Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - Chapter 2

[blood_and_pie]

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After nearly three hours, Sam had narrowed his focus down to Oklahoma. There had been an outbreak of swine flu, which wasn’t all that unusual in and of itself, but the rate at which it was spreading was ridiculous. The hospitals’ waiting rooms were so full, that the lines had started to spill out into the street.

Sam pulled his mind back a bit, and started a new sweep, looking for anyone in Oklahoma that might be the Horseman he was looking for. It would have been helpful if they’d embraced the cliche a bit more and actually taken to riding conveniently color-coded horses, but sadly that didn’t seem to be the case.

There was a man in Tulsa who was sick. Disgustingly, repulsively congested. Sam wouldn’t have noticed his particular phlegminess amidst the rest of the phlegmy residents except for one thing: whenever the man was by himself, the phlegm lifted off of him like mist and turned into a swarm of flies.

“Gotcha,” Sam said, smiling to himself. Dean slept for three more hours, during which Sam kept watching Pestilence.

There was an advantage to being nearly all-seeing, Sam thought. It was easy to make sure Dean was safe. Then again, knowing what Dean was doing all the time made it that much more obvious that he was still giving Sam the cold shoulder. The sun was well on its way up the sky when Dean finally unzipped the tent again. He’d been awake for two hours, most of which had been spent sharpening his knives, and snacking on the various trail mixes and M&Ms in his bag.

“So. Want to zap us to a motel room with a shower?” Dean asked, staring out at the water.

Sam stood up and looked at Dean - who met his gaze with a lopsided smile. “Sure. Oklahoma okay?”

“What’s in Oklahoma?”

“Pestilence.”

“Naturally.”

“You sure you don’t want to hike back up? Take the scenic route?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Dean rolled his eyes. “My thighs are killing me, alright?”

Sam huffed a small, stifled laugh. “Okay then. Don’t use up all the hot water.” He turned away from Dean as reality shifted around them settling into a motel 20 miles out from Tulsa.

“Dude,” Dean said. “That was…”

“Something wrong?” Sam asked, looking back at his brother.

“No, I just. That was very, uh…low turbulence or whatever.”

Sam could feel his eyebrow creeping up in confusion.

“I didn’t feel like I was getting torn through space.”

“You weren’t. We just kinda side-stepped.”

“A thousand miles? That’s a hell of a side-step.”

Sam smirked. “I’ve got really long legs.”

Dean nodded, and opened his bag, pulling out a change of clothes. He started to head for the bathroom but stopped just short of the door. “What you can do…is it all from the demon blood, or just…the whole Lucifer thing?”

For a fraction of a second, Sam considered expanding on ‘the whole Lucifer thing,’ but then he thought better of it. “It’s not the blood. Well, not entirely. I haven’t had any…not intentionally, anyway, since the night I killed Lilith.”

Dean nodded and walked into the bathroom without another word.

The shower turned on a few seconds later and Sam sighed. Dean was dealing far better than expected, but it was hard to imagine things ever going back to normal. With a flick of his fingers, Sam swapped out the sheets on the beds. He hadn’t thought to check them when he’d looked for a suitable motel near Tulsa, but the ones that had been on the beds had looked…crunchy.

The door buzzer rang and Sam glared at the peephole. “What now?” he muttered, walking to the door.

He knew there were demons outside, he could sense them. He was expecting black eyes on the other side of the door. What he hadn’t expected however, was thirty sets of black eyes all staring at him with unabashed adoration.

The one closest to the door, wearing a teenager with green hair and a nose ring, fell to his knees when Sam opened the door. “My lord, we have heard your call to arms! We felt the deaths of those foolish enough to oppose you.” He held up something that looked a whole lot like a fruit basket and added, “We await your command.”

Sam took the fruit basket, looked out at the demons and said, “Go home.”

The green-haired demon looked crestfallen. “Your very presence makes us strong. We wish only to serve. We’ll do anything you ask of us.”

“Okay, good. Go home.”

