March-Stalkers Mighty: 13/22
Passus VII: Pes dexter.
“Joanna Beth Harvelle.” Ellen’s voice rang out over the rocks like a richer, deeper echo of her daughter’s, sending a cringe of instinctive guilt twisting down Dean’s spine. “What have you done?”
Chapter warnings: demonic possession (temporary), graphic injury, canon-typical violence.
The noise
Of long-drawn howls that echoed through the air
Excited Pentheus, and his anger flared.
...
The whole mad throng
Rush at him, all united, and pursue
Their frightened quarry, frightened now for sure,
Now using less fierce language, blaming now
Himself, admitting now that he’s done wrong.
Wounded, he cries, “Help, Aunt Autonoe!
Mercy! Actaeon’s ghost should move your mercy!”
Actaeon’s name’s unknown. She tore away
His outstretched hand, and Ino seized and wrenched
The other off. With no hands left to stretch
Out to his mother, “Look, mother!” he cried,
And showed the severed stumps. And at the sight
Agave howled and tossed her head and hair,
Her streaming hair, and tore his head right off.
Metamorphoses, Ovid, completed 7 C. E., trans. Melville 1987. (Pentheus, having insulted Bacchus, is mistaken for a wild boar and torn apart by the Bacchants, including his own mother Agave.)
When you reached the point where you were deliberately trying to hide your plans from Ellen, Dean reflected, it was probably a sign that you should rethink your plans.
But they needed to do this. And there was no one else mad enough to let in on it. Well. No one Dean was about to trust with his back. And, hey, he’d gone hunting with just Sam for company before. And if he deliberately shut his brain down at that point, before it could helpfully start listing all the differences between that and this, well, who was going to call him on it?
He hadn’t mentioned Cas to Jo. He’d been very relieved to find he hadn’t needed to: whatever Ellen had said to her had made her look at him a little more warmly, and a little more sadly, but not ask any questions.
So, here they were, he and Jo, running through the marshes and leaping over rocks and up the tors like a pair of goats, with a demon on their heels. Best plan ever, right? Right.
Jo, of course, was quicker.
Dean’s lungs were bursting in his chest, and the raw jagged shoulder of the hill was looming impossibly high against the grey sky in front of them. There was no way he was going to get to the top of that before the stupid weightless black smoke barrelling towards them caught up.
Jo glanced back, a flash of pallor against dark rocks, and he saw her mouthing something that he couldn’t make out. Then he tripped, stumbled, wished fiercely for a gun (useless, but it would make him feel better), leaped and almost missed the edge of the next shelf of rock and came down jarringly hard on his knee. He was up again in a moment, body dragging unwilling and heavy, with sharp granite tearing at his palms and the roots of tiny hard plants crumbling under his grip, feeling the throb of triumph behind him.
He was running out of seconds.
Dean’s body took over, adrenalin and fury driving into his legs and shoving him forward, up and over the next shoulder of rock, one small rise closer to the glaringly obvious cleared spot at the top where he and Jo had scratched a demon trap into the rock earlier. From this angle, the demon had to be able to see that ground, had to be expecting a trap there, would try to make its move before that. And Dean still had two steep descents and ascents to go, which it could soar right on over. No way was he getting there first, and the demon knew it.
Dean swung sharply to the left, raced along the shoulder of the narrow ridge to where another jagged outcrop reached out towards it. It was a hopeless leap, farther than the length of Dean’s body, but if he made it it would keep him ahead another few seconds.
He didn’t make it.
His arm came up at the last moment, saving his skull from cracking into the rock, then he was sliding and tumbling down the scree between two hunched and distorted towers of granite, down into the little antechamber at their feet. And the demon hit him from behind.
It was the weirdest feeling of weightlessness, having something like that pour into you, slide oily-slick into every limb and take it for itself. Even while Dean’s body was still tumbling, with this rock slamming into his elbow and that little shower of gravel and mud slipping in under his shirt, there was something unreal about it, like he wasn’t responsible for it. He could stop worrying, because he had no choices to make anymore - not even when to curl his fingers.
The demon flexed his limbs. Then his body slammed into the ground.
Everything was very still for a moment. Then, “Oh, baby. That tickled,” the demon drawled, dragging Dean’s teeth and breath and tongue around in his mouth.
The son of a bitch. Those were Dean’s bits he was waggling about.
Dean tried to clench his jaw stubbornly, but the demon lifted his head from the ground and laughed, low and soft, Dean’s voice but not Dean’s laughter, and that was really doing his head in. Also, he could still feel every bit of the gravel rash along his back and cheek and hands, and the bruises from the rocks, and that was just not fair.
The demon pulled Dean to his feet, far too smoothly considering Dean could feel his legs shaking and the stiffness in his right knee. His heart was thundering, and his lungs still grasping for as much as they could drag in, and the demon slowed the first to an insolently steady thud and just flat-out ignored the second, pulled the air in through his nose as lazily as if Dean was in bed.
Dean’s hand - the demon’s hand - the hand lifted, and pulled aside the collar of Dean’s shirt. The demon bent Dean’s head, and Dean saw his own fingers holding aside the fabric of his own shirt, and a glimpse of his chest and the protective sigil he’d drawn there before he and Jo had left. The hasty protective sigil, which he’d drawn crooked.
He felt the corner of his mouth curl into a gleeful little twist.
“Careless,” it commented.
Yeah, maybe, you smug little son of a bitch, Dean thought viciously. Worked, though, didn’t it?
He felt the demon’s incomprehension (apparently it could hear him, which could come in handy), and the way it brushed him off as irrelevant. “A pretty body,” it commented, running Dean’s hands down his sides and thighs, and ew, it was using him to feel himself up. Was that weird? It was probably weird. Also, hey! Pretty? “Our Lord will be pleased with me.”
So you sick freaks have got a boss now? Nice. That explains a lot.
“I don’t think so,” Jo said, and stepped out from between the rocks. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again. Who is he, anyway?”
The demon grinned like a kid on its birthday, and gave Jo a creepily thorough once-over. “The tasty skinny fledgling,” it purred. “Do you know the best thing about these bodies?” Dean’s hand lifted and reached out to hover in the air in front of him, fingers flexing and curling like the promise of a fist. “Touch. It’s touch. You’ve been wanting this body for years, haven’t you?”
... What? No she hasn’t.
Jo’s face didn’t change, no blush, no revulsion or embarrassment or fear. In the shadows of the rocks, the colour of her hair was dulled to a faint cream, and her face looked closer to grey, hard and brittle as her voice. “Not half so much as I’ve been wanting to put down one of you suckers.”
The muscles of Dean’s face shifted, changing the smile on his mouth into something that felt mocking and intimate. The demon took a step forward, towards Jo, reaching out to slide its fingers around her arms.
Dean felt the moment when it hit the invisible wall.
The gaze he was forced to share swung down towards his feet, and the demon’s incredulity shot through him just as Jo struck a match on her boot and dropped it. The oil sprang into flame, racing around his feet and along the lines of the other demon trap that he and Jo had laid earlier, the one right at the bottom of the scree slide, exactly where anything tumbling down there would have to fall.
The fire flared bright for a minute, then died, leaving charred black moss in its wake. Lighting it hadn’t been necessary, really, but it made the point pretty damn neatly. And, hey, Dean was proud of himself for how he’d timed all that. He deserved some theatrics.
“So,” Jo suggested, and hooked her thumb into the loop of her belt just next to the iron knife and the canteen of blessed water. “Let’s talk.”
The demon snarled under Dean’s breath, and looked away, out between the rocks and down over the marshes. Dean got the distinct impression it was... searching. Calling. Shit.
Then, “Why not?” it said, and smiled slick as oil. “We’ve got nothing but time. My lady,” and hell, Dean hadn’t even known his voice could put that much leer and innuendo into one word, but Jo didn’t even shudder. This had to be even weirder for her, talking to a monster wearing Dean’s face.
“You’ve got a master,” Jo said. “What is he? Demon, or angel?”
The demon tilted Dean’s head and licked his lips. “Yes,” it said.
Demons couldn’t lie. They’d worked that out. But they could evade like nobody’s business, or just refuse to answer. Seemed like this one wanted to play, though, at least enough to screw with them.
Or play for time.
He saw the flicker of impatience on Jo’s face, and silently urged her to hurry up. Not that patience had ever been her strong point, especially lately. “Is your leader an angel?” she amended, going for the direct approach.
The demon grinned, too broad, and lifted Dean’s hands to look at his fingers. Then it licked them, the grit and the salt and the blood on the pads of his fingertips, and mused, “White wings to black. A brother’s sword burning in the dark. Who do you think made us?”
Dean felt something cold squeezing at his stomach, something that had nothing to do with the foreign will pressing him down into nothing at all inside his own body.
Jo’s eyes lit up as if she’d caught a clue. “You turned up not long before the angels did. Are you working together?”
“Where we go, they follow,” the demon said, like it was confessing a sordid secret. Dean could feel the rage and the glee lurking just below the surface, the monstrosity of the thing even as it aped human words through his mouth. “And where they go, you can bet your shining lilywhites that, sooner or later, we’ll be there.”
That isn’t true, Dean thought furiously at it. They’re nothing like you, you messed-up little fucker. There’s nothing in you that cares about anything but you, is there?
