner rather than later. If I take those pills, you can write me off for the next four hours. It’s like jamming my head full of cotton wool. I can’t think straight when I’m on that shit.”
“Right,” Sam laid the sarcasm thick, “and the pain’s really enhancing your clarity.”
The look Dean shot him was lethal.
“She’s not getting her hands on you again, Dean. I’m not gonna let that happen.”
“This isn’t about the end of the world for her, Sam. This virus? The seal? It’s all secondary to her.”
Sam’s face scrunched in exasperation. “Why’s it so hard for you to just let me watch your back?”
“Because you can’t!” Dean snapped.
Sam flinched, the accusation like a cool blade to the chest.
Regret swept Dean’s features. He closed his eyes, and the small shake of his head was penitent. “I didn’t mean that.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right. I dropped the ball in that alley. I let you down.” He nodded. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. Believe me, I’ve played enough Monday morning quarterback about it. But I can’t undo it. All I can do is make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Sam,” Dean told him wearily. He crossed to the hallway entrance, stooped to scoop up the duffel from the floor. He came back across the room, dumped the bag on the coffee table and eased carefully onto the couch. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, unzipped the duffel and pulled out a box of rounds. He didn’t look up when he spoke.
“Where’s the Vicodin?”
*********************************************************************************************
He stood behind her, so he didn’t see her face. When he brought the blade up against her throat, she raised a reinforcing hand to his wrist, as if she thought he might have faltered.
Dean’s relationship with knives had changed for good. He knew it as he dragged the blade across her neck. When her knees went, he took her weight and folded her on the ground; a bloody, bubbling, leaky doll.
It was the same in the dream. Over and over. He stood behind them all. They all raised that same hand to his wrist. But he didn’t hesitate. Not with Christine, or Shelley, or Meg, or Jo.
*********************************************************************************************
Jo sat Indian style on the carpet in front of the coffee table and finished loading the magazines. From where he sat at the dining room table beside Marcus, Sam had a clear line of sight to both her, and his brother sprawled on the couch behind her. Dean’d hit the deck fast and hard; hadn’t moved a muscle since Sam had taken the ammunition from his drug-clumsy hands and tipped him out of the upright position. In between the sporadic conversation at the table around him, Sam could hear his brother’s quiet snoring. When she was done with the rounds, Jo got started on a weapons check. She worked quickly, her level of comfort with the firearms as much a surprise to Marcus as it was to Sam.
It was just after midnight when they hit the first jackpot.
“Okay, I think I got something about the knife.”
Sam blinked smarting eyes at Marcus. “What about it?”
Marcus ceased his frantic scribbling, swiveled the book around and tapped the diagram on the page with his finger. “Look familiar?”
Sam squinted, saw the serpent engraving winding up the handle. “Very. What does it say?”
“It’s called the Dagger of Andromalius.”
Sam frowned. “Why do I know that name?”
“Legemeton Vel Calvicula Salomonis Regis.” Bobby downed the last of his coffee, cracked the mug onto the table. “Andromalius’s the last demon listed in The Goetia. Dagger’s news to me, though. Never heard of it.”
“So, what’s his deal?”
Bobby shrugged. “According to King Solomon, his office was a kind of underworld regulatory facility. You can read it a few ways, but essentially he’s supposed to have maintained honor amongst demons. If there is such a thing.”
“With the Dagger? Like a demonic cleaner?”
“I dunno. Like I said, I never heard of it before.” Bobby rifled through the texts on the table. It took him a while to find what he was after, but finally he threw an open book down the length of the table. Sam caught it on the slide, found himself staring at a drawing of a large-headed man, a serpent snaking around his arm and rearing out of his hand.
“There’s not a lot of pictorial representations of Andromalius around,” Bobby explained. “He’s a bit of a dark horse. Supposedly he appears in human form, holding a serpent.”
“Or a dagger with a serpent handle.”
“Startin’ to look like. Yeah.”
“So, how did Christine Picoult end up with this thing?”
Marcus popped his pen between his lips and turned his attention back to his notes. “According to Bradley, Gaap gave him the knife.” He shuffled the papers. “Back in one of the first entries, mid-November 2003, there’s an entry referencing the ‘cracking of the seal’. It says right here, Gaap came to him with ‘things to come, and the means by which balance would be restored’.”
Sam shook his head, confused. “So, they’re sitting on the seal about to unleash unholy hell, and Gaap just… what? Shows up and saves humankind? I don’t get it. Gaap’s this major league figure in demonology. It’s like saying you had one of the three wise men show up at your office Christmas party and spike the punch.”