“My lord-”

Sam lowered his voice and repeated himself one last time. “Go. Home.” The sidewalk and asphalt beneath the demons’ feet turned the color of glowing embers and Hell swallowed the demons back down, leaving behind thirty extremely disoriented people. “You should probably go home too,” Sam added, closing the door as all of them vanished.

He put the basket on the motel table and sat down in one of the two chairs, staring at the plastic, purple wrapping paper.

A few minutes later, Dean came out of the shower, took one look at Sam staring at the basket and asked, “Demons or Horsemen?”

“Demons.”

“What’s in it?”

Sam shook his head, “You don’t want to know.”

“So…not chocolate covered strawberries then?”

“Well…technically there is chocolate. No strawberries though.”

Dean gave him a look. “If there’s chocolate, it can’t possibly be that bad.”

“No, it - Dean!”

As Dean opened the plastic wrapping and recoiled, the smell of decay, stale blood and dark chocolate filled the air.

“I told you.”

“That’s just…unsanitary.”

Sam snapped his fingers, sending the basket just outside their window, where it burned to ash within seconds.

“I was gonna suggest lunch, but now that I’ve lost my appetite, permanently, maybe we should just hit the road?”

“Yeah. Okay. Pestilence is still in Tulsa. You want to drive, or…?”

“Take the angel-express?” Dean shook his head, “I’m driving. You still need to fill me in on what you know. We need a plan, don’t we?”

********

Sam told Dean everything he knew about Pestilence, and the other Horsemen, which wasn’t much. In the back of his mind, amongst the other memories of his former life (the ones he wasn’t that proud of), he knew that if he’d gone through with his original plans, the Horsemen wouldn’t be a problem. He’d had rituals in place to enslave all of them. There’d been a catch of course, there always was when dealing with beings as powerful as them - the ritual he’d created would have bound their power into rings, but those rings could re-open his Cage.

He hadn’t bound them, so they were a far greater threat, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t protect himself or Dean. Out of the four of them only Death could kill him, that much he knew. The other three could still influence him though, and he didn’t know to what extent.

“So do we know how to kill him?” Dean asked as they pulled into the over-full parking lot of Tulsa General Hospital.

“The Horsemen can’t be killed.”

“That’s nice. So, what’s our plan exactly?”

Sam sighed. “Talk to him.”

“Seriously?” Dean scoffed.

“‘Fraid so.” They walked to the main doors of the hospital passing by dozens of people waiting in line outside. Most of them had given up on standing, and were sitting, or lying down. A few were sprawled out in positions that looked so uncomfortable it seemed more likely they’d just collapsed.

As they passed a man who was coughing weakly into the asphalt, something occurred to Sam. “Be healed,” he said quietly. The man at his feet stopped coughing and pushed himself up to his knees. He blinked wearily up at Sam and Dean, stood up and yawned. “I feel a lot better,” the man mumbled. Then he left the line of people and wandered out into the parking lot.

Dean looked at Sam curiously.

“Well…I am an angel.” Sam shrugged. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.” He closed his eyes and concentrated on the dozens of people around them. When he opened his eyes again, nearly all of them were standing. They looked dazed, but better, and started walking away.

“That’s a neat trick,” Dean said.

“Yeah, but something tells me it isn’t going to stay this easy,” Sam said as they walked through the hospital doors. He could sense Pestilence - this close, it was hard to not sense him. The Horseman’s presence permeated the air and was so strong, that by the time they got out of the waiting area and deep into the hospital, Sam was having a difficult time narrowing down which direction they had to go.

They were working their way up the stairs to the second floor when Dean made a not-good sound, staggered and dropped to his knees, coughing violently. Sam pulled his brother back to his feet, healing him again. He’d been trying to keep Dean protected since they walked in, but it was difficult - it wasn’t just one disease attacking Dean, it was all of them. There were viruses attacking Dean’s system that Sam didn’t even have a name for - one was a hybrid of malaria, chicken pox and conjunctivitis. Sam himself stayed unaffected, protected by his grace, but he could feel Pestilence’s aura prickling at his skin - like thousands of tiny insect legs. Sam scratched absently at his forearm and gave Dean another once-over before pointing at a door ahead of them. “He’s there. He has to be.”

