The Devil You Know : Chapter 4
See part 1 for disclaimers
Chapter 4
“Stop the car.”
Sam jolts out of a restless doze with a sharp cry, arms flying. Dean hears knuckles hit glass and padded metal as he cuts the wheel to the right. Sam groans, back arching, as the Nova rocks to a halt.
“Sam?”
Dean grabs his nearer arm and Sam yells, screams, really, head bent back at a painful angle on the reclining seat. His body seizes, and looks, Dean thinks in panic, like the possessed when black smoke pours through their throats.
“Sam!”
The scream cuts off and his eyes roll back as spasms grab him and set his feet to drumming on the floorboards. Dark capillaries spiderweb down his forehead and jaw. When Dean drops his arm in horror, Sam slams sideways into the door, so hard the whole car shakes. For a moment he’s plastered to the door panel, straining as if he’s trying to force his way through the spaces between the molecules, and then he’s slamming back the opposite way.
Dean just barely catches him before he smashes onto the dashboard, get both arms around his brother and hangs on while Sam throws them violently around the front seat.
Dean’s wrist cracks against the door handle, and he twists his hand around, gets his fingers underneath and yanks. The door pops open and they both spill out onto dusty grass. He rolls Sam beneath him and pins him to the ground while Sam bucks and shakes in the throes of the terrible spasms.
Headlights wash over and past them. They’re on a lonely stretch of highway, but it’s not completely deserted; Dean can only hope twilight hides them from the passing cars. He braces a forearm on Sam’s collarbones to try and keep his head from smashing up and down on the ground.
“Sam! Sam, c’mon!”
He’s not hearing him. Dean’s just going to have to wait it out. He hooks his ankles over Sam’s jerking legs and tries to keep him still without hurting him. Headlights sweep them again, this time from behind the Nova, and a horn blares. It occurs to Dean that he didn’t flick on the hazard lights before he bailed, but he really doesn’t give a shit at the moment. Sam clenches up into knotted, vibrating muscle, triggered maybe by the blast of noise and light, and Dean has all he can do to hold him down.
Another car passes, this one slowing as if the driver has caught a glimpse of the two of them struggling beneath the open door. Dean hears the engine slack off, and Sam’s face bleeds red in reflected tail lights. “Just keep the fuck going,” Dean grits out. Stolen car, detoxing passenger-he doesn’t need a Good Samaritan now.
The tail lights recede, but Dean’s not breathing any easier. Driver’s probably already on his cell, reporting them to emergency services. “Sam. Hey, come on. Come back, Sam.” He doesn’t dare let go to pat his face and he doesn’t think Sam can hear him yet anyway.
Finally the tense lines in his face loosen. Sam groans, sounding like he’s gargling on saliva, and Dean eases up the pressure on his chest. He rolls him up on his side, and his arms and legs flop limply before settling on the grass.
The spasms have almost stopped.
“Sam. I know you feel like shit, but you gotta get up.”
He groans again, and Dean hears him spit.
“Come on, dude. We’re about to have company.”
Sam rolls half onto his back. “I bit my tongue.”
“We passed an exit a few miles back; I’ll pull off and get you some ice.” Dean hardens his voice. “Get up, Sam. I don’t want to be here when the cops swing by.”
He hauls him to his feet and stuffs him back into the car. Dean sneaks a look at him under the dome light-the dark veins webbing his face have vanished, leaving only pale, sweaty Skin. He pushes the door closed and Sam slumps on it, eyes closed and twitching a little beneath the lids.
The car bumps over the grassy median as Dean pulls a U-turn, and Sam moans. “Not so fast!”
“You gonna puke?”
“Don’ think so…”
“Then suck it up while I get us out of here.”
He backtracks to the nearest town, a cluster of houses around a single stoplight, a feed store, and a couple of churches. On the outskirts is a tiny market, just about to close for the night. Dean flirts, a little desperately, with the lone check-out girl, and over her blushing she holds the store open so he can buy ice and soda and a half-price box of cinnamon donuts.
His wallet’s getting pretty thin.
Sam’s lolling weakly in the passenger seat when he comes out. Dean tears open the bag of ice and digs out a thick frosty cube fore his brother. “Put that on your tongue,” he tells him, and twists open a soda bottle. “And take a couple sips of this.”
