The Devil You Know : Chapter 8
See part 1 for disclaimers.
Chapter 8
East will take them towards the ripples beginning to spread outward from Ilchester; west, towards Bobby, and if Dean can keep him from getting caught up in Zachariah’s maneuverings, he will.
North leads to Canada, and border crossings are just not something Dean wants to deal with today.
So Sam drives due south.
And yeah, Sam drives, not that Dean’s thrilled with that-he just got his Baby back, after all. But it can’t be helped.
He’s got his hands full in the back seat.
“Lean forward. Slowly. You hit that table pretty hard, I need to see if your shoulder’s out again. All right, it feels okay; back’s not bleeding either. Sit back now. Sit back, Cas.”
The little burst of energy that got him out to the car is depleted; each of Castiel’s motions are delayed, his reaction time dulled by shock. Dean flattens his hand on the angel’s breastbone to keep him from folding right over again, holding him against the seatback while he half-turns to reach the first aid kit spread open on the seat beside him.
“This is going to sting, but I need to clean it out. Don’t grab my arms, okay? I don’t want to spill the bottle. You want something to bite down on? No? Okay, take a deep breath, hang on to the armrest… I know, I know… It’s bad, I know, but you need the antiseptic… Shit. Hang on. Can you take another breath now? Breathe… Easy on the cornering, Sam! Jeez. Okay, Cas, almost done. Breathe in, real slow.”
Dean leaves him to the monumental task of pushing oxygen in and out of his lungs, just long enough to tear strips of adhesive tape off the roll and tack them within easy reach on the back of the front seat. “Hey. Tip your head back, let me see your eyes. Okay, you’re good.”
He isn’t, really. Castiel’s head keeps drifting forward, and then his shoulders follow, peeling away from the seat like he means to pitch head first into the footwell behind Sam’s seat. Dean eases him back again and tries to get him propped against the door.
His fingers don’t want to stay clenched on the armrest where Dean places them, and Castiel goes sagging forward again. The car’s motion isn’t helping, the sway of slight dips in the road magnified by Sam’s lead foot. Sam keeps flicking glances in the rearview mirror, too, drifting to the right as he does so and then pulling back into his lane with sharp little jerks when he looks back at the road. Dean knows he’s panicked, that the demon’s words brought back all his fears of being a freak, but he just doesn’t have time to talk him past it right now.
Most of Cas’ blood is in his lap, for christ’s sake.
Dean bunches another towel beneath the ragged hole. “This might hurt-I’m going to pinch it closed, tape it tight to hold the edges together,” he says. “Ready?” And Castiel dips his head in a tiny nod, so slight as to be unnoticeable to anyone not watching closely. But Dean’s watching, and so he starts, spreading his hand wide to draw the torn edges of skin inward with the pads of his fingertips. Castiel stiffens and presses back, presses deep into the seat with a creak of leather; and then he blows out a soft breath, eyes restless beneath heavy lids. A thick bubble of blood squeezes out of the hole torn by the demon and spills over Dean’s fingers.
From the front seat comes a harsh sound of protest; Dean glances up in time to catch Sam’s gaze in the mirror. “That’s seriously gross, man. You sure you don’t want to suture?”
“Eyes on the road, Sam.” Dean positions layers of gauze, edges them with streamers of tape. “I can’t stitch something this deep,” he mutters, as much in apology to Castiel as explanation to Sam.
“Don’t concern yourself about it,” Castiel murmurs back. “It is not as bad as it could have been.”
“Don’t see how.” The gauze is already spotted with bright red, and Dean tears open a packet of heavy, plastic-backed dressing.
“It intended to rip free my Grace.”
Dean winces, presses down. “You sound pretty sure for a guy who claims his angel powers are gone.”
“I…” Castiel blinks. “I could just tell,” he says slowly.
“Uh-huh.” Tape pulls free of the seatback with little popping sounds. “Probably because all that angel mojo is just blocked, not blasted out of you. Let me see your hand.”
The binding symbol is still barely visible beneath the split, blistered skin, but Dean shakes his head. “I dunno about this, Cas-I’m kind of scared it’ll pull a sneak comeback. I might still have to burn…”
The Impala hits a pothole with the force of a sledgehammer. Sam bounces high enough to whack his head on the ceiling, but the real impact slams up through the frame from the rear wheel. Dean feels it all the way to the marrow of his bones, the sickening crack of metal smashing roadbed.
“The hell, Sam!”
“It didn’t look that deep!” Sam yelps, but Dean barely hears him, because Castiel has gone a strange color.
As hard as the jolt was to Dean, it had to be astronomically worse for a guy with a freakin’ hole torn through him.
He sounds like he’s quietly strangling; his eyes are nearly rolled back in his head and his hand flexes helplessly against his lap, blunt nails scratching denim. Dean catches that hand, moves it to the hem of his own shirt, and Castiel’s fingers twist in the loose cloth until they turn white.
“Hang on, Cas. Dammit, I’m sorry, I know that hurt. Hang on.”
Dean works one hand behind Castiel’s neck and squeezes, thumb digging in to the rigid lines of muscle there, a counterpoint to the waves of pain wracking him.
Sam’s hunched over the wheel, radiating guilt. Fields whip past, broken by lines of trees and then the high concrete arches of a bridge. Dean rocks the base of the angel’s neck, murmuring, “Easy, easy, hang on,” while the miles roll past.
Finally Castiel’s thin, choked breaths even out; Dean hears him swallow, and he eases his tight grip. “Still with me?”
“That… that…”
“Nearly sent you into orbit, I know. Sam’s not gonna do that again; Sam’s gonna concentrate on the road and dodge the potholes,” Dean says pointedly.
“Sorry. I didn’t think it was that deep.”
“Just watch the road. You’ll screw up the suspension.” And the angel, Dean doesn’t add, because that should go without saying. He turns, carefully, so Castiel’s fingers aren’t dislodged, and digs through the duffels that have tumbled to the floor. Finally he unearths a silver flask.
“Here. I figure a little of this can’t do too much damage. Just a little-it’s strong.”
Castiel’s head snaps back as the pungent scent of whiskey hits his nostrils.
“One sip,” Dean urges. “It’ll take the edge off.”
It makes him cough, and that in turn causes him to tighten up with hurt, but after a long moment the tense line of his shoulders relaxes. “Better?” Dean asks.