Dean nodded, looked like he was going to throw up while cholera passed through his system, and then gave Sam a weak thumbs-up a half-second later when he’d been healed.

Sam opened the door labeled Dr. Green, and they both stepped through.

Pestilence was sitting at a small pine desk, writing in a notebook. He didn’t look up when they entered.

“I’ll be with you momentarily. Just finishing up my notes.” The Horseman turned a page in his notebook and kept writing. His face was narrow and long, and his shrewd eyes moved across the paper as quickly as his pen.

On the love-seat against the wall was a woman. Or rather, what used to be a woman. The corpse was horribly disfigured with ruptured pustules and large jagged patches of necrosis, and its left arm was still oozing slowly.

“Poor Mrs. Poole,” said the Horseman. “Her suffering was quite long. Exquisite assortment of symptoms. I really outdid myself.”

“Wow. You must be your number one fan,” Dean said, stepping closer to the desk.

“Ha! You must be Dean.” Pestilence stood up and held out his hand. “Put her there!”

Dean swallowed nervously and took a half-step back. “No thanks, I’ll pass.”

“How about you, Star of the Morning?” the Horseman said, sneering at Sam. “You too good to shake my hand, too?”

Sam smirked and clasped both of his hands around the Horseman’s, giving his hand a firm shake. “Nice to meet you. Your brother says you take a great deal of pride in your work.”

“That I do, my friend.” He pulled out an ampule of yellow liquid and held it up to Sam. “Croatoan virus, batch delta. Ten times as fast acting, and completely incurable.” He grinned. “Even by your kind.”

Dean’s nervousness was palpable, Sam could hear his brother’s heart thumping louder at just the memories of their last encounter with the virus.

“Would you like to see a demonstration?” Pestilence asked, leering at Dean.

The ampule in the Horseman’s hand lit up with Hellfire and disintegrated.

“Ow!” Pestilence yelled, shaking his hand out. He brought his singed fingertip to his mouth and glared at Sam.

“Threaten my brother again, and I’ll feed you to my hounds.”

Pestilence frowned, “You do know that you have zero control over my actions, don’t you? You didn’t complete your little spell. I’m under no compulsion to obey you.”

“And yet here you are…following my last standing orders,” Sam scoffed. “How very innovative.”

Rage flickered across the Horseman’s face, and for just a second he wasn’t even remotely human. A thousand eyes in a seething mass of pulsing, green energy stared at Sam and looked inside of him, searching for weaknesses.

“So you make humans sick. Big whoop.” Dean said.

Pestilence refocused on Dean and hissed, “What did you say, you little sack of pus and bone?”

“I said, big deal. Humans get sick all the damn time. We’re weak.” Dean’s eyes flicked to Sam. “If my brother wanted us all gone, he could wipe us out in a few hours.”

Sam almost corrected Dean, because he’d really only need about twenty minutes tops, but then thought better of it.

“All I’m saying is…humans are easy targets. You ever infected anything immortal? Ever given a vampire the flu? Can you give a werewolf chicken pox?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I can. Monsters are just mutated humans. Mutation’s a…specialty of mine.”

“Really?” Dean raised his eyebrows. “So I guess you can infect demons too, right? I mean they were human once. And ghosts? What about ghosts?”

“Do you have a point, little bug?” the Horseman said angrily.

Sam took a step towards his brother as he cured him of syphilis, the Ebola virus and rabies.

“I just think, if you were really good at what you do - as good as you think you are - you’d have stepped up your game a bit.” Dean said smirking, and coughed once as he suffered from a half-second bout of pneumonia. “No wonder the angels think you’re a joke.”

“What did you say?” Pestilence growled. The air in the room started to grow humid, heavy and faintly green.

“They don’t have to worry about you. I mean they don’t care about humans. Your just doing their dirty work for them. For free, even! And after you’re done, they’ll have Earth to themselves. It’s not like you can infect them.”