Bobby nodded slowly, rubbed his beard. “It’s weird, I’ll give you that.”
“Things to come? What does that mean?”
“Supposedly, you can summon Gaap to tell the future. If you ask him a question, he’ll answer truthfully about things ‘Past, Present and to Come’.” Bobby hung some quotations in the air with his fingers around his last words.
Sam face creased in disbelief. “What, cause he’s just really helpful like that?”
Marcus shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no. Those priests in Prague? Gaap predicted three bloody battles between mankind and the demon world, all starting with this plague. When they couldn’t destroy the seal, he offered them a deal. He agreed to put a stop to all three wars, but he took three of the priests’s souls back to hell with him in return.” Marcus looked up, stricken. “Christ, imagine pulling those straws. No, thank you. The surviving priest goes back to the Vatican with the summoning ritual. Bradley uses it again in 2003, thinks he’s summoning Gaap to open the seal, finds out he’s smack in the middle of a business transaction from way back in 1349.”
“So, what? This is the third get-out-of-jail-free card? We summon Gaap and he does the rest?” Sam looked from Bobby to Marcus. “Sounds a little too good to be true, doesn’t it? And what’s the deal with this knife? Restoring balance to what?”
Marcus scratched his cheek, flicked back to the picture of the knife. “I don’t know yet. There’s more about the dagger, though. This thing sounds pretty heavy duty. Says it’s indestructible, can’t be broken, blah blah blah… but here, look: it’s ‘bound and linked’ to the holder.” Marcus grimaced, looked up at Sam. “When it changes hands, it has to be consecrated to preserve its power.”
“Of course, it does. Great. We have to consecrate it.” Sam rubbed his stinging eyes. “Consecrate it how?”
Marcus flipped the page, tracked a finger along the text and flicked through his references with his spare hand. He toggled his head, lips moving as he read, and then he paused.
“Oh.” Marcus glanced up at Sam nervously. “It has to be consecrated with demon blood.”
Sam froze, the flat of his fingers midway through a tight circuit at his temple. He dropped the hand to his lips, closed his eyes. “Jesus Christ,” he sighed.
He leaned back in his chair and gazed into the living room at Dean.
I had to. She asked me to.
“Okay,” he said finally, turning his attention back to the books. “What else?”
**********************************************************************************************
John sat on a chair in the corner of the room - hunched - his face lost in the warehouse shadows. Dark and inscrutable. His eyes glistened.
“It’s like losing your mind every day down there.” His voice was a ragged rumble; rose and ebbed and broke like a wave.
Dean licked his cracked lips, tasted the cold copper of his blood. His jaw creaked on abused hinges. “Lemme loose.”
“It all goes.”
“Dad, cut me loose. Please.” Dean shifted, woke brutal channels and tracts deep in the terrain of his internal geography. He clamped his teeth together, clenched his eyes shut.
When he cracked his lids again, John was leaning forward into the light, his face still half-drenched in dark. He had his elbows on his knees, eyes dipped to his open hands. “Everything you try to keep hold of,” he uttered thickly.
Dean realized with a cold flash of horror that his dad was weeping.
“It all goes.”
**********************************************************************************************
It was quarter to six in the morning when Dean woke. He was cold and uncomfortable, and his spine cracked in protest as he rolled onto his back. He got his watch up close enough to his face to determine the time, eased his forearm gently to his chest when the stab and throb of his shoulder discouraged any further movement.
“Morning.”
Dean shifted, saw Jo standing beside the coffee table. He grunted a reply while the current state of affairs slotted slide by terrible slide into an internal projector, bounced a fifty-foot warning off his mental screens. “What’s goin’ on?”
He elbowed the couch beneath him, got stalled by the impromptu fireworks display in his shoulder halfway into the sitting position. Jo offered a hand and he clapped his palm into hers, let her lean back and haul him up onto this feet.
The sudden change of altitude was a mistake. Dean snapped his mouth shut on a bark of pain, dipped his chin to his chest.
“You alright?” Jo’s fingers closed around his upper arm.
“No,” he admitted. For a few long seconds he blinked his way through a smattering of silver flecks behind his eyes. His vision tunneled, then slowly cleared.
“Jesus. You’re a mess, Dean.”
“Yeah, some bitch kneed me in the balls. Really finished me.” He gave her a sideways glance that lacked any real umbrage, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Well, some jackass really deserved it. If I let go, are you gonna keel over?”