“Some,” Castiel croaks.
“Good. Bend your elbow so I can tie your arm up, keep everything immobilized.” Dean pauses. “Cas?”
“Yes.” Another of those fleeting delays, and then his gaze jitters around the interior of the car until it lands on Dean. His eyes roll a little, and he grips convulsively at Dean’s shirttail again. “Oh. That’s like… diving.”
Maybe he’s getting the hang of angel-babble, because it doesn’t freak him out this time. Much. “You’re dizzy?”
“Yes, dizzy,” Castiel agrees, and Dean snorts.
“No more booze for you. Lightweight. Arm up, against your chest. I’m going to reach behind you and wrap this around; that too tight? Okay, lean back.”
He makes Sam pull over so he can climb out and get the angel stretched across the back seat, a canvas bag full of clothes beneath his head, a rolled-up jacket cushioning his wrecked side against the seatback.
“Still can’t reach the healing?” he asks, low, and Castiel shakes his head without opening his eyes. “It’s okay-it’ll come back.”
“Will it?”
Dean draws the blanket over him. “Cas, you heard that demon coming, didn’t you?”
His eyes startle open. “That’s not the same. They step between to travel; the sound the doors make behind them is distinctive.”
“Not to humans.”
Dean holds his gaze steadily while he lets the words sink in. Finally the bitter set of Castiel’s mouth relaxes; he doesn’t say anything else, but he gives a little nod and settles back, moving his shoulders carefully against the canvas bag a few times before stilling.
Dean backs out and gets into the front. Sam’s hands are knotted on the wheel; he’s hunched forward, glaring through the windshield with a whole mix of emotions stewing across his face-anger and impatience, but guilt, too. “You done fussing?”
“For now,” Dean answers evenly. The guilt must be winning; Sammy always did get pissed off when something made him feel guilty. “You okay to drive?”
“I’m fine. Jeez, a guy makes one mistake…”
“When Bela shot you in the arm, did I jostle you around?”
Sam huffs in annoyance, but as Dean slouches down in his seat, he notices that his brother pulls back out onto the road with extra care.
-----
Sam’s pacing through the close, red chamber, hands clasped behind his back. His feet make faint squelching noises with each step, and Dean’s stomach contracts. The rack is casting jagged shadows onto the walls, and when Sam pivots, they slice across his face in dark bands.
“Sam? What’re you… You don’t belong here!”
Sam smiles thinly, lips drawn tight against his teeth. “It’s okay. Where are we really?”
“You shouldn’t be here!”
“Where are we right now, Dean?”
This is a dream.
He yanks himself free of it, so hard that he physically jumps, knees flying up, hands flying out, all smacking the dashboard. Sam - real Sam - gives him a sideways look.
“You okay?”
“Fell asleep.”
“No kidding. You’re still having nightmares?”
“Didn’t know I had a time limit on them.” Dean rubs his faces, hard, and then scooches around so he can check their passenger. “Cas okay?”
“I guess so. He’s quiet anyway.”
It’s not a particularly helpful answer. ‘Quiet’ can mean bleeding out beneath the blanket, or not breathing, or leaking what’s left of his Grace out the corners of his eyes like tears. Dean pushes up so he can reach over the seat and tug aside the blanket.
Shit. He’s bled clear through the bandages already. “Pull over,” Dean snaps, and he swivels, hand on the door handle, poised to leap out the second Sam coasts to a gentle stop.
There’s so much blood.
The gauze is soggy with it, and the adhesive tape lifts easily when Dean peels it away. Castiel’s eyes open, leveling a thousand-yard stare that passes right through Dean. “I don’t want to,” he says, calmly, and then a string of words spills out, words that jolt deep in the pit of Dean’s stomach. Not Latin; maybe Aramaic, though some of the syllables remind him of ancient Persian, of a complex spell Bobby recited over a seriously displaced desert wind spirit once.
“Cas.”
Another burst of unearthly words is his only answer. Each shivers with silent resonance against the Impala’s steel bones. There are wards there, protections Dean placed within her when he rebuilt her, and he can feel the reverb of them with each word Castiel speaks.
The back door creaks open and the car dips as Sam squeezes in, bringing with him a gust of wind and highway noise. The shiver in the air is stilled beneath the rush of passing traffic.
“Here-towels from the trunk.” Sam pushes rough cloth into Dean’s hands, and he automatically lowers them to Castiel’s injury. “Will you be okay if I keep driving? Someone’s going to see us, and if the cops get involved…”
“Yeah, drive.” Dean crowds up onto the seat beside Castiel’s legs without easing the pressure on his shoulder, and Sam circles the car, slamming doors and trunk. “Find us someplace quiet, out of the way, where we can stop,” Dean requests when Sam slides back behind the wheel.
“Sure thing.”
Castiel has gone quiet again, eyes slipping shut without ever coming back into focus. Dean shifts one hand just enough to monitor the faint thump of the heartbeat while he holds the towel in place. He loses track of the minutes, of the turn-offs Sam takes, concentrating only on the slight rise and fall of the chest beneath his hands.
It’s nearly an hour later when the Impala slows. “How about that?” Sam asks, and Dean raises his head at last.
They’re in a rural, wooded area. No mailboxes are visible alongside the deserted stretch of two-lane road, and the only sign of civilization is a slate roof partially hidden behind a stand of pines. Overgrown bushes dip low across the lane leading to it.
“Looks promising,” Dean answers, and Sam cranks the wheel sideways.
A rusted glider is nearly buried under swaths of winter-browned grass on what used to be the front lawn; behind the house are the remains of a cement-block garage, its interior filled with the collapsed roof and door. Sam pulls the Impala in beside it and cuts the engine.
“I’ll check the house,” Dean says, and Sam snorts.
“I’ll check the house-you stay with him.”
“Be careful. You have a gun? Take a flashlight, too…”
“Dean. I got it.”
Sam disappears around the corner. Dean can still hear him, thumping on the door and then prying at it, wood splintering with sharp cracks in the silence.
The angel’s quiet. Dean holds on and waits.
-----
They’ve traded clean comfort for a hidden bolt-hole, but they can make do for a few days. They’ve roughed it in abandoned buildings before.
Just… not with a guy who might be dying by slow, strange degrees.
