Buffy/SPN crossover: Resistance 3/4
Part 2
The six or seven girls hanging out in the training room were easy to tease into a workout, and they were amazing. They were as sleek and fast as the Impala, working together as smoothly as if they’d done it all their lives, the kind of teamwork it had taken him and Sam years to figure out. Dean was a little shocked he was keeping up, honestly, what with the somersaults and cartwheels and backflips around him like he’d wandered onto the floor of a cheerleading competition.
He blocked every hit, though, ducking and diving easily, smiling wide as they grinned back. He felt awake for the first time in days, letting himself enjoy the purity of their violence.
Then the energy pouring into him seized up and flipped over, white to black.
Sam had left. Sam was running. Sam was running from him. Dean felt it like a scab tearing open over an infected wound, releasing a torrent of blood and pus, filthy but still a relief. Sam was running and he wanted-he needed-Dean to catch him.
And Dean wanted help. Sure, he could do it alone if he had to. But these girls, they were better than any gun, better even than any knife. They were here, with him, breathing in the same hectic rhythm, and he knew they’d go with him if he just waited a little longer, until they felt it too.
Jane nearly got him with a sweep kick while he was daydreaming, and he hit back hard enough that she slammed into the wall, her grin all teeth as she launched herself right back. Dean felt part of himself that wasn’t really him, but that was just as bloodthirsty, rising through his body like a tide, calling the Slayers to him. They’d go, and they’d run, and they’d catch.
The girls were still moving, but they’d started to coalesce into something more directed. Something like a pack.
“Hey!” Buffy said, her voice cutting through the fog that surrounded him.
He blinked, not sure what her problem was. He was going to be out of her hair soon, they all were. He’d catch Sam and he’d-
He shook his head. He’d catch Sam-
He’d catch-
His head snapped to the side with the force of Buffy’s fist. “Let them go,” she was saying, making no sense at all, and he hit back because that’s what you did when you got hit. Buffy took the blow and darted away, right outside his reach. He wasn’t interested in hunting her, and Sam wouldn’t have told her anything before he left, so he let it go.
Sam was out there, calling to him.
Dean clenched his fists. The Slayers fell into place one by one, until they were ringing him, all except Buffy, still glaring at him like she had something to say. He frowned; shouldn’t she be helping him?
“Dean, you-” she said, then gulped. He could feel the thing in him reaching out to her, like it had drawn in the other Slayers, promising them the best of chases, heedless through the forest, every nerve ablaze. And then the end, red with blood, a perfect victory over the very best prey. Behind him the other Slayers shifted, nearly as eager as he was to begin the challenge.
But Buffy set her shoulders and yelled, “Willow!”
The witch sparkled into existence next to Buffy, waving her arms in an evident attempt to keep her balance. “Urk?” she managed.
Dean probably would have thought she was cute, if he could have been interested in that kind of thing right now. He started moving towards the exit, and he felt the Slayers, his pack, following him.
Buffy and Willow’s voices faded in and out. “… Wild Hunt … superstrong …” Dean’s fingers flexed and closed on empty air. His blood pulsed in time with the others’, and beyond that there was Sam, calling to him. The room was too small and hard; he needed to run, to feel his feet hitting soft ground and leaping over leaf and branch.
Willow was chanting now, an unseen wind rising to rustle her skirt and blow sweetly across Dean’s overheated skin. Then the wind grew stronger, until it was an effort to stand in it. He could feel the Slayers separating from him, like the bones of a skeleton coming apart when the rest of the body was no longer there to bind them.
It didn’t matter. He would have liked the company, but this hunt was his. Sam was his. The air around him seemed brighter, almost golden, as if he were caught in a shaft of sunlight in a forest clearing. The Slayers were staring at him now, shifting uneasily, fear turning to anger the way it did when civilians got too close to the truth.
“I’ve got it locked down into him,” Willow said, the strain evident in her voice even through the roaring in his ears. “It’s pretty brilliant, actually-Sam is pumping power into him through their mystical link, and it’s raising the Huntsman aspect. There’s some sort of focus on him, an object--”
Buffy was in front of him. Dean advanced, because he’d wasted too much time already. It was so good not to worry about anything but the hunt. He’d spent so many days, years even, on all this pointless bullshit.
She was a pleasure to fight, even if it was a distraction from his goal. Sweep kick, back flip, uppercut, high kick, knee to his thigh, and back away, breaking contact. He hit her upper back before she got out of range and she staggered; he kicked out to finish her off, but she was too fast.
“If you’re in there,” Buffy said, inches from his chest, “I’m really sorry about this.” She dodged left, avoiding his fist, and scissored her legs to trip him, spinning in the air to land facing him while he hit the floor. But he was already bouncing up like a rubber ball, raising his hands. Side kick that hurt bone-deep, his return kick on her hip rocking her back before she went into handspring to land both feet on his chest. He went down as she somersaulted over. It was like a game where the prize was not dying, and he’d always loved those. Jump back to his feet, dodge the punch, sweep kick.
He stuck a hand out and sent June flying back against the wall, her attack defeated before it began. He frowned, because Buffy was a challenge, but if all the Slayers piled on he might waste valuable energy on not-Sam. His knee caught Ksenia in the stomach, propelling her out of range. He heard her start to vomit as Buffy took advantage of the opening to land a kick straight between Dean’s legs.
Dean staggered back-that fucking hurt, and why were they doing this again? There was something wrong, the air all hot and dry, his thoughts evaporating like water.
Buffy rushed him, boxing his ears as she leapt up and over his head, doing a half twist to land facing him. Before he could turn, she pounded his exposed neck, two solid punches from each fist, and then grabbed the leather strap that held his amulet and pulled.
When it parted, the amulet came with her. Buffy tossed it towards Willow as Dean yelled his outrage-that was his, Sam’s, and he’d kill anyone who-and then the shock hit him and it was lights out.
****
Dean woke up raging, struggling against the chains holding him down. Some small corner of his mind wanted to lie back and figure out what had happened, but mostly he was just furious, his body starving for something it couldn’t quite define but knew well where to find. If he could have formed words, he would have been yelling for Sam, but all he could do was growl.
He could still hear Sam’s voice, whispering, asking him to come out and run. They’d fight, they’d dance, and it would be better than ever because Sam really wanted it now, he was fully committed. Around the edges, Dean knew that Sam wasn’t actually speaking for himself, not any more. But it was still such a goddamn attractive offering that even hearing it sent through mystical means-which, again, was not Sam’s standard method of communication, now that Azazel was dead and gone-wasn’t enough to deter Dean from trying to follow.
Cool fingers stroked his temples, sending relief through him like injections of icewater. He jerked once more and then his muscles slackened.
He breathed in, out, just like he’d been trained, until his heart slowed and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t sound like a homicidal maniac. “Let me up.”
“How much do you remember?” Willow asked him, just outside his peripheral vision even when he twisted to see her. Her voice was soft and didn’t calm him at all.
He closed his eyes and counted his breaths again until he got to fifteen. “I was sparring, and then-I was hunting. I feel him. He’s not far.”
“Are you going to go after him if we unlock you?”