He gave the matter due consideration. “No,” he decided finally.
“You’re alright?”
“Yes.” Dean rubbed his sleep-crusted eyes, then sent his fingers through the untidy bristle of his hair as he got his bearings.
Sam was passed out in the armchair beside the couch, an exercise in spatial incongruity that should have made sleep impossible. There was something earnest and desperate about his contortionist’s slumber, and Dean’s attention lingered on his brother. He let the familiar tug of protective guardianship resolve and organize, the way it always did: define, center, engage, direct.
It set Dean outside himself, outside the groan and flash-fire of his body. Put him where he needed to be.
He half-turned towards Jo, eyes still on Sam. “Where’s Bobby?”
“He went to dig up some stuff we need for this ritual.”
“By himself?” Dean’s brow furrowed.
“Marcus went with him.”
Dean threw a palm up. “Awesome. They run into any trouble, he can translate their way out of it.”
“Why do you have to be such an asshole?”
“Because I am an asshole,” he snarled.
“No, actually, you’re not,” Jo snapped, arms folded.
Dean squinted at her. He’d forgotten how mouthy she was. How he always occupied the space equidistant between violence and affection in her company. The triggers she tripped weren’t all that dissimilar to Sam’s infuriating repertoire.
“What is that, a character reference?” He hobbled through to the dining room, headed for the kitchen. “Where’s the coffee? I need coffee.”
Jo followed him through the back door onto the verandah when Dean took his brew out there. He swept a militant eye over the trees where the forest floor butted up against the backyard, leaned a hip against the porch rail. When he was satisfied no unseen danger lurked, he turned some serious attention to the coffee in his hand.
“So, we’ve got this ritual or what?” he asked around his mug. “Translation’s done?”
“Uh-huh. Well, not all of it, but enough. From what they’ve dug up, it looks like we got about twenty-four hours before the shit hits the fan. The timing sounds pretty specific.”
Dean winced. “Twenty-four hours? We heard anything about what’s goin’ on back in Portland?”
Jo hesitated. “There’ve been some news reports, yeah. It’s not pretty. But so far, it’s still just Portland, so that’s something, I guess.”
Dean sipped his coffee, showed Jo his teeth. “This just gets worse and worse, the more I think about it. What about the other cities?”
“Same as here. Feels like a whole new world. I mean, even if we stop this…”
“Don’t bet on it, Jo. People make things into what they need ‘em to be. If it comes to it, they’ll find some way to explain it.”
“I guess.”
“Trust me, it’s what people do. Speaking of which, is Marcus still freakin’ out?”
“What?”
“Your boyfriend, Jo. Is he still freakin’ out about Sam? ‘Cause if he tries anything stupid, I’m gonna beat the living shit out of him. Just so we’re clear.”
“This isn’t easy for him, Dean. He’s scared. We all are.”
It was an honest enough confession, but Dean was low on caffeine, short on time and in a fair amount of pain. It was a trifecta that showcased why the vast majority of clients found him offensive.
He scowled. “What are you doin’ with that fuckin’ pussy, anyway?”
Jo shot him down with both barrels, eyes and voice like ice. “Watch your mouth.”
Dean wrapped his lips around the edge of his coffee before he said anything else to endanger his testicles.
“He didn’t run,” Jo said.
“What?”
“You asked me what I’m doing with such a fucking pussy. I’m telling you. He didn’t run. Not when he found out what I do, and not now. And that fucking pussy just spent the better part of last night translating a text that, for all intents and purposes, could get every one of us killed in the next twenty-four hours. So, yeah, he’s freaking out a little. He’s having a hard time with this news about Sam. But he’s still here. He’s a good guy, Dean. He cares about people. Maybe he doesn’t know his way around a shotgun, and maybe he’s not winning any boxing contests. Both very good reasons for him to stay as far away from this mess as he can possibly get. But he hasn’t run.” She crossed her arms. “Why the hell should you care, anyway?”
“‘Cause you’re my friend,” Dean clipped. “You start fuckin’ around on the job, that’s how you get yourself hurt.”
Jo gave him an exasperated shrug of her shoulders. “You honestly think you’re my friend, Dean? Then what the hell was that bullshit at my apartment the other night?”
Dean tilted his chin, lips tugging downward. “Actually, no. I take it back. Sam’s right. I’m incapable. Forget it.” He gave her a tight humorless smile, pushed off from the porch railing and headed for the door.