Whoever lived in the house seems to have picked up and left one day with whatever they could carry and not much else. There are no clothes in the dressers or photos on the walls; the medicine chest in the water-stained bathroom is empty. But furniture remains, and appliances-tables and chairs, a few mouse-gnawed couches, an empty, stagnant refrigerator. Curtains, thin with dry rot, hang over the glassless windows.
Cats have gotten into the bedroom; there’s still a mattress on the bedframe, but it’s not fit to touch. Sam manages to scrounge up enough couch cushions for a couple of makeshift beds, and to break up the oldest furniture to get a fire going in the fireplace.
“Four planes, a commuter jet, and a news helicopter fell out of the sky around Atlanta,” Sam reports when he comes back in from the car, carrying armloads of gear. He lets it all slide down onto the gritty floor. “Radio’s calling it ‘unprecedented wind shear’, but I don’t think so.”
“Probably not.” Dean dribbles salt in a thin line across the last windowsill, unsheathes his knife, and rolls up his sleeve. “Move-I need to mark the door.”
“How many times have you bled yourself?”
“A few. Move.”
“Can’t you use water like on the car?”
“Blood’s stronger than even holy water for some things. Move, Sam. I don’t want angels breathing down our necks.”
Sam shifts aside reluctantly. Blood’s already welling from a fresh gash across his brother’s forearm, and he watches Dean dip his fingers into it. “You’re going to make yourself sick for him.”
“I’m not even down a pint. And just remember this is keeping your ass hidden, too. Now go see if there are any pots left in the kitchen.”
-----
The only light comes from the red glow of the embers in the fireplace; once Sam dropped off to sleep, Dean switched off the lantern to save the battery. Weapons are spread around him in a compact arc, and he reassembles the last gun mostly by touch, metal parts sliding together with smooth clicks.
There’s something up in the crawl space under the eaves. The stealthy skitter of claws on rough wood sends an uncomfortable shiver down his spine with every scurry overhead. Dean places the cleaned gun at the end of his line-up and cradles a whetstone in his hand, hoping the soft scrape of his favorite knifeblade across it will drown out the rodents.
Blankets rustle beside him; he drops the stone and slides over. Castiel’s eyes gleam up at him in the firelight.
“Hey. About time you woke up. You were starting to scare me, buddy.”
“S’ry.” His voice is the merest wisp of sound, and it breaks off into dry, rasping coughs that rattle his frame.
“Don’t try to talk. Lemme sit you up so you can take a drink.”
There are bottles of water weighing down one of the duffels; Dean snags a couple, guides one into Castiel’s shaking hand. “Slowly, don’t gulp. I don’t need two puking patients to deal with.”
He swallows, breathes out a long, shuddering gasp. “Sam?”
“Doing okay, actually.” Dean steadies the angel’s wrist as he raises the bottle again. “Going through another long stretch without symptoms. Seems to be sleeping pretty easy right now.”
“This is good.”
“Yeah. Sit back, okay? You feel like you’re going to shake apart.”
A branch crumbles into glowing coals, sending a whirl of sparks up the chimney. Castiel inches backwards, strain flickering across his face, until the fieldstone fireplace is bracing his back. He lets his head tip back to rest against the stones. “I am sorry to worry you. You have enough concerns, with Sam.”
“Finish your water.” Dean turns aside to collect the arsenal fanned across the floor. “I watch your back, you watch mine when you can,” he mutters, shoving guns into the duffel. “There’s soup left over-you want me to heat it up for you?”
“Thank you, no.” Castiel watches Dean finish packing away the weapons, tucking knives into the loops sewn in a side pocket. When he reaches for the Lucifer sword, Castiel holds out a hand. “May I?”
Dean lays it carefully across the other’s lap. “Rinsed it down with holy water and then stuck it in the fire. I’m guessing it’s clean, but it’s probably not a good idea to stick ourselves with it.”
“No, best not.” Castiel is turning it over slowly, one-handed. “You will need this; keep it close. If anything should happen, do not let it fall into enemy hands.”
Ember light catches the sword, causing it, Dean notices uneasily, to glow as if the blade is forged of flame. “You still believe I can kill Lucifer with it.”
“Of course.” He raises it, and the light flashes along its length, from garnet to amber and back again. “The question is, should you.”
“I thought that was my whole purpose, my destiny, to destroy Lucifer.”
“That is Zachariah’s plan.” Castiel’s arm begins to tremble, and he lowers the sword to his lap again. Behind him, a chunk of firewood hisses as sap boils out of a deep crack; the low sizzling noise is the only sound for a long moment. “Fulfilling it will bring the End Times he desires. Paradise-but only for those few who remain.”
Fitful reddish light and deep shadows play across his face as he stares into the flames. The image nudges at a locked-down niche in the back of Dean’s mind. He pushes down a sudden irrational urge to seize the angel’s chin and yank his face away from the fire.
“So what am I supposed to do then?” he demands angrily. “We can’t just leave Lucifer to run roughshod over the earth.”
“No.” Castiel rolls his head back and the disquieting illusion of Hellfire is swallowed by the gloom. “I believe… we need to inter Lucifer in his keep once again.”
“The door’s open.”
“There are other chambers. Ways to strengthen the doors.”
“And I’m supposed to do it? With this?” Dean plucks up the sword and holds it aloft between them. “Cas. C’mon.”
“I have confidence that you can succeed.”
“Zachariah said it took an archangel to stuff Lucifer into his cage last time.”
“Then we will have the element of surprise at least.”
“Jeez. You really think you’re funny now, don’t you?”
“I am not joking. Lucifer is bound to seek you out eventually, out of curiosity for the one foretold to kill him, if nothing else. I still know the locations of the prison doors. We will be ready for him.”
“Yep, you think you’re funny.”
Dean turns and stuffs the sword into the duffel along with the other weapons. On the far side of the fireplace, Sam makes a muffled grumbling noise, not quite wakened, but disturbed on some level by their voices. His feet scrape, restless and irritable, against the floor where they overhang his too-short pile of cushions. The air pouring through the broken windows is damp and chilly and Sam huddles his arms tighter around himself, subsiding back into deep sleep with a last cranky mutter.
Castiel is staring into the fireplace again. A breeze slips in the window; it rustles the bushes growing up through the empty frame and stirs the embers into renewed flames. Castiel shifts his shoulders on the stone wall, lifting his face skyward as the breeze ruffles his hair.