Yes, every cell in him shouted. He panted, fighting the desire, because it was sick, bloodied. He had to be smart, or this thing in his head would hurt Sam. He could feel the spirit crawling inside, wanting the same thing he did except that it wanted to go further, tear Sam open and spread his guts across the earth. Then he’d be the only one to have Sam. His fingers clenched, scraping against the bedframe. Metal rattled and his chains groaned. If he gave it his all, they’d never hold him.
He was way over his head and the only person he needed was the one he wanted to kill.
Dean forced himself still. He ignored the sounds-running, yelping, cracking branches-that weren’t coming from anything real. The Huntsman was going to take him over soon enough, but he wasn’t gone yet. “Can you-help me. Please.”
Buffy’s voice came from further away, but when he turned his head he could at least see her, standing by the door with her arms crossed over her chest. He gulped air, holding it together.
“If you can take us to him, we can try to contain you both. Separately,” she emphasized, which Dean got even as he hated it. Even imagining seeing Sam was enough to make him want to throw himself against his bonds until he could get his hands on-in-his brother.
He let the desire go through him like electric shock, arching up, and then forced himself to lie back. “Yeah, okay. Just-I might not be much help.”
“You’re doing great,” Willow said, almost like she meant it. “With all the magic pouring into you, it’s kind of a miracle you’re still sane.”
From the expression on Buffy’s face, she didn’t find that any more reassuring than Dean did.
But they let him up, Dean not even bothering to rub at the welts on his wrists. He could barely hear them talking plans over the buzz of SamSamSam in his head, taste of copper in his mouth that was Sam’s blood as well as his own. He got lost on the way out of the complex, trying to go in a straight line towards Sam instead of following the corridors; Buffy said something about the Road Runner and outlines in walls that Dean figured he would at least have smiled at, under other circumstances.
Outside the sky was a strange bright gray, like behind the layer of clouds the sun had gotten ten times larger. As Dean watched, purple lightning erupted in four different places at once, and from the booms he heard, he’d missed some. The air was still but hot and his face instantly itched with sweat. Without a breeze, Sam would be harder to track by scent; on the other hand, the light would keep him from hiding. Maybe the elements were taking sides.
His phone rang.
“Sam?”
“I’m ready,” Sam said, unhesitating but laced with an underlying jitteriness that Dean recognized from years ago, every time Sam had to go to a new school and prove himself smarter than everyone else all over again.
“Yeah?” Dean said, and then another wave of bloodlust took his words and washed out his vision like a flash. Dimly, he felt small fingers uncurling his grip on the phone.
“-all pretty worried, Sam,” Buffy said as Dean fought to stay still. Somebody else-Willow-grabbed his elbow, and the world tuned back in again. Dean wanted to tell her that maybe witches were useful after all, but he couldn’t spare the energy. “We’re not sure you’re thinking clearly right now.”
Sam laughed. Either he was loud enough to be heard by anyone around or Dean was hearing him in his head. “I stopped thinking clearly when a demon burned my girlfriend to death. I know this is screwed up, believe me. But if you let Dean come to me, I can keep him from killing me. I mean, ever. I can end the cycle. I’ve been given this amazing power, and even if it was a demon who gave it, that doesn’t mean I can’t use it for good.”
Dean knew that song. He couldn’t rightly say he was sure it was a hundred percent wrong. Sam’s powers had saved his life before, with Max, and then with breaking his deal. But Buffy was talking for him. “That might be true,” she admitted. “But does that mean you’ll live forever? I’ve never seen that work out well. Are you and Dean supposed to chase each other across the universe like those guys on Star Trek?”
“Star Trek?” Willow asked, like she couldn’t help herself-and even in the midst of all this Dean had to admit he didn’t think Buffy was a Star Trek kind of girl-and Buffy mouthed something that must’ve been a name.
Sam didn’t care, though, and huffed out an irritated breath. “Dean doesn’t have the same role to play,” he said, sounding just like he was explaining why he had to go away to Stanford and dump the family business, because they weren’t the same people, Dean, and he wanted something better for himself. “Have Willow take those spells off him, let him come to me.”
Dean reached for his phone, but Buffy danced away, and with Willow hanging on to him and his head spinning like a ball bearing he wasn’t in any shape to grab her. “Why don’t we meet-”
“No,” Sam snapped. “He’s my brother. He’s my Huntsman. We don’t need you.”
Half of Dean was ready to agree. Buffy was still out of reach, though. “I think you need to calm down before we talk about that.”
“I like you, Buffy,” Sam said, switching to casual sincerity, which was almost creepier than the anger because it sounded just as real. “But if you try and keep me and Dean apart, we’re going to have a problem.”
“We already do,” Buffy said, but Sam hung up-Dean swayed on his feet, like Sam’s voice had been holding him up as much as Willow-and then Dean’s head felt like about half the contents had been poured out.
“Thanks,” he said to Willow, because he had the feeling he was going to forget pretty soon how much he owed her. She let go of his arm and blushed.
A pop-music ringtone blared out, and they both turned to Buffy, who looked at Dean’s phone in her hand for a second before figuring out that the noise was coming from her own phone and tossing Dean’s back. She answered, then listened for a bit. “Where? They do what? How did you-okay, that’s creepy. Yeah.”
She hung up and looked away from them for a second, as if trying to figure out how to break some bad news. “Giles just talked to a friendly neighborhood seer who says that there’s something about to start eating a ton of people out in Loudon.”
Dean consulted his internal map of the country, then his sense of where Sam was (and seriously, could he keep that? It was the only worthwhile thing the Huntsman had given him). “That’s where Sam is,” he said.
“Buffy,” Willow said, “you know what that means.”
“Starts with t, ends with p?”
Top? Dean thought, and then was glad he hadn’t said that out loud.
“We were going to follow Dean to Sam anyway,” Willow said, speculatively.
“Doesn’t matter.” Buffy turned to go back inside. “We can’t let anybody get killed over this.”
“Sam wouldn’t-” Dean said, and had to hurry to get beside her. “You of all people should know, he’s not gonna let anybody get killed either!”
“Yeah,” Buffy said indifferently, sticking her head in the door and ignoring Dean, “Ksenia! Grab everyone! Full weapons, five minutes in the parking lot!” She turned back to him. “I hope you’re right. But Giles says these monsters have to be summoned, and that they could wipe out a city if they get a day and a half to breed. So do you think he might think he’s more in control than he is?”
Dean swallowed and followed her inside to arm up.
****
At least Willow had warded most of the crazy away from him. She was a fucking awesome witch, and he’d tell anyone who asked.
He watched the girls efficiently passing out swords and axes. In his head, he made a smart remark about how much better guns were. In reality, he had difficulty keeping himself from grabbing one of the bigger blades, hefting it in his hand and going to find Sam. He leaned against the wall, nearly shaking with the effort of staying still.
Okay, even Willow’s superpowers had their limits. Dean checked his gun, just to remind himself that it was there.
Realizing that they weren’t taking his car brought him back for a moment. But the thing in him wasn’t a fan of machines and might just wreck the Impala because it was a fucking unnatural being that didn’t care about physics or engines or anything that wasn’t forged directly by human hands. So he ignored the stab of concern and let Buffy direct him into a big panel van.