“You’re unbelievable.”
Dean knew he should keep moving. Let it go and just head inside. But he snapped around like a quarterhorse, one eyebrow arching.
“S’cuse me?”
“The minute the conversation goes anywhere you don’t want it to go, you just shut down and take off. It’s like Pavlov rang a bell somewhere.”
“Spare me the Psych 101.”
“You know, Marcus told me about your little conversation in his office. I don’t think this has anything to do with you not trusting people. I think this has to do with you being trusted.”
Dean shook his head, chuffed out a laugh, but Jo ignored him.
“You’re afraid to have people trust you, because the minute your interests cross, Sam comes first. Sam is always going to come first. You’ve got no boundaries when it comes to your brother and you know it. You’re not just afraid of letting people down. You know you’re going to. So, it’s just easier to be a jackass. That way you can make it okay that you don’t have anyone or anything in your life outside Sam-fucking-Winchester.”
Dean caught movement in the doorway out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t know how long Sam had been standing there, but he didn’t suppose it mattered very much. He’d sure as hell heard the closing argument.
Sam turned back in to the house, cheeks flushing.
“Sam, wait.” Dean shook his head at Jo, gave her a hard reproachful stare. “Nice. Thank you.”
He caught up with his brother in the hallway.
“Hey.”
Sam didn’t stop. He smacked open the door at the end of hall, headed out on to the front porch.
Dean followed. “Dude, wait up.” He grabbed Sam’s arm, and that was it.
Sam spun like a top. He flashed out a hand and caught Dean by the throat, pinned him hard against the wall. Dean yelped, a sharp outburst of surprise as he jolted against the front of the house. He bit back a groan, shut his eyes while the throb in his shoulder flared, then abated. When he blinked, he found himself a few inches from Sam’s expressionless face, eyes dark and rippling.
Dean’s gut clenched, a thousand tiny knives of adrenalin prickled his extremities. The hand he got up around Sam’s wrist was quaking. He felt like he was filling up with ice, the sensation countered by the sweat that broke across his scalp.
You were gonna let me kill a lot of people, weren’t you, Dean?
“Sam, let go,” he wheezed. The grip on his throat neither tightened nor loosened. He tried again. “Sam, stop.”
Dean heard the front screen door slap shut, and then Jo was shouting.
“Sam, get off him!” She grappled at his arm, faltered when she looked up and saw Sam’s face. “Oh, my God.”
Dean wrenched on Sam’s wrist, and the fingers at his neck squeezed.
“Holy water.” He strained the request to Jo through his teeth. Heard the snap of her boot heels on wood as she ran back into the house. He tugged on his brother’s arm again, knew he was down to what air was left in his screaming lungs.
“Sammy, please.”
Dean got some purchase off the porch beneath him and kicked out hard, boot glancing off Sam’s shin. Sam regarded him with the same blank expression, cocked his head a little in confusion.
“What are you doing?”
It was Sam’s voice, but the fidelity was off. There was honest inquiry in his tone, and the realization cut through the ringing in Dean’s skull, punched a hard line of clarity through the buzz.
He doesn’t know. Holy fuck, he’s got no clue.
He tried to get something out - reason with him - but there wasn’t any travel on the air in and out of him. The edges of his vision began to dot and sparkle.
He heard Jo shouting, felt the cold spray on his face as the holy water hissed off his brother. The confusion in Sam’s face deepened as he half-turned, dragged Dean two feet along the wall with impossible ease. Jo backed up in a hurry. Dean wanted to tell her: Hit him again with the water. Couldn’t get the words out. Then he saw movement to his right, and Sam’s head snapped back around too. Marcus lunged forward, jacked the butt of Bobby’s shotgun hard into Sam’s smoking face.
Sam let go, and they both dropped like stones.
*********************************************************************************************
Dean puked the coffee all over the porch. Choked and spat an ominous river of black onto the boards. He rolled, rode out a few violent coughs and hiccups while his heaving lungs overcompensated for the lack of oxygen.
Bobby squatted silently at his shoulder, hand fisted in the collar of his jacket.
There was a loud scraping down past his feet, and Dean heard Jo and Marcus’s tense, lowered voices. He lifted his head, tried to see where Sam lay.
“Where is he?” The question caught in his burning throat, spluttered up and out of his mouth inside a hacking cough.