“Dean, Dean,” the false voice drawled on, without missing a beat. “Whatever would your dear dead Daddy say if he could see you now, see into your thoughts?” It hadn’t taken its eyes off Jo’s face. Messing with them, gauging her reaction. Messing with her, not with Dean, just using Dean to work out what would get to her, and shit, why had he ever thought it was a good idea to let a monster inside him? There were things in Dean’s head that were private.
“The things you let that angel do to you in your dreams, Dean.”
It drew out the words, sugary and rotten, pulling out all the most private sweet little moments that Dean had carefully not been thinking about and and getting its filthy oily touch all over them, turning them into something sordid and shamefully addictive.
Jo’s eyes widened like the demon was showing her whatever sick crap it had dreamed up, whatever it was implying. Dean curled up tight around his thoughts and jerked them away from those slippery imaginary fingers. It probably wouldn’t do any good, but he could damn well feel like he was glaring at the son of a bitch. All the Cas thoughts were his, incubus or not, and the fact that he had a demon riding his ass didn’t mean it got to screw around in there. Or that it got to blab them to anyone else.
Then Jo drew a dishrag from her belt, unscrewed the cap of the canteen of blessed water, and slid one corner of the cloth in to dampen it. Dean felt the demon tense and contract, all its focus squeezing down onto the trace of wet darkness on the cloth just at the mouth of the canteen. “I don’t distract that easily,” she said, in that sharp little I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-the-world voice she’d been using too much lately. “And I’m not feeling very patient just now. So let’s slip this up a notch. You guys have been pretty quiet for the last few years, since the angels settled in. Now you’re everywhere, and you’re working together. What’s changed?”
The demon took a step backward, thoughtful like it was scoping out the terrain, and Dean felt it searching outward again. This time it came back satisfied, satisfied and smug. Something was getting close, and Dean couldn’t yell to Jo to look out, to exorcise the one in him already and get herself behind a salt line. “It’s the angels,” the demon replied, meek and mocking. “It’s always the angels.”
Jo snorted, and reached up to tuck several loose locks that were falling over her eyes back into her braid. “Yeah. Sure. That guy you’re riding? He says they’ve left.”
“Our lord wants them back.” Dean’s tongue flickered out to slide lasciviously over his lips. “Bloody things they are, and so exquisitely obedient in slaughter.”
It was lying. It had to be lying. Or, or... playing with the truth so it sounded like something else. The demons wanted the angels, somehow. That was all it had actually said. The rest was insinuations and questions. And, yes, of course angels obeyed when they were told to kill (by other angels), because they thought humans were the enemy, okay, that made sense.
Jo’s eyebrows lifted. “Who isn’t these days?” she pointed out, sharp and clear as broken glass.
“Joanna Beth Harvelle.” Ellen’s voice rang out over the rocks like a richer, deeper echo of her daughter’s, sending a cringe of instinctive guilt twisting down Dean’s spine. “What have you done?”
There was a thread of absolute fear and rage curling through there that only ever turned up when it was Jo’s life on the line, but when the demon turned thoughtful delighted eyes on this newcomer, it looked at her like she was so much meat.
Great. Now there were two of them in the line of fire.
Dean strained against his muscles, trying to work out exactly how they worked, how to claim them back. No one had ever done it before, getting control off a demon, but Dean was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch. And nothing was gutting Jo on his watch.
The demon made a soft noise of pleasure against the inside of Dean’s mouth, and its eyes drifted down to the soft fall of blue cloth just below Jo’s belt. Dean realised, with a sickening lurch, that it had heard that thought. It was making plans, and letting him know it.
“Mum! We’re handling it!” Jo protested, standing tall and straight and looking suddenly very very vulnerable to Dean’s (the demon’s) eyes. “This is the best chance we’ve got, okay?”
Ellen looked over at Dean, and the demon flashed his teeth at her. She set her jaw, but didn’t look away. Dean felt some small, childish part of him cling to that glare, furious as it was and promising a world of tongue-lashing when they got home. There was no way, that look said, no matter what the world threw at her, that Ellen was leaving here without both Jo and Dean, if only so she could kill them herself. “Drive it out of him and we’re going home.”
“Mum,” Jo tried again, more quietly this time.
And it was the weirdest thing, Dean thought in a detached sort of way, how both she and Ellen, caught in each other’s eyes, sounded and looked more alive than he’d seen them since Bill had died: Jo defensive and indignant like a girl rather than the woman of fragmented ice and steel of two minutes before, Ellen’s face alive with horror, laid over with maternal fury. Like there was some other whole conversation, a history of conversations of frustrations and love and hurt, going on underneath under the words that were actually there.
Something softened in Ellen’s face, warm and very tired; and she lifted up a hand to tuck a loose forelock back behind Jo’s ear. “We’ve lost enough already, baby,” she said, quietly enough that Dean felt like he should be clearing his throat and looking away and pretending he wasn’t there. “Don’t make me lose you too.”
Or maybe it was you two.
Dean strained again, reaching for his hands, his feet, his mouth, anything, and it all faded like smoke. Useless as flailing around in your bed sheets in the middle of a bad dream. He was useless, isolated and floating in the middle of nowhere.
“Time’s up,” said the demon softly, with Dean’s mouth.
There was a rumbling of rock overhead, just like there had been when Dad had been killed, at the canyon with the etayn. Then the boulder smashed into the ground at Dean’s feet, the trap was broken, and the air was filled with black smoke.
Shit. So much for getting this disgusting perverted thing out of Dean.
Dean’s demon laughed as the power surged through its limbs, and it stepped forward over the useless line. Ellen’s iron knife was out and Jo’s a moment behind her, but a flick of Dean’s fingers and Ellen was flying backwards, pinned to the rock face half a yard above ground, with her head cracking sickeningly back against the granite. Dean couldn’t even look to see if she was alright, because the other two demons were solidifying into their horrible horned bodies on either side of him, and the demon wearing him was advancing on a white and tight-jawed Jo.
Stab it, Dean tried to shout at her. Stab me, hell, just get rid of it. Only she wouldn’t, even if she’d been able to hear him, because iron wouldn’t kill it, only hurt it. Jo wouldn’t think that was a fair exchange, Dean’s life for a faint chance at hers. Sometimes she could be too logical.
“What do you want him to do to you?” the demon purred to her, pausing just out of range and tilting Dean’s head impossibly far like a curious sparrow. There was movement at the corner of Dean’s eye, one of the other demons, somewhere near where Ellen was, and he couldn’t see.“What shall we do now, while your mother watches? All we have is time.”
Jo didn’t bother answering, because she wasn’t the kind to taunt and snark when lives were on the line, not like Dean. The hand holding the knife flickered to the left, with the eyes of the demon glued to the sharp tip. Then her other hand whipped forward, slashing the wet cloth across Dean’s face. It sizzled and burned, but not like the real pain of the gravel - this was the demon’s pain, not Dean’s, and he caught only the fierce echo of it, like a burn in over-used muscles.
The demon snarled and lurched back, as the pommel of Jo’s knife slammed into Dean’s stomach and doubled him up. Jo darted past, and the second demon, the one by Ellen, was suddenly collapsing and shrieking as it was hamstrung with salted iron. Jo booted it viciously away as it collapsed, and she had the salt bag out and open in another moment.
She only got about half of the semi-circle she needed before the demon in Dean slapped it out of her hands, flung it away, and bore her to the ground between his knees. Ellen shouted something, a few hasty lines of exorcism and cursing, and it was choked off. Too late, anyway: Dean’s knife was in his hand, and there was blood in his mouth, and with a stupidly easy flick of his wrist the demon had Jo’s belly opening soft and messy under the blade.
Ellen screamed behind him, and Dean heard the echo of it inside his own head. Jo’s eyes were wide and far too bright, the soft rich brown of them shocked and still furious with the adrenalin of battle, clinging to that like it would keep her from realising, even as her body jerked and writhed, and Dean couldn’t close his own eyes, couldn’t help but see the slick coloured curves inside the gaping wound, the ruined innards of Jo’s body.
He roared at the demon, wordless fury and vengeance and denial; and the demon tipped Dean’s head back and laughed, childishly happy with what it had done.
The sky was too dark, was all Dean could think. Jo loved the sunlight, loved the way it lit everything up, even the dark granite, and made it beautiful, even when it was bleak. And it loved her - it caught her hair and turned it into fine gold, gave warmth and life to the pallor of her face. Made her look like a real lady of legend, not one of them, not someone who spent her days scrounging around in the mud like them. That was what she should be staring up at right now as her eyes dimmed, not...
... The sky was too dark. The sky was too dark, with feathers. Dark feathers.
Dean felt the shock and the thrill shoot through the demon inside him, as it forgot all about the humans and lit up. Its head was turning, Dean’s face splitting into a grin of terror and welcome, just as Cas’ wings blocked out the narrow scrap of sky and he drove into the demon like a grim, determined arrow.
Cas’ hands clamped down on his collar and flung. Dean went sprawling halfway across the little antechamber, bruised and battered with the force of the impact. When the demon turned his eyes the right way again, Cas (who shouldn’t be here, Cas whom Dean had told to get the hell out) was leaning down over Jo, wings coiled and tense, lowering his hand to her forehead. She batted at him, feeble and weakening, then again more strongly, even as Cas pulled away and launched himself at the demon holding Ellen, one long lithe uncoiling of muscle and intent. The demon was distracted and wide-eyed, and Ellen twisted against it, kicked at the back of one goat-like knee and grabbed one horn to pull its head back, just in time for Cas’ sword to flash across its throat.
