The Other Son: Chapter Eighteen
Title: The Other Son
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Eighteen: AVERSION
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter eighteen | AVERSION
“Dude,” Dean said, holding-up the sheet and grimacing. “That is just nasty.”
“Would you stop it?” Sam whispered, glancing around the morgue.
“What?” Dean’s expression changed and he dropped the sheet. “Yeah, that’s not an animal attack.”
“What did you see?” Sam asked, stepping forward and picking-up the sheet that Dean had let fall.
“It sure as hell doesn’t feel like one.”
“Feel?” and then it occurred to Sam and he dropped the sheet, pushed the metal slab back into the freezer and nodded towards the exit. “Tell me.”
“Remember how I said I’d know something like the shtriga if I ever felt it again?” Dean jerked his head meaningfully back toward the morgue doors that had swung closed behind them.
“Okay, so it’s not a creature, it’s some kind of spirit,” Sam said.
“Or maybe both?”
“What do you mean?” They’d made it out of the building and were walking down the front steps. “Dean?” Sam prompted.
“I’m saying that the shtriga had some sort of - I dunno, intelligence sort of. Like, there was a goal. This didn’t feel the same. This was just - mindless and violent.”
Sam let out a slow breath and tried to pretend that hearing that didn’t freak him out a little. “If it’s mindless, though, then how do you explain the pattern?” The victims - four so far - were employed in some form at the local school; Jacqueline Morris had been the school principal, Paul Kinkaid had been a science teacher, Melody O’Connell was the school’s secretary and Markus Finch was the school’s nurse.
“Maybe it doesn’t like school?”
“Something’s gotta be behind it,” Sam said, ignoring the lame joke. He waited until Dean had settled into the passenger seat of the impala and then started it up, pulling out into traffic and heading back to their motel.
“Controlling it, you mean.” Dean shook his head and shifted in his seat but said nothing further. They’d been in Ashtonville for three days already and Sam hadn’t once stopped wishing that their first hunt after what had happened at the Roadhouse could have been something simpler - a poltergeist, a haunting. Every time they checked a house where one of the deaths had occurred Dean got a pale, pinched look on his face and Sam could only imagine what he was picking up from the place. He didn’t fail to notice that Dean never touched anything in any of the homes - although it wasn’t like Sam would have let him if he had tried.
“What?” Sam asked, because Dean didn’t look like he entirely believed Sam’s theory.
“Nothing.”
The silence in the impala was oppressive and Sam concentrated on the road until Dean frowned and finally took-in the landscape passing-by that he’d been staring at. “Dude, where are we going?”
“Back to the motel.”
“What for?”
Sam flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. “I’m thinking maybe we need a bit of a break before we check any more leads. Take a bit of a rest or something.”
“You want me to nap? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Screw that, Sam. I’m not some little kid that needs quiet time!”
“Maybe I do!”
Dean snapped his mouth shut and glared out the window, his gaze flickering back to Sam periodically before he stretched his hand across the space between them and wriggled his fingers under the collar of Sam’s zip-top and shirt until he was touching bare skin. Sam held his breath. “I call bullshit,” Dean said, withdrawing his hand and crossing his arms.
“Fine. You caught me. It’s total bullshit. That isn’t going to change the fact that we’re going back to the motel.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah? Now who’s bullshitting?” He glanced over at Dean and thought that maybe he was pushing a bit too much and then promptly stopped second-guessing himself. “One victim’s house and one dead body is enough for today. We don’t even know exactly where to go next, we need to think this through.”
“You know we’re going to the library, next,” Dean grumbled, letting his head fall back against the seat - a move that arched into Sam’s touch as he absently stroked his fingers up and down Dean’s neck. Dean kept a lot to himself, and he was complicated, but Sam was all kinds of stubborn. There were certain things about Dean that were more obvious than others, quirks his lover had that Sam had collected like baseball cards and hoarded like candy. Dean didn’t like to be considered weak or freakish, hated anything that would imply that he was either and would go to any length (including running himself into exhaustion) to prove that he was otherwise. He was also secretly an incredible softy, no matter how much he tried to deny it, Dean cuddled.
Also, Dean could be distracted so very easily, and that was something that Sam frequently exploited. All it took was one brief, casual touch and Sam could re-route Dean’s focus from a case to anything Sam could bring himself to feel. Usually it was sex, because that was the safest way of being affectionate with Dean without allowing him the opportunity to accuse anyone of being a girl, because that got a bit old after a while. It was a last resort for Sam, because he didn’t like the feeling that he was maybe manipulating Dean through his gift, but if the man wasn’t taking care of himself than Sam figured anything was fair game. “Yeah,” Dean said, breathily. “Okay. Motel it is.” Sam kept his hand on the back of Dean’s neck right up until they’d crossed into their room, and then he pushed Dean against the door and replaced his hand with his mouth, and Dean forgot that he’d been gearing-up to yell at Sam for implying that he was weak, and he also forgot about the feel of demonic creatures and bloody corpses and the taste of terror.
……………………………………
Outside a child was calling, an androgynous voice carried on the wind - the child was singing. “Go away,” Dean said. Low-level spirits could sometimes be ordered away just that easily. The child sang on. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Dean said.
“But Dean,” a voice whispered directly into his ear. “We believe in you.” Something cold and scratchy wrapped around his ankles and jerked his body down towards the foot of his bed, strong enough to render his struggles futile. A wind was blowing fierce and strong and suddenly there was heat and flame and Dean was struggling like a wildcat but something was subduing him, something was keeping his movements confined. “My dad’s gonna kill you!” he said, defiant as his head was jerked back roughly, something - a hand - grasping his hair, nearly tugging it clean out of his skull. “You’re gonna burn!”
“You first.”
Dean wrenched himself free of the dream so violently that he ended-up on the floor. For a moment he concentrated on breathing, his head was aching and when he breath was under control he half-stumbled, half-crawled to Sam’s bag where Dean knew there was always a supply of pain meds - kept within easy reach for when Sam suffered a vision. Two pills down and Dean couldn’t bring himself to crawl back into the bed with Sam. He was restless and he didn’t want to wake his lover. Instead, he pulled the quilt Sophia had packed for him from his bag and draped it around his body. Sam had booked a room with only the one bed, not seeing a point in having the two.
“Dean?” Sam asked, still mostly asleep.
“Go back to bed, Sammy. M’fine.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Just need to use the bathroom,” Dean lied.
“M’kay.” Sam settled back in and Dean shifted his hold on the blanket. No way was he climbing back into a bed where something could rear-up and drag him down off of it. He pulled on his clothes and then snatched the quilt back into his hands and paced into the bathroom, locking the door. It was maybe a crazy thing to do, but even if the memories of the dream were fading, the feeling was still there, and Dean stepped into the tub - quilt, clothes and all - and settled with his back against the curved corner.
……………………………..
Sam woke-up the next morning to the smell of coffee - fresh and welcoming. When he blinked his eyes open, it was to the sight of a large Styrofoam cup steaming on the night table by the bed. “Rise and shine!” Dean sing-songed.