“So you knew all along where Lilith would open Lucifer’s cage?” Dean jabs at the flickering coals with another scavenged branch.
“No.” Castiel lowers his chin; the flash of firelight on his eyes, bright in the red, mobile light, triggers another twinge in that uncomfortable place in the back of Dean’s mind. “Zachariah didn’t tell me much. I discovered by chance that she was the final seal while looking at a volume left unattended. I did intend to warn you, but I was being watched more closely than I suspected.” His gaze slips away to the side. “I was not told of Ilchester until the final hours, after I released Sam and Zachariah was assured of my rehabilitation.”
Those appalling hours in the Green Room come back to Dean in a sick rush-his dawning horror, the utter frustration of Castiel’s stony coldness. His terror when the cracks in the angel’s impassive armor closed over again and his last hope of saving Sam vanished.
And then the unthinkable rekindling of that hope, when, despite everything, Cas had come through for him.
An angel, for him.
Dean tosses the branch onto the fire, bending to catch that turned-aside gaze, until reluctantly, the angel’s guilt-ridden eyes are drawn back to his.
“Zach really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
Castiel’s mouth twists. “He was… adamant… his plan succeed.”
“'Adamant' - that’s the ten-dollar word for ‘rip you apart until you’re back in line’?”
“I was not in my vessel, so…”
“So, what? It doesn’t count?” Dean’s voice rises, and he breaks off, glancing over at Sam. His brother snorts loudly and flails once before settling down again. Dean scoots closer to the angel. “Tell me what Zachariah did,” he hisses.
The fire pops quietly. Castiel’s gaze flutters up, across the ceiling and off to the side, past Dean’s ear and out around the room. His shoulders shift restively against the stonework until Dean lays his hand weightily in the center of his chest and stills him.
“It no longer matters,” Castiel murmurs, still not meeting his gaze.
“I know what he did to you in Chuck’s house, and what he worked to make Sam do. I’d like to know the complete list of his crimes.”
“It was correction, not a crime…”
“Cas. Tell me, so I know what all he’s answering for when I kill him.”
“Without divine intervention, humans cannot kill angels.”
“I sure as hell can try.”
Dean’s hand is firm on his chest, his gaze equally firm on the head bent before him. Finally Castiel’s shoulders slump infinitesimally. “In the Repository are entire catalogs housing the myriad torments humanity has devised for his fellow creatures. Zachariah had millennia of ingenuity to choose from.”
“Wait-are you saying he made you watch people torturing and slaughtering each other?” Ice pours down Dean’s spine; his fingers tighten involuntarily, pressing deep into the angel’s skin.
“I was made to live them,” Castiel says gently. “Zachariah bound my Grace, lined up the moments he’d selected, and pushed me in. When I finally emerged at the far end, I was quite convinced the most compassionate thing we could do for humanity was to put it out of its misery.”
Dean’s frozen, staring in horror at the wearied angel before him. “That… that’s twisted,” he whispers at last. “Heaven borrowing from Hell to break one of their own?”
“Not quite-Hell first borrowed the ideas from Earth.”
Dean sinks back slowly, his hand dropping away. “If that’s the case, how did you ever change your mind? How can you believe we’re still worth saving after what Zach put you through?”
Castiel’s shoulders twitch in a slight shrug. “I found you more convincing than Zachariah, Dean Winchester.”
The calm statement rocks him to his core. “Shit, Cas, are you crazy? Don’t… dammit, don’t put your faith in me.”
The angel’s watching him unblinkingly in the dim light. “Too late.”
Dean surges up and around the room with an agitated stride. Capture Lucifer-a job for holy warriors, and this beat-up fugitive from Heaven’s ranks is confident he can do it. He circles the decrepit living room again, his footsteps startling the rodents in the ceiling into panicked skitters.
“I’m not expecting you to do it alone, you know. I will… have your back, as you say. Perhaps we can recruit others to our cause as well.”
Dean circles back and crouches by the angel’s side. He’s shaking harder now, and despite his resolute tone, his eyes are struggling to stay open. “You’re pretty out of it. The bleeding’s slowed way down, but you’ve still got a hole punched clean through you. Scoot back over and lie down.”
Castiel searches his face for a moment, while this time it’s Dean who steadfastly refuses to meet the other’s eyes, busying himself instead with checking the bandages swathing his shoulder. Dean’s braced for more argument - or pep talk or whatever the hell Castiel is trying to inspire in him - but the angel only shakes his head.
“I would like to sit up for a while. I’m awake; I may as well keep watch so you can get some rest.”
“You sure? Gotta be honest here, you don’t look all that alert.”
“If I grow too weary, I’ll wake you. I ache too much at the moment for more sleep.”
Dean winces. “At least lean on the cushions, okay?” He stretches, catches a corner of the burst and leaking couch cushions, drags them over. “Hold my arm and lift up; okay, ease back down. Now bend forward so this one can go behind your back. And take the blanket before you freeze.”
When the angel’s settled, Dean tosses a duffel full of clothes to the floor in front of the hearth; it makes a lumpy pillow, and he can’t even pretend the floorboards are comfortable, but it’s not the worst place he’s ever sacked out. He shoves at the canvas until he’s worked a hollow for his head into it and leans back, crossing one ankle over the other. “Don’t let the mice run across me.”
“Of course not.” A faint thread of amusement colors Castiel’s voice. Another breeze rustles through the bushes, and Dean folds his arms over his chest and closes his eyes.
-----
The corridors are dim, reeking and claustrophobic. Walls and floor have a barely perceptible inward slope, lending the impression of being sucked slowly down into a deep vortex. He veers abruptly off the main path into a side corridor, but within seconds finds it curving around, leading downward to the pit once more. Dismayed, he wrenches around, putting the red glow to his back, and finds another passage, one that leads marginally upwards.
He rounds a corner studded with the gleaming white knobs of vertebrae, but by the third step realizes the floor is spiraling lazily downward again.
The walls ripple with reflected red flowing into depthless black; from within the deep shadows a figure detaches itself and strolls toward him.
It takes him a second to recognize Sam’s features on the oddly squat body; when he does, his heart - the scooped-out spot where his heart used to be - contracts violently.
“Sam. You can’t be here!”