There was a flash of red light. The demon crumpled to the ground, and was still.
So apparently there was a weapon that killed demons.
The other demon, the one Jo had wounded, was holding back, uncertain and hostile and limping, and Dean felt his own throat snarl at it derisively. Then the demon rose to Dean’s feet and closed in on Cas, like the humans were so much irrelevant meat now.
Cas darted away from Ellen as he came, half a leap and half a glide, backed away from the second demon, and stepped back onto his off foot. The demon in Dean purred like it saw a lover dancing and slid in towards him, matching him move for move; and just for a moment, Cas’ eyes locked on Dean’s, all hot blue determination and promise.
Dean’s heart did a stupid little girly flip inside him.
It was just the same as in his dreams and memories - that secret little warmth, something precious and incomprehensible, just for Cas. Not a glamour, because it was too imperfect and rough, fixated on little details like Cas’ stupidly chapped lips. Not an influence, because, hey, there was a demon inside him, taking him over completely, driving out everything, even his own will, and Dean still felt exactly the same thing when he saw the way the blue of those eyes lit up when they met his.
Dean knew now what it felt like to have a monster inside him, and this was nothing like that.
So. Okay, then. Whatever it was, whyever it was, it didn’t come from anything outside. It was Dean’s, just Dean’s, all warm and mushy and fierce. Whatever Cas was, whatever he’d done, whatever he thought or felt or expected or intended to do, it didn’t change that.
Dean grinned at him on the inside, furious and weirdly triumphant, and just for a moment he thought he felt his own lips twitch in response.
Then, just a moment too late, the demon in Dean worked out (in a burst of fury and delight) that Cas wasn’t being driven. He was leading - leading them away from Ellen and Jo, leading them over to where the discarded bag of salt was lying forgotten in a crevice of the rock, to where it only took one fluid movement and a slash at the second demon’s legs and Cas had scooped it up and launched it in an arc over all their heads, into Ellen’s waiting hands.
The other demon tried to get back to her, to scatter the salt line before it was complete, but Ellen was too fast and Cas was suddenly there, pressing it too hard. Dean’s demon glanced back in time to see Ellen complete the circle, sealing herself and Jo inside. Jo was sitting up, pale but bright-eyed, and Dean had a moment to wonder what Cas had done there before the demon dismissed them as uninteresting.
“There are more coming,” Cas said, gruff between breaths; and Ellen pulled out the gun with the salt rounds, to stand steady as an oak over her daughter.
The demon riding Dean made a delighted, grating laugh, and flicked its hand carelessly at its injured companion, something like “this one’s mine.” Then it slunk forward into Cas’ space, arms open in invitation.
Cas stepped lightly sideways, left an opening at his flank. The demon took it, closed in just in time for Cas to duck away and under Dean’s arm, knocking him off his feet again with a twisting buffet of one wing (and hey, his wings were working, good on him!).
Cas was good, and he was quick, but he was at a disadvantage: Cas didn’t want to hurt Dean, and those wings were too large in a small space.
There had been a few times when Dean had had to face an angel who was downed but could still fight, who still had the use of arms and legs. They were formidable and dangerous, but not half so much as they were from the air. And Cas’ full wingspan was actually wider than this narrow little space. He was cramped, and couldn’t use his wings to lighten his movements or confuse his enemy or get extra height to come crashing down from above. And if you were strong enough it was too easy to grab or shoot a wing to get an angel off-balance.
The demon grinned.
... Crap. Dean shouldn’t be thinking these things.
The twisty malevolent thing inside him fell back onto Dean’s own muscles, used his memories and his instincts and his knowledge of Cas, the sneaky son of a bitch, and darted in under the next to drive a punch right to the centre of the wing-finger that he’d broken.
Cas clenched his jaw shut tight around the edges of that piercing bright angelic scream, and Dean felt the cool slide of metal snug in his palm as the demon twisted the angel’s sword out of his grip.
Cas growled, and Dean felt it rumble low and promising through his belly. Then the demon laughed, thrilling with the fight, and took advantage of the moment to spin Cas around and slam him into the wall.
For one precarious, brilliant moment Dean nearly forgot that his body wasn’t his own, that Cas’ life was in danger here. All that strength coiling and shoving back against him, pinned so briefly against Dean’s body. And this, this, Dean could almost be tempted by: the straining muscles of Cas’ back arching against Dean’s chest and hips and thighs, wings rolling back to clap against Dean’s shoulders and sides, and Dean wanted so badly to be able to bend his head and nuzzle at the line of sweat trickling down the side of his throat, to soothe the taut muscles there back into relaxation, but it was the demon talking, the filth inside him making him want to do it.
The demon dipped his head instead, and bit. Then it pressed Dean’s wild grin into the soft spot behind Cas’ ear, and shoved his hips in hard against warm curves in front of him. “Hey there, hot stuff,” it purred, with Dean’s voice. “How you doing?”
To his horror, Dean felt his treacherous body respond in ways that it shouldn’t, in ways that Cas would be appalled and revolted by if he knew (but it was the demon, only the demon, and its lust for blood and pain). Cas snapped his head back and connected with Dean’s nose, hard. Dean felt the shocked starburst of white-hot damage only as relief.
“Fuck!” The demon staggered back, shaking Dean’s head and grinning bright and mad as the blood started to trickle. Cas’ sword glinted dully in its hand, swaying mockingly with the obscene cant of Dean’s hips.
“I can see your true face, you know,” Cas remonstrated mildly, as he slipped sideways and began to circle the demon again, and why the hell wasn’t he getting clear? “You should be aware that, even in that body, it is not particularly enticing.”
... Of course Cas would get blandly sarcastic in a life-or-death situation. Dean felt ridiculously happy about that, for some reason.
The demon preened. “Do you like it? It made me think of you.” Its free hand danced down Dean’s throat, over his chest and down over his belly to flicker over his groin, and Dean gritted his metaphorical teeth and tried his hardest to pretend the disgusting thing wasn’t making him pose like a whore in front of Ellen and Jo (not to mention Cas, but that thought was untouchable for a whole bunch of other reasons). And why the hell was it making out like it knew Cas?
“So messed up in here over you. So eager to give himself up to me, Castiel.” It danced forward, feinted with the sword at where Cas’ right wing hung a little stiff and slow - not broken again, Dean thought, but it looked sore.
Cas flinched, and missed a step. The demon laughed, fell back like the honourable opponent it wasn’t, and tugged open the neck of Dean’s shirt to show Cas the misdrawn sigil of protection. “So eager to become a monster, if it meant some of his friends might get off easy.”
Cas’ face changed, then, as for the first time some feeling that didn’t belong to the cool, implacable warrior flickered across his features. Just that slight parting of his lips, and the slight narrowing of his eyes, and the lighting of the fire inside them, all of it so faint as to be almost invisible; but Dean saw it, through the eyes the demon held, and he read there the same how-dare-you-try-to-throw-your-life-away fury that had been on Ellen’s face not five minutes before. And, there, he hadn’t been making it up, all those times when he’d thought he’d read something in Cas that no one else could see, because there was no way in hell he’d have thought Cas would go all mother-bear like Ellen - over Dean, of all people.
Dean could count on one hand the number of people who’d cared enough to tear him a new one for being reckless with his own life. Apparently, now, there was one more. Whatever else Cas was up to, whatever else he was playing with, however it was that the sly wonderful son of a bitch had turned up here where of all places he shouldn’t be, he cared.
It was a revelation, so strange and unexpected that Dean almost missed the way Cas’ face smoothed over, and the warning note in his quiet monotone. “If you give him up, you will have a chance to flee. If you stay in his body, I will burn you out, and you and all the memories you carry will be unmade.”
That was a decidedly odd way of saying “I’ll kill you.”
Burning out sounds painful, Dean piped up helpfully inside the demon. I’m voting for a little of column A, how about it, buddy?
The demon kept right on with its life choice of ignoring the hell out of Dean. And, apparently, of Cas. It shoved in close, banking on Cas not shoving a blade into Dean’s heart, and closed its fingers around Cas’ neck.
“Oh, I like humans, Castiel,” it panted into his face. Cas’ foot came up and slammed into its knee, but it barely stumbled. “So passionate, and so easy to persuade into the most terrible things in the name of love.” It giggled, and Cas got his hands locked in over its fingers and twisted from the hip, bringing them both down in a clash of knees and wings and hot breath on the ground. The demon latched Dean’s teeth onto Cas’ neck as they fell, rolled, and came out on top. It sat up, one hand on either shoulder, and beamed.
“Almost as good as angels,” it added, like the twist of a knife in the gut.
Cas’ hair was a mess, and his face was set and bloodied and grim, and his body was spread out under Dean (for the taking, the demon interjected helpfully) like an offering - helpless - no, dammit, which were Dean’s thoughts, and which were the demon’s?
Dean shut down that train of thought entirely, and tried to ignore the way the hips that technically belonged to him were shoving hungrily down into the warm beautiful body beneath him.
Then, as Cas reached up towards Dean’s face, the demon snarled and moved quick as a snake, slashing the sword deep and ragged into the muscle of Cas’ good wing, pinning him to the ground.
Cas did scream then, the blinding sound of it choked off by the weight of the demon’s hand bearing down on his throat. It yanked the sword out, a savage twist on the exit to tear skin and muscle, and Dean was getting really damn fed up with this dick using his handsto hurt his friends.