“Dean…”
“It’s ginger ale, Sam. It’s good for upset stomachs.”
Sam alternates sips of soda with clicking the ice against his teeth. The lights in the market switch off, and Dean can see the check-out girl peering anxiously out the plate glass window at them. He sighs. “Better get us out of here before she calls the cops.”
-----
When they hit the county line, Dean loops back out to the interstate. He fills the tank at the first gas station he sees, relieved when his credit card isn’t declined, and lets Sam talk him into relinquishing the wheel.
He feels better, he insists. It’ll keep his mind busy.
Two hours later Dean’s off the road in a closed weigh station, sitting braced against the side of the Nova with Sam’s back pulled tight to his chest, arms wrapped around his brother while Sam screams through a knotted t-shirt, wracked with the worst muscle cramps outside of Hell.
Four hours after that, after another pitstop when Sam starts a disjointed conversation with someone Dean eventually figures out is Sarah Blake, a conversation that degenerates into a massive panic attack, they hit the Ohio state line.
Sam’s fitfully asleep as Dean cruises slowly up and down the streets of a town on the border, checking out vehicles. A packaging factory on night shift offers a parking lot full of possible replacements.
In the back row next to a sagging chain link fence, Dean rolls to a stop. When he shifts quietly into park, Sam startles awake. “What-?”
“Shh. Picking out a new car.”
“Oh.” Sam rubs his face, rolls his neck until it cracks. “Which one?”
“That Chevelle, I think.”
It’s old-not classic like his Baby, not restored vintage like the Nova, just old. Faded blue paint, rust spots, a missing hubcap. Nothing to attract attention, and it reminds him of cars from Bobby’s lot.
He has the door open in one minute, the engine hot-wired in five after that. The exhaust’s a little loud, but otherwise it sounds good. He gets out and pops the trunk. There’s a small tool kit, a spare gas can, and some old grease-stained t-shirts jumbled up with the jack and a spare tire. Dean finds a screwdriver in the tool box and goes around to tap a knuckle on Sam’s window.
“Pull everything out of the Nova while I swap plates around, wouldya?”
He trades license plates with a car a few rows over, and when he comes back, Sam’s stuffing trash into a spare bag. Dean stops him as he’s about to dump out the melted ice water.
“Leave that-I need it.”
His rosary is put to use again. When the ice-melt in the plastic bag is blessed, he flips open his cell and scrolls through pictures until he comes to a recent one. “Here, hold this for me,” Dean says, handing the water to Sam.
He dips in his fingers, and using the picture of the back of the motel door as a guide, paints Castiel’s sigil onto the Chevelle’s weathered roof.
“You think that’ll work?” Sam asks skeptically.
Dean sighs. “Maybe? I’m gonna pretend it will, anyway.”
Only one thing left to do; Dean wipes down the interior of the Nova with one of the old shirts, making sure to get everywhere prints may have collected. His hand lingers on the hood after he closes the driver’s door for the last time-the clawed-up paint is no longer smooth and glossy, and there are fresh dents up and down the body.
“Sorry, girl. Guess you weren’t in as good hands with me as I promised.” He smoothes his palm over a particularly deep gouge over the left headlight. “Think of ‘em as battle scars, okay? You put up a real good fight for us.”
“Dean, if you’re done talking to the car, we should get out of here before the shift ends.”
“Shut up, Sam.” Dean swipes the t-shirt over the places he just touched, tosses it in the new car’s backseat, and climbs in. The exhaust is kinda loud-jackass owner should get that fixed.
He rolls cautiously out of the factory lot and points the car toward Chuck’s town.
-----
Dean doesn’t really know what to expect. The last time Castiel tried to fight off his kin, it left a warehouse a twisted, sparking ruin.
The town’s still there, though. It’s quiet in the grey early dawn, streetlights just starting to wink out, a few joggers and dogwalkers traveling the sidewalks. Dean drives slowly past the end of Chuck’s block and doesn’t see any gaping holes in the roofline or angelic light blinding everyone in a mile radius.
“Cops,” Sam says quietly. “Fly casual.”