A smirk curls his lip. “I know the way out, if you just tell me where we are really.”
“How did you get here?”
“Followed the screams. You can follow me out, Dean. Just tell me where you saw me last.”
Overwhelming horror nearly cuts his legs from under him. He reaches for his brother and Sam shuffles sideways, smiling a strange little smile as he keeps his brother at arm’s length. “Where did you leave me?”
Back in the abandoned house. Is this his subconscious trying to remind him Hell’s hallways are only a nightmare for him now? Sam’s not prowling the Pit with him, he can’t be.
The oozing walls blur and lighten and he’s standing in the center of the dilapidated living room again, in a circle of ruddy light thrown by the fireplace. The pile of duffel bags is a dark smudge at the right edge of his vision and Sam beams at him from across the firelit space. He spreads his hands and then clasps them at his waist with a clap of too-soft flesh.
“See? I told you this is how we get out.” Still beaming that pleasant smile, Sam casts another leisurely look around the room. “Where is this house, anyway? I need to know, to keep us topside.”
His throat clogs with panic. His attention had been taken up by a bleeding angel, not exit signs. He remembers a fleeting glimpse of a road sign for a national forest, and…
Pain explodes in his ankle. He looks down at his feet but his feet aren’t there. The room swirls and tips and there’s a second burst of pain and no wonder he can’t find his feet, he’s lying on his back with his legs stretched out, not upright with them under him…
“Dean. Dean.”
It’s dawn. Dawn and he’s blinking up at the mildew-speckled ceiling and Castiel is kicking his ankle, hard.
“Dean, wake up.”
“Jeez, dude, what the hell?” Dean jerks his feet aside and rolls to a sitting position. Castiel is staring worriedly at him, half-fallen off the cushion from his efforts to rouse Dean. “When I said wake me, I meant call out, or give me a nudge.”
“You were dreaming.”
“Yeah, I was.” The suffocating dread of the nightmare swells again, and Dean’s irritation fades. “Uh, thanks, I guess.”
“You were dreaming.” Frowning, Castiel hitches closer, his movements made clumsy by the arm bound to his chest, and he searches Dean’s eyes. “Too deeply. Too…” He grimaces, free hand cutting the air in a gesture of frustration.
“Just another nightmare of Hell Sweet Hell,” Dean says with forced lightness. He shoves to his feet. “Gonna answer nature’s call and then scrounge up some breakfast. Here; while I’m outside, drink this water-you need to replace all that fluid you lost yesterday.”
“Dean…”
“Oh my god, can’t you wake up quietly?” Sam groans from his pile of cushions. He pulls the coat he’s been using as a blanket over his head and his distressed bleating noises follow Dean out the door to the dew-soaked yard.
He’s crouched on the hearth when Dean returns, making pissy-faces at the dying coals he’s just smothered under a too-large chunk of wood. Dean hates camping, and Sam sucking at woodscraft is just one of the reasons why. “Leave that,” he orders, setting down a shoebox he’s brought in from the trunk and elbowing Sam aside. There’s a coating of ash all over his boots and the bricks and hanging in the air around the fireplace opening, along with the acrid smell of smoke.
Sam growls something under his breath that Dean just ignores as he nudges the firewood back out of the coals. Sam’s shoving his arms into his jacket with sharp angry motions and he jerks his chin at Castiel. “Your angel gets really twitchy when you leave the room. You might wanna teach him to lengthen the tether.”
“Go pee, Sam. You’ll feel better.”
Dean doesn’t look up as his brother huffs out the door. He just concentrates on rebuilding the fire, scraping ashes out of the grate, slipping twists of old receipts fished from the depths of his pockets beneath the scant embers. “Sorry about that.”
He sees Castiel’s shoulder lift in a slight shrug. “Sam’s discomfort is understandable. Demon blood is extremely toxic.”
“I’m okay going outside, you know. I’m careful.”
“You cannot let your guard down for even a second.”
“Believe me, I know. Lucifer’s got a big ol’ neon target pasted on my back.” A thin line of flame is creeping along the twisted paper, and Dean tucks dry twigs in beside it, blowing gently until they ignite. Castiel flicks a sharp glance up at him, and he grins. “Figure of speech, Cas.”
“Yes, of course.” The angel turns the empty water bottle in his hands, seemingly intent on the print on the label. “I’m actually more worried about Zachariah at the moment.”
“Zach? We gave him the slip. Got that bloodspell to keep us out of sight.” Carefully, Dean crisscrosses thin branches over the strengthening flames and then sits back on his heels while he waits for them to kindle.
“It is not infallible.”
“Yeah, I know. I won’t get too dependent on it.” Dean cocks his head. “What is it, anyway?”
“Enochian.” The angel bends one knee, drawing his leg in so he can shift his weight forward in careful increments. He traces his finger in a circle through the ash and dust on the floor. “Within. For the place to be protected. These…” and he crosses it with a diagonal grid of lines, “…give order to the wards.” He swirls one of the now-familiar symbols Dean has been drawing for days into the top space. “Eyes. And directly below, reflect. Or mirror, or cast back, the meanings are flexible.”
A gust of wind smudges the dust-drawn lines, announcing Sam’s return. He stares down at the pair hunched over the hearth with the sigil between them. “Is there coffee?”
“Workin’ on it, Sam.”
“I can see that. I’m starving, Dean.”
“Got your appetite back, good. Look in that brown paper bag over there, that’s where I stashed the groceries.”
There’s a sustained bout of rustling behind Dean, as if Sam’s trying to crawl into the bag instead of extract packages from it. “To veil,” Castiel says softly after a quick glance at Sam, and Dean leans close again as he swirls another symbol into the center space. “Or else shroud, either is valid.”
Then a loud rattling interrupts the lesson as Sam holds up the cereal box he’s dug out and shakes it. “No milk, I guess?”
“I’ll pop down to the corner market and pick up a quart,” Dean says, exasperated. “Can you eat it dry for once?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yeah, you can go find a store. I’m not even sure where we are.”
The fire’s burning hot enough now to heat water; Dean fills a pot from one of the water jugs and sets it into the coals. Sam’s crunching his way through the cereal one handful at a time, fooling with the laptop balanced across his knees and grumpily occupied for the moment. Dean reels in the shoebox from the Impala’s trunk and riffles through the contents.