The demon leant his body down, until Dean’s lips brushed against the sharp corner of Cas’ jaw. Then it breathed, too soft for anyone but Dean and Cas to hear, “So like him, you have become. Like our master. Tempting us away from the path. Does he intrigue you, Castiel? You, the only unfallen angel who yearns towards what we can be?”
It raised Dean’s bloodied sword hand, eyeing the joint where wing became shoulder, calculating the quickest and most vicious way to sever that, to work the point of the blade in and rip Cas apart.
Hell, no.
Dean locked up all his muscles, and drove the fucking sword into the ground.
Cas’ eyes snapped up, and locked on Dean’s - not the demon’s, Dean’s - all rebuke and plea and some weird tinge of resignation. Compromises, Dean thought wildly, tussling viciously with the startled demon just to hold his body still as stone. Then Cas’ hands came up and rested, oddly gentle, over Dean’s wrists.
“You have delayed too long,” he said soft and gravel-dark. “It wasn’t your friends that I was waiting for.”
The soft thump of wings against the sky, a sudden flurry of deep, rich colours, then something hot and furry collided with Dean from the side and he was rolling over and over with Sam between his arms, Sam growling and panting with frustration and Sam knowing better than anyone how Dean’s body worked in a wrestle, disentangling himself and springing away. The demon raised Dean’s head, startled and annoyed, and launched itself at the impudent dog-like thing just as Cas rose, towering against the skyline like a judgement, tossed his sword to someone Dean couldn’t see, and leapt forward too fast to follow, clamping his hands over Dean’s eyes and mouth.
The demon in him shouted, then screamed, and Dean grinned viciously at the son of a bitch and raised his hands to clamp them over Cas’, to hold them there, as Cas’ body pressed up against him from behind and the solid weight of Sam pinned his legs and thighs from the front (inescapably safe). Whatever the hell Cas was doing it burned like a bitch, and Dean pressed into it and back into Cas’ body and thought vicious smitey thoughts at the demon, as it writhed and squealed and had the nerve to try to kick Sam. There was fighting going on somewhere to Dean’s right, the snarl of the other demon and the slap of wings against the air and the scuffle of feet on rock, then the retort of Ellen’s pistol, a squeal and a gurgle, and the thud of a body.
Fire burned through his veins, through his flesh, through every hair follicle and sweat gland, and Dean let his head fall back on Cas’ shoulder and screamed with the demon. Then it was gone, and every muscle in Dean’s body was left weak and shaking behind.
The hand over his eyes loosened its hold, and slid delicately (gently?) up to his forehead, slipping slick over sweat. Then it pushed back into his hair, and cradled his head loosely as the other arm dropped to lock nice and firm around Dean’s waist.
There was a reality and a sincerity to the heat of Cas’ body against his back that hadn’t been there before. Like he was really solid, really meant to be there, and was kind of diffident about it at the same time.
“Dean,” Cas rumbled, low and hopeful in his ear, and Dean felt his face (his) split into a grin, in response to the lurch in his own stomach.
“Hey Cas!” he said, obnoxiously bright because that was easier, and groped down in front of him to bury his fingers in the deep, coarse hair of the Sam-dog’s shoulders. He felt the muscles move under his hands and the canine neck swivel around toward him, and Sam’s teeth locked none-too-gently around his hand, just as Cas huffed against the side of his neck.
“Reckless,” he growled, and the dark anger rumbling up against Dean’s back and breathed into the side of his neck did things to his belly that no scolding from Ellen had ever provoked.
Dean snorted, wrapped his fingers around the top half of Sam’s jaw in the way that really irritated anything dog-shaped, and nudged his shoulders cheerfully back against Cas’ body. “Nah, I knew you guys had m’ back. Right, Sammy?”
Sam shook Dean’s hand out of his mouth (and Dean could totally guess the “ew, gross, Dean, you got your hand in my mouth”expression, even with a long dog face), and Cas cuffed Dean hard around the side of the head, which, to be fair, he probably deserved. Then Cas was gone in an unsteady lurch of movement, and the air at Dean’s back was cold and empty, and Ellen was saying his name quiet and urgent as the rest of the world came back.
Dean opened his eyes, just as Cas said, “The woman is injured.”
It was an unexpected little tableau. Two angels, female, one blonde with white and purple wings and the other red-headed with feathers in a riot of scarlet and vermillion and violet, both with their swords out and standing over the body of the other demon. Beyond them, Ellen and Jo in their salt circle, Jo sitting up gingerly with one hand clamped around her belly (and the amount of blood on her shirt made Dean’s stomach turn over). But they weren’t the only ones in there.
“Uh,” Dean tried cautiously. “Gwen?”
Sam gave him his much-practised “I’ve got used to having an idiot for a brother” face (and hell, Dean had missed that stupid bitch of a face, and how had he ever thought that Cas would let Gabriel take that away from him?). Gwen, who was kneeling next to Jo with an arm around her shoulders and holding what must have been Cas’ sword in her free hand, ignored Dean completely, and looked up at Cas. “She’s still a mess. Can one of you guys fix her up, or do we need Gabriel?”
Jo’s eyes narrowed, and Cas, for some reason, glanced back over his shoulder at Sam. “Is Gabriel coming? That wasn’t the last of the demons.”
Sam looked uncomfortable, and the angel with purple and white wings (Rachel?) wrinkled up her nose and said, cool and almost disdainful, “Gabriel is exactly as you left him,” whatever that meant.
Cas’ shoulders drooped very slightly. Then Ellen’s pistol came up, and levelled at Cas’ stomach.
“Nobody gets near my daughter without an explanation,” she said bluntly.
Sam made a hurt little whimpering noise, and Dean’s blood flash-boiled.
Somewhat to his surprise, Dean found that he was stepping forward and shoving his way in front of Cas, putting the solid bulk of his own body between the wounded angel and the muzzle of the gun. Yeah, well, he was half inclined to spit, nobody shoots my angel without going through me first. Only Cas was Cas’ angel, and Dean didn’t actually know what he was doing here or what the hell arrangement he’d apparently had with that demon, and Ellen was looking at Dean with this incredulous expression that was half pity and half irritation, and he couldn’t snap at Ellen, so he just let his cheeks flush and stood there a bit stupidly, and looked mutinous.
“I don’t shoot until I know what I’m aiming at,” Ellen said, each word like a sturdy little boulder dropped in front of Cas’ face, right over Dean’s shoulder. “And I don’t know you.”
Gwen gave Dean one of her “why are there so many men in the world?” eyerolls and said to Ellen, nice and sensible as if they were chatting over dinner and there were no lives at stake here, “They’re friends, Ellen. Castiel here has saved my life twice, and Hanael lent me spare buttons for the only shirt I had when two of them got torn off miles from anywhere. Let them heal Jo.”
Ellen levelled her gaze on Gwen, then on Cas, then, for some reason, on Dean. There was a very still moment, and Dean saw Rachel’s shoulders coil up tense. Cas touched Dean’s arm, careful and a bit shaky, moving up to stand beside him, exposed.
Then Ellen lowered the gun, and the red-headed angel went down on one knee beside Jo at Cas’ nod, and Gwen was murmuring something to Jo, and the angel was raising two fingers to Jo’s forehead like everything was simple.
... What? The hell had buttons got to do with anything? Secret woman code for something more sinister?
Also, if Dean wasn’t very much mistaken, those were Gwen’s pants that the other angel (Hanael) was wearing. They certainly weren’t your usual angel make. And Gwen was all dressed in an angel tunic and slacks.
Dean pointed at her suspiciously. “We thought you were dead.”
“Caught on the wrong side of the rockfall,” Gwen said absently, as she held Jo’s ruined shirt clear of her body and watched whatever Hanael was doing take effect. Dean narrowed his eyes at Cas’ profile, the dark curls and the soft creamy curve of his neck and the intensity of his focus on whatever thoughts and magic his friend was sending into Jo’s body. “Gabriel wanted to take me back over here, but I wouldn’t let him until he proved to me that Sam was okay. Then I decided I’d be more use with Sam than in here.”
“Sam’s alright, is he?” Ellen stuck in, her voice rawer and curter than Dean was used to.
Dean blinked, and looked down at the long furry face on his other side. Sam, who was sort of maybe leaning against his thigh, wrinkled his nose and looked sort of sheepish. In all the confusion, Dean had almost forgotten that not everyone here knew what Sam was.
Gwen’s eyes slid sideways to Sam, then up to Dean, then back to Jo, as Jo made a little pained noise and leaned more heavily on her shoulder. Hanael’s hand dropped from Jo’s forehead; and, like he’d been waiting for it, Cas staggered and went down on one knee, pressing his knuckles into the rockface beside him to keep from slumping over. Dean’s hand shot out to steady him, and shit, that was a lot of blood on his wing.
“Sam’s fine,” Gwen was saying decisively (evasively) in the background. “We’ve all been working a few things out. There’s been a few misunderstandings...”
Cas lifted his head to meet Dean’s eyes. There was pain in there, and something like apology, and a hell of a lot of warning. His left wing was leaking white light, bleeding out sluggish and wispy into the air around him. The kind of hurt that meant real hurt, for an angel (sure, you had to get the throat or the heart to kill them, but what if this just killed them slower?). Dean sank to his knees beside him, heart thumping sickeningly, and reached out to hover his hand helplessly over dark feathers matted with dust and blood. The light curled in curiously to nuzzle around his fingers, and Cas’ forehead furrowed up and went all pissy at him.
And, because this was Dean’s life, that was when the rest of the demons decided to turn up.