Being surrounded by a well-armed, whispering group of hot chicks was a good distraction (and even if he’d been careless about condoms in his early teens, they were all a couple years too old to be his kids, and anyway he hadn’t been careless, so he was entitled to look, plus he was just looking, no damage done by checking out the menu). They were amped, nearly as ready for a fight as he was.
“C’mon,” he said sharply as two of them jostled each other, ignoring Willow’s explanation of what she’d found out from this Giles guy and his pet seer about the monsters they were looking for. “You don’t pay attention, you could get somebody else killed.”
They lost their grins and Dean felt a lot like his Dad must’ve, which made him feel old and sad, so now everyone was unhappy. Buffy stuck her head around from the front passenger seat. “Everything okay back there?” She had a disgruntled expression that said that she was wondering about her ability to play mom herself.
“Fine,” Willow said, not looking at Dean, like there was a brace on her neck preventing her from turning towards him. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re protecting their babies.”
“Babies that eat people,” Jane said, in case anybody needed a reminder.
Willow nodded. “And they’ll only get more aggressive as time goes on. There’s nothing wrong with the Gryzwort in their natural habitat, but gated communities aren’t their natural habitat.”
Dean snorted and thought about how annoying the job could be sometimes, protecting rich assholes because they were people too. Ghosts and vampires aside, a lot of the things he’d killed were just doing what they did to get by. Protecting their families, like these monsters were doing, only in the wrong place and the wrong time. For everybody else to survive, these things were going to have to get out of the way, or be gotten. Tough luck, but there it was.
He rubbed at the back of his sweaty neck. Too many people in the van, no matter how cute they were.
When they piled out of the van in the middle of an abandoned subdivision, houses half-constructed, Dean could feel the death in the air. Sam was teasing him, he could feel it: a relief and an ache that Sam wasn’t here, but had left him this present, something for him to kill. This wasn’t hunting instinct, not like he knew it; this was the thing taking him over, wanting the thrill of the chase and the burn of the blade across flesh. He ground his teeth together and followed the girls, already far out ahead of him.
The first of the Slayers found the first nest almost immediately, and then the monsters-big snakey things, with too many legs and way too many teeth, swinging their long-necked heads at him like baseball bats edged with fangs-were everywhere, swarming through the unpaved streets and the abandoned ditches. Dean ducked and swung and fired and then did it all again.
He could feel each one of the Slayers, moving like extensions of his arm, or like he was the combined product of their power. This was their hunt, their coordination and trust in one another, moving like individual waves in the greater ocean, and he was the current tying them together.
It felt good, cookies-and-milk-from-mom good: safe, even as a small part of his brain was screaming that nothing was right.
One girl used him like a ladder, running up his back to get the height she needed for a spectacular flip-kick, and he just bent and pushed when she needed it most. He caught another out of the air, stopping her from taking a header, and she put her hands out so that the fall turned into a backflip. He’d lost his gun somehow, and his shirt was soaked with monster blood.
The babies were nesting in the basement of one of the show homes, in the media cave with the fake cardboard HDTV still perched on the wall. Small, the monsters didn’t look that awful, more like lizards than anything else.
They squealed when he stomped their heads in. One eeled away and got to the stairs, except that it wasn’t even big enough to climb up the first step. Dean picked it up, its little needle teeth trying uselessly to chew through his sleeve, and he looked at it. Inhuman; not malicious, but malice didn’t matter so much as blood did.
The bones of its neck snapped like twigs when he squeezed.
****
Buffy found him standing there, though at least he’d dropped the corpse. “Hey,” she said sharply. “You got any idea what Sam’s up to?”
Dean closed his eyes. “He’s close,” he admitted. “I think maybe-you should send the girls back.” Out here, in unfamiliar territory, they were exposed, and every person was one more potential hostage. His sense of the other Slayers had faded now that they weren’t fighting any more, just having their wounds tended and cleaning up. If they were like his Hounds, Sam would have no hesitation in taking them out.
Buffy nodded, obviously following his logic. “Willow thinks she can shield me, and you, so you don’t go any crazier than you normally are-” which Dean was a little hurt by, even if they had met under extreme circumstances, and his face must have shown it, because Buffy sighed. “Anyway, if the three of us can’t get it done, then more Slayers probably aren’t going to help.”
So they climbed up into the afternoon light. The weather was freaky again, the air that strange mix of dark and light that signalled a summer thunderstorm. He could feel it on his skin, raising the hairs on his arms. At Buffy’s order, the van took off-jeez, someone should teach Jael to drive, because whoever’d done it the first time had missed a few spots-and then it was just the three of them standing in the empty road.
Sam was ready for him now. Dean started walking. “Hey, uh, Willow,” he managed, just before it really hit: a wave of bloodlust so intense it felt like coming his brains out. He was done thinking or talking; he started moving.
It was like breathing through caramel. Dean couldn’t see anything except the path in front of him. His heartbeat was an engine, roaring in his ears, except that it wasn’t really an engine he was hearing, something familiar and real. He was hearing hoofbeats.
At last, they came to an open place, a parking lot for some big box with cars scattered around like fallen leaves. Sam was there. There was nothing in the world but the distance between them. Dean felt so disconnected that it was like being drunk, and he should have stumbled. Instead he his body knew exactly what it was doing. He started running, leaving Buffy and Willow behind.
Every step made him lighter, faster. Parts of him were dropping away, good fucking riddance because he didn’t need to lose any of his focus in worry. This was a hunt. Buffy hauled ass behind him, keeping pace easily. There was some kind of link between the two of them now, but it felt fragile and anyway he didn’t need help to catch his own damned brother.
Seeing Sam was both physical relief and pain like being skinned: they were nowhere close enough. Sam’d found them a nice big place to fight. He grinned at Dean, dimples flashing, happy to see Dean like he hadn’t been since before he’d left for college, maybe since before he’d hit puberty. Dean’s heart lurched. He loved Sam so much he wanted to tear the flesh from Sam’s bones, scrape them clean with his teeth.
“You left,” he said.
Sam shrugged. “I had a couple of things to figure out. You had to know I was coming back for you.”
Dean tilted his head back and forth, cracking his neck, getting ready. “Or I was coming for you.” He was so light on his feet he might as well have been filled with helium. Just being near Sam was a relief, like when his shoulder had gotten infected when he was eighteen, after the antibiotics finally kicked in and the fever started to go down. The buzzing confusion in his head, the little lost-boy whimpers at the edge of his hearing, they were all calmed now.
They circled each other easily, moving like counterweights.
“I know what to do now, Dean,” Sam said, showing off, happy as when he’d gotten an A+ on a school paper.
“Yeah?” Dean feinted. Sam maintained perfect distance; that invisible rope between them wouldn’t have lost any tension. Dad would have been proud enough to please even Sam. Dean dodged Sam’s playful strike in return, leaning back, enjoying the tug of gravity and the strain on his own muscles.
“It was easy once I started thinking about it. Everyone assumes the Huntsman wins eventually, because he’s the human and because that’s how a hunt usually ends, when the predator decides it’s over.” Dean ducked under Sam’s fist, teeth bared in joy as he nearly took out Sam’s knee. Sam’s breaths were starting to come faster as Sam danced backwards, bobbing on the balls of his feet to keep Dean guessing about which way he was going to break. “We don’t have to do it that way. All you gotta do is submit to me. Then you’ll be safe, we’ll both be safe.”