“Here we go-topographic map of the U.S.” He unfolds it and flattens it to the floor in front of Castiel; the angel visibly perks up and leans over, studying it with interest. “Can you point out where the cage doors are?”
It takes him a minute, scrunching his eyes and tilting his head, before his expression clears. “Ah, I see. This representation is very different from an actual view from above.” His finger comes down near the East Coast and taps once. “You know this one-St. Mary’s, Ilchester.” Castiel slides his finger up the map. “But here, also.”
Dean bends closer. “North Jersey?”
“Clifton.” His finger slides northward. “And here.”
“Watertown, New York.”
“Outside it, actually. Along the Black River by the village called Philadelphia.”
Dean barks out a laugh. “Another city of brotherly love. Nice.”
Castiel continues on down the map. “Detroit. Near Knoxville. Lake Ouachita.”
“Wait, wait, go back. Knoxville?”
Castiel traces a circle over eastern Tennessee. “Not in the city, it’s just the nearest large marker. Nearby.”
“Hold on.” Dean twists, pulls another map from the shoebox, flaps it open, and spreads it overtop the first. “Tennessee. Show me.”
Another head-tilt, and then, “Here.” His finger comes down close to a small dot labeled Maryville, in a swatch of green that’s part of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
“That one’s within easy driving distance of where we are now-where I think we are now. Sam? Where are we?”
His brother’s staring at them, a fistful of cereal rings halfway to his mouth. “What are you two talking about?”
Dean takes a deep breath, and when he lets it out, he’s smiling coldly. “The place we need to go next-the place where we might be able to cage up Lucifer again.”
-----
Maps are spread across the floor in rustling layers. Dean’s frowning over them and Sam’s working on a page of notes gleaned from satellite photos, chamber of commerce websites, and archives of Appalachian lore.
“There’re a lot of ghosts walking those hills, apparently,” Sam says.
Dean glances up from the pages of the journal. “Dad has some notes in here, too, nothing specific, but he mentions the Smokys as a hotspot for spirits.”
“Nothing about Heaven’s prison doors?”
“Nope; but he copied down a story about a colonial settlement being taken over by mass ‘possession by dark imps’-the people went nuts and vanished into the mountains and left the village to rot. Dad got the story from an old hill woman; says it was passed down to her from her great-grandmother.”
“And the settlement was in the spot Castiel pointed out?”
“Doesn’t say. Nobody ever came back to rebuild, and the exact location got lost over time.”
“Huh.” Sam’s got a bag of pretzels propped on his hip and a jar of peanut butter clamped between his knees, and he absently dips a pretzel in the jar before stuffing it in his mouth. “Ghosts and demons and a town in the wrong place that got removed.” He crunches loudly for another moment and shrugs. “We’ve investigated places on less.”
“Yeah.” Dean slides a couple of maps closer, lining them up in geographical order. “You said we’re still in Illinois?”
“A little southeast of Shawnee National Forest.”
“We’ll need to get back on the interstate. Head to Nashville, then take I-40 to Knoxville. We can be in the area by the end of the day.”
“Today?” Sam asks, startled, a puff of pretzel crumbs spraying out as he speaks.
Dean glances back at Castiel, curled loosely on the musty cushions and seemingly asleep again. “Nah. We’ll be okay here for another night. We’ll hit the road first thing in the morning.”
-----
Sam’s seated across from him in the sole armchair, legs outstretched, hands folded on his stomach. He seems mesmerized by the crackling fire, but he smiles fondly without looking up when he feels his gaze land on him.
“You see? As long as I know where we are, I can keep us out of Hell.” Sam raises his eyes then, and they glint small and bright in the firelight. “Where is this house located?”
“Why’re you asking me? You’re the one who drove us here, Sammy.”
The walls flush with a reddish cast. As he watches, they soften and darken, and his heart jolts when a clot of blood the size of his fist oozes down the wall beside the fireplace. The mantel is suddenly crowned with rib bones, bristling pale in the now-lurid light.
“I need to know, Dean, to keep us out!” Sam’s words are urgent, but his tone has a flatness to it as if he’s reciting lines.
Because this is a dream. It’s not Hell, it’s only a dream.
Before he can wrench himself out, Sam’s chair dissolves in a mist of blood and bone. His brother tips over onto the floor and shoves himself desperately backwards on hands and heels, his face contorted in terror. “They’re coming! Don’t let them take me, Dean! Tell me where we are so I can get us out of here!”
Nails skitter along bone pathways, drawing nearer out of the darkness. Deep visceral dread fills him, and an image flashes unbidden in his mind’s eye.
The last place he knew for certain where they were-the Illinois highway seen from the Impala’s backseat, a flash of road sign, the words Shawnee National Forest, next exit barely registering before his attention is turned elsewhere. Blood is slick beneath his palm as inertia drags them through a long turn. The exit ramp narrows down into a two-lane road that carries them deep into the countryside.
“Dean, hurry!”
A heartbeat is fluttering erratically under his hand and he can’t watch the road right now, so to save Sam, he blurts, “We’re in Illinois, a little southeast of Shawnee…”
Sam’s face blinks from terrified to elated. The blood-soaked chamber melts away to the interior of the Impala, the overgrown lane leading to the abandoned house visible through the windshield…
“Dean! Wake up!”
A huge jolt snaps through Dean. A hand is gripped tight on his shoulder, digging in so deeply his skin burns. Sam’s face is bled of color for a split second - pale eyes, pale hair, pale mouth parting angrily - and then the image is gone, replaced by Castiel’s face inches from his.
Another hard shake rocks him. “Dean, wake up, now,” Castiel insists, voice ringing with command.
“Dude, I’m awake.”
“You weren’t.”
“That’s kind of the point - night, sleep - humans need it.”
Castiel’s mouth goes tight, worry creasing his forehead. “You were dreaming.”
“I know.” Dean catches the angel’s arm, giving it a little jiggle, and Castiel reluctantly loosens his grasp and sits back on his heels. “They’ve gotten worse lately, but shit, no wonder, right? Don’t sweat it, Cas.”
Castiel shakes his head. “No, you don’t understand. The dreaming, it’s too deep. You are… too still. Too quiet. It isn’t usual, of the times you suffered these dreams before.”
He’s agitated, shoulders twitching, eyes flicking to the window where the curtains are shifting in the breeze, then back to Dean again. He makes an impatient noise in the back of his throat.