“Joanna Beth Harvelle.” Ellen’s voice rang out over the rocks like a richer, deeper echo of her daughter’s, sending a cringe of instinctive guilt twisting down Dean’s spine. “What have you done?”
Chapter warnings: demonic possession (temporary), graphic injury, canon-typical violence.
The noise
Of long-drawn howls that echoed through the air
Excited Pentheus, and his anger flared.
...
The whole mad throng
Rush at him, all united, and pursue
Their frightened quarry, frightened now for sure,
Now using less fierce language, blaming now
Himself, admitting now that he’s done wrong.
Wounded, he cries, “Help, Aunt Autonoe!
Mercy! Actaeon’s ghost should move your mercy!”
Actaeon’s name’s unknown. She tore away
His outstretched hand, and Ino seized and wrenched
The other off. With no hands left to stretch
Out to his mother, “Look, mother!” he cried,
And showed the severed stumps. And at the sight
Agave howled and tossed her head and hair,
Her streaming hair, and tore his head right off.
Metamorphoses, Ovid, completed 7 C. E., trans. Melville 1987. (Pentheus, having insulted Bacchus, is mistaken for a wild boar and torn apart by the Bacchants, including his own mother Agave.)
When you reached the point where you were deliberately trying to hide your plans from Ellen, Dean reflected, it was probably a sign that you should rethink your plans.
But they needed to do this. And there was no one else mad enough to let in on it. Well. No one Dean was about to trust with his back. And, hey, he’d gone hunting with just Sam for company before. And if he deliberately shut his brain down at that point, before it could helpfully start listing all the differences between that and this, well, who was going to call him on it?
He hadn’t mentioned Cas to Jo. He’d been very relieved to find he hadn’t needed to: whatever Ellen had said to her had made her look at him a little more warmly, and a little more sadly, but not ask any questions.
So, here they were, he and Jo, running through the marshes and leaping over rocks and up the tors like a pair of goats, with a demon on their heels. Best plan ever, right? Right.
Jo, of course, was quicker.
Dean’s lungs were bursting in his chest, and the raw jagged shoulder of the hill was looming impossibly high against the grey sky in front of them. There was no way he was going to get to the top of that before the stupid weightless black smoke barrelling towards them caught up.
Jo glanced back, a flash of pallor against dark rocks, and he saw her mouthing something that he couldn’t make out. Then he tripped, stumbled, wished fiercely for a gun (useless, but it would make him feel better), leaped and almost missed the edge of the next shelf of rock and came down jarringly hard on his knee. He was up again in a moment, body dragging unwilling and heavy, with sharp granite tearing at his palms and the roots of tiny hard plants crumbling under his grip, feeling the throb of triumph behind him.
He was running out of seconds.
Dean’s body took over, adrenalin and fury driving into his legs and shoving him forward, up and over the next shoulder of rock, one small rise closer to the glaringly obvious cleared spot at the top where he and Jo had scratched a demon trap into the rock earlier. From this angle, the demon had to be able to see that ground, had to be expecting a trap there, would try to make its move before that. And Dean still had two steep descents and ascents to go, which it could soar right on over. No way was he getting there first, and the demon knew it.
Dean swung sharply to the left, raced along the shoulder of the narrow ridge to where another jagged outcrop reached out towards it. It was a hopeless leap, farther than the length of Dean’s body, but if he made it it would keep him ahead another few seconds.
He didn’t make it.
His arm came up at the last moment, saving his skull from cracking into the rock, then he was sliding and tumbling down the scree between two hunched and distorted towers of granite, down into the little antechamber at their feet. And the demon hit him from behind.
It was the weirdest feeling of weightlessness, having something like that pour into you, slide oily-slick into every limb and take it for itself. Even while Dean’s body was still tumbling, with this rock slamming into his elbow and that little shower of gravel and mud slipping in under his shirt, there was something unreal about it, like he wasn’t responsible for it. He could stop worrying, because he had no choices to make anymore - not even when to curl his fingers.
The demon flexed his limbs. Then his body slammed into the ground.
Everything was very still for a moment. Then, “Oh, baby. That tickled,” the demon drawled, dragging Dean’s teeth and breath and tongue around in his mouth.
The son of a bitch. Those were Dean’s bits he was waggling about.
Dean tried to clench his jaw stubbornly, but the demon lifted his head from the ground and laughed, low and soft, Dean’s voice but not Dean’s laughter, and that was really doing his head in. Also, he could still feel every bit of the gravel rash along his back and cheek and hands, and the bruises from the rocks, and that was just not fair.
The demon pulled Dean to his feet, far too smoothly considering Dean could feel his legs shaking and the stiffness in his right knee. His heart was thundering, and his lungs still grasping for as much as they could drag in, and the demon slowed the first to an insolently steady thud and just flat-out ignored the second, pulled the air in through his nose as lazily as if Dean was in bed.
Dean’s hand - the demon’s hand - the hand lifted, and pulled aside the collar of Dean’s shirt. The demon bent Dean’s head, and Dean saw his own fingers holding aside the fabric of his own shirt, and a glimpse of his chest and the protective sigil he’d drawn there before he and Jo had left. The hasty protective sigil, which he’d drawn crooked.
He felt the corner of his mouth curl into a gleeful little twist.
“Careless,” it commented.
Yeah, maybe, you smug little son of a bitch, Dean thought viciously. Worked, though, didn’t it?
He felt the demon’s incomprehension (apparently it could hear him, which could come in handy), and the way it brushed him off as irrelevant. “A pretty body,” it commented, running Dean’s hands down his sides and thighs, and ew, it was using him to feel himself up. Was that weird? It was probably weird. Also, hey! Pretty? “Our Lord will be pleased with me.”
So you sick freaks have got a boss now? Nice. That explains a lot.
“I don’t think so,” Jo said, and stepped out from between the rocks. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again. Who is he, anyway?”
The demon grinned like a kid on its birthday, and gave Jo a creepily thorough once-over. “The tasty skinny fledgling,” it purred. “Do you know the best thing about these bodies?” Dean’s hand lifted and reached out to hover in the air in front of him, fingers flexing and curling like the promise of a fist. “Touch. It’s touch. You’ve been wanting this body for years, haven’t you?”
... What? No she hasn’t.
Jo’s face didn’t change, no blush, no revulsion or embarrassment or fear. In the shadows of the rocks, the colour of her hair was dulled to a faint cream, and her face looked closer to grey, hard and brittle as her voice. “Not half so much as I’ve been wanting to put down one of you suckers.”
The muscles of Dean’s face shifted, changing the smile on his mouth into something that felt mocking and intimate. The demon took a step forward, towards Jo, reaching out to slide its fingers around her arms.
Dean felt the moment when it hit the invisible wall.
The gaze he was forced to share swung down towards his feet, and the demon’s incredulity shot through him just as Jo struck a match on her boot and dropped it. The oil sprang into flame, racing around his feet and along the lines of the other demon trap that he and Jo had laid earlier, the one right at the bottom of the scree slide, exactly where anything tumbling down there would have to fall.
The fire flared bright for a minute, then died, leaving charred black moss in its wake. Lighting it hadn’t been necessary, really, but it made the point pretty damn neatly. And, hey, Dean was proud of himself for how he’d timed all that. He deserved some theatrics.
“So,” Jo suggested, and hooked her thumb into the loop of her belt just next to the iron knife and the canteen of blessed water. “Let’s talk.”
The demon snarled under Dean’s breath, and looked away, out between the rocks and down over the marshes. Dean got the distinct impression it was... searching. Calling. Shit.
Then, “Why not?” it said, and smiled slick as oil. “We’ve got nothing but time. My lady,” and hell, Dean hadn’t even known his voice could put that much leer and innuendo into one word, but Jo didn’t even shudder. This had to be even weirder for her, talking to a monster wearing Dean’s face.
“You’ve got a master,” Jo said. “What is he? Demon, or angel?”
The demon tilted Dean’s head and licked his lips. “Yes,” it said.
Demons couldn’t lie. They’d worked that out. But they could evade like nobody’s business, or just refuse to answer. Seemed like this one wanted to play, though, at least enough to screw with them.
Or play for time.
He saw the flicker of impatience on Jo’s face, and silently urged her to hurry up. Not that patience had ever been her strong point, especially lately. “Is your leader an angel?” she amended, going for the direct approach.
The demon grinned, too broad, and lifted Dean’s hands to look at his fingers. Then it licked them, the grit and the salt and the blood on the pads of his fingertips, and mused, “White wings to black. A brother’s sword burning in the dark. Who do you think made us?”
Dean felt something cold squeezing at his stomach, something that had nothing to do with the foreign will pressing him down into nothing at all inside his own body.
Jo’s eyes lit up as if she’d caught a clue. “You turned up not long before the angels did. Are you working together?”
“Where we go, they follow,” the demon said, like it was confessing a sordid secret. Dean could feel the rage and the glee lurking just below the surface, the monstrosity of the thing even as it aped human words through his mouth. “And where they go, you can bet your shining lilywhites that, sooner or later, we’ll be there.”
That isn’t true, Dean thought furiously at it. They’re nothing like you, you messed-up little fucker. There’s nothing in you that cares about anything but you, is there?
“Dean, Dean,” the false voice drawled on, without missing a beat. “Whatever would your dear dead Daddy say if he could see you now, see into your thoughts?” It hadn’t taken its eyes off Jo’s face. Messing with them, gauging her reaction. Messing with her, not with Dean, just using Dean to work out what would get to her, and shit, why had he ever thought it was a good idea to let a monster inside him? There were things in Dean’s head that were private.