“Why are you awake?” Sam asked, somewhat perplexed by the change in their roles. Dean was the one who was rarely awake early; Sam always had to coax him into the world with coffee, or at least promises of coffee.
“Places to go, people to see, demons to exorcise,” Dean tossed out flippantly, and then knocked-back his coffee.
“How many of those have you had?” Sam asked with a grimace, because Dean was far too upbeat for that hour of the day.
“A few. Anyway, I’ve been through your little book and there’s nothing that sounds promising. I’m thinking we need to go to your favourite place on earth.”
“The library is not my favourite place on earth, Dean.”
“Whatever dude. But lets go. I’ve been itching to salt and burn something since we drove into this town.” That was something that Sam was more familiar with when it came to Dean. Every hunter, Sam was certain, had a part of the hunt that they preferred above all others. For Sam it was the research - before things got really dangerous or confusing, when it was just him and logic and a mystery. For Dean it was the end, the salting and burning - knowing whatever they were after was settled and done. Sam also suspected that maybe his lover had a thing for fire.
Sam drank his coffee and tried to somehow find enough energy to match Dean. “I was thinking about what you said the other day,” Dean said.
“What did I say?”
“That someone might be controlling whatever is killing these people. Y’know, like maybe using whatever it is as some kind of weapon.” Sam was a little startled to realize that ‘weapon’ had become a sort of buzz-word for him, and for some reason hearing Dean use it set him on alert, like maybe there was another layer to this case that he hadn’t realized the other day - like maybe there were aspects of it that Dean might identify with. “-so we should check the school out as well, because I’m thinking whoever is controlling the - things - is there.”
“It would explain the connection - I mean everyone who has died so far has worked at the school.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, let me get dressed,” Sam said, reluctantly tossing aside the covers and grabbing-up fresh clothes and his kit as he headed to the bathroom.
………………………………….
It occurred to Sam right about the time he was setting aside his seventh book that he and Dean hadn’t picked-up anything to eat. Dean had been impatient to get moving and Sam was never able to eat much of anything so soon after waking. They’d separated, Dean heading over to the school to check-out suspicious employees who might be controlling something dark and dangerous, and Sam had continued on to the library to try and ascertain just what supernatural creature they were dealing with.
With the amount of information they had to go on, Sam was almost certain that it would be impossible to figure-out what was doing the killing. He had a list of possibilities that was about two pages long (but ranked in order of likelihood, because Dean may have had a point when he had accused Sam of being anal), but two pages of various monsters was not going give him any insight into how to break the control, he needed to narrow the list down.
Sam pushed away from the table, stuffing his notes into his bag and headed out of the library, intent on looking for someplace to grab something to eat because his stomach was protesting quite vociferously to its state of emptiness.
The phone call was expected, but Sam had not anticipated Dean having found anything to go on so soon. “Get this,” Dean said by way of greeting. “This math teacher - Ms. Hikida - has a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. Apparently she’s a chemistry teacher but the school wouldn’t let her teach that subject. She’s been teaching math for nearly a decade and her class has the lowest pass-rate. She’s bitter and she blames the principal. She was pretty open about it, too. I mean, I mentioned the names of a few of the victims and she could barely contain a sneer.”
“Is that all you picked-up?”
“Dude, I didn’t even have to touch her, she’s got guilty stamped across her forehead. Anyway, she’s in class for the rest of the afternoon so I’m thinking we should head over to her house and see if maybe she’s got some large demonic pet chained in her basement. How’d you make out?”
“Not nearly as well,” Sam admitted as he slid into the impala and started the engine. “I’ve got two pages worth of what might be doing the killing and each one has a different weakness.”
“Nice,” Dean said, sounding distracted. “Well, if we find some wacky alter or something, that would give us more of a clue of what we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, but Dean -“
“Well then get your butt over here, we’re wasting time.” Sam glared at the phone when the dial tone clicked-in and wondered to himself why everyone seemed inclined to hang-up on him all the time. What he had been trying to say was that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to break into the woman’s home when they weren’t sure what creature they were dealing with. It was entirely possible that it was one that didn’t require summoning and instead, as Dean had flippantly put it, stayed locked in her basement. In which case, they were probably going to get mauled before they could even make-out what it was that was attacking them. Either way, they were at an impasse, because the only way they could learn what they were dealing with was to take the risk.
…………………………………………..
“Uhm,” Sam said as they pulled into the apartment building where Janice Hikida lived.
“Tell me they did not building an entire apartment building in the corner of a cemetery,” Dean said, voicing the exact thought that had been going through Sam’s head.
“Looks like it.” Sam thought that even without the way he had been raised, and the things he had been seen, he would still have more respect for the departed than to move into a building built in a graveyard. At the very least, it was just plain “Creepy,” Dean muttered, Sam bit back a smirk.
They parked the car and headed-inside, each of them carrying guns with silver-bullets, and Sam taking two knives and some holy water. The main entrance was elaborate and richly decorated, a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There was also a large front desk with a sombre looking man standing behind it. “We’ll go around back,” Sam said.
“What? Why? Just flash a badge or something, no reason to be scared of the stupid apartment security dude.”
“Yeah, and then he tells Hikida that her home was searched and she figures someone’s onto her. Nice thinking, Genius.” The back entrance was the fire escape and there was no way to open the door without setting-off alarms, and getting caught on camera. “Great,” Sam muttered.
“Hold-up,” Dean said and disappeared around the corner of the building. For a moment Sam stood and stared uncomprehendingly at where Dean had disappeared round the corner, and then, assuming that Dean would not be coming back, he slowly followed. By the time he’d made his way around to the front of the building Dean was engrossed in conversation with a tall, slim, blond woman carrying her groceries. Dean had four bags in each hand and was smiling and laughing and on his way into the building. He caught Sam’s eyes and grinned wider. “The rest are in the trunk!” he said, and then bumped his hip against the button that activated the automatic doors, flirting shamelessly with the girl.
Dean barely spared a glance to the guard standing behind the desk, he seemed to barely notice anything as he and the girl headed to the elevators and awaited the arrival of one. Sam, however, couldn’t quite believe that it could be so easy. He trailed slowly after, and tried very hard to appear casual and all the time wondered when blending in and lying and subterfuge became more natural to Dean - the bartender from Fitchburg - than it did to Sam, who had been born and raised in a world that made subterfuge essential.
“Thanks so much for all you help!” Susan said as Sam dropped the last of the bags onto her counter. “I always have to do at least three trips on shopping days and that really just sucks.”
“Not at all,” Dean replied with a devil’s grin that held nine kinds of naughty implications - it made Susan blush and laugh a little and it also made Sam feel incredibly hot. “It was on our way, anyway. We’re dropping-in to visit a friend.”
“We should be going,” Sam volunteered, mostly because Susan’s body language was looking increasingly like an invitation to both or either of them and that was a little much for Sam.
“Yeah, sure,” Susan said. “Well, if you’re ever visiting your friend again … you know where to find me.”
“Heh,” Dean said, then wiggled his eyebrows once his back was turned to Susan. Sam rolled his eyes and closed the woman’s door behind them.