Even in the midst of delivering a punch, Dean had to roll his eyes at Sam’s expectation that he’d just follow orders. His blow clipped Sam on the shoulder, but Sam had just been setting up his own kick, narrowly missing Dean’s kidneys. They whirled full circle and faced each other again, Dean crouching in readiness.
“I’m serious, Dean. The only solution is for you not to fight.”
Dean indicated what he thought about that with a leap that bowled Sam over, Dean’s boots pounding Sam in the stomach and thigh as they tumbled to the ground. Dean got in two more good kicks before Sam disengaged, not smiling any more.
Sam might be taller and broader these days, but deep inside he knew the same thing Dean did: he was prey.
“Run,” Dean said, half a command and half a plea.
Even if the Hart was more than Sam, an invader in his body, Sam was also still inside, so Dean’s instruction worked just about as well as it ever did.
His next hit sent Sam flying back across two lanes of cars as if Dean had Slayer powers. He bounced right up like a Superball, and Dean frowned. “You can’t hurt me,” Sam said, his eyes narrowed playfully.
Dean’s vision had never been sharper, his ears never so attuned to the world around him. He put a little red car between him and Sam, wanting to see if Sam had brought any more surprises. Sam’s resistance to damage was a bit of a puzzle, but there was a difference between being hard to kill and hard to hurt.
And then Sam raised his hand and the car flew up and over Dean’s head like there was a rocket launcher underneath it. The wind of its passing whistled in Dean’s ears and tore at his hair. It landed behind him with a horrific crunch. Somebody screamed. Dean was annoyed at the thought that civilians were going to get in the way.
Fuck, this was a Target or something-there were probably kids here. Dean shook his head to clear it as Sam advanced, only dancing out of reach at the last second. “Not playing fair, Sammy,” he said, ducking behind another row of cars. “Where’s my superpowers?”
While Sam was circling, Dean pulled his gun. A bullet would slow him down enough that Dean could take his time, he figured. He dropped and rolled underneath a truck, just in time to hear Sam blow away the entire row behind him, the sound louder than machine-gun fire. He got his shoulder up against a big concrete block in the middle of the parked cars, the base of a lamppost, and crouched behind it as he listened for Sam.
Where the fuck were Willow and Buffy? He wasn’t ashamed to admit to himself that he’d be grateful for backup. But they were probably helping the civilians, and he wouldn’t put it past Sam to have created some barrier just to keep out anything supernatural that might interfere with his plans. No, this was Dean’s job, and he was going to do it.
At just the right moment, he popped up and nailed Sam in the shoulder. Sam went down like a target at a carnival, hands flying up in a way that was hilarious even in the middle of everything. Dean barrelled forward, jumping over a stray fender, to get in close enough that Sam’s car-throwing powers wouldn’t be quite as useful.
He was on Sam before Sam could even sit up, punching him in the face once, twice, three times, one knee in his stomach to keep him down. Sam’s head slammed into the concrete. He would’ve killed a regular human, but Sam got his arms braced and shoved up, and he flung Dean off like Dean was a clingy three-year-old instead of a grown man. Dean landed on his feet, crouched to go again.
Sam stood to his full height and grinned at him, mouth bloody. Dean could see a black dot through a tear in his shirt where Dean’s bullet had bounced off. Dean grinned right back at him. This was more awesome than any sparring they’d ever done. This was them, but better-the best challenge either one of them would ever face. The gun had been a mistake, that much was obvious now. He needed to use a man’s weapon, something with an edge.
“Throwing a car at me,” Dean chided, “that’s weak. Do it yourself.”
In response, Sam lunged at him, and the impact sent them both skidding like something out of The Matrix, nothing a human could’ve handled. Dean felt the scrape and bump of a curb, then soft grass, and then they were rolling into a street. Sam ended up on top, practically sitting on Dean’s legs, and fisted his hands in Dean’s jacket. “Like this better?”
Dean twisted a knee up and nailed Sam in the balls, which apparently weren’t anywhere near as invulnerable as the rest of him. (See, he could learn new things-thanks, Buffy.) Sam wheezed and fell back.
Dean jumped to his feet-and stared at the bus that had shuddered to a halt five feet from him. The driver cringed away from him, even behind her shield of glass and metal. She looked at him like he was one of the monsters.
Behind him, Sam yelled, high and furious. Dean spun and saw that he was headed back to the parking lot. Running, just like he should be: running so Dean could catch him.
Dean bit his lip, hard, trying to see Sam, Sammy, not the wavering shape in front of him who made Dean’s blood sing out with the call to chase and cut. But the Hart held his hands out at his sides like a sacrifice, and Dean knew that it was the hunt that bound them together, made them equals. Leave the hunt and he’d lose Sam forever. Pursue and the Hart would be his world.
It wasn’t surprising that there was a knife in his hand. He swung it up, towards Sam’s stomach, and Sam didn’t step away.
The impact went through him like a car crash. Sam barely twitched back, and the knife shattered to the hilt.
“Told you so,” Sam said, sing-song, the way he’d always done when he was making fun of Dean’s homework. “I deciphered the prophecy. I’m safe. This time around, I can’t be hurt until I’m already mortally wounded. Great paradox, right? Good planning.”
That made Dean’s brain itch, a buzz overwhelming the shock still vibrating in his arm. He dropped the remains of the knife. “Whose plan, Sam?”
Sam shrugged and raised his hand. His irises were huge, almost obscuring the whites, pupils distorted like they’d been melted in some fire.
That was when the world went white. The pain was indescribable, all-consuming, burned alive but the nerves refused to die. Dean felt himself collapse to the-he wasn’t outside any more. He’d fallen onto a hard, cool floor. Smelled like girlsweat and disinfectant: the training room. He couldn’t control his twitching limbs, jerking like he’d been electrocuted again, until girls’ hands-four or five girls, felt like-grabbed on and kept him still.
“The transport spell isn’t supposed to do that,” Willow said from somewhere above him, which didn’t surprise him much. It wasn’t the transport, Dean knew. It was being pulled away from Sam.
“We got you out when we saw the thing with the knife,” Buffy told him, kneeling as he shook and struggled to stop his whimpers. “He’s got powers he shouldn’t have, not if this is just the Huntsman and the Hart. Letting you go to him was a mistake. We need to rethink our approach, get some more intel. Willow’s got this place warded ten different ways, he won’t get within a mile, but we need to figure out how to fix him.”
Dean turned his head towards the floor and watched his tears drip onto the ground-in dirt. They were right, he was sure. He’d tried to knife his own brother in the gut, which meant that he was so far wrong he might better have gone to Hell. And Sam being unkillable, that should’ve been the best news he’d ever had. But he couldn’t help but think that Sam was in deep fucking shit. Worse, Dean had maybe signed up with people who were willing to pile it higher and deeper to save the rest of the world.
“There’s something else we could try,” he managed. Probably a bad idea, but they needed information to match Sam’s secrets. The connection to the Slayers he’d felt during the fight with the Grizzlies was too powerful to be kept under wraps; someone had to know more about it.