“Dean!” Sam whispered. Knock it off. He’s getting pissed..

Don’t talk into my brain. I hate that.

Stop goading him!

Pestilence walked out from behind his desk, raised a long finger and pointed it at Dean’s nose. “I can too.”

Dean scoffed. “Yeah, whatever dude.” He turned his back on the Horseman and patted Sam on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go.”

Sam looked from Pestilence who had gone oddly silent, to his brother, and then followed Dean out the door.



********

They drove back to the motel, lost in their own thoughts. Sam tried to look for a common thread that would help him locate the Horsemen more easily. They were all immensely powerful, but short of that, they didn’t give off a particularly unique energy pattern, or anything else to make it easy for them to track.

He sighed, wishing not for the first time, that he’d at least gone ahead with the binding part of the spell he’d planned to use on the Four. He hadn’t because the spell weaved in all of his now-abandoned plans for destroying humanity. If he’d bound them though, he would have been able to track them, and summon them at will.

Dean pulled into the motel parking lot and they went back into their room, both of them pointedly ignoring the two gift baskets by the door. Sam cracked his knuckles once they were inside, incinerating the offerings. He sat down at the table, and tapped his fingers against the ”wood”, trying to think of how to find Famine.

“You hungry?” Dean asked. “We totally missed lunch. And late lunch.”

“What are you in the mood for?” Sam asked, not really up for take-out of any sort. He was thirsty though. Really thirsty. He suddenly realized what he was craving, and felt the side of his jaw twitch.

“I don’t even care. Chinese I guess? Or there was this ‘Burgers & Beer’ place we passed. That’d hit the spot. Man, I’m starving.” Dean pulled off his shirt and swapped it for a new one from his duffle. As an afterthought, he pulled out his flask and took a sip. Then he took another, longer sip, and then another.

Sam watched his brother, remembering his own flask, and what he’d carried in it for a while. “Okay sure, let’s go.” They’d get a nice normal dinner, and then he could stop thinking about the color red and the faint smell of sulfur.

Dean drove them to ‘Burgers & Beer’ faster than should have been possible. Sam might have had something to do with that. He was glad Dean had decided to drive though, because if Sam had transported them, they might have ended up somewhere with far fewer burgers and far more demons. Tasty, tasty demons.

Sam clenched his eyes shut as they pulled into the parking lot, trying to block out the voices and smells of all the demons on Earth. Nearly all of them were wearing humans, and all those humans had blood, pints and pints of demon -

“You getting out or you gonna stay in the car looking constipated?” Dean asked.

Sam ground his teeth together and followed Dean into the restaurant.

It was only four in the afternoon, so the place wasn’t too busy. A waiter took their drink order right away, and came back three minutes later with a pitcher of beer and onion rings.

Dean ordered some kind of deluxe cheeseburger with bacon and everything else you could possibly pile onto a cheeseburger. Sam ordered a salad with grilled chicken, and an iced tea. Dean poured himself a glass of beer from the pitcher, and downed it.

“Take it easy there, cowboy,” Sam mumbled as his eyes landed on a couple seated a few booths away. They were sitting next to each other, and they were both staring right at him. Demons.

Come near us and I’ll wipe you from existence, Sam told them. The demons kept staring at him with unblinking, black eyes.

Dean had worked his way through half of the pitcher when his burger arrived. He peered down at it over the rim of his glass. The door to the restaurant opened, and an old, withered man in a wheelchair entered, pushed by another demon.

Three things happened at once. The old man, Famine, smiled wide when he saw Sam; the two demons in the booth stabbed themselves in the throat with their forks; and Sam called to Castiel for help right before he lunged for the two demons.

Castiel appeared, looked from Famine, to Sam, to Dean, to Dean’s burger, grabbed a hold of Dean with his left hand and Dean’s burger with his right and vanished, taking Dean with him.

“It’s so good to meet you, Sam,” said the Horseman.