“Let’s go,” Sam said tightly, ignoring the roll of Dean’s eyes as they walked back toward the elevator and toward Janice Hikida’s apartment.
Sam wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the incredibly modernist apartment that he walked into. “How do people live like this?” Dean wondered, having settled himself onto an awkward looking couch.
“Not everyone likes plush sofas that practically swallow you whole when you sit on them.”
“Yeah, those people are called masochists.” Sam rolled his eyes and proceeded to walk around the place. Janice Hikida’s apartment was a fair size. She had an adjoining kitchen and living room, with a dining area in one corner. On the left there was a door into a bathroom that was about twice the size of the door on the right, which was where her bedroom was located. Dean had a few more comments to make on that arrangement, but Sam wasn’t in the mood to hear any of them. Instead he paid close attention to the small details of the apartment, searching for any clue that would narrow the list of possible creatures that Hikida might be using to do her dirty work. The entire apartment, however, was void of anything remotely suspicious. There was nothing contained in it that hinted even at the sort of person Janice Hikida was outside of the most obvious - an anal mathematician slash chemistry teacher who enjoyed modern-everything to an extreme.
There were no personal photographs in frames, no artwork aside from a large white painted canvas and a smaller canvas with a red dot in the corner. Janice kept her grading and teaching supplies on the bookshelf that held nothing by way of light reading. Sam scanned the spines of the few books that occupied the shelf finding books on chemistry and also several coffee table books about India held up by a statue of Vishnu that was acting as a bookend. “There’s not even a TV,” Dean was saying. “Dude, this woman is seriously freaking me out.”
“Have you picked-up on anything?”
“Bitter, bitchy and totally anal,” Dean said. “She alphabetized her friggin’ cupboard. Who does that?” Sam shook his head and turned back toward the windows, frowning at the view beyond it, headstones and grave markers and the large crematorium building. “No monsters chained in the basement,” Dean said. Sam frowned and glanced over at Dean and then back out the window. “What? You got something?”
“Maybe she doesn’t keep them in the basement,” Sam said. “Come on.”
Dean followed Sam out the door and back to the elevator. “You know, you’ve lost me.”
“On the list I put together,” Sam explained. “One of the creatures I thought might be behind the attacks were Pischachas. They’re all over Hindu mythology and they’re flesh-eating demons. They’d probably leave remains exactly like the bodies of the school staff we’ve looked at.”
“Hindu? Dude, this chick is Chinese, or Vietnamese, or something. But she ain’t from India.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “I had a hunt where a Danish man was using Hoodoo to reanimate the body of his dead son.”
“You took on a zombie? Without me?”
“That was before I knew you, Dean.”
Dean pouted, although Sam was certain that he would deny it if pressed. “Man, I missed all the cool hunts.”
“Can we focus?” Dean muttered to himself as the elevator chimed and released them on the main floor. This time, neither one paid the guard any mind as they continued on their way out. “Anyway, these demons favour cremation grounds as places to live. I’m thinking that she has them over in the crematorium and brings them out when she has a task for them.”
“How is she controlling them? We didn’t see anything in her apartment. I mean, this chick is so anal she folds her underwear.”
“You looked in her underwear drawer?”
“I thought she might be hiding something in there!”
“Like what? Underwear?”
“Ha ha,” Dean said blandly. “Okay, here it goes.” They had reached the crematorium and as he spoke, Dean reached toward the door, only to be stopped when Sam smacked his hand away.
“It’s the middle of the day. We’re not just going to walk in there and look for demons.”
“Well, what do you suggest then, Genius?” Sam looked skyway and pulled his EMF meter from his pocket, switching it on. “Uh, Sam? We’re in the middle of a graveyard, I think you can be pretty certain that thing is gonna sing for you.”
Sam ignored him and pointed the meter at the building, nodding to himself when it registered EMF in abundance. He switched it off and returned it to his pocket. “Okay, so to keep them in here she’d have to do some kind of containment spell or something.” He backed-up and looked toward the roof and the walls of the brick crematorium, and then glanced toward the ground, twisting so he could look in all directions. “That would do it.” Around the building, four feet away from the walls, was a thin circle of gunpowder.
“I’m not even going to ask how she got her hands on this,” Dean said as he crouched to inspect the gunpowder circle.
“Gunpowder is actually used in some Chinese remedies.”
“This much of it?”
“Well, no. I’m just saying, it’s not as hard to come by as you might think.”
“But it works like salt?”
“Not so much,” Sam said. “My guess is this is a security measure for her. She’d have to come here to set the pishachas free. They prefer darkness, and abhor fire. I’m willing to bet that she put down the circle so that if they proved difficult to control she could burn the crematorium down - subdue them and also do away with the chance of someone bringing the murders to her doorstep.”
“Right, get rid of the disobedient minions before they have a chance to kill someone working in the crematorium and connect the chain of murders with her building.”
“Exactly.” Sam jerked his head to the first row of bricks, barely visible through the tall grass. “There’s chalk markings there, as well, she’s got this entire place as a cage for them, all she needs to do is open the doors and say the words and she’s broken the barrier and set them loose. She’s probably got some sort of charm - a necklace or some piece of jewellery that she’s attached the control to so she sends them out after her victim and they eat and then return when she calls them.” Dean made an ‘icky’ face and shuddered. “So the question becomes, how do we stop her?”
“I’m all for ending this tonight,” Dean said. Sam’s raised eyebrow asked the question for him and Dean shrugged. “Make her summon them. Make her think that she needs to summon them again. That way we can kill them without walking right into their layer and getting ambushed, and catch her in the act.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying.”
“Don’t worry, Sammy, I’ll do it. She’s already seen me around asking questions.”
“No way, Dean. These things are incredibly dangerous.”
“You say that about all the things we’ve ever hunted.”
“Because it’s usually true, but these things are particularly ruthless.”
“Argue all you want, but you already know it makes more sense for me to be the bait.”
“No, Dean. Absolutely not. No chance, not ever. I mean it.”
…………………………………………..
Sam crouched behind Jacob Flatch’s tombstone, grasping his gun in one hand and peering around the corner, watching for any sign of Dean or Janice. He hadn’t seen Dean since the afternoon when Dean had left the motel to go and do what he did best - stir-up trouble and annoy people. It was approaching midnight and he started to wonder if Janice would take the bait, would try to cover her tracks, take-out someone she perceived as a threat.
When the pishachas were sent back where they came from and Janice was taken care of, Sam would have to sit down and have a talk with his lover about his idea of a plan, because attacking the attention of a woman who had already demonstrated that she had no qualms with summoning demons that would literally rip a person to shreds, and then send them after her co-workers wasn’t what constituted a solid plan in Sam’s mind. He figured that he should have put his foot down, stopped Dean from going ahead with it, presented one of the hundreds of other options they’d had and talked sense rather than acquiesce. Still, there was something Sam had been noticing in Dean since they’d gone back to Fitchburg, something that made him edgy, and it was a relief to see Dean focussed on something - anything - else, even if it was stirring-up serious trouble.
“Hey,” a voice said far too close to Sam’s ear for comfort, considering he hadn’t heard anyone approaching.