Part 4
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The six or seven girls hanging out in the training room were easy to tease into a workout, and they were amazing. They were as sleek and fast as the Impala, working together as smoothly as if they’d done it all their lives, the kind of teamwork it had taken him and Sam years to figure out. Dean was a little shocked he was keeping up, honestly, what with the somersaults and cartwheels and backflips around him like he’d wandered onto the floor of a cheerleading competition.
He blocked every hit, though, ducking and diving easily, smiling wide as they grinned back. He felt awake for the first time in days, letting himself enjoy the purity of their violence.
Then the energy pouring into him seized up and flipped over, white to black.
Sam had left. Sam was running. Sam was running from him. Dean felt it like a scab tearing open over an infected wound, releasing a torrent of blood and pus, filthy but still a relief. Sam was running and he wanted-he needed-Dean to catch him.
And Dean wanted help. Sure, he could do it alone if he had to. But these girls, they were better than any gun, better even than any knife. They were here, with him, breathing in the same hectic rhythm, and he knew they’d go with him if he just waited a little longer, until they felt it too.
Jane nearly got him with a sweep kick while he was daydreaming, and he hit back hard enough that she slammed into the wall, her grin all teeth as she launched herself right back. Dean felt part of himself that wasn’t really him, but that was just as bloodthirsty, rising through his body like a tide, calling the Slayers to him. They’d go, and they’d run, and they’d catch.
The girls were still moving, but they’d started to coalesce into something more directed. Something like a pack.
“Hey!” Buffy said, her voice cutting through the fog that surrounded him.
He blinked, not sure what her problem was. He was going to be out of her hair soon, they all were. He’d catch Sam and he’d-
He shook his head. He’d catch Sam-
He’d catch-
His head snapped to the side with the force of Buffy’s fist. “Let them go,” she was saying, making no sense at all, and he hit back because that’s what you did when you got hit. Buffy took the blow and darted away, right outside his reach. He wasn’t interested in hunting her, and Sam wouldn’t have told her anything before he left, so he let it go.
Sam was out there, calling to him.
Dean clenched his fists. The Slayers fell into place one by one, until they were ringing him, all except Buffy, still glaring at him like she had something to say. He frowned; shouldn’t she be helping him?
“Dean, you-” she said, then gulped. He could feel the thing in him reaching out to her, like it had drawn in the other Slayers, promising them the best of chases, heedless through the forest, every nerve ablaze. And then the end, red with blood, a perfect victory over the very best prey. Behind him the other Slayers shifted, nearly as eager as he was to begin the challenge.
But Buffy set her shoulders and yelled, “Willow!”
The witch sparkled into existence next to Buffy, waving her arms in an evident attempt to keep her balance. “Urk?” she managed.
Dean probably would have thought she was cute, if he could have been interested in that kind of thing right now. He started moving towards the exit, and he felt the Slayers, his pack, following him.
Buffy and Willow’s voices faded in and out. “… Wild Hunt … superstrong …” Dean’s fingers flexed and closed on empty air. His blood pulsed in time with the others’, and beyond that there was Sam, calling to him. The room was too small and hard; he needed to run, to feel his feet hitting soft ground and leaping over leaf and branch.
Willow was chanting now, an unseen wind rising to rustle her skirt and blow sweetly across Dean’s overheated skin. Then the wind grew stronger, until it was an effort to stand in it. He could feel the Slayers separating from him, like the bones of a skeleton coming apart when the rest of the body was no longer there to bind them.
It didn’t matter. He would have liked the company, but this hunt was his. Sam was his. The air around him seemed brighter, almost golden, as if he were caught in a shaft of sunlight in a forest clearing. The Slayers were staring at him now, shifting uneasily, fear turning to anger the way it did when civilians got too close to the truth.
“I’ve got it locked down into him,” Willow said, the strain evident in her voice even through the roaring in his ears. “It’s pretty brilliant, actually-Sam is pumping power into him through their mystical link, and it’s raising the Huntsman aspect. There’s some sort of focus on him, an object--”
Buffy was in front of him. Dean advanced, because he’d wasted too much time already. It was so good not to worry about anything but the hunt. He’d spent so many days, years even, on all this pointless bullshit.
She was a pleasure to fight, even if it was a distraction from his goal. Sweep kick, back flip, uppercut, high kick, knee to his thigh, and back away, breaking contact. He hit her upper back before she got out of range and she staggered; he kicked out to finish her off, but she was too fast.
“If you’re in there,” Buffy said, inches from his chest, “I’m really sorry about this.” She dodged left, avoiding his fist, and scissored her legs to trip him, spinning in the air to land facing him while he hit the floor. But he was already bouncing up like a rubber ball, raising his hands. Side kick that hurt bone-deep, his return kick on her hip rocking her back before she went into handspring to land both feet on his chest. He went down as she somersaulted over. It was like a game where the prize was not dying, and he’d always loved those. Jump back to his feet, dodge the punch, sweep kick.
He stuck a hand out and sent June flying back against the wall, her attack defeated before it began. He frowned, because Buffy was a challenge, but if all the Slayers piled on he might waste valuable energy on not-Sam. His knee caught Ksenia in the stomach, propelling her out of range. He heard her start to vomit as Buffy took advantage of the opening to land a kick straight between Dean’s legs.
Dean staggered back-that fucking hurt, and why were they doing this again? There was something wrong, the air all hot and dry, his thoughts evaporating like water.
Buffy rushed him, boxing his ears as she leapt up and over his head, doing a half twist to land facing him. Before he could turn, she pounded his exposed neck, two solid punches from each fist, and then grabbed the leather strap that held his amulet and pulled.
When it parted, the amulet came with her. Buffy tossed it towards Willow as Dean yelled his outrage-that was his, Sam’s, and he’d kill anyone who-and then the shock hit him and it was lights out.
****
Dean woke up raging, struggling against the chains holding him down. Some small corner of his mind wanted to lie back and figure out what had happened, but mostly he was just furious, his body starving for something it couldn’t quite define but knew well where to find. If he could have formed words, he would have been yelling for Sam, but all he could do was growl.
He could still hear Sam’s voice, whispering, asking him to come out and run. They’d fight, they’d dance, and it would be better than ever because Sam really wanted it now, he was fully committed. Around the edges, Dean knew that Sam wasn’t actually speaking for himself, not any more. But it was still such a goddamn attractive offering that even hearing it sent through mystical means-which, again, was not Sam’s standard method of communication, now that Azazel was dead and gone-wasn’t enough to deter Dean from trying to follow.
Cool fingers stroked his temples, sending relief through him like injections of icewater. He jerked once more and then his muscles slackened.
He breathed in, out, just like he’d been trained, until his heart slowed and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t sound like a homicidal maniac. “Let me up.”
“How much do you remember?” Willow asked him, just outside his peripheral vision even when he twisted to see her. Her voice was soft and didn’t calm him at all.
He closed his eyes and counted his breaths again until he got to fifteen. “I was sparring, and then-I was hunting. I feel him. He’s not far.”
“Are you going to go after him if we unlock you?”