Sam heard the words, but only barely. He had his mouth wrapped around the wound in the female demon’s neck and it was growing wider as he drew more and more blood from it. For a brief moment he wondered how Famine could affect him so strongly, when he’d been immune to Pestilence.

Famine heard his thought, and answered, “Because hunger doesn’t just come from the body, it comes from the soul. And your soul…” he laughed - a dry rasping sound “…your soul is ravenous.”

My brother- Sam struggled to keep his thoughts together as he finished draining the first demon and switched to the second, you infected him.

“I woke his hunger and his thirst. He’ll drink himself to death in a matter of hours.”

No. Sam drained the demon faster and faster.

“Your little angel pet won’t be able to help him. He’s discovered red meat.”

The second demon slumped forward when Sam let go of him. He wiped his hand across the back of his mouth, staining it red and glared at the Horseman. “They got away.”

Famine chuckled again. “Distance doesn’t matter. That counts for you too, of course. It doesn’t matter where you go, as long as I walk the Earth, your hunger will grow and grow. The difference of course, is that you won’t die. It’s all going exactly according to plan.”

“No,” Sam shook his head, “there is no plan. There is no war, no Apocalypse. Just… just go back to where you came from.”

“Why would I do that, when everything I want is right here?” The Horseman held his hand out and Sam took a step back reflexively. The bloodless demons’ eyes flickered as Famine pulled their souls out of their bodies and into his open mouth.

Sam watched the black smoke flow down into the old man and suddenly felt a spark of rage. “They’re mine.”

Famine closed his mouth, breathed contentedly and asked, “Since when do you care about demons? Canon-fodder. Fuel for my vessel. Isn’t that what you said, Morningstar? You said I could feast on their souls as long as you got their blood. That was our arrangement.”

The demon standing guard behind the Horseman flinched, just a little, when Sam looked at him. “Come here,” Sam said, and watched the demon walk around Famine’s wheelchair until he was standing right in front of Sam. The demon dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

Flesh opened under Sam’s tongue as he bit down on the demon’s throat. The blood ran down his throat, making his brain hum happily. The power boost he gained from it was a drop in the bucket now, all things considered, but somehow that didn’t change how badly he wanted more.

“You can have every drop, Lucifer, but their souls are mine. You promised me the souls of Earth and the souls of Hell that wander Earth. That was our deal.”

As he drank down the last drop of the demon’s blood, Sam finished scanning the Horseman’s mind and found what he was looking for. Sam’s mouth curved into a smile as he swallowed down the demon’s soul, looked back at Famine and announced, “Deal’s off.”

The Horseman seemed to expand in all directions as he screamed in fury, a giant, cavernous maw, eager to devour everything. It snapped at Sam, crashing against his defenses with a thunderous noise.

“Hell is mine,” Sam took a step towards the old man, “Earth is mine. You don’t get a single soul.”

Famine glared up at Sam, who nearly doubled over at the pulse of hunger that ran through him. He was starving. He wanted to fall to the floor, tear open Hell and drink it all down. Instead, he gritted out. “You don’t feed on the souls themselves though. You feed on their hunger.”

“We had a deal, Morningstar. I don’t care that you called off your war. I want what was promised me.”

“I promised you a feast…and you’ll have one.”

The old man cocked a thin, grey eyebrow at him, and licked his lips. “You are honorable after all.”

Sam smiled, stiffly, fighting the urge to devour with every ounce of his willpower. “Of all the beings that have ever existed, which ones had the greatest hunger?”

The Horseman frowned and said, “You can’t possibly be suggesting-”

“Purgatory.” Sam leaned down close to Famine’s ear and added, “Filled to the brim with things driven solely by their appetites. It was made for you. Together, you and I can open the door.”

“My older brother says that Purgatory is sealed for a reason.” Famine mused, but a thin stream of drool slipped out between his lips and ran down his chin.

Sam kept his face carefully neutral. “Do you always obey your brother?”

“He is older than time.”

“So that means you have to always do what he says?”

The Horseman frowned, licked his chapped lips and said, “No.”

“Well then, what are we waiting for?”

********

on to chapter 3