“The things you let that angel do to you in your dreams, Dean.”
It drew out the words, sugary and rotten, pulling out all the most private sweet little moments that Dean had carefully not been thinking about and and getting its filthy oily touch all over them, turning them into something sordid and shamefully addictive.
Jo’s eyes widened like the demon was showing her whatever sick crap it had dreamed up, whatever it was implying. Dean curled up tight around his thoughts and jerked them away from those slippery imaginary fingers. It probably wouldn’t do any good, but he could damn well feel like he was glaring at the son of a bitch. All the Cas thoughts were his, incubus or not, and the fact that he had a demon riding his ass didn’t mean it got to screw around in there. Or that it got to blab them to anyone else.
Then Jo drew a dishrag from her belt, unscrewed the cap of the canteen of blessed water, and slid one corner of the cloth in to dampen it. Dean felt the demon tense and contract, all its focus squeezing down onto the trace of wet darkness on the cloth just at the mouth of the canteen. “I don’t distract that easily,” she said, in that sharp little I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-the-world voice she’d been using too much lately. “And I’m not feeling very patient just now. So let’s slip this up a notch. You guys have been pretty quiet for the last few years, since the angels settled in. Now you’re everywhere, and you’re working together. What’s changed?”
The demon took a step backward, thoughtful like it was scoping out the terrain, and Dean felt it searching outward again. This time it came back satisfied, satisfied and smug. Something was getting close, and Dean couldn’t yell to Jo to look out, to exorcise the one in him already and get herself behind a salt line. “It’s the angels,” the demon replied, meek and mocking. “It’s always the angels.”
Jo snorted, and reached up to tuck several loose locks that were falling over her eyes back into her braid. “Yeah. Sure. That guy you’re riding? He says they’ve left.”
“Our lord wants them back.” Dean’s tongue flickered out to slide lasciviously over his lips. “Bloody things they are, and so exquisitely obedient in slaughter.”
It was lying. It had to be lying. Or, or... playing with the truth so it sounded like something else. The demons wanted the angels, somehow. That was all it had actually said. The rest was insinuations and questions. And, yes, of course angels obeyed when they were told to kill (by other angels), because they thought humans were the enemy, okay, that made sense.
Jo’s eyebrows lifted. “Who isn’t these days?” she pointed out, sharp and clear as broken glass.
“Joanna Beth Harvelle.” Ellen’s voice rang out over the rocks like a richer, deeper echo of her daughter’s, sending a cringe of instinctive guilt twisting down Dean’s spine. “What have you done?”
There was a thread of absolute fear and rage curling through there that only ever turned up when it was Jo’s life on the line, but when the demon turned thoughtful delighted eyes on this newcomer, it looked at her like she was so much meat.
Great. Now there were two of them in the line of fire.
Dean strained against his muscles, trying to work out exactly how they worked, how to claim them back. No one had ever done it before, getting control off a demon, but Dean was nothing if not a stubborn son of a bitch. And nothing was gutting Jo on his watch.
The demon made a soft noise of pleasure against the inside of Dean’s mouth, and its eyes drifted down to the soft fall of blue cloth just below Jo’s belt. Dean realised, with a sickening lurch, that it had heard that thought. It was making plans, and letting him know it.
“Mum! We’re handling it!” Jo protested, standing tall and straight and looking suddenly very very vulnerable to Dean’s (the demon’s) eyes. “This is the best chance we’ve got, okay?”
Ellen looked over at Dean, and the demon flashed his teeth at her. She set her jaw, but didn’t look away. Dean felt some small, childish part of him cling to that glare, furious as it was and promising a world of tongue-lashing when they got home. There was no way, that look said, no matter what the world threw at her, that Ellen was leaving here without both Jo and Dean, if only so she could kill them herself. “Drive it out of him and we’re going home.”
“Mum,” Jo tried again, more quietly this time.
And it was the weirdest thing, Dean thought in a detached sort of way, how both she and Ellen, caught in each other’s eyes, sounded and looked more alive than he’d seen them since Bill had died: Jo defensive and indignant like a girl rather than the woman of fragmented ice and steel of two minutes before, Ellen’s face alive with horror, laid over with maternal fury. Like there was some other whole conversation, a history of conversations of frustrations and love and hurt, going on underneath under the words that were actually there.
Something softened in Ellen’s face, warm and very tired; and she lifted up a hand to tuck a loose forelock back behind Jo’s ear. “We’ve lost enough already, baby,” she said, quietly enough that Dean felt like he should be clearing his throat and looking away and pretending he wasn’t there. “Don’t make me lose you too.”
Or maybe it was you two.
Dean strained again, reaching for his hands, his feet, his mouth, anything, and it all faded like smoke. Useless as flailing around in your bed sheets in the middle of a bad dream. He was useless, isolated and floating in the middle of nowhere.
“Time’s up,” said the demon softly, with Dean’s mouth.
There was a rumbling of rock overhead, just like there had been when Dad had been killed, at the canyon with the etayn. Then the boulder smashed into the ground at Dean’s feet, the trap was broken, and the air was filled with black smoke.
Shit. So much for getting this disgusting perverted thing out of Dean.
Dean’s demon laughed as the power surged through its limbs, and it stepped forward over the useless line. Ellen’s iron knife was out and Jo’s a moment behind her, but a flick of Dean’s fingers and Ellen was flying backwards, pinned to the rock face half a yard above ground, with her head cracking sickeningly back against the granite. Dean couldn’t even look to see if she was alright, because the other two demons were solidifying into their horrible horned bodies on either side of him, and the demon wearing him was advancing on a white and tight-jawed Jo.
Stab it, Dean tried to shout at her. Stab me, hell, just get rid of it. Only she wouldn’t, even if she’d been able to hear him, because iron wouldn’t kill it, only hurt it. Jo wouldn’t think that was a fair exchange, Dean’s life for a faint chance at hers. Sometimes she could be too logical.
“What do you want him to do to you?” the demon purred to her, pausing just out of range and tilting Dean’s head impossibly far like a curious sparrow. There was movement at the corner of Dean’s eye, one of the other demons, somewhere near where Ellen was, and he couldn’t see.“What shall we do now, while your mother watches? All we have is time.”
Jo didn’t bother answering, because she wasn’t the kind to taunt and snark when lives were on the line, not like Dean. The hand holding the knife flickered to the left, with the eyes of the demon glued to the sharp tip. Then her other hand whipped forward, slashing the wet cloth across Dean’s face. It sizzled and burned, but not like the real pain of the gravel - this was the demon’s pain, not Dean’s, and he caught only the fierce echo of it, like a burn in over-used muscles.
The demon snarled and lurched back, as the pommel of Jo’s knife slammed into Dean’s stomach and doubled him up. Jo darted past, and the second demon, the one by Ellen, was suddenly collapsing and shrieking as it was hamstrung with salted iron. Jo booted it viciously away as it collapsed, and she had the salt bag out and open in another moment.
She only got about half of the semi-circle she needed before the demon in Dean slapped it out of her hands, flung it away, and bore her to the ground between his knees. Ellen shouted something, a few hasty lines of exorcism and cursing, and it was choked off. Too late, anyway: Dean’s knife was in his hand, and there was blood in his mouth, and with a stupidly easy flick of his wrist the demon had Jo’s belly opening soft and messy under the blade.
Ellen screamed behind him, and Dean heard the echo of it inside his own head. Jo’s eyes were wide and far too bright, the soft rich brown of them shocked and still furious with the adrenalin of battle, clinging to that like it would keep her from realising, even as her body jerked and writhed, and Dean couldn’t close his own eyes, couldn’t help but see the slick coloured curves inside the gaping wound, the ruined innards of Jo’s body.
He roared at the demon, wordless fury and vengeance and denial; and the demon tipped Dean’s head back and laughed, childishly happy with what it had done.
The sky was too dark, was all Dean could think. Jo loved the sunlight, loved the way it lit everything up, even the dark granite, and made it beautiful, even when it was bleak. And it loved her - it caught her hair and turned it into fine gold, gave warmth and life to the pallor of her face. Made her look like a real lady of legend, not one of them, not someone who spent her days scrounging around in the mud like them. That was what she should be staring up at right now as her eyes dimmed, not...
... The sky was too dark. The sky was too dark, with feathers. Dark feathers.
Dean felt the shock and the thrill shoot through the demon inside him, as it forgot all about the humans and lit up. Its head was turning, Dean’s face splitting into a grin of terror and welcome, just as Cas’ wings blocked out the narrow scrap of sky and he drove into the demon like a grim, determined arrow.
Cas’ hands clamped down on his collar and flung. Dean went sprawling halfway across the little antechamber, bruised and battered with the force of the impact. When the demon turned his eyes the right way again, Cas (who shouldn’t be here, Cas whom Dean had told to get the hell out) was leaning down over Jo, wings coiled and tense, lowering his hand to her forehead. She batted at him, feeble and weakening, then again more strongly, even as Cas pulled away and launched himself at the demon holding Ellen, one long lithe uncoiling of muscle and intent. The demon was distracted and wide-eyed, and Ellen twisted against it, kicked at the back of one goat-like knee and grabbed one horn to pull its head back, just in time for Cas’ sword to flash across its throat.
There was a flash of red light. The demon crumpled to the ground, and was still.