Yes, every cell in him shouted. He panted, fighting the desire, because it was sick, bloodied. He had to be smart, or this thing in his head would hurt Sam. He could feel the spirit crawling inside, wanting the same thing he did except that it wanted to go further, tear Sam open and spread his guts across the earth. Then he’d be the only one to have Sam. His fingers clenched, scraping against the bedframe. Metal rattled and his chains groaned. If he gave it his all, they’d never hold him.
He was way over his head and the only person he needed was the one he wanted to kill.
Dean forced himself still. He ignored the sounds-running, yelping, cracking branches-that weren’t coming from anything real. The Huntsman was going to take him over soon enough, but he wasn’t gone yet. “Can you-help me. Please.”
Buffy’s voice came from further away, but when he turned his head he could at least see her, standing by the door with her arms crossed over her chest. He gulped air, holding it together.
“If you can take us to him, we can try to contain you both. Separately,” she emphasized, which Dean got even as he hated it. Even imagining seeing Sam was enough to make him want to throw himself against his bonds until he could get his hands on-in-his brother.
He let the desire go through him like electric shock, arching up, and then forced himself to lie back. “Yeah, okay. Just-I might not be much help.”
“You’re doing great,” Willow said, almost like she meant it. “With all the magic pouring into you, it’s kind of a miracle you’re still sane.”
From the expression on Buffy’s face, she didn’t find that any more reassuring than Dean did.
But they let him up, Dean not even bothering to rub at the welts on his wrists. He could barely hear them talking plans over the buzz of SamSamSam in his head, taste of copper in his mouth that was Sam’s blood as well as his own. He got lost on the way out of the complex, trying to go in a straight line towards Sam instead of following the corridors; Buffy said something about the Road Runner and outlines in walls that Dean figured he would at least have smiled at, under other circumstances.
Outside the sky was a strange bright gray, like behind the layer of clouds the sun had gotten ten times larger. As Dean watched, purple lightning erupted in four different places at once, and from the booms he heard, he’d missed some. The air was still but hot and his face instantly itched with sweat. Without a breeze, Sam would be harder to track by scent; on the other hand, the light would keep him from hiding. Maybe the elements were taking sides.
His phone rang.
“Sam?”
“I’m ready,” Sam said, unhesitating but laced with an underlying jitteriness that Dean recognized from years ago, every time Sam had to go to a new school and prove himself smarter than everyone else all over again.
“Yeah?” Dean said, and then another wave of bloodlust took his words and washed out his vision like a flash. Dimly, he felt small fingers uncurling his grip on the phone.
“-all pretty worried, Sam,” Buffy said as Dean fought to stay still. Somebody else-Willow-grabbed his elbow, and the world tuned back in again. Dean wanted to tell her that maybe witches were useful after all, but he couldn’t spare the energy. “We’re not sure you’re thinking clearly right now.”
Sam laughed. Either he was loud enough to be heard by anyone around or Dean was hearing him in his head. “I stopped thinking clearly when a demon burned my girlfriend to death. I know this is screwed up, believe me. But if you let Dean come to me, I can keep him from killing me. I mean, ever. I can end the cycle. I’ve been given this amazing power, and even if it was a demon who gave it, that doesn’t mean I can’t use it for good.”
Dean knew that song. He couldn’t rightly say he was sure it was a hundred percent wrong. Sam’s powers had saved his life before, with Max, and then with breaking his deal. But Buffy was talking for him. “That might be true,” she admitted. “But does that mean you’ll live forever? I’ve never seen that work out well. Are you and Dean supposed to chase each other across the universe like those guys on Star Trek?”
“Star Trek?” Willow asked, like she couldn’t help herself-and even in the midst of all this Dean had to admit he didn’t think Buffy was a Star Trek kind of girl-and Buffy mouthed something that must’ve been a name.
Sam didn’t care, though, and huffed out an irritated breath. “Dean doesn’t have the same role to play,” he said, sounding just like he was explaining why he had to go away to Stanford and dump the family business, because they weren’t the same people, Dean, and he wanted something better for himself. “Have Willow take those spells off him, let him come to me.”
Dean reached for his phone, but Buffy danced away, and with Willow hanging on to him and his head spinning like a ball bearing he wasn’t in any shape to grab her. “Why don’t we meet-”
“No,” Sam snapped. “He’s my brother. He’s my Huntsman. We don’t need you.”
Half of Dean was ready to agree. Buffy was still out of reach, though. “I think you need to calm down before we talk about that.”
“I like you, Buffy,” Sam said, switching to casual sincerity, which was almost creepier than the anger because it sounded just as real. “But if you try and keep me and Dean apart, we’re going to have a problem.”
“We already do,” Buffy said, but Sam hung up-Dean swayed on his feet, like Sam’s voice had been holding him up as much as Willow-and then Dean’s head felt like about half the contents had been poured out.
“Thanks,” he said to Willow, because he had the feeling he was going to forget pretty soon how much he owed her. She let go of his arm and blushed.
A pop-music ringtone blared out, and they both turned to Buffy, who looked at Dean’s phone in her hand for a second before figuring out that the noise was coming from her own phone and tossing Dean’s back. She answered, then listened for a bit. “Where? They do what? How did you-okay, that’s creepy. Yeah.”
She hung up and looked away from them for a second, as if trying to figure out how to break some bad news. “Giles just talked to a friendly neighborhood seer who says that there’s something about to start eating a ton of people out in Loudon.”
Dean consulted his internal map of the country, then his sense of where Sam was (and seriously, could he keep that? It was the only worthwhile thing the Huntsman had given him). “That’s where Sam is,” he said.
“Buffy,” Willow said, “you know what that means.”
“Starts with t, ends with p?”
Top? Dean thought, and then was glad he hadn’t said that out loud.
“We were going to follow Dean to Sam anyway,” Willow said, speculatively.
“Doesn’t matter.” Buffy turned to go back inside. “We can’t let anybody get killed over this.”
“Sam wouldn’t-” Dean said, and had to hurry to get beside her. “You of all people should know, he’s not gonna let anybody get killed either!”
“Yeah,” Buffy said indifferently, sticking her head in the door and ignoring Dean, “Ksenia! Grab everyone! Full weapons, five minutes in the parking lot!” She turned back to him. “I hope you’re right. But Giles says these monsters have to be summoned, and that they could wipe out a city if they get a day and a half to breed. So do you think he might think he’s more in control than he is?”
Dean swallowed and followed her inside to arm up.
****
At least Willow had warded most of the crazy away from him. She was a fucking awesome witch, and he’d tell anyone who asked.
He watched the girls efficiently passing out swords and axes. In his head, he made a smart remark about how much better guns were. In reality, he had difficulty keeping himself from grabbing one of the bigger blades, hefting it in his hand and going to find Sam. He leaned against the wall, nearly shaking with the effort of staying still.
Okay, even Willow’s superpowers had their limits. Dean checked his gun, just to remind himself that it was there.
Realizing that they weren’t taking his car brought him back for a moment. But the thing in him wasn’t a fan of machines and might just wreck the Impala because it was a fucking unnatural being that didn’t care about physics or engines or anything that wasn’t forged directly by human hands. So he ignored the stab of concern and let Buffy direct him into a big panel van.