”Okay, sit down before you fall over.” Dean presses on a tense shoulder until Castiel huffs out a breath and thumps down onto the floor. “Take a deep breath-seriously, Cas, you’ve got the shakes. Another. Okay. Now tell me what the problem is. Take your time.”
A sudden spatter of raindrops startles another twitch from him. “We don’t have the luxury of time. Dean, quickly-tell me what you’ve been dreaming.”
His intensity stirs a deep disquiet in the pit of Dean’s stomach. “What else? Hell. I’m down in the Pit again.”
“Who is with you?”
“How did you…? Sam, okay? Somehow I dragged Sam down with me.”
“It’s not Sam.” Castiel pushes close, fixing Dean with a quietly frantic gaze. “Someone is walking in your dreams.”
Dean rears back. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I tried - I cannot - I could only wake you.”
“Then how do you know someone’s in there?” His stomach goes into a slow, churning roll, and Dean rubs at the back of his neck, prickling with cold sweat.
“You shudder in your sleep when Hell invades your dreams. Your legs move, and you lash out.” Castiel’s eyes flick down to Dean’s hands, which had clenched tight as soon as the angel began to speak. He lowers his voice. “You curse, and your own shouts wake you if the nightmare continues long enough.”
“You know all that about me?” Dean asks, low.
Castiel gestures with his unbound hand. “You were my charge, Dean.”
He shakes his head, not wanting to examine that too closely. “So how was this different?”
“You became very, very still. Silent. I heard the change in your breathing as you sank into the angel’s construct.”
“An angel’s doing this?”
“We are the only beings who can build realities from a distance. Dean, what is Sam doing while in these dreams?”
Dean’s eyes fall shut in dismay. “He’s asking where we are.”
Castiel shoves gracelessly to his feet, snatching for Dean’s shoulder again. “Did you answer?”
“Yeah, I… shit. Kind of. I told him the last place I remembered for certain.”
“So he’s close. We need to leave, now. Get your brother up.”
“Who could sleep through all this talking?” In the shadows on the far side of the fireplace, Sam sits up on his cushions. “Who’s coming? Lucifer?”
“Possibly. But I suspect Zachariah or one of his followers. Someone who knew to search through dreams for actual memories of Hell, and then to track those to Dean. We must go.”
Rain pelts Dean full in the face when he yanks open the door. By the time he shoves the others into the car, all three of them are soaked. He plunks the weapons bag into Sam’s lap. “Find the sword. I’ll be right back.”
“Dean, we should not linger,” Castiel says urgently from the backseat.
“I won’t be long.”
He circles the living room, camp lantern raised high and casting oblique shadows on the walls. They’ve left nothing behind but the blood symbol on the door. Dean scrapes his boot through the smudged sigils on the hearth and bends to stir the coals-the blood-soaked bandages and towels have been burned to ash so no trace remains.
He leaves the house to the scurrying rodents and ducks through the rain to the Impala.
-----
Rain pounds the car as they flee through the night. The wipers thump rapidly, barely able to keep up with the downpour. Dean hunches forward, peeling his wet shirt off the upholstery, before touching the sword on the seat beside him to reassure himself of its presence. He glances at the rearview mirror to catch Castiel’s eye.
“Will the protection on the roof hold up through this?”
“Not indefinitely. It will eventually erode.”
“Can you tell if it’s still working?”
“Yes.” The angel sounds surprised he hasn’t lost the ability. He tilts his head back, gazing up at - or maybe through - the car roof.
“Tell me when it starts to go.”
“I will.”
They drive on. Sam flounces from side to side, pulling at his damp jeans and flannel until Dean cranks the heat and he dries off enough to stop fussing and play with the radio. The all-night news stations are still talking about the air crashes in Atlanta, mixed with breaking reports of a wildfire now devouring parts of Maine. The newscasters are arguing, tossing out theories that grow wilder the longer they chatter. When one of them brings up aliens, Dean points at the radio.
“Find some music or turn it off.”
It’s near dawn when Castiel stirs in the backseat. “Dean.”
“Okay. I’ll find a place to stop.”
Half an hour down the road is a rest stop, deserted in the pre-dawn storm. Sam grabs a duffel and groans his way out of the front seat. “Oh, thank god, running water! Don’t rush, Dean, I’m dying to wash up and change.”
The car is silent save for the drumming rain and the tick of the cooling engine. Sam’s sloshing footsteps recede and the restroom door thump-thumps behind him. Dean draws a long, slow breath and lifts up on one hip to slide his knife free.
“Where should I paint it?”
Castiel regards him with regret. “You won’t like this.”
“On the ceiling, huh?”
“I am afraid so.”
“Gotta be done,” he sighs. The dressing around his forearm rips free. Dean half-turns to prop his arm on the seatback; he presses the blade to his skin. Castiel sits forward, free hand sliding beneath Dean’s arm to catch any spilled blood.
The curving lines and symbols take shape rapidly beneath his slick fingers. Dean arches back, reaching to trace the bottom-most glyph, and Castiel shifts with him, spread hand guarding the upholstery.
Dean presses a sticky thumb to the outer edge, three nearly-overlapping dots forming an equilateral triangle, and Castiel’s whisper stirs the underside of his outstretched arm. The symbol seems to shimmer for a second, but when Dean blinks, the lines lie motionless and flat once more.
“What was that? Should I have been saying it too?”
The angel shakes his head. “Gemeganza,” he repeats. “It means ‘Your will be done’. It’s a gesture of respect, for use of the power. Not necessary, just…”
“Superstition?” Dean suggests, and Castiel thins his lips and ducks away, bending to snag a shirt that trails out of the nearest duffel.
“Angels are not superstitious. It is respect, nothing more.”
“Knocking wood is a gesture of respect, too, from certain points of view.” Dean wraps the offered shirt around his arm and jerks his head at the door. “Hop out. You need a change of clothes if you’re going to be out in public.”
“Am I?”
“Well, I need breakfast that isn’t served in wax paper and eaten in the car before I go stomping around in the wet woods looking for a hidden door, and until your angel mojo comes back, so do you. You can’t sit in a diner in jeans with that much blood on them.”