“God dammit, Dean.”
“Wow! Pleasure to see you, too,” Dean snarked, throwing-up his hands as he joined Sam behind the large monument to Mr. Flatch.
“Are you trying to get yourself shot?”
“Not so much.” Dean twisted around to glance at the crematorium. “Any sign of her yet?”
“Nothing. How did it go?” Dean shrugged noncommittally and Sam frowned, mostly because Dean had failed to meet his eyes and that usually meant he was hiding something. “Dean?”
“It went fine.”
Sam frowned and twisted so he was fully facing the other man, his eyebrows raised like he expected more. Mostly, Sam just wanted Dean to meet his eyes so he could see for himself if everything really was all right. “Are you sure?” he pressed.
“Hey, check it out.” Dean ignored Sam entirely and jerked his chin toward the crematorium where the security lights outside the building were flickering. Sam squinted and could make-out the dark silhouette and a stout woman making her way toward the building. “That’s her,” Dean said.
“Stay in the damned salt ring, okay?” Sam asked.
“You’re not taking on that crazy lady and those demons by yourself.”
“Keep your voice down or all of this ends before it starts,” Sam said.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not. You already promised me. And I need you to phone the cops so they can be here before she recovers.”
“I still don’t think getting slapped on the wrist for burning down a crematorium is justice considering what this chick’s done.”
“Well, we’re not going to shoot her, and there’s nothing to pin the murders on her with, so this will have to do,” Sam said. “Now stay in this salt circle until I tell you it’s clear. Dean?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go chant the ears off those things. Hey, and make it snappy, I missed dinner.” Sam rolled his eyes but crept away from the monument, out of the salt ring he had made on the ground and closer to where Janice Hikida was crouching, cradling her wrist on which Sam could just barely make-out the faint glowing outline of a bracelet. She was muttering under her breath, her short-cropped hair obscuring her face but Sam didn’t need to see her lips or hear her words to know what she was chanting. She had already broken the circle that kept the demons inside - marred the chalk line that ran the width of the front step into the crematorium. Sam cocked his gun - a precaution - and took another step forward.
“Hey!” a male voice intoned, startling both Sam and Janice, and they turned with equally surprised expressions toward the large man in the security guard uniform who was standing not four feet from them. “You can’t be here,” the man said, glaring balefully at Sam.
Sam frowned and glanced from the security guard to Janice, who remained crouching avoiding looking up from the ground where her gaze was focussed on a crumpled piece of paper that, when Sam looked closer, had a smear of red across the white surface, a rusted reddish colour that Sam could immediately identify as dried blood. His eyes darted nervously toward the marker behind which Dean was hopefully still sitting, and then slid back to the man. “I know what you are,” Sam said calmly.
“Drop your weapon!” the man said. Sam began the chant right then, ignoring Janice’s eyes when they raised to look at him first in surprise then a growing fear that might have made him nervous if he had been paying attention. He ignored the two figures that stepped slowly down the steps, the flickering lights from the building making their red eyes glow and accentuating the throbbing of the thick veins that protruded along slender necks and shadowed temples. Sam chanted despite a growing sense of dread and an increasing desire to run and hide-away in the circle with Dean. To break the rhythm would mean to lose control and unintentionally allow the demons their free movement once more, as it was, he was slowing them down, subduing them slowly.
“No!” Janice cried. “No, you can’t!” she wrapped her arms around Sam’s legs and he had to work to keep his balance but he kept going. “Please! Please!”
There was a moment when Sam thought idly, listlessly, that there would be repercussions for trying to control something as volatile and ruthless as pishachas. He thought it without any real emotion, because as he chanted he felt his emotions drifting further away until there was nothing but the steady thrum of his own voice filling the darkness. He even forgot about Dean and why he was even standing there chanting at all. There were the words that he formed precisely and with an ease that came from repeated practice that afternoon. He thought there should be the shrill demon shrieks or a show of resistance, but instead the pishachas stayed very still - held in suspended animation between where Sam stood and where Janice stood - and even as he realized that it was a battle of wills between him and the woman who summoned them, he also thought that she would lose because she was frantic and chanting in broken, choked, sobs and holding-up her bracelet like a talisman against evil. It didn’t work.
His chant broke when the dark, figures with red glowing eyes had formed a dark circle around Janice. Flinched when her scream was choked off by a demon biting away at her vulnerable throat. He hadn’t anticipated something like that happening, hadn’t even thought - and that was stupid of him, because that was the first thing that most demonic forces did upon being set free of their masters. “Sam!” Dean called, running out of the circle and dragging him back and away from the gore even as he flipped his lighter open and tossed it back as they staggered into an ungainly run, it struck the ring of gunpowder and the crematorium and the demons and what remained of Janice went-up in flames.
“Y’know,” Dean said once Sam had pulled the impala into an empty parking lot where he could focus on not throwing-up the burger he’d had for dinner. “If I had a choice between taking down those things again and taking down a bunch of zombies? I’d take the zombies.”
“Duly noted,” Sam said.
Dean nodded, looking particularly pinched and clearly trying just as Sam was to keep from throwing-up, he clapped a hand on Sam’s thigh and nodded. “Let me drive.”
……………………………………………..
There was a tree, and it was the biggest tree he had ever seen. It’s bark was rough and its branches wide and he knew that he it was older than he would ever have a chance to be. His fingers scratched and clutched uselessly at the thick rope that burned around his neck, and curiously water was flooding in from somewhere - water and fire. “You have no idea what’s coming, Boy,” a figure said, his teeth gleaming white as he smiled.
“Let me go,” he pleaded.
“Not for anything,” the figure said. “Anything,” he repeated, enunciating each syllable. “Do you know what you are?” He closed his eyes and stretched his toes down, tried to touch the ground so he could catch a breath. His fingers scrabbled against the ropes but he knew there was no point. The man leaned in closer. “You’re hell on earth. And I can’t tell you how excited that makes me.”
“Dean?” Sam asked, and Dean’s eyes flew open, his breath coming in short rasps and he realized that Sam was leaning over him and Dean had wrapped his hands around Sam’s forearms, had cut claw marks into smooth skin. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Dean said. “Go back to sleep.” He moved to get out of bed but Sam dragged him back down, fitted Dean’s body close to his side and groped blindly in the dark until he had found the TV remote and flicked it on. “Sam?”
“It’s fine,” Sam said. His sin was pressed against Dean’s and Dean could feel the worry and the concern, but that didn’t match the feeling of love and peace that Sam was radiating, and even if the after shocks of the nightmare were working through his body, he was wrapped-up in Sam and maybe, if even for a few hours, he could pretend that it was enough to keep him safe, to keep him subdued.
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
Electronics Stores
Author: revenant_scribe
Chapter Eighteen: AVERSION
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, wincest, semi-spoilers for 1.18 'Something Wicked'. Violence!
A/N: There is no new Winchester being added into the mix here. This is definitely not one of those fics. Please leave a review! It keeps my muse happy and makes my day!!