Being surrounded by a well-armed, whispering group of hot chicks was a good distraction (and even if he’d been careless about condoms in his early teens, they were all a couple years too old to be his kids, and anyway he hadn’t been careless, so he was entitled to look, plus he was just looking, no damage done by checking out the menu). They were amped, nearly as ready for a fight as he was.
“C’mon,” he said sharply as two of them jostled each other, ignoring Willow’s explanation of what she’d found out from this Giles guy and his pet seer about the monsters they were looking for. “You don’t pay attention, you could get somebody else killed.”
They lost their grins and Dean felt a lot like his Dad must’ve, which made him feel old and sad, so now everyone was unhappy. Buffy stuck her head around from the front passenger seat. “Everything okay back there?” She had a disgruntled expression that said that she was wondering about her ability to play mom herself.
“Fine,” Willow said, not looking at Dean, like there was a brace on her neck preventing her from turning towards him. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure they’re protecting their babies.”
“Babies that eat people,” Jane said, in case anybody needed a reminder.
Willow nodded. “And they’ll only get more aggressive as time goes on. There’s nothing wrong with the Gryzwort in their natural habitat, but gated communities aren’t their natural habitat.”
Dean snorted and thought about how annoying the job could be sometimes, protecting rich assholes because they were people too. Ghosts and vampires aside, a lot of the things he’d killed were just doing what they did to get by. Protecting their families, like these monsters were doing, only in the wrong place and the wrong time. For everybody else to survive, these things were going to have to get out of the way, or be gotten. Tough luck, but there it was.
He rubbed at the back of his sweaty neck. Too many people in the van, no matter how cute they were.
When they piled out of the van in the middle of an abandoned subdivision, houses half-constructed, Dean could feel the death in the air. Sam was teasing him, he could feel it: a relief and an ache that Sam wasn’t here, but had left him this present, something for him to kill. This wasn’t hunting instinct, not like he knew it; this was the thing taking him over, wanting the thrill of the chase and the burn of the blade across flesh. He ground his teeth together and followed the girls, already far out ahead of him.
The first of the Slayers found the first nest almost immediately, and then the monsters-big snakey things, with too many legs and way too many teeth, swinging their long-necked heads at him like baseball bats edged with fangs-were everywhere, swarming through the unpaved streets and the abandoned ditches. Dean ducked and swung and fired and then did it all again.
He could feel each one of the Slayers, moving like extensions of his arm, or like he was the combined product of their power. This was their hunt, their coordination and trust in one another, moving like individual waves in the greater ocean, and he was the current tying them together.
It felt good, cookies-and-milk-from-mom good: safe, even as a small part of his brain was screaming that nothing was right.
One girl used him like a ladder, running up his back to get the height she needed for a spectacular flip-kick, and he just bent and pushed when she needed it most. He caught another out of the air, stopping her from taking a header, and she put her hands out so that the fall turned into a backflip. He’d lost his gun somehow, and his shirt was soaked with monster blood.
The babies were nesting in the basement of one of the show homes, in the media cave with the fake cardboard HDTV still perched on the wall. Small, the monsters didn’t look that awful, more like lizards than anything else.
They squealed when he stomped their heads in. One eeled away and got to the stairs, except that it wasn’t even big enough to climb up the first step. Dean picked it up, its little needle teeth trying uselessly to chew through his sleeve, and he looked at it. Inhuman; not malicious, but malice didn’t matter so much as blood did.
The bones of its neck snapped like twigs when he squeezed.
****
Buffy found him standing there, though at least he’d dropped the corpse. “Hey,” she said sharply. “You got any idea what Sam’s up to?”
Dean closed his eyes. “He’s close,” he admitted. “I think maybe-you should send the girls back.” Out here, in unfamiliar territory, they were exposed, and every person was one more potential hostage. His sense of the other Slayers had faded now that they weren’t fighting any more, just having their wounds tended and cleaning up. If they were like his Hounds, Sam would have no hesitation in taking them out.
Buffy nodded, obviously following his logic. “Willow thinks she can shield me, and you, so you don’t go any crazier than you normally are-” which Dean was a little hurt by, even if they had met under extreme circumstances, and his face must have shown it, because Buffy sighed. “Anyway, if the three of us can’t get it done, then more Slayers probably aren’t going to help.”
So they climbed up into the afternoon light. The weather was freaky again, the air that strange mix of dark and light that signalled a summer thunderstorm. He could feel it on his skin, raising the hairs on his arms. At Buffy’s order, the van took off-jeez, someone should teach Jael to drive, because whoever’d done it the first time had missed a few spots-and then it was just the three of them standing in the empty road.
Sam was ready for him now. Dean started walking. “Hey, uh, Willow,” he managed, just before it really hit: a wave of bloodlust so intense it felt like coming his brains out. He was done thinking or talking; he started moving.
It was like breathing through caramel. Dean couldn’t see anything except the path in front of him. His heartbeat was an engine, roaring in his ears, except that it wasn’t really an engine he was hearing, something familiar and real. He was hearing hoofbeats.
At last, they came to an open place, a parking lot for some big box with cars scattered around like fallen leaves. Sam was there. There was nothing in the world but the distance between them. Dean felt so disconnected that it was like being drunk, and he should have stumbled. Instead he his body knew exactly what it was doing. He started running, leaving Buffy and Willow behind.
Every step made him lighter, faster. Parts of him were dropping away, good fucking riddance because he didn’t need to lose any of his focus in worry. This was a hunt. Buffy hauled ass behind him, keeping pace easily. There was some kind of link between the two of them now, but it felt fragile and anyway he didn’t need help to catch his own damned brother.
Seeing Sam was both physical relief and pain like being skinned: they were nowhere close enough. Sam’d found them a nice big place to fight. He grinned at Dean, dimples flashing, happy to see Dean like he hadn’t been since before he’d left for college, maybe since before he’d hit puberty. Dean’s heart lurched. He loved Sam so much he wanted to tear the flesh from Sam’s bones, scrape them clean with his teeth.
“You left,” he said.
Sam shrugged. “I had a couple of things to figure out. You had to know I was coming back for you.”
Dean tilted his head back and forth, cracking his neck, getting ready. “Or I was coming for you.” He was so light on his feet he might as well have been filled with helium. Just being near Sam was a relief, like when his shoulder had gotten infected when he was eighteen, after the antibiotics finally kicked in and the fever started to go down. The buzzing confusion in his head, the little lost-boy whimpers at the edge of his hearing, they were all calmed now.
They circled each other easily, moving like counterweights.
“I know what to do now, Dean,” Sam said, showing off, happy as when he’d gotten an A+ on a school paper.
“Yeah?” Dean feinted. Sam maintained perfect distance; that invisible rope between them wouldn’t have lost any tension. Dad would have been proud enough to please even Sam. Dean dodged Sam’s playful strike in return, leaning back, enjoying the tug of gravity and the strain on his own muscles.
“It was easy once I started thinking about it. Everyone assumes the Huntsman wins eventually, because he’s the human and because that’s how a hunt usually ends, when the predator decides it’s over.” Dean ducked under Sam’s fist, teeth bared in joy as he nearly took out Sam’s knee. Sam’s breaths were starting to come faster as Sam danced backwards, bobbing on the balls of his feet to keep Dean guessing about which way he was going to break. “We don’t have to do it that way. All you gotta do is submit to me. Then you’ll be safe, we’ll both be safe.”