So apparently there was a weapon that killed demons.
The other demon, the one Jo had wounded, was holding back, uncertain and hostile and limping, and Dean felt his own throat snarl at it derisively. Then the demon rose to Dean’s feet and closed in on Cas, like the humans were so much irrelevant meat now.
Cas darted away from Ellen as he came, half a leap and half a glide, backed away from the second demon, and stepped back onto his off foot. The demon in Dean purred like it saw a lover dancing and slid in towards him, matching him move for move; and just for a moment, Cas’ eyes locked on Dean’s, all hot blue determination and promise.
Dean’s heart did a stupid little girly flip inside him.
It was just the same as in his dreams and memories - that secret little warmth, something precious and incomprehensible, just for Cas. Not a glamour, because it was too imperfect and rough, fixated on little details like Cas’ stupidly chapped lips. Not an influence, because, hey, there was a demon inside him, taking him over completely, driving out everything, even his own will, and Dean still felt exactly the same thing when he saw the way the blue of those eyes lit up when they met his.
Dean knew now what it felt like to have a monster inside him, and this was nothing like that.
So. Okay, then. Whatever it was, whyever it was, it didn’t come from anything outside. It was Dean’s, just Dean’s, all warm and mushy and fierce. Whatever Cas was, whatever he’d done, whatever he thought or felt or expected or intended to do, it didn’t change that.
Dean grinned at him on the inside, furious and weirdly triumphant, and just for a moment he thought he felt his own lips twitch in response.
Then, just a moment too late, the demon in Dean worked out (in a burst of fury and delight) that Cas wasn’t being driven. He was leading - leading them away from Ellen and Jo, leading them over to where the discarded bag of salt was lying forgotten in a crevice of the rock, to where it only took one fluid movement and a slash at the second demon’s legs and Cas had scooped it up and launched it in an arc over all their heads, into Ellen’s waiting hands.
The other demon tried to get back to her, to scatter the salt line before it was complete, but Ellen was too fast and Cas was suddenly there, pressing it too hard. Dean’s demon glanced back in time to see Ellen complete the circle, sealing herself and Jo inside. Jo was sitting up, pale but bright-eyed, and Dean had a moment to wonder what Cas had done there before the demon dismissed them as uninteresting.
“There are more coming,” Cas said, gruff between breaths; and Ellen pulled out the gun with the salt rounds, to stand steady as an oak over her daughter.
The demon riding Dean made a delighted, grating laugh, and flicked its hand carelessly at its injured companion, something like “this one’s mine.” Then it slunk forward into Cas’ space, arms open in invitation.
Cas stepped lightly sideways, left an opening at his flank. The demon took it, closed in just in time for Cas to duck away and under Dean’s arm, knocking him off his feet again with a twisting buffet of one wing (and hey, his wings were working, good on him!).
Cas was good, and he was quick, but he was at a disadvantage: Cas didn’t want to hurt Dean, and those wings were too large in a small space.
There had been a few times when Dean had had to face an angel who was downed but could still fight, who still had the use of arms and legs. They were formidable and dangerous, but not half so much as they were from the air. And Cas’ full wingspan was actually wider than this narrow little space. He was cramped, and couldn’t use his wings to lighten his movements or confuse his enemy or get extra height to come crashing down from above. And if you were strong enough it was too easy to grab or shoot a wing to get an angel off-balance.
The demon grinned.
... Crap. Dean shouldn’t be thinking these things.
The twisty malevolent thing inside him fell back onto Dean’s own muscles, used his memories and his instincts and his knowledge of Cas, the sneaky son of a bitch, and darted in under the next to drive a punch right to the centre of the wing-finger that he’d broken.
Cas clenched his jaw shut tight around the edges of that piercing bright angelic scream, and Dean felt the cool slide of metal snug in his palm as the demon twisted the angel’s sword out of his grip.
Cas growled, and Dean felt it rumble low and promising through his belly. Then the demon laughed, thrilling with the fight, and took advantage of the moment to spin Cas around and slam him into the wall.
For one precarious, brilliant moment Dean nearly forgot that his body wasn’t his own, that Cas’ life was in danger here. All that strength coiling and shoving back against him, pinned so briefly against Dean’s body. And this, this, Dean could almost be tempted by: the straining muscles of Cas’ back arching against Dean’s chest and hips and thighs, wings rolling back to clap against Dean’s shoulders and sides, and Dean wanted so badly to be able to bend his head and nuzzle at the line of sweat trickling down the side of his throat, to soothe the taut muscles there back into relaxation, but it was the demon talking, the filth inside him making him want to do it.
The demon dipped his head instead, and bit. Then it pressed Dean’s wild grin into the soft spot behind Cas’ ear, and shoved his hips in hard against warm curves in front of him. “Hey there, hot stuff,” it purred, with Dean’s voice. “How you doing?”
To his horror, Dean felt his treacherous body respond in ways that it shouldn’t, in ways that Cas would be appalled and revolted by if he knew (but it was the demon, only the demon, and its lust for blood and pain). Cas snapped his head back and connected with Dean’s nose, hard. Dean felt the shocked starburst of white-hot damage only as relief.
“Fuck!” The demon staggered back, shaking Dean’s head and grinning bright and mad as the blood started to trickle. Cas’ sword glinted dully in its hand, swaying mockingly with the obscene cant of Dean’s hips.
“I can see your true face, you know,” Cas remonstrated mildly, as he slipped sideways and began to circle the demon again, and why the hell wasn’t he getting clear? “You should be aware that, even in that body, it is not particularly enticing.”
... Of course Cas would get blandly sarcastic in a life-or-death situation. Dean felt ridiculously happy about that, for some reason.
The demon preened. “Do you like it? It made me think of you.” Its free hand danced down Dean’s throat, over his chest and down over his belly to flicker over his groin, and Dean gritted his metaphorical teeth and tried his hardest to pretend the disgusting thing wasn’t making him pose like a whore in front of Ellen and Jo (not to mention Cas, but that thought was untouchable for a whole bunch of other reasons). And why the hell was it making out like it knew Cas?
“So messed up in here over you. So eager to give himself up to me, Castiel.” It danced forward, feinted with the sword at where Cas’ right wing hung a little stiff and slow - not broken again, Dean thought, but it looked sore.
Cas flinched, and missed a step. The demon laughed, fell back like the honourable opponent it wasn’t, and tugged open the neck of Dean’s shirt to show Cas the misdrawn sigil of protection. “So eager to become a monster, if it meant some of his friends might get off easy.”
Cas’ face changed, then, as for the first time some feeling that didn’t belong to the cool, implacable warrior flickered across his features. Just that slight parting of his lips, and the slight narrowing of his eyes, and the lighting of the fire inside them, all of it so faint as to be almost invisible; but Dean saw it, through the eyes the demon held, and he read there the same how-dare-you-try-to-throw-your-life-away fury that had been on Ellen’s face not five minutes before. And, there, he hadn’t been making it up, all those times when he’d thought he’d read something in Cas that no one else could see, because there was no way in hell he’d have thought Cas would go all mother-bear like Ellen - over Dean, of all people.
Dean could count on one hand the number of people who’d cared enough to tear him a new one for being reckless with his own life. Apparently, now, there was one more. Whatever else Cas was up to, whatever else he was playing with, however it was that the sly wonderful son of a bitch had turned up here where of all places he shouldn’t be, he cared.
It was a revelation, so strange and unexpected that Dean almost missed the way Cas’ face smoothed over, and the warning note in his quiet monotone. “If you give him up, you will have a chance to flee. If you stay in his body, I will burn you out, and you and all the memories you carry will be unmade.”
That was a decidedly odd way of saying “I’ll kill you.”
Burning out sounds painful, Dean piped up helpfully inside the demon. I’m voting for a little of column A, how about it, buddy?
The demon kept right on with its life choice of ignoring the hell out of Dean. And, apparently, of Cas. It shoved in close, banking on Cas not shoving a blade into Dean’s heart, and closed its fingers around Cas’ neck.
“Oh, I like humans, Castiel,” it panted into his face. Cas’ foot came up and slammed into its knee, but it barely stumbled. “So passionate, and so easy to persuade into the most terrible things in the name of love.” It giggled, and Cas got his hands locked in over its fingers and twisted from the hip, bringing them both down in a clash of knees and wings and hot breath on the ground. The demon latched Dean’s teeth onto Cas’ neck as they fell, rolled, and came out on top. It sat up, one hand on either shoulder, and beamed.
“Almost as good as angels,” it added, like the twist of a knife in the gut.
Cas’ hair was a mess, and his face was set and bloodied and grim, and his body was spread out under Dean (for the taking, the demon interjected helpfully) like an offering - helpless - no, dammit, which were Dean’s thoughts, and which were the demon’s?
Dean shut down that train of thought entirely, and tried to ignore the way the hips that technically belonged to him were shoving hungrily down into the warm beautiful body beneath him.
Then, as Cas reached up towards Dean’s face, the demon snarled and moved quick as a snake, slashing the sword deep and ragged into the muscle of Cas’ good wing, pinning him to the ground.
Cas did scream then, the blinding sound of it choked off by the weight of the demon’s hand bearing down on his throat. It yanked the sword out, a savage twist on the exit to tear skin and muscle, and Dean was getting really damn fed up with this dick using his handsto hurt his friends.