Summary: Sam knows there are a lot of things about his father that he will never understand, or agree with -- the first and foremost being why John Winchester is so unnerved by his son's visions. It's why Sam goes alone to Fitchburg when images of the town's 'welcome' sign flash through his head while he's driving and leave him reeling for hours after. He's only looking for a hunt, but what he finds is about to turn Sam's entire world upside-down, and threaten its very foundations.
chapter eighteen | AVERSION
“Dude,” Dean said, holding-up the sheet and grimacing. “That is just nasty.”
“Would you stop it?” Sam whispered, glancing around the morgue.
“What?” Dean’s expression changed and he dropped the sheet. “Yeah, that’s not an animal attack.”
“What did you see?” Sam asked, stepping forward and picking-up the sheet that Dean had let fall.
“It sure as hell doesn’t feel like one.”
“Feel?” and then it occurred to Sam and he dropped the sheet, pushed the metal slab back into the freezer and nodded towards the exit. “Tell me.”
“Remember how I said I’d know something like the shtriga if I ever felt it again?” Dean jerked his head meaningfully back toward the morgue doors that had swung closed behind them.
“Okay, so it’s not a creature, it’s some kind of spirit,” Sam said.
“Or maybe both?”
“What do you mean?” They’d made it out of the building and were walking down the front steps. “Dean?” Sam prompted.
“I’m saying that the shtriga had some sort of - I dunno, intelligence sort of. Like, there was a goal. This didn’t feel the same. This was just - mindless and violent.”
Sam let out a slow breath and tried to pretend that hearing that didn’t freak him out a little. “If it’s mindless, though, then how do you explain the pattern?” The victims - four so far - were employed in some form at the local school; Jacqueline Morris had been the school principal, Paul Kinkaid had been a science teacher, Melody O’Connell was the school’s secretary and Markus Finch was the school’s nurse.
“Maybe it doesn’t like school?”
“Something’s gotta be behind it,” Sam said, ignoring the lame joke. He waited until Dean had settled into the passenger seat of the impala and then started it up, pulling out into traffic and heading back to their motel.
“Controlling it, you mean.” Dean shook his head and shifted in his seat but said nothing further. They’d been in Ashtonville for three days already and Sam hadn’t once stopped wishing that their first hunt after what had happened at the Roadhouse could have been something simpler - a poltergeist, a haunting. Every time they checked a house where one of the deaths had occurred Dean got a pale, pinched look on his face and Sam could only imagine what he was picking up from the place. He didn’t fail to notice that Dean never touched anything in any of the homes - although it wasn’t like Sam would have let him if he had tried.
“What?” Sam asked, because Dean didn’t look like he entirely believed Sam’s theory.
“Nothing.”
The silence in the impala was oppressive and Sam concentrated on the road until Dean frowned and finally took-in the landscape passing-by that he’d been staring at. “Dude, where are we going?”
“Back to the motel.”
“What for?”
Sam flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. “I’m thinking maybe we need a bit of a break before we check any more leads. Take a bit of a rest or something.”
“You want me to nap? Are you kidding me?”
“It’s been a long day.”
“Screw that, Sam. I’m not some little kid that needs quiet time!”
“Maybe I do!”
Dean snapped his mouth shut and glared out the window, his gaze flickering back to Sam periodically before he stretched his hand across the space between them and wriggled his fingers under the collar of Sam’s zip-top and shirt until he was touching bare skin. Sam held his breath. “I call bullshit,” Dean said, withdrawing his hand and crossing his arms.
“Fine. You caught me. It’s total bullshit. That isn’t going to change the fact that we’re going back to the motel.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah? Now who’s bullshitting?” He glanced over at Dean and thought that maybe he was pushing a bit too much and then promptly stopped second-guessing himself. “One victim’s house and one dead body is enough for today. We don’t even know exactly where to go next, we need to think this through.”
“You know we’re going to the library, next,” Dean grumbled, letting his head fall back against the seat - a move that arched into Sam’s touch as he absently stroked his fingers up and down Dean’s neck. Dean kept a lot to himself, and he was complicated, but Sam was all kinds of stubborn. There were certain things about Dean that were more obvious than others, quirks his lover had that Sam had collected like baseball cards and hoarded like candy. Dean didn’t like to be considered weak or freakish, hated anything that would imply that he was either and would go to any length (including running himself into exhaustion) to prove that he was otherwise. He was also secretly an incredible softy, no matter how much he tried to deny it, Dean cuddled.
Also, Dean could be distracted so very easily, and that was something that Sam frequently exploited. All it took was one brief, casual touch and Sam could re-route Dean’s focus from a case to anything Sam could bring himself to feel. Usually it was sex, because that was the safest way of being affectionate with Dean without allowing him the opportunity to accuse anyone of being a girl, because that got a bit old after a while. It was a last resort for Sam, because he didn’t like the feeling that he was maybe manipulating Dean through his gift, but if the man wasn’t taking care of himself than Sam figured anything was fair game. “Yeah,” Dean said, breathily. “Okay. Motel it is.” Sam kept his hand on the back of Dean’s neck right up until they’d crossed into their room, and then he pushed Dean against the door and replaced his hand with his mouth, and Dean forgot that he’d been gearing-up to yell at Sam for implying that he was weak, and he also forgot about the feel of demonic creatures and bloody corpses and the taste of terror.
……………………………………
Outside a child was calling, an androgynous voice carried on the wind - the child was singing. “Go away,” Dean said. Low-level spirits could sometimes be ordered away just that easily. The child sang on. “I don’t believe in ghosts,” Dean said.
“But Dean,” a voice whispered directly into his ear. “We believe in you.” Something cold and scratchy wrapped around his ankles and jerked his body down towards the foot of his bed, strong enough to render his struggles futile. A wind was blowing fierce and strong and suddenly there was heat and flame and Dean was struggling like a wildcat but something was subduing him, something was keeping his movements confined. “My dad’s gonna kill you!” he said, defiant as his head was jerked back roughly, something - a hand - grasping his hair, nearly tugging it clean out of his skull. “You’re gonna burn!”
“You first.”
Dean wrenched himself free of the dream so violently that he ended-up on the floor. For a moment he concentrated on breathing, his head was aching and when he breath was under control he half-stumbled, half-crawled to Sam’s bag where Dean knew there was always a supply of pain meds - kept within easy reach for when Sam suffered a vision. Two pills down and Dean couldn’t bring himself to crawl back into the bed with Sam. He was restless and he didn’t want to wake his lover. Instead, he pulled the quilt Sophia had packed for him from his bag and draped it around his body. Sam had booked a room with only the one bed, not seeing a point in having the two.
“Dean?” Sam asked, still mostly asleep.
“Go back to bed, Sammy. M’fine.”
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“Just need to use the bathroom,” Dean lied.
“M’kay.” Sam settled back in and Dean shifted his hold on the blanket. No way was he climbing back into a bed where something could rear-up and drag him down off of it. He pulled on his clothes and then snatched the quilt back into his hands and paced into the bathroom, locking the door. It was maybe a crazy thing to do, but even if the memories of the dream were fading, the feeling was still there, and Dean stepped into the tub - quilt, clothes and all - and settled with his back against the curved corner.