“Always do, dude,” Dean mutters out of the side of his mouth, and rolls slowly past the unmarked car. The suits inside are too busy slurping from plastic-capped cups to pay him any mind. He drives another half-dozen blocks just in case, before turning left to work his way back to Chuck’s house.
They park the next block over and cut through the yard backing up to Chuck’s. Dean doesn’t have any concrete plan; how exactly do you take on a vengeful angel, anyway?
He’ll have to make it up as he goes.
The house is dark and quiet. Every window is blown out, although the houses to either side look undamaged. Sam nudges Dean and points-torn yellow caution tape is fluttering in the bushes out front, just visible around the corner of the house. “Something happened here,” Dean says. Glass crunches under his boots when he climbs the back steps.
He pulls open the empty storm door and shifts the crowbar he’s clutching to his shoulder, poised to swing. “You hear anything?” he whispers, and Sam shakes his head.
The house is a wreck inside. Furniture’s overturned, clutter lies in heaps below tilted shelves. There are shards of glass and plastic blown everywhere. Dean eases cautiously through the dim rooms, Sam nearly treading on his bootheels.
The kitchen is marginally neater. The window blinds are tangled on the counter and cupboard doors swing wide, revealing emptied shelves, but it looks as if someone made an attempt to sweep up. Dean checks behind a narrow door - it’s a broom closet - and then frowns as something on the fridge catches his eye. He touches his fingers to the metal door handle and finds it tacky with reddish-brown patches.
“Okay… Dean?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t freak, okay?” Sam says carefully.
Dean turns. Sam’s facing out toward the living room, and when Dean moves beside him, he catches hold of Dean’s arm and squeezes.
“Jesus fucking christ.”
“Take it easy, Dean.”
He’s not listening. He knocks Sam’s hand off with a hard shake and is across the room in three big strides, chest filling with a burning mixture of horror and something that might be fear if he’s honest about it.
The back wall’s splattered with streaks and droplets of red, crosshatched like someone flung brushfuls of it across the expanse. They cover the wall in a sick abstract all the way up to the cracked ceiling… except for a roughly human-sized blank space in the center.
“Fucking hell.” Dean stretches out a shaking hand, fingers running disbelievingly over a deep angular gash in the plaster. The edges fall away in soaked-red crumbs beneath the light touch. He raises blank eyes to his brother. “Was this… was Cas…?”
“We don’t know what happened yet, Dean.” Sam’s trying for soothing, but his heart’s racing so fast his voice comes out more pinched than reassuring. “It looks like Zachariah’s not here, at least. Let’s try and find Chuck.”
Dean stands for a second, shoulders sagging, staring at the nightmarish wall. Sam lays a tentative hand on his shoulder, and he explodes.
He wrenches free and windmills the crowbar up and around. Sam jumps out of range as the hooked end bites deep into the wall, sending out plaster shrapnel. Dean wrenches the tool free, tearing loose a huge chunk of wall, and slams it down again.
“Dean! Dean, stop! We gotta… Dean. Stop, okay?”
He tears out another ragged chunk and swings back into another wind-up, but instead of landing the blow, he lets the crowbar droop and he pitches forward onto the wall, head burying on his other arm.
Sam gently twists the crowbar out of his dangling hand. “Come on. Let’s find Chuck. And then we’ll find Castiel.”
Dean lifts burning eyes. “Will we?”
And Sam doesn’t have a ready answer.
Dean pushes past him, reclaiming his crowbar as he goes, and heads upstairs. He no longer bothers with caution, just charges up the staircase like he’s hoping to meet resistance and Sam can only scrambled along in his wake.
The hallway at the top is narrow and dark; a bulb-less lamp hangs from the shadowy ceiling. Four doors open off the corridor and Dean rips open the nearest-it’s a closet, the shelves half-full of dingy linens and blankets. The next is a bathroom, shards of mirror shining in the dawn light and punctuated by chunks of broken white porcelain.
Dean points at the door to the right along the hall as he heads toward the last door on the left. “You check there, I’ll take this one.”
He flings open the door to a bedroom that’s surprisingly sparse, considering the clutter downstairs. The ceiling’s fallen in, and the mattress has been dragged off the double bed and canted across the closet door where the lintel offers scant protection.