They’re getting low on clothes again. Dean digs through the duffels from the trunk and manages to piece together some clean shorts, socks, a pair of jeans that won’t trip Cas or fall off him. The water that dribbles from the rest stop’s faucets is lukewarm at best, and the paper towels are coarse, but it’s sufficient for a rough clean-up.
“Hold still.” Dean’s trying to knot a sling over Castiel’s shoulder, and he keeps twisting, looking behind him toward the narrow window set high in the back wall above the toilet stalls, and then back past Dean to the heavy door. “You’re awful twitchy; you hear something?”
“No. We’re too far from the car, though.”
“I’m almost done. Okay, slide your arm in here-carefully!” he adds as Castiel’s breath hisses between his teeth. “Let the weight rest on the sling. Better?”
“Much. I thank you.”
“No problem. Now let’s go find breakfast.”
-----
They find breakfast in a small homey café a dozen or so miles further down the road. The windows glow, warm and welcoming in the early morning murk, and the parking lot is crowded with pick-ups and a couple of logging trucks. Dean edges the Impala right up to the weathered board walls, beneath the end-most window.
He squirms, working his arms out of his jacket so he can drape it around the Lucifer sword. Sam pauses with his hand on the door handle.
“You can’t take that in a restaurant!”
“Watch me.”
“Dean!”
“Sam!” he parrots, and then, “I’m not letting it out of my reach. We have angels tailing us, in case you forgot. This the only weapon remotely able to take one out.”
The wooden steps sag under their weight, and the screen door screeches with nostalgic familiarity when Dean swings it wide, triggering memories of the thousands of other rural cafés he and his brother and his dad have eaten in over the years. The sword is a reassuring weight under his arm as he ushers Sam and Castiel inside.
A wave of warm air, sweet with the scents of coffee, bacon, syrup, washes over them as soon as Sam shoves open the inner door, and Dean’s stomach rumbles, loudly enough that his brother snickers.
Sam’s just as hungry, though-he barrels ahead for the nearest table, and Dean has to divert him, send him down the scuffed aisle to the booth all the way in the back. The Impala is parked directly below them, gleaming in the steady drizzle.
Dean points his chin in her direction. “This close enough?” he asks Castiel in a low voice.
“Yes. Barely.”
“Okay, then sit down. You’re going to eat something. Just until your holy generator comes back online.”
He makes Sam slide over to the window and pushes in beside him, tucking the sword next to his thigh where he can grab it in a hurry if he needs to. Castiel is sitting bolt upright on the seat opposite, casting sidelong glances around the restaurant. Most of the other customers seem to know each other, and the conversation is loud and friendly, rising above the clatter of thick china and heavy silverware and the racket from the kitchen. Dean sticks his leg out under the table to nudge Castiel’s ankle.
“Relax, okay? I’m watching the door.”
Their waitress hustles up, pen already poised over her order pad. “Morning, guys. What can I… whoa. What does the other guy look like?” she blurts, after an almost comical double-take at the sight of Castiel’s battered face.
He blinks, head tilting slightly, and replies gravely, “Zachariah’s true visage has no human frame of reference, but…”
Dean lunges forward, hand shooting out and slapping down hard on Castiel’s wrist to cut him off. “He thinks he’s funny,” he says lightly, and offers a what-can-ya-do grin and shrug up at the waitress. “He needs his coffee. So do I. And I’ll have the special, extra homefries, extra side of bacon. He’ll have pancakes, plain. And a glass of milk. Oh, and you don’t happen to have honey, do you?”
“Um…” She looks from Dean’s fingers, pressed into his companion’s arm in warning, back to his fixed smile, and nonchalantly sways back a step from the table. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Great. Bring that instead of syrup, could you?”
“Uh, sure. What about him?” she asks with a nod at Sam, who’s struggling to maintain a bland expression. “You gonna order for him too, or let him do it himself?”
“Oh, he can order,” Dean says breezily, and sits back with a final warning stare at the angel.
“That was one of those figures of speech again, Cas,” he explains once the waitress has swept away to the kitchen pass. “She was just commenting on how roughed-up you look, not asking for a dissertation on angel anatomy.”
“Oh.” His forehead crinkles, and Dean can tell he’s running the exchange through his mind again, working out the colloquial meaning behind the literal words. He sees the moment Cas gets it-he touches his thumb to the deep split in his lip, runs a fingertip across one bruised, swollen cheek… and then his mouth lifts in a shadow of a smirk. “Oh. The other guy.”
Dean can’t help grinning back. “Yeah. We’ll let her think he looks worse than you, okay? It’s better for your image.”
The waitress returns in a gratifyingly short time, bracing a heavy tray on the edge of the table and doling out mugs and juice glasses and plates. Dean passes Sam his plate - it’s full of some kind of weird omelet thing, studded with strange vegetation and oozing strands of what had better be cheese - while the waitress sets out ketchup and a squeeze bottle of honey.
“Anything else, guys?”
“We’re good for now.” Castiel is staring in fascination at the heaped plate at Dean’s elbow; while he’s distracted, Dean reaches over and starts fixing the angel’s coffee, cutting it liberally with milk until it’s a pale, creamy tan. He pops the cap on the honey and squeezes out a generous golden pool overtop the stack of pancakes. “Okay, you’re all set. Can you manage a fork left-handed? Then dig in.”
Dean sits back, sliding his own plate over with a happy sigh. He feels Sam’s sudden stare and looks up with a wary frown. “What?”
“Dude.” Sam shakes his head, turning his gaze to the angel sitting across the booth from them and studying his breakfast with deep concentration. “You’re feeding him milk and honey.”
“Yeah, so?” Dean’s back goes stiff, and his defensive tone makes Castiel pause his careful sectioning of his pancakes and glance up.
“So, nothing.” Sam gives his brother a half-smile. “That’s… really clever.”
“Hey, I listened to Pastor Jim’s sermons.”
“Occasionally,” Sam snorts, but he’s still smiling as he curves his arm around his own plate and tucks in. Castiel flicks a glance between the two of them, and, apparently hearing only friendly jibes, goes back to his breakfast.
“I miss Jim,” Dean says abruptly. He stabs his fork into his potatoes. “We could really use him for this fight.”
“Yeah.” Sam stares down at the table. “Me, too,” he says softly.
They finish eating in silence, the hum and clatter of the café a warm backdrop to their shared meal.
-----
On to Chapter 9