……………………………..
Sam woke-up the next morning to the smell of coffee - fresh and welcoming. When he blinked his eyes open, it was to the sight of a large Styrofoam cup steaming on the night table by the bed. “Rise and shine!” Dean sing-songed.
“Why are you awake?” Sam asked, somewhat perplexed by the change in their roles. Dean was the one who was rarely awake early; Sam always had to coax him into the world with coffee, or at least promises of coffee.
“Places to go, people to see, demons to exorcise,” Dean tossed out flippantly, and then knocked-back his coffee.
“How many of those have you had?” Sam asked with a grimace, because Dean was far too upbeat for that hour of the day.
“A few. Anyway, I’ve been through your little book and there’s nothing that sounds promising. I’m thinking we need to go to your favourite place on earth.”
“The library is not my favourite place on earth, Dean.”
“Whatever dude. But lets go. I’ve been itching to salt and burn something since we drove into this town.” That was something that Sam was more familiar with when it came to Dean. Every hunter, Sam was certain, had a part of the hunt that they preferred above all others. For Sam it was the research - before things got really dangerous or confusing, when it was just him and logic and a mystery. For Dean it was the end, the salting and burning - knowing whatever they were after was settled and done. Sam also suspected that maybe his lover had a thing for fire.
Sam drank his coffee and tried to somehow find enough energy to match Dean. “I was thinking about what you said the other day,” Dean said.
“What did I say?”
“That someone might be controlling whatever is killing these people. Y’know, like maybe using whatever it is as some kind of weapon.” Sam was a little startled to realize that ‘weapon’ had become a sort of buzz-word for him, and for some reason hearing Dean use it set him on alert, like maybe there was another layer to this case that he hadn’t realized the other day - like maybe there were aspects of it that Dean might identify with. “-so we should check the school out as well, because I’m thinking whoever is controlling the - things - is there.”
“It would explain the connection - I mean everyone who has died so far has worked at the school.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, let me get dressed,” Sam said, reluctantly tossing aside the covers and grabbing-up fresh clothes and his kit as he headed to the bathroom.
………………………………….
It occurred to Sam right about the time he was setting aside his seventh book that he and Dean hadn’t picked-up anything to eat. Dean had been impatient to get moving and Sam was never able to eat much of anything so soon after waking. They’d separated, Dean heading over to the school to check-out suspicious employees who might be controlling something dark and dangerous, and Sam had continued on to the library to try and ascertain just what supernatural creature they were dealing with.
With the amount of information they had to go on, Sam was almost certain that it would be impossible to figure-out what was doing the killing. He had a list of possibilities that was about two pages long (but ranked in order of likelihood, because Dean may have had a point when he had accused Sam of being anal), but two pages of various monsters was not going give him any insight into how to break the control, he needed to narrow the list down.
Sam pushed away from the table, stuffing his notes into his bag and headed out of the library, intent on looking for someplace to grab something to eat because his stomach was protesting quite vociferously to its state of emptiness.
The phone call was expected, but Sam had not anticipated Dean having found anything to go on so soon. “Get this,” Dean said by way of greeting. “This math teacher - Ms. Hikida - has a chip on her shoulder the size of Texas. Apparently she’s a chemistry teacher but the school wouldn’t let her teach that subject. She’s been teaching math for nearly a decade and her class has the lowest pass-rate. She’s bitter and she blames the principal. She was pretty open about it, too. I mean, I mentioned the names of a few of the victims and she could barely contain a sneer.”
“Is that all you picked-up?”
“Dude, I didn’t even have to touch her, she’s got guilty stamped across her forehead. Anyway, she’s in class for the rest of the afternoon so I’m thinking we should head over to her house and see if maybe she’s got some large demonic pet chained in her basement. How’d you make out?”
“Not nearly as well,” Sam admitted as he slid into the impala and started the engine. “I’ve got two pages worth of what might be doing the killing and each one has a different weakness.”
“Nice,” Dean said, sounding distracted. “Well, if we find some wacky alter or something, that would give us more of a clue of what we’re dealing with.”
“Yeah, but Dean -“
“Well then get your butt over here, we’re wasting time.” Sam glared at the phone when the dial tone clicked-in and wondered to himself why everyone seemed inclined to hang-up on him all the time. What he had been trying to say was that he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to break into the woman’s home when they weren’t sure what creature they were dealing with. It was entirely possible that it was one that didn’t require summoning and instead, as Dean had flippantly put it, stayed locked in her basement. In which case, they were probably going to get mauled before they could even make-out what it was that was attacking them. Either way, they were at an impasse, because the only way they could learn what they were dealing with was to take the risk.
…………………………………………..
“Uhm,” Sam said as they pulled into the apartment building where Janice Hikida lived.
“Tell me they did not building an entire apartment building in the corner of a cemetery,” Dean said, voicing the exact thought that had been going through Sam’s head.
“Looks like it.” Sam thought that even without the way he had been raised, and the things he had been seen, he would still have more respect for the departed than to move into a building built in a graveyard. At the very least, it was just plain “Creepy,” Dean muttered, Sam bit back a smirk.
They parked the car and headed-inside, each of them carrying guns with silver-bullets, and Sam taking two knives and some holy water. The main entrance was elaborate and richly decorated, a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. There was also a large front desk with a sombre looking man standing behind it. “We’ll go around back,” Sam said.
“What? Why? Just flash a badge or something, no reason to be scared of the stupid apartment security dude.”
“Yeah, and then he tells Hikida that her home was searched and she figures someone’s onto her. Nice thinking, Genius.” The back entrance was the fire escape and there was no way to open the door without setting-off alarms, and getting caught on camera. “Great,” Sam muttered.
“Hold-up,” Dean said and disappeared around the corner of the building. For a moment Sam stood and stared uncomprehendingly at where Dean had disappeared round the corner, and then, assuming that Dean would not be coming back, he slowly followed. By the time he’d made his way around to the front of the building Dean was engrossed in conversation with a tall, slim, blond woman carrying her groceries. Dean had four bags in each hand and was smiling and laughing and on his way into the building. He caught Sam’s eyes and grinned wider. “The rest are in the trunk!” he said, and then bumped his hip against the button that activated the automatic doors, flirting shamelessly with the girl.
Dean barely spared a glance to the guard standing behind the desk, he seemed to barely notice anything as he and the girl headed to the elevators and awaited the arrival of one. Sam, however, couldn’t quite believe that it could be so easy. He trailed slowly after, and tried very hard to appear casual and all the time wondered when blending in and lying and subterfuge became more natural to Dean - the bartender from Fitchburg - than it did to Sam, who had been born and raised in a world that made subterfuge essential.
“Thanks so much for all you help!” Susan said as Sam dropped the last of the bags onto her counter. “I always have to do at least three trips on shopping days and that really just sucks.”
“Not at all,” Dean replied with a devil’s grin that held nine kinds of naughty implications - it made Susan blush and laugh a little and it also made Sam feel incredibly hot. “It was on our way, anyway. We’re dropping-in to visit a friend.”