The door bounces off the wall and a bearded face pops up and starts screaming. “I didn’t touch him! I swear I didn’t! I did what you said and didn’t touch him!”
Dean lowers the crowbar. “Where’s Cas, dammit?”
Chuck blinks and his bleary eyes come into focus. “Dean?”
“Get outta there and talk to me. Was he here?”
Chuck crawls out of his makeshift fort, arm curled protectively around a thick brown bottle. “I thought you were Zachariah.”
“Do I look like that dick? Did he have Cas? What happened to him?”
Chuck sways until he topples over backwards onto the bent mattress, arms flying up to keep the contents of his bottle from jolting out. “He’s… he was… Don’t hit me, okay?”
Dean circles the bed and crouches down. “I’m not gonna hit you,” he says in measured tones. “Just tell me. Zachariah was here? And he had Cas?”
Chuck nods, fumbling his bottle to his lips. His eyes are damp and red and there’s a strong odor of too-sweet booze clinging to him. “Dragged him in from, dunno-somewhere. He tried to fight. But Zachariah… there was all this wind. And the blood… oh, god, so much blood!” He takes another slug from the bottle and then hides his face in his crooked elbow.
Sam appears in the doorway behind them, and when Dean glances up, shakes his head and mouths, ‘Nothing’. The seething heat in Dean’s belly chills down to ice. “I saw the blood. Where’s Cas now?”
Chuck shakes his head without lifting it. “Don’t know. He took off.”
“Took off flying?”
“No way.” Chuck wraps his other arm over his head. “Zachariah, he… oh, shit. There were feathers everywhere,” he moans, sending Dean’s stomach plummeting.
“Chuck, tell me what happened right. The fuck. Now.”
Beneath his sheltering arms, he’s still shaking his head. “He ran. Zachariah left to look for you and he got free and just went. That was… yesterday? Blood all over, so sliced up I don’t know how he was still standing.”
“Zachariah sliced him?”
“Yeah, to pieces. Put him against the wall and carved into him with the sword… He hit him, too, and tore…” Chuck makes a gripping, twisting motion with one hand, still with his head bent. “He screamed.”
And everything inside Dean sucks down into the black hole in his center. “Tell me you have some idea which way he went.”
The remoteness of Dean’s voice snaps Chuck’s head up finally, his eyes wide and wary. “He… he ran down the street. Went left, not right. Cut between the Lalor’s and the Mercer’s houses and then I couldn’t see him anymore.”
“Did the cops spot him?” Sam asks from the bedroom door, and Chuck drags his transfixed gaze off Dean and shakes his head.
“If they had, they’d’ve chased after him. They think I was running a meth lab out of my kitchen and blew it up the other night. They’ve been watching ever since.”
“Not watching too close if a bleeding guy can run out your front door without being seen.”
“It was dark. He was moving pretty fast for as messed up as he was.” When Dean’s eyes go even colder, Chuck flinches and fumbles for his bottle.
“But he was alive when he got out.” Dean rises abruptly and wheels around the bed, motioning Sam out ahead of him. “I’ll find him.”
He clatters downstairs, urging Sam through the house and out the back door again. “Come on, Sam, move it.”
“Dean, where are we even going to start looking? He could be anywhere.”
Dean yanks the car door open and tosses the crowbar into the back seat. “Hurry up.”
“Seriously, where?”
“He’s on foot,” Dean says, sliding into the driver’s seat and reaching for the wires dangling around his knees. “Hurt, bad, it sounded like.” The engine catches, and he revs it once, pulling the door closed impatiently.
“Okay, so, what? We drive in circles and hope we spot him?”
Dean’s hands are clamped tight on the top of the steering wheel. He leans forward and rests his chin on his white knuckles and closes his eyes. “After he tangled with the archangel, Cas mentioned ‘sanctuary’ a couple of times, like a place he could go to heal. What’s sanctuary usually, Sam?”
His brother’s face clears. “A church.”
“Yup.” Dean throws the car into gear and pulls away from the curb. “We need a list of every church in town.”
Sam leans over the seat to retrieve the laptop. “I’ll start searching.”