The demon leant his body down, until Dean’s lips brushed against the sharp corner of Cas’ jaw. Then it breathed, too soft for anyone but Dean and Cas to hear, “So like him, you have become. Like our master. Tempting us away from the path. Does he intrigue you, Castiel? You, the only unfallen angel who yearns towards what we can be?”
It raised Dean’s bloodied sword hand, eyeing the joint where wing became shoulder, calculating the quickest and most vicious way to sever that, to work the point of the blade in and rip Cas apart.
Hell, no.
Dean locked up all his muscles, and drove the fucking sword into the ground.
Cas’ eyes snapped up, and locked on Dean’s - not the demon’s, Dean’s - all rebuke and plea and some weird tinge of resignation. Compromises, Dean thought wildly, tussling viciously with the startled demon just to hold his body still as stone. Then Cas’ hands came up and rested, oddly gentle, over Dean’s wrists.
“You have delayed too long,” he said soft and gravel-dark. “It wasn’t your friends that I was waiting for.”
The soft thump of wings against the sky, a sudden flurry of deep, rich colours, then something hot and furry collided with Dean from the side and he was rolling over and over with Sam between his arms, Sam growling and panting with frustration and Sam knowing better than anyone how Dean’s body worked in a wrestle, disentangling himself and springing away. The demon raised Dean’s head, startled and annoyed, and launched itself at the impudent dog-like thing just as Cas rose, towering against the skyline like a judgement, tossed his sword to someone Dean couldn’t see, and leapt forward too fast to follow, clamping his hands over Dean’s eyes and mouth.
The demon in him shouted, then screamed, and Dean grinned viciously at the son of a bitch and raised his hands to clamp them over Cas’, to hold them there, as Cas’ body pressed up against him from behind and the solid weight of Sam pinned his legs and thighs from the front (inescapably safe). Whatever the hell Cas was doing it burned like a bitch, and Dean pressed into it and back into Cas’ body and thought vicious smitey thoughts at the demon, as it writhed and squealed and had the nerve to try to kick Sam. There was fighting going on somewhere to Dean’s right, the snarl of the other demon and the slap of wings against the air and the scuffle of feet on rock, then the retort of Ellen’s pistol, a squeal and a gurgle, and the thud of a body.
Fire burned through his veins, through his flesh, through every hair follicle and sweat gland, and Dean let his head fall back on Cas’ shoulder and screamed with the demon. Then it was gone, and every muscle in Dean’s body was left weak and shaking behind.
The hand over his eyes loosened its hold, and slid delicately (gently?) up to his forehead, slipping slick over sweat. Then it pushed back into his hair, and cradled his head loosely as the other arm dropped to lock nice and firm around Dean’s waist.
There was a reality and a sincerity to the heat of Cas’ body against his back that hadn’t been there before. Like he was really solid, really meant to be there, and was kind of diffident about it at the same time.
“Dean,” Cas rumbled, low and hopeful in his ear, and Dean felt his face (his) split into a grin, in response to the lurch in his own stomach.
“Hey Cas!” he said, obnoxiously bright because that was easier, and groped down in front of him to bury his fingers in the deep, coarse hair of the Sam-dog’s shoulders. He felt the muscles move under his hands and the canine neck swivel around toward him, and Sam’s teeth locked none-too-gently around his hand, just as Cas huffed against the side of his neck.
“Reckless,” he growled, and the dark anger rumbling up against Dean’s back and breathed into the side of his neck did things to his belly that no scolding from Ellen had ever provoked.
Dean snorted, wrapped his fingers around the top half of Sam’s jaw in the way that really irritated anything dog-shaped, and nudged his shoulders cheerfully back against Cas’ body. “Nah, I knew you guys had m’ back. Right, Sammy?”
Sam shook Dean’s hand out of his mouth (and Dean could totally guess the “ew, gross, Dean, you got your hand in my mouth”expression, even with a long dog face), and Cas cuffed Dean hard around the side of the head, which, to be fair, he probably deserved. Then Cas was gone in an unsteady lurch of movement, and the air at Dean’s back was cold and empty, and Ellen was saying his name quiet and urgent as the rest of the world came back.
Dean opened his eyes, just as Cas said, “The woman is injured.”
It was an unexpected little tableau. Two angels, female, one blonde with white and purple wings and the other red-headed with feathers in a riot of scarlet and vermillion and violet, both with their swords out and standing over the body of the other demon. Beyond them, Ellen and Jo in their salt circle, Jo sitting up gingerly with one hand clamped around her belly (and the amount of blood on her shirt made Dean’s stomach turn over). But they weren’t the only ones in there.
“Uh,” Dean tried cautiously. “Gwen?”
Sam gave him his much-practised “I’ve got used to having an idiot for a brother” face (and hell, Dean had missed that stupid bitch of a face, and how had he ever thought that Cas would let Gabriel take that away from him?). Gwen, who was kneeling next to Jo with an arm around her shoulders and holding what must have been Cas’ sword in her free hand, ignored Dean completely, and looked up at Cas. “She’s still a mess. Can one of you guys fix her up, or do we need Gabriel?”
Jo’s eyes narrowed, and Cas, for some reason, glanced back over his shoulder at Sam. “Is Gabriel coming? That wasn’t the last of the demons.”
Sam looked uncomfortable, and the angel with purple and white wings (Rachel?) wrinkled up her nose and said, cool and almost disdainful, “Gabriel is exactly as you left him,” whatever that meant.
Cas’ shoulders drooped very slightly. Then Ellen’s pistol came up, and levelled at Cas’ stomach.
“Nobody gets near my daughter without an explanation,” she said bluntly.
Sam made a hurt little whimpering noise, and Dean’s blood flash-boiled.
Somewhat to his surprise, Dean found that he was stepping forward and shoving his way in front of Cas, putting the solid bulk of his own body between the wounded angel and the muzzle of the gun. Yeah, well, he was half inclined to spit, nobody shoots my angel without going through me first. Only Cas was Cas’ angel, and Dean didn’t actually know what he was doing here or what the hell arrangement he’d apparently had with that demon, and Ellen was looking at Dean with this incredulous expression that was half pity and half irritation, and he couldn’t snap at Ellen, so he just let his cheeks flush and stood there a bit stupidly, and looked mutinous.
“I don’t shoot until I know what I’m aiming at,” Ellen said, each word like a sturdy little boulder dropped in front of Cas’ face, right over Dean’s shoulder. “And I don’t know you.”
Gwen gave Dean one of her “why are there so many men in the world?” eyerolls and said to Ellen, nice and sensible as if they were chatting over dinner and there were no lives at stake here, “They’re friends, Ellen. Castiel here has saved my life twice, and Hanael lent me spare buttons for the only shirt I had when two of them got torn off miles from anywhere. Let them heal Jo.”
Ellen levelled her gaze on Gwen, then on Cas, then, for some reason, on Dean. There was a very still moment, and Dean saw Rachel’s shoulders coil up tense. Cas touched Dean’s arm, careful and a bit shaky, moving up to stand beside him, exposed.
Then Ellen lowered the gun, and the red-headed angel went down on one knee beside Jo at Cas’ nod, and Gwen was murmuring something to Jo, and the angel was raising two fingers to Jo’s forehead like everything was simple.
... What? The hell had buttons got to do with anything? Secret woman code for something more sinister?
Also, if Dean wasn’t very much mistaken, those were Gwen’s pants that the other angel (Hanael) was wearing. They certainly weren’t your usual angel make. And Gwen was all dressed in an angel tunic and slacks.
Dean pointed at her suspiciously. “We thought you were dead.”
“Caught on the wrong side of the rockfall,” Gwen said absently, as she held Jo’s ruined shirt clear of her body and watched whatever Hanael was doing take effect. Dean narrowed his eyes at Cas’ profile, the dark curls and the soft creamy curve of his neck and the intensity of his focus on whatever thoughts and magic his friend was sending into Jo’s body. “Gabriel wanted to take me back over here, but I wouldn’t let him until he proved to me that Sam was okay. Then I decided I’d be more use with Sam than in here.”
“Sam’s alright, is he?” Ellen stuck in, her voice rawer and curter than Dean was used to.
Dean blinked, and looked down at the long furry face on his other side. Sam, who was sort of maybe leaning against his thigh, wrinkled his nose and looked sort of sheepish. In all the confusion, Dean had almost forgotten that not everyone here knew what Sam was.
Gwen’s eyes slid sideways to Sam, then up to Dean, then back to Jo, as Jo made a little pained noise and leaned more heavily on her shoulder. Hanael’s hand dropped from Jo’s forehead; and, like he’d been waiting for it, Cas staggered and went down on one knee, pressing his knuckles into the rockface beside him to keep from slumping over. Dean’s hand shot out to steady him, and shit, that was a lot of blood on his wing.
“Sam’s fine,” Gwen was saying decisively (evasively) in the background. “We’ve all been working a few things out. There’s been a few misunderstandings...”
Cas lifted his head to meet Dean’s eyes. There was pain in there, and something like apology, and a hell of a lot of warning. His left wing was leaking white light, bleeding out sluggish and wispy into the air around him. The kind of hurt that meant real hurt, for an angel (sure, you had to get the throat or the heart to kill them, but what if this just killed them slower?). Dean sank to his knees beside him, heart thumping sickeningly, and reached out to hover his hand helplessly over dark feathers matted with dust and blood. The light curled in curiously to nuzzle around his fingers, and Cas’ forehead furrowed up and went all pissy at him.
And, because this was Dean’s life, that was when the rest of the demons decided to turn up.