“We should be going,” Sam volunteered, mostly because Susan’s body language was looking increasingly like an invitation to both or either of them and that was a little much for Sam.
“Yeah, sure,” Susan said. “Well, if you’re ever visiting your friend again … you know where to find me.”
“Heh,” Dean said, then wiggled his eyebrows once his back was turned to Susan. Sam rolled his eyes and closed the woman’s door behind them.
“Let’s go,” Sam said tightly, ignoring the roll of Dean’s eyes as they walked back toward the elevator and toward Janice Hikida’s apartment.
Sam wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the incredibly modernist apartment that he walked into. “How do people live like this?” Dean wondered, having settled himself onto an awkward looking couch.
“Not everyone likes plush sofas that practically swallow you whole when you sit on them.”
“Yeah, those people are called masochists.” Sam rolled his eyes and proceeded to walk around the place. Janice Hikida’s apartment was a fair size. She had an adjoining kitchen and living room, with a dining area in one corner. On the left there was a door into a bathroom that was about twice the size of the door on the right, which was where her bedroom was located. Dean had a few more comments to make on that arrangement, but Sam wasn’t in the mood to hear any of them. Instead he paid close attention to the small details of the apartment, searching for any clue that would narrow the list of possible creatures that Hikida might be using to do her dirty work. The entire apartment, however, was void of anything remotely suspicious. There was nothing contained in it that hinted even at the sort of person Janice Hikida was outside of the most obvious - an anal mathematician slash chemistry teacher who enjoyed modern-everything to an extreme.
There were no personal photographs in frames, no artwork aside from a large white painted canvas and a smaller canvas with a red dot in the corner. Janice kept her grading and teaching supplies on the bookshelf that held nothing by way of light reading. Sam scanned the spines of the few books that occupied the shelf finding books on chemistry and also several coffee table books about India held up by a statue of Vishnu that was acting as a bookend. “There’s not even a TV,” Dean was saying. “Dude, this woman is seriously freaking me out.”
“Have you picked-up on anything?”
“Bitter, bitchy and totally anal,” Dean said. “She alphabetized her friggin’ cupboard. Who does that?” Sam shook his head and turned back toward the windows, frowning at the view beyond it, headstones and grave markers and the large crematorium building. “No monsters chained in the basement,” Dean said. Sam frowned and glanced over at Dean and then back out the window. “What? You got something?”
“Maybe she doesn’t keep them in the basement,” Sam said. “Come on.”
Dean followed Sam out the door and back to the elevator. “You know, you’ve lost me.”
“On the list I put together,” Sam explained. “One of the creatures I thought might be behind the attacks were Pischachas. They’re all over Hindu mythology and they’re flesh-eating demons. They’d probably leave remains exactly like the bodies of the school staff we’ve looked at.”
“Hindu? Dude, this chick is Chinese, or Vietnamese, or something. But she ain’t from India.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “I had a hunt where a Danish man was using Hoodoo to reanimate the body of his dead son.”
“You took on a zombie? Without me?”
“That was before I knew you, Dean.”
Dean pouted, although Sam was certain that he would deny it if pressed. “Man, I missed all the cool hunts.”
“Can we focus?” Dean muttered to himself as the elevator chimed and released them on the main floor. This time, neither one paid the guard any mind as they continued on their way out. “Anyway, these demons favour cremation grounds as places to live. I’m thinking that she has them over in the crematorium and brings them out when she has a task for them.”
“How is she controlling them? We didn’t see anything in her apartment. I mean, this chick is so anal she folds her underwear.”
“You looked in her underwear drawer?”
“I thought she might be hiding something in there!”
“Like what? Underwear?”
“Ha ha,” Dean said blandly. “Okay, here it goes.” They had reached the crematorium and as he spoke, Dean reached toward the door, only to be stopped when Sam smacked his hand away.
“It’s the middle of the day. We’re not just going to walk in there and look for demons.”
“Well, what do you suggest then, Genius?” Sam looked skyway and pulled his EMF meter from his pocket, switching it on. “Uh, Sam? We’re in the middle of a graveyard, I think you can be pretty certain that thing is gonna sing for you.”
Sam ignored him and pointed the meter at the building, nodding to himself when it registered EMF in abundance. He switched it off and returned it to his pocket. “Okay, so to keep them in here she’d have to do some kind of containment spell or something.” He backed-up and looked toward the roof and the walls of the brick crematorium, and then glanced toward the ground, twisting so he could look in all directions. “That would do it.” Around the building, four feet away from the walls, was a thin circle of gunpowder.
“I’m not even going to ask how she got her hands on this,” Dean said as he crouched to inspect the gunpowder circle.
“Gunpowder is actually used in some Chinese remedies.”
“This much of it?”
“Well, no. I’m just saying, it’s not as hard to come by as you might think.”
“But it works like salt?”
“Not so much,” Sam said. “My guess is this is a security measure for her. She’d have to come here to set the pishachas free. They prefer darkness, and abhor fire. I’m willing to bet that she put down the circle so that if they proved difficult to control she could burn the crematorium down - subdue them and also do away with the chance of someone bringing the murders to her doorstep.”
“Right, get rid of the disobedient minions before they have a chance to kill someone working in the crematorium and connect the chain of murders with her building.”
“Exactly.” Sam jerked his head to the first row of bricks, barely visible through the tall grass. “There’s chalk markings there, as well, she’s got this entire place as a cage for them, all she needs to do is open the doors and say the words and she’s broken the barrier and set them loose. She’s probably got some sort of charm - a necklace or some piece of jewellery that she’s attached the control to so she sends them out after her victim and they eat and then return when she calls them.” Dean made an ‘icky’ face and shuddered. “So the question becomes, how do we stop her?”
“I’m all for ending this tonight,” Dean said. Sam’s raised eyebrow asked the question for him and Dean shrugged. “Make her summon them. Make her think that she needs to summon them again. That way we can kill them without walking right into their layer and getting ambushed, and catch her in the act.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying.”
“Don’t worry, Sammy, I’ll do it. She’s already seen me around asking questions.”
“No way, Dean. These things are incredibly dangerous.”
“You say that about all the things we’ve ever hunted.”
“Because it’s usually true, but these things are particularly ruthless.”
“Argue all you want, but you already know it makes more sense for me to be the bait.”
“No, Dean. Absolutely not. No chance, not ever. I mean it.”
…………………………………………..
Sam crouched behind Jacob Flatch’s tombstone, grasping his gun in one hand and peering around the corner, watching for any sign of Dean or Janice. He hadn’t seen Dean since the afternoon when Dean had left the motel to go and do what he did best - stir-up trouble and annoy people. It was approaching midnight and he started to wonder if Janice would take the bait, would try to cover her tracks, take-out someone she perceived as a threat.
When the pishachas were sent back where they came from and Janice was taken care of, Sam would have to sit down and have a talk with his lover about his idea of a plan, because attacking the attention of a woman who had already demonstrated that she had no qualms with summoning demons that would literally rip a person to shreds, and then send them after her co-workers wasn’t what constituted a solid plan in Sam’s mind. He figured that he should have put his foot down, stopped Dean from going ahead with it, presented one of the hundreds of other options they’d had and talked sense rather than acquiesce. Still, there was something Sam had been noticing in Dean since they’d gone back to Fitchburg, something that made him edgy, and it was a relief to see Dean focussed on something - anything - else, even if it was stirring-up serious trouble.