People worship a damn lot of ways, he thinks later. The Catholic and Episcopal churches are easy to find, and both are open, allowing Dean easy access. Once he’s checked the public areas, he works his way shamelessly through basements, storage rooms, and bell towers, dodging suspicious priests. The rest of the churches are locked up, in between services, and Dean starts breaking in. He picks locks at the Methodist and Baptist churches, and bashes in a small pane of glass to flip a deadbolt on the side door of the Faith Fellowship Bible Church. Sam watches his back, ready to run interference if need be, and once inside splits off from his brother to double the coverage.
The Presbyterian minister catches them about to kick in a basement window. “I’m looking for someone in trouble,” Dean tells him bluntly. “I think he’s tryin’ to hide in a church and I need to get in and look.”
“Please,” Sam adds, and thank god for soulful baby brother eyes, because the minister studies Sam’s earnest expression and the desperation radiating off Dean and then leads them around the building to unlock the door.
Castiel isn’t in that one, either.
It’s evening by the time they cover the last of the churches in and around town-a synagogue and a storefront chapel in a rough part of downtown. There’s no sign of a wounded, wandering angel in any of them.
Dean’s starting to unravel.
He sags on the side of the car outside another independent bible church, where they’d simply followed inside a stream of people reporting for choir practice. There’s a permanent crease between his eyes and his hands shake a little when he forgets to clench them. “I was sure he’d go for a church,” he says in a low, defeated voice.
“It was a good idea, Dean.”
He tips his head back to the darkening sky. “Where is he?”
“Hiding pretty deep, I guess.” Sam eyes his brother. “We need a new plan,” he says carefully, and when Dean doesn’t react beyond a weary nod, continues, “and I think we should get a room while we work it out.”
“Okay. Sure.” Dean pushes off the fender, slowly, like his joints ache. “Saw a place a couple of blocks from here.”
The room’s done up all in shades of blue, from the linoleum to the linens to the paint. Dean doesn’t find it either soothing or depressing, just notices that it’s cleaner than the last place and is grateful for small favors. He drops onto the bed by the door and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Chuck’s words won’t stop looping through his mind. “…feathers everywhere... carved into him with the sword… He screamed.”
“You think he’s dead, Sammy?”
Sam swings the door shut and sets his crowbar on top of the TV, flexing his cramped fingers. “No,” he says firmly, and Dean could hug his brother for being so positive. “He’s hiding. We just have to think where. But first, I’m going next door and getting us something to eat. There’s a sign that says laundry room, so if the machines are working, I’ll throw in a load of wash. We’re gonna eat, shower, and rest-and then we’re going to figure out where and angel would go to ground.”
Dean cracks an eyelid at the authoritative tone. “You okay to do all that?”
“Yeah. I’m a little shaky, but I’m doing better.” He tosses a bag so it lands beside Dean’s had. “Last pair of clean shorts are in there. Strip and give me your clothes.”
Dean rolls his eyes in resignation. “You’re bossy.”
“And you’re slightly less likely to sneak off while I’m out if you’re nearly naked. Drop ‘em, Dean.”
Later, hours later, after Sam brings back a sandwich and chips for him and a bagel he only picks at for himself, after he comes back again with an armful of warm, clean clothes, after Dean skims the news channels and Sam checks occult websites for new activity, Dean lies in bed and watches blocks of light from passing headlights slide across the dark ceiling. He’s bone-tired, but too wired to sleep.
Cas is out there somewhere. Torn to pieces all over again.
What the hell is it with angels going after their own brothers like that?
And Dean got him into this, with his ‘please help me stop Sam’ and ‘worth dying for’.
Dean’ll get him out of it. He will.
If he can only figure out where to look.
His mind is still poking at it when his exhausted body finally gives up and drops him into sleep.
Dean floats back to consciousness with relief already spreading warmly through the ache in his gut. “We forgot to check abandoned churches,” he says out loud to the dark room.
Sam’s sheets rustle as he rolls over, still wide awake despite the late hour. “Shit, you’re right. Why didn’t we think of that before? He wouldn’t want to hide out in an active church with people in and out.”
“But it would still be hallowed ground.” Dean flings back his blanket. “I’m gonna start checking online.”