Even in the midst of delivering a punch, Dean had to roll his eyes at Sam’s expectation that he’d just follow orders. His blow clipped Sam on the shoulder, but Sam had just been setting up his own kick, narrowly missing Dean’s kidneys. They whirled full circle and faced each other again, Dean crouching in readiness.
“I’m serious, Dean. The only solution is for you not to fight.”
Dean indicated what he thought about that with a leap that bowled Sam over, Dean’s boots pounding Sam in the stomach and thigh as they tumbled to the ground. Dean got in two more good kicks before Sam disengaged, not smiling any more.
Sam might be taller and broader these days, but deep inside he knew the same thing Dean did: he was prey.
“Run,” Dean said, half a command and half a plea.
Even if the Hart was more than Sam, an invader in his body, Sam was also still inside, so Dean’s instruction worked just about as well as it ever did.
His next hit sent Sam flying back across two lanes of cars as if Dean had Slayer powers. He bounced right up like a Superball, and Dean frowned. “You can’t hurt me,” Sam said, his eyes narrowed playfully.
Dean’s vision had never been sharper, his ears never so attuned to the world around him. He put a little red car between him and Sam, wanting to see if Sam had brought any more surprises. Sam’s resistance to damage was a bit of a puzzle, but there was a difference between being hard to kill and hard to hurt.
And then Sam raised his hand and the car flew up and over Dean’s head like there was a rocket launcher underneath it. The wind of its passing whistled in Dean’s ears and tore at his hair. It landed behind him with a horrific crunch. Somebody screamed. Dean was annoyed at the thought that civilians were going to get in the way.
Fuck, this was a Target or something-there were probably kids here. Dean shook his head to clear it as Sam advanced, only dancing out of reach at the last second. “Not playing fair, Sammy,” he said, ducking behind another row of cars. “Where’s my superpowers?”
While Sam was circling, Dean pulled his gun. A bullet would slow him down enough that Dean could take his time, he figured. He dropped and rolled underneath a truck, just in time to hear Sam blow away the entire row behind him, the sound louder than machine-gun fire. He got his shoulder up against a big concrete block in the middle of the parked cars, the base of a lamppost, and crouched behind it as he listened for Sam.
Where the fuck were Willow and Buffy? He wasn’t ashamed to admit to himself that he’d be grateful for backup. But they were probably helping the civilians, and he wouldn’t put it past Sam to have created some barrier just to keep out anything supernatural that might interfere with his plans. No, this was Dean’s job, and he was going to do it.
At just the right moment, he popped up and nailed Sam in the shoulder. Sam went down like a target at a carnival, hands flying up in a way that was hilarious even in the middle of everything. Dean barrelled forward, jumping over a stray fender, to get in close enough that Sam’s car-throwing powers wouldn’t be quite as useful.
He was on Sam before Sam could even sit up, punching him in the face once, twice, three times, one knee in his stomach to keep him down. Sam’s head slammed into the concrete. He would’ve killed a regular human, but Sam got his arms braced and shoved up, and he flung Dean off like Dean was a clingy three-year-old instead of a grown man. Dean landed on his feet, crouched to go again.
Sam stood to his full height and grinned at him, mouth bloody. Dean could see a black dot through a tear in his shirt where Dean’s bullet had bounced off. Dean grinned right back at him. This was more awesome than any sparring they’d ever done. This was them, but better-the best challenge either one of them would ever face. The gun had been a mistake, that much was obvious now. He needed to use a man’s weapon, something with an edge.
“Throwing a car at me,” Dean chided, “that’s weak. Do it yourself.”
In response, Sam lunged at him, and the impact sent them both skidding like something out of The Matrix, nothing a human could’ve handled. Dean felt the scrape and bump of a curb, then soft grass, and then they were rolling into a street. Sam ended up on top, practically sitting on Dean’s legs, and fisted his hands in Dean’s jacket. “Like this better?”
Dean twisted a knee up and nailed Sam in the balls, which apparently weren’t anywhere near as invulnerable as the rest of him. (See, he could learn new things-thanks, Buffy.) Sam wheezed and fell back.
Dean jumped to his feet-and stared at the bus that had shuddered to a halt five feet from him. The driver cringed away from him, even behind her shield of glass and metal. She looked at him like he was one of the monsters.
Behind him, Sam yelled, high and furious. Dean spun and saw that he was headed back to the parking lot. Running, just like he should be: running so Dean could catch him.
Dean bit his lip, hard, trying to see Sam, Sammy, not the wavering shape in front of him who made Dean’s blood sing out with the call to chase and cut. But the Hart held his hands out at his sides like a sacrifice, and Dean knew that it was the hunt that bound them together, made them equals. Leave the hunt and he’d lose Sam forever. Pursue and the Hart would be his world.
It wasn’t surprising that there was a knife in his hand. He swung it up, towards Sam’s stomach, and Sam didn’t step away.
The impact went through him like a car crash. Sam barely twitched back, and the knife shattered to the hilt.
“Told you so,” Sam said, sing-song, the way he’d always done when he was making fun of Dean’s homework. “I deciphered the prophecy. I’m safe. This time around, I can’t be hurt until I’m already mortally wounded. Great paradox, right? Good planning.”
That made Dean’s brain itch, a buzz overwhelming the shock still vibrating in his arm. He dropped the remains of the knife. “Whose plan, Sam?”
Sam shrugged and raised his hand. His irises were huge, almost obscuring the whites, pupils distorted like they’d been melted in some fire.
That was when the world went white. The pain was indescribable, all-consuming, burned alive but the nerves refused to die. Dean felt himself collapse to the-he wasn’t outside any more. He’d fallen onto a hard, cool floor. Smelled like girlsweat and disinfectant: the training room. He couldn’t control his twitching limbs, jerking like he’d been electrocuted again, until girls’ hands-four or five girls, felt like-grabbed on and kept him still.
“The transport spell isn’t supposed to do that,” Willow said from somewhere above him, which didn’t surprise him much. It wasn’t the transport, Dean knew. It was being pulled away from Sam.
“We got you out when we saw the thing with the knife,” Buffy told him, kneeling as he shook and struggled to stop his whimpers. “He’s got powers he shouldn’t have, not if this is just the Huntsman and the Hart. Letting you go to him was a mistake. We need to rethink our approach, get some more intel. Willow’s got this place warded ten different ways, he won’t get within a mile, but we need to figure out how to fix him.”
Dean turned his head towards the floor and watched his tears drip onto the ground-in dirt. They were right, he was sure. He’d tried to knife his own brother in the gut, which meant that he was so far wrong he might better have gone to Hell. And Sam being unkillable, that should’ve been the best news he’d ever had. But he couldn’t help but think that Sam was in deep fucking shit. Worse, Dean had maybe signed up with people who were willing to pile it higher and deeper to save the rest of the world.
“There’s something else we could try,” he managed. Probably a bad idea, but they needed information to match Sam’s secrets. The connection to the Slayers he’d felt during the fight with the Grizzlies was too powerful to be kept under wraps; someone had to know more about it.
Part 4
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