Bobby’s face came into view above him. “Jo’s got him, just relax.” He twisted away. Dean didn’t hear the specifics of his exchange with Marcus but he understood the panicked tone well enough. There was the jingle of thrown keys and then Bobby’s attention was back in his face, hand to his cheek. “Dean, you need to calm down, you hear me? In and out. Slow it down.”
Dean dropped his head back to the wooden slats. He blinked up at the verandah roof, tried to regulate his breathing. Bobby was right. He was having an ear-buzzing, mind-stalling, teeth-chattering, hands-shaking freak-out. An icy sensory echo plumbed bone-deep at the wound in his cheek, drilled down beneath the older jagged scar at his shoulder. Dean closed his eyes, grappled for something concrete - something solid and known - against which he could steady himself.
“That wasn’t Sam.” It could have been a shout or a whisper that left his lips, for all Dean knew.
Bobby’s hand uncurled from his collar, thick fingers gingerly exploring beneath Dean’s jaw.
“No,” he agreed grimly. “It wasn’t.”
**********************************************************************************************
The office wasn’t extravagant. Bobby had moved a simple wooden desk, a pedestal filing unit and two chairs out of the way to make room for the Devil’s Trap he had marked on the polished boards. Dean gave the room a visual once over as he quietly closed the door behind him. He took his time arriving at Sam, handcuffed to a chair in the center of the sigil. His brother cut eyes to the floor when Dean’s gaze finally settled on him.
Bobby had cuffed Sam’s wrists behind the chair. Dean knew it was the most practical way to do the job, but it bothered him. It made his teeth tingle in the way an accidental hammer to the fingertip made them sing.
Dean hooked the backrest of a nearby chair, dragged it about halfway between the door and Sam. He waggled the water bottle in his free hand, moved it into Sam’s line of sight. Sam shook his head, no.
“There’s aspirin, if you need it.”
Dean knew Sam had to have a thumper of a headache; the right side of his face was dark and swollen, one eye almost shut. But Sam shook his head again.
“Okay.” Little pot on kettle action, eh, Sam? The old martyr boomerang.
He turned his chair around, straddled the seat and got his right elbow up on the backrest. He dropped the water bottle down to the floor beside his boot and sniffed off a laugh. “So, I guess the historian isn’t such a pacifist after all.” When Sam didn’t answer, he added: “Guy’s got an arm on him for a fuckin’ librarian.”
The corner of Sam’s good eye twitched, pulled at his cheek. Dean scratched the back of his neck, winced, and didn’t say anything else for a while.
The year Sam turned sixteen, they’d spent three months in a shithole hick town in Indiana. Their Dad must have been either really tired, or really hard up, because he’d dropped his bundle and taken a few weeks work at the local auto repair shop. Sam had got a decent run at a high school and a girl. And Dean had actually held down a job behind the local bar for longer than two weeks. It was something of a personal record at the time. Still was, come to think of it. It was a taste of stability that Dean tolerated the way a generous Alsatian allows tethering. But for Sam, it had been a cataclysmic pit stop. Their last night in town, Sam snapped and belted their dad on the front lawn of their rented house. Dean had got between them - busted it up - feeling sick and scared and full of unwanted knowledge.
He hadn’t thought about that night in years. But he was thinking about it now. Dean ached for his father in a way he hadn’t since Wyoming. Not the cryptic, vaguely menacing John Winchester who inhabited his blood-drenched dreams of late. Dean desperately wanted the sanctuary of his dad.
Dad’s dead.
“Did I hurt anyone?” Sam narrowed his eyes, sent the question quietly to the floorboards.
Dean shook his head, screwed up his nose dismissively. “No,” he clipped. “We’re all okay.”
Sam frowned. “I was going to….You were--”
“I’m okay, Sam.” Dean passed a finger under his nose, looked around the walls of the study. “How much do you remember?”
The question deepened Sam’s frown. “I don’t know. All of it? It’s like I’m there, but I’m not. It’s hard to explain.”
That arched Dean’s eyebrow. He wasn’t really sure what to make of that. “I’ll bet.”
“Are they…?”
“They’re pretty freaked. Yeah. I’d get used to the cuffs for the time being.”
Dean dipped his eyes. He’d agreed to this. His brother handcuffed to a chair. The room reeked of Bobby’s place after Duluth, the air as thick and unpalatable as harbor water. “Be glad Marcus doesn’t know one end of a shotgun from the other. Coulda gone a whole other way.”
A quarter of a century defending his brother’s liberty and it came down to this. He’d made a career out of protecting Sam’s freedom; safeguarded him from a thousand nameless horrors they had hunted, a thousand more homegrown. It grated against the very core of his being, Sam’s hands bound while his own were free.