There’s no centralized database for closed-down churches in Ohio, it turns out. By dawn, all Dean’s found is one story about a man who bought a long-empty church on Third Street and renovated it into a grand, albeit odd, private home, and another about a local D.A.R. chapter cleaning up a graveyard at an abandoned churchyard halfway to the next town. He scrawls down the location of the graveyard just in case and sits back, arms folded, frowning at the screen.
And Sam’s puking again.
Eventually the shower and sink faucets are shut off, not that the rushing water was covering the distressed noises from the bathroom anyway. Sam comes out and leans heavily in the doorway. “Any luck?”
“Not really.”
“So we check the library. They might have local history that isn’t online.”
“Okay.” Dean closes the laptop and rises, stretching, and then fixes Sam with a stern glare. “I heard you. How’re you doing?”
Sam rolls around the doorframe on one shoulder and reaches for a clean shirt, steadfastly avoiding Dean’s gaze. “Not great. But I can keep going.”
“Then pack up and let’s go. Time’s a-wasting.”
-----
The librarian reacts to Sam’s cover story of working on a photo essay on abandoned churches of the Midwest with mild interest, and searches out a handful of booklets and an old city directory printed by the local historical society. Sam settles at a public computer with Dean hanging over his shoulder, and starts cross-tracking locations with Google Maps.
“I’ve got that one already,” Dean says, jabbing a finger at the screen. “That’s the one with the graveyard clean-up.”
Sam swats his hand away. “Leave it. I want directions.”
He’s moving too damn slowly. Dean has to go pace the stacks to keep from shaking Sam until his head rattles. He’s doing his best, he’s just… methodical. Dean doesn’t want methodical, he wants fast, dirty results, he wants to be able to roar out to a boarded-up church and smash down the door and pull Cas out.
He wants to find him already, damn it.
The librarian is approaching Sam again, and Dean hurries back over. She’s holding a large, thin book, and when she reaches Sam, she spreads it open on the carrel beside him. A faintly musty odor reminiscent of Bobby’s house rises from the lightly foxed pages.
“I forgot about this one,” she says apologetically. “Though to be honest, I don’t know if you’ll want to visit it.”
A black and white photo shows a small clapboard church, the white-painted siding bright on a long-ago sunny day. A couple dressed in somber clothing and a stair-step line of children squint in front of polished double doors.
“What’s wrong with this one?” Sam asks.
“Kids kept breaking in, and then there was a fire a few years back. The fire department found evidence of devil worship inside.” She makes a face. “There was some fairly creepy graffiti on the walls, and there’s still reports of lights and chanting out there sometimes late at night. It’s pretty isolated and people mostly leave it alone. You probably don’t want to go out there.”
“Probably not,” Sam agrees, and Dean knows what he’s thinking-that a wounded angel wouldn’t seek sanctuary in a defiled church.
“Where is it?” he blurts, and when Sam and the librarian look up at him in surprise, he offers a weak grin. “You never know, it might be worth a look.”
Half an hour later, they’re prying peeling plywood off the back window of a brick building that looks more like a schoolhouse than the church it’s supposed to have been. The board cracks about halfway up the window, and together they fan it up and down until the wood splits raggedly, enough that they can fold it up and hoist themselves through the window.
Barely any light filters around the blocked windows. The floor sags alarmingly with every step, soft with dry rot. “We should’ve picked up flashlights,” Sam mutters.
It doesn’t take long to search, even with the lack of light. Interior walls have collapsed, leaving one big rubble-strewn space, open to the roof slates high above. Dean locates a door near where they climbed in, and he and Sam pitch aside chunks of plaster and boards and mortar until there’s enough room to force the door open.
Dank, musty air spills out of the pitch-black opening. “Don’t go down there without a light!” Sam exclaims, catching Dean’s arm.
He digs a lighter out of his pocket, and brushes Sam’s hand off. “Yeah, like I’ll just leave without checking.”
The whole staircase sways under his weight. Dean holds the light in one hand, the wall with the other, and inches down treads gone mushy with moisture. Water’s trickling somewhere and his boots sink into a thin layer of silty mud when he reaches bottom. He raises the lighter and the brick walls glisten in the flickering light.
“Cas? Cas, it’s me, Dean. You down here?”
The close, damp walls muffle his voice, but there’s nowhere for anyone to hide. It takes only a moment to pick his way around the cellar.