“Hey,” a voice said far too close to Sam’s ear for comfort, considering he hadn’t heard anyone approaching.
“God dammit, Dean.”
“Wow! Pleasure to see you, too,” Dean snarked, throwing-up his hands as he joined Sam behind the large monument to Mr. Flatch.
“Are you trying to get yourself shot?”
“Not so much.” Dean twisted around to glance at the crematorium. “Any sign of her yet?”
“Nothing. How did it go?” Dean shrugged noncommittally and Sam frowned, mostly because Dean had failed to meet his eyes and that usually meant he was hiding something. “Dean?”
“It went fine.”
Sam frowned and twisted so he was fully facing the other man, his eyebrows raised like he expected more. Mostly, Sam just wanted Dean to meet his eyes so he could see for himself if everything really was all right. “Are you sure?” he pressed.
“Hey, check it out.” Dean ignored Sam entirely and jerked his chin toward the crematorium where the security lights outside the building were flickering. Sam squinted and could make-out the dark silhouette and a stout woman making her way toward the building. “That’s her,” Dean said.
“Stay in the damned salt ring, okay?” Sam asked.
“You’re not taking on that crazy lady and those demons by yourself.”
“Keep your voice down or all of this ends before it starts,” Sam said.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m not. You already promised me. And I need you to phone the cops so they can be here before she recovers.”
“I still don’t think getting slapped on the wrist for burning down a crematorium is justice considering what this chick’s done.”
“Well, we’re not going to shoot her, and there’s nothing to pin the murders on her with, so this will have to do,” Sam said. “Now stay in this salt circle until I tell you it’s clear. Dean?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go chant the ears off those things. Hey, and make it snappy, I missed dinner.” Sam rolled his eyes but crept away from the monument, out of the salt ring he had made on the ground and closer to where Janice Hikida was crouching, cradling her wrist on which Sam could just barely make-out the faint glowing outline of a bracelet. She was muttering under her breath, her short-cropped hair obscuring her face but Sam didn’t need to see her lips or hear her words to know what she was chanting. She had already broken the circle that kept the demons inside - marred the chalk line that ran the width of the front step into the crematorium. Sam cocked his gun - a precaution - and took another step forward.
“Hey!” a male voice intoned, startling both Sam and Janice, and they turned with equally surprised expressions toward the large man in the security guard uniform who was standing not four feet from them. “You can’t be here,” the man said, glaring balefully at Sam.
Sam frowned and glanced from the security guard to Janice, who remained crouching avoiding looking up from the ground where her gaze was focussed on a crumpled piece of paper that, when Sam looked closer, had a smear of red across the white surface, a rusted reddish colour that Sam could immediately identify as dried blood. His eyes darted nervously toward the marker behind which Dean was hopefully still sitting, and then slid back to the man. “I know what you are,” Sam said calmly.
“Drop your weapon!” the man said. Sam began the chant right then, ignoring Janice’s eyes when they raised to look at him first in surprise then a growing fear that might have made him nervous if he had been paying attention. He ignored the two figures that stepped slowly down the steps, the flickering lights from the building making their red eyes glow and accentuating the throbbing of the thick veins that protruded along slender necks and shadowed temples. Sam chanted despite a growing sense of dread and an increasing desire to run and hide-away in the circle with Dean. To break the rhythm would mean to lose control and unintentionally allow the demons their free movement once more, as it was, he was slowing them down, subduing them slowly.
“No!” Janice cried. “No, you can’t!” she wrapped her arms around Sam’s legs and he had to work to keep his balance but he kept going. “Please! Please!”
There was a moment when Sam thought idly, listlessly, that there would be repercussions for trying to control something as volatile and ruthless as pishachas. He thought it without any real emotion, because as he chanted he felt his emotions drifting further away until there was nothing but the steady thrum of his own voice filling the darkness. He even forgot about Dean and why he was even standing there chanting at all. There were the words that he formed precisely and with an ease that came from repeated practice that afternoon. He thought there should be the shrill demon shrieks or a show of resistance, but instead the pishachas stayed very still - held in suspended animation between where Sam stood and where Janice stood - and even as he realized that it was a battle of wills between him and the woman who summoned them, he also thought that she would lose because she was frantic and chanting in broken, choked, sobs and holding-up her bracelet like a talisman against evil. It didn’t work.
His chant broke when the dark, figures with red glowing eyes had formed a dark circle around Janice. Flinched when her scream was choked off by a demon biting away at her vulnerable throat. He hadn’t anticipated something like that happening, hadn’t even thought - and that was stupid of him, because that was the first thing that most demonic forces did upon being set free of their masters. “Sam!” Dean called, running out of the circle and dragging him back and away from the gore even as he flipped his lighter open and tossed it back as they staggered into an ungainly run, it struck the ring of gunpowder and the crematorium and the demons and what remained of Janice went-up in flames.
“Y’know,” Dean said once Sam had pulled the impala into an empty parking lot where he could focus on not throwing-up the burger he’d had for dinner. “If I had a choice between taking down those things again and taking down a bunch of zombies? I’d take the zombies.”
“Duly noted,” Sam said.
Dean nodded, looking particularly pinched and clearly trying just as Sam was to keep from throwing-up, he clapped a hand on Sam’s thigh and nodded. “Let me drive.”
……………………………………………..
There was a tree, and it was the biggest tree he had ever seen. It’s bark was rough and its branches wide and he knew that he it was older than he would ever have a chance to be. His fingers scratched and clutched uselessly at the thick rope that burned around his neck, and curiously water was flooding in from somewhere - water and fire. “You have no idea what’s coming, Boy,” a figure said, his teeth gleaming white as he smiled.
“Let me go,” he pleaded.
“Not for anything,” the figure said. “Anything,” he repeated, enunciating each syllable. “Do you know what you are?” He closed his eyes and stretched his toes down, tried to touch the ground so he could catch a breath. His fingers scrabbled against the ropes but he knew there was no point. The man leaned in closer. “You’re hell on earth. And I can’t tell you how excited that makes me.”
“Dean?” Sam asked, and Dean’s eyes flew open, his breath coming in short rasps and he realized that Sam was leaning over him and Dean had wrapped his hands around Sam’s forearms, had cut claw marks into smooth skin. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Dean said. “Go back to sleep.” He moved to get out of bed but Sam dragged him back down, fitted Dean’s body close to his side and groped blindly in the dark until he had found the TV remote and flicked it on. “Sam?”
“It’s fine,” Sam said. His sin was pressed against Dean’s and Dean could feel the worry and the concern, but that didn’t match the feeling of love and peace that Sam was radiating, and even if the after shocks of the nightmare were working through his body, he was wrapped-up in Sam and maybe, if even for a few hours, he could pretend that it was enough to keep him safe, to keep him subdued.
<< END CHAPTER >>
[MASTER POST]
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