“You never should have--”
“Shut up, Sam.” Dean said it quietly, but his tone invited no debate. He inhaled deeply through his nose, let it out slow through his lips. “So, I’ve been catchin’ up on some reading, while you’ve been in here.”
“Yeah, well, unless I missed the tutorial on removing your unwanted demon half, I didn’t see anything very helpful in there last night.” Sam’s eyes were bitter, dull and resigned. It made Dean want to shake Sam and slit Meg’s throat, not necessarily in that order.
“Christine Picoult told me we were looking at this problem from the wrong angle.”
“So?”
“So, I think she was right.” Dean scratched at his eyebrow. “She also told me it was gonna be a while before I figured out the kind of trouble she’d gone to, to help us out.”
“Six months ago you never would have listened to her.”
There was a question in there somewhere, but Dean wasn’t sure exactly what it was. He arched an eyebrow, responded with a general deflection. “Yeah. Well, recent events have forced me to re-evaluate my shoot-first-ask-questions-later policy on demons.” He paused. “This ritual. It’s not about destroying the seal. It’s a summoning ritual.”
“Yeah. I know.” Sam kept his eyes on his knees.
“So, I figure, better the devil I know, right? If I’m gonna summon this Gaap guy, ask him to hit the brakes on his own demon-works, I should get to know him a little.” He stopped, but when Sam didn’t interject, he continued. “And you know what keeps stickin’ in my mind? I mean, apart from the awesome Nostradamus shit this guy’s supposed to be capable of…” He sniffed, squinted up at the ceiling while he recited from the text. “ ‘He can deliver Familiars out of the Custody of other Magicians’. Sounds like that might be a handy little skill, doesn’t it?”
They volleyed a steady, penetrating stare back and forth between them, long enough for Sam’s unvoiced suspicion to be silently confirmed. It sparked a lightning quick flash of fear up behind Sam’s eyes, and Dean was glad to see something back there. Glad to see something wanting in his brother for the first time since he’d entered the room.
“And if you’d read Bradley’s stuff about those priests in Prague,” Sam countered sharply, “you’d know Gaap’s services aren’t free.”
“No, I read it.” Dean nodded, pouted a little. “Well, okay, I skimmed it.”
Sam cocked his head incredulously, and Dean gave him a hesitant smile. It felt odd on his lips, like it was the first one in a long time. He couldn’t really remember. Maybe it was.
“Oh, come on. Fifty pages later. Fuck, get to the point already.” Dean rolled his hand, leaned forward onto the front legs of his chair. “I got the general gist. Gaap foretold three wars. Three deals. Three dead priests. Guy doesn’t take IOUs. Lemme tell ya, Sammy, I’m startin’ to see the advantages of an upfront payment scheme.”
They stared at each other some more. Sam shook his head slowly. “I won’t let you do this.”
Dean sighed, dropped his chair back onto all fours. “Well, you’re handcuffed to a chair, buddy. Not really in a position to be callin’ the shots around here. Listen to me. In a little over five months, I’m dead. We do nothing here, then maybe we’re all dead tomorrow, maybe we’re not. But whether I go now or I go in five months time, I’m still fucked, Sam. I got nothin’ to lose by askin’.”
“What about me, Dean?” Sam’s lips quavered around the words. He shook his head. “I’m not ready to lose you.”
It was equal parts affection and pity that twitched up the corner of Dean’s lip, tightened his chest. “Newsflash, Sam: You’re not gonna be ready.”
“You can’t just--”
Dean cut him off. “I am.”
“What?”
“I’m ready.”
Dean saw it in his brother’s face, the thousand ways it broke him to hear it. And it ratcheted up the vice-grip in Dean’s own chest. He didn’t want to be the cause of the shiny slide Sam failed to keep from spilling down his cheek. This wasn’t about hurting Sam. It was about saving him.
And Sam didn’t know all the thousand ways Meg had brought Hell to Dean’s door early. Why this was easy now.
Dean got to his feet. “Okay, I’ll be back in a bit.” He paused when he got to the door. “How tight are those cuffs?”
Sam swallowed hard, kept his eyes on the floor and didn’t answer.
“It’s gonna get long, sittin’ there like that. I just don’t wantcha to be uncomfortable.”
Sam’s face crumpled. He closed his eyes; blinked another glistening, slick streak to his jaw as he turned away.
Chapter Thirteen