“He’s not here.”
“Then get out of there before you break your neck.”
Back outside, Dean scrapes his boots clean on the curb. “What’s next on the list?”
“That old graveyard west of here. According to the historical society survey, there’s nothing left of the church except foundations, but there may be a cellar he could lay low in.”
Dean tips his head back to the sky for a moment. “The devil-worship church is closer.”
“It’s also been used for devil worship. I think it’s a last resort, Dean.”
It should be the last resort-logically, he knows this. But… “I checked the map; as the crow flies, it’s pretty close to Chuck’s street.”
Sam tosses up his hands. “Fine, we’ll go there next! It’s a waste of time, though.”
“Maybe,” Dean mumbles as he slides back into the car. Still, something’s nagging at him and won’t let him be.
He snatches the directions out of Sam’s hand and flattens them onto the dash above the steering wheel.
-----
The church, when he finally locates it at the ass end of a dirt back lane, doesn’t look like a hotbed of dark arts. The siding has weathered to a chipped grey, and the tall windows have boards nailed securely across them, but there aren’t any pentagrams or the like spray-painted on the building. Dean pulls up next to an ornate iron fence that’s slowly being swallowed by the trunks of trees growing up along it and wonders if this too is going to be a bust. When he tugs apart the ignition wires, it’s so quiet he can hear the crows in the overgrown fields surrounding them.
Sam shoves his door open. “Come on,” he says impatiently. “Let’s get this over with.”
As they wade through the long grass in the churchyard, Sam taps Dean’s arm and points. Above one half of the padlocked double doors, a plain wooden cross has been nailed upside down.
“Don’t get your hopes up-he’s probably not here. The librarian was right, this place has been desecrated.”
Dean fits the end of his crowbar under the lock’s hasp. “I’m checking anyway,” he says stubbornly.
The screws pull free of the wood with a loud screech. Dean touches the knife in his belt and shoves the door wide.
It opens to a narrow vestibule, littered with pages torn from hymnals and two halves of a broken signboard announcing the last service, some sixty years in the past.
More torn pages are drifted across the floor of the sanctuary. The vaulted ceiling is open to the sky in the back corner, blackened joists poking through the roof slates, deep grey smudges climbing the wall where the fire had smoldered. Enough light spills through the gaps in the roof that Dean doesn’t need his lighter.
Sam circles the room, stepping carefully around overturned pews and studying the walls. “Do you see these symbols? They’re the real deal, not just kids goofing around.”
“I see ‘em,” Dean says shortly. He gets a better grip on his crowbar and eases down what used to be the center aisle, bending to poke at a tangle of shattered pews. There are gouges in the walls that suggest someone went on a bench-tossing rampage sometime in the past.
“Look at the altar,” Sam says quietly. A communion table has been turned upside down and a rough circle cleared around it. The cloth draping the top is crusted with wax, and when Sam steps up to touch a stained metal bowl left on it, his boots crunch on a scatter of small bones. He winces. “He’s not here, Dean. This place is steeped in the occult.”
“Which is why I thought Cas might’ve picked here to hide.” Dean pokes at a mass of wire and wood with the end of the crowbar. A few yellowed piano keys shake loose of the twisted mess and he kicks them aside. “Dark canceling out the light, y’know?”
“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Don’t think it panned out, though.”
“I’m gonna keep looking anyway.”
He works his way back around the room, looking for a door to a cellar or even a closet he may have missed. A choir loft stretches across the back wall, but the narrow staircase that led to it has been ripped free and lies buried in rubble from the crumbling wall. Dean turns to ask Sam to give him a hand in digging it out so he can prop the risers up like a ladder and check the loft, but for a second he doesn’t see him.
Sam has crouched down in the far back corner, next to a heap of blackened beams and roof slates where the ceiling’s caved in from the fire. As Dean starts to call him, he swivels around on his heels, and his eyes are wide with shock. “Dean, here!”
He’s clear across the church without realizing he’s moved, nearly knocking Sam over as he pushes in between him and the debris walling off the corner. Sam throws one arm out. “Careful, it’s kind of unstable.”
Dean barely hears him, because down behind the crumbling rafters, pressed tight to the angle where floor meets wall, is the one he’s been searching for. “Oh, god. Cas.”
His face is so battered his own brothers probably wouldn’t recognize him. He’s lost both shoes and a sock and he’s drawn his legs up close to his body. His shirt’s missing. Castiel is on his side with his arms wrapped tightly around his bare torso, so tightly Dean can barely see the faint rise and fall of his chest.
And the blood...
“What the fuck is this?” Dean hisses, panic rising at the sight of the livid markings carved everywhere on the pale skin, markings that are still seeping thin, nearly black blood, the rivulets streaking down to puddles on the floor. He reaches toward the symbol sliced into Castiel’s uppermost shoulder and Sam’s hand shoots out to intercept his.
“Don’t! Those are really wrong.” His face scrunches. “I can smell the demon blood mixed in with his.”
“Demon blood. Zachariah poisoned him with demon blood?”
“It’s for…” Sam breaks off. Dean pins him with a deadly glare, teetering on the thin edge of seething fury and full-blown panic. Sam scrubs his hand down his face and reluctantly continues. “It’s for taking someone apart. Certain sigils cut into the joints in a certain order, and when the last one’s in place, the soul cracks apart with the body.” He ducks his head away from Dean’s horrified gaze. “Watched Ruby do it once,” he mutters. “She wanted to send a warning to a rival band of demons.”
“Jesus.” Dean twists away from his brother. “A spell to dismember a soul.” He reaches down over the beams and very carefully lifts Castiel’s left hand from where it lies heavy and slack atop his other arm. “On top of that, this is a binding spell.”
Sam leans forward to peer at it. “It’s warped from the burns, but yeah, I think so.”
“I know so. I got a good look at the one Meg put on you.” Very gently he releases the blistered hand. “We’ve got to get the poison out of Cas’ system before it kills him.”
“Are you… Are you sure it hasn’t already?” Sam asks hesitantly. “This might just be Jimmy.”
“It’s Cas. Can’t you tell?” Dean frowns as he grasps the angel’s chin and starts to tip his head upward. “Cas? Hey, buddy. Can you…”
Castiel’s eyes snap open, wild and unfocused. He wrenches his chin from Dean’s fingers, flinging himself back in an uncoordinated scramble. Sam falls back as a rush of wind tosses one of the beams so it rolls down the heap, and then a harsh blast of sound knocks him even flatter.
Dean flies backward across the church, propelled by a gale-force punch of wind. One of the overturned pews breaks his fall, and splintering beneath his back as he smashes down.
“Dean!” Sam lunges for his brother, lying dazed and winded in the broken pieces. Behind him, Castiel lurches upright. He stumbles on the burnt debris, and then tries to step-turn-lift; he only pitches hard off the wall before crashing down in a tangle to the floor.
“Catch him!” Dean wheezes. He’s having trouble drawing breath, but when Sam reaches to help him sit up, he waves him off. “Before he hurts himself worse!”
Sam turns, just as Castiel drags himself to his feet once more, bent to one side with his arm clamped tight across his bleeding stomach. He pivots, confused eyes bouncing between Sam, advancing with hands spread wide, and Dean, choking back a groan as he rolls up onto his hands and knees.
Castiel half-turns, pushing his shoulder against the air; he pitches into the wall again, a short burst of angel voice piercing the air when he hits.
Dean’s suddenly beside him, clearing the collapsed beams and catching him just as he starts a lethargic slide down the wall, a smear of red trailing in his wake. They sink down to the floor, Castiel still trying to wrench away.
“Cas! Cas, it’s me, Dean. Wake up. I know you’re in there.”
“Dean, be careful…”
“It’s okay, Sam, he’s coming around. Cas, hey. Easy. It’s just me.”
He watches recognition seep slowly back into the blank eyes. Castiel blinks, and some of the coiled-wire tension eases; he’s heavy where he’s sprawled across Dean’s legs.
“Dean?”
“Yeah, we’ve got you now. Hang on, Cas. Just hang on, okay?”
Castiel’s blistered hand edges up and closes on Dean’s shirt, fingers twisting tight into the fabric. It’s way more literal than Dean intended him to take it, but he’s strangely okay with that.
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On to Chapter 5