Beatty, 1988 (part 7 of 9)
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the ballad of simon and rita (i).
Simon Walker is newly dead. (He will never be newlywed, but she told him this months ago. That much isn't news.)
Simon Walker is newly dead, and his corpse is so fresh it still smells like a human being. Even in this heat--late August, a Sunday afternoon just edging into evening reds. His blood's not a rich crust on the ground, but liquid still. Pool's getting bigger, so he's not even done bleeding out. He's face down, skull crushed all to hell, flecks of bone (shouldn't be there) in his hair. She can't see much else, but she's seen enough.
Remembers Jerry Walker, Simon's kid brother, spring of '85. He'd slit his inner thighs, bled out on the family toilet. Seen her first dead body that day--same as all the rest of the neighborhood. She remembers all the blood. Never seen a murder before today, though. Mess is all the same, but for one thing.
John Winchester's boots track wet prints all inside the store, and he's still there when Rita finds them.
--
"This isn't what it looks like, Rita." John kicks a canister used to be full of salt, and he has no trouble empathizing with the weary uncertainty of its roll. Circles and loops--no forward progress. Salt's a pink slush on the ground, too little, too late.
He's not going to bother telling her more; he had a choice, he'd wish it was exactly what it looks like. World's exactly what it seems. Wishes he was the worst thing in this town. Not a good streak of happenstance by any estimation, but not near so bad as what he's beginning to suspect.
Fifteen minutes prior, and Simon Walker was still mostly alive. Thought you'd be back, Winchester, he'd said, which isn't ever a good thing to hear. At best, means you fucked up and Bobby's barking at you from behind a bent screen door, waiting to grudgingly accept whatever mini-mart apology you've got warming in the back seat. When today your name is Richard Fainall, it's considerably worse.
Simon Walker's expression is truly reptilian when John slips through the door, barrel first. "Expected you a little sooner, actually. Hear you had a run-in with the authorities. You keep waving a gun on very first date, people're going to think you're some kind of freak."
"Heard you'd been here a while," John replies, and if he is nonplussed he is determined not to show it. "Jim Beatty, huh? Interesting he's running around lately. Though there'd be a policy about trips topside." He doesn't make a habit of drawing conversation out of his marks (or anyone else, for that matter), but he's never been one-on-one with an outright demon before. Smart bet to draw things along as best he can.
If that's what this is. Simon's (last name, 'SAYS: Shut up and buy something; Thank you for Shopping at Beatty Mercantile') eyes pool dark as an oil slick, and John's thinking that's as hard as proof comes in this business.
"Please. As if I'd answer a crossroads call. That's whores' work; some of us have standards, even in Hell." Even as he lays out the words, Simon's movement is all seduction, not unlike a black widow's courtship dance. "Borderlands, Winchester. You know you were thinking it. Hell's Gate? The American West is an amazingly literal place. You had to be thinking it. It helps your little thought process any, things make the jump all the time. Wriggle up topside when the moon is right, or God's not looking, or--well. Fuck if I know. Jim's just a soul out of hell; doesn't even know it. No a demon yet, unfortunately. But a ghost? He couldn't be so lucky. Don't tell me you're surprised this happens. So many people like you, Hell's burstin' at the seams. Someone like Jim swimming at the edges slips out and...we follow him."
John doesn't have time for this. "Your kind are all the same to me."
"Oh really?" Simon flashes a smile, white teeth and crinkles at the edges of black eyes. "I'd have pegged you for a more personal type. You've got a vicious streak a mile wide when it comes to 'my kind,' and I'm supposed to believe you're on some selfless, holy crusade? I'm sorry, baby, but your kind don't work that way. Besides... A while back all the wires in Hell were vibrating a little message, talked about something big going down, made you a hunter.
"Wanna talk about that?"
John flips the safety on Dean's (because it's his, isn't it; some tacit coming-of-age rite John had missed which proclaimed, Dean is your son, he's a hunter, and this is his) gun and aims squarely at Simon's skull. Means No.
"How long have you been hunting, Winchester?" Simon asks, and there's a girlish trill to his voice. "'Cause I'm guessing five years. December twenty-third, you ship out and you never look back. It's funny, see, because me? I've been hunting you since around then, too. Coincidence, you think? Been hunting you and your little baby boy. Off and on. I'm not obsessed. I have other priorities, see. Speaking of which. Where is your little hellspawn?"
"Not anywhere you'll find him." John keeps the gun trained on Simon.
"Oh," says Simon, and he purses his lips; tight little frown. "We know little Sammy's not here. You know, you weren't supposed to leave him. All alone, especially."
You're telling me, John thinks.
"We can work around that; we'll find him, don't you worry. But I was talking about Dean." Everything rocks, rolls, and crashes. "Hear tell he's quite the kicker!"
John shakes, though every part of him wishes he hadn't. It isn't much--is almost nothing, really; tremor down his arms and through the tips of his fingers--but Simon smiles anyway.
"We need Sammy's whereabouts, see. We found you, but we need the whole three-piece set if we want our gold star. Oh, don't glare at me like that; it's nothing you wouldn't like. I promise you I wouldn't dream of splitting a single hair on his head--I just want to see the little prince for myself." Wink. "So, we'll give you Dean... and all I need in return is an address. You don't even need to deliver. But think fast, Winchester; we find what we're looking for on our own and your one bargaining chip doesn't mean a whole lot to us, see? Hell's Gate at sundown, what do you say?"
Why, John asks. And Simon, coy and toothsome and slippery, won't say. Instead, he says, "Because that's when the gate opens, sweetheart. There's others looking for Sammy and believe me, they don't play by the same rules as I do. I don't play well with them, so if you think about how nice I am, think of what they are. Something tells me you know a good deal when you smell one."
John smells a trap, is what he smells. Simon doesn't bother convincing him otherwise; doesn't nudge him away from his own machinations, either. John's not sure if it's carelessness, or a pure and simple challenge.
He's not sure it matters. Whatever's stirring in Beatty has them by the throat, and it's never gonna just let go.
"You know, John--something I also heard, while perusing the wires. Dean's not such a big fan of flying, is he?" says Simon, lips puckered with a mockery of parental concern. "Do you think it's the crashing he's afraid of, or the never coming down?"
Hell's Gate at sundown, duly noted.
John unloads rounds into Simon Walker 'til there's nothing left of his face but wrecked sinews and a red spray across the back wall.
When the onslaught breaks, Simon screams. Lunges forward.
the ballad of simon and rita (ii).
It's April in Nevada. Warm already, but not the baked outsides and sweat-slicked insides that come with summer proper. Gonna be a scorcher, when it comes--plumajillo and sage that line the road are already greying and limp against cracked earth. Rita swears she can see the steam rise from the pavement in front of Simon Walker's place, darkened with hosewater that morning.
She pulls open the screen door and pushes in the wooden one. Makes a screech like the kind you hear down alleyways in big city movies. In the movies, the neighbors in the flats above shout, shut the fuck up, cunt! as the woman is ravaged, and swept into a dumpster with the next morning's trash.
In Rita's life, which is not at all a televised crime drama (it's Beatty; it's Beatty, and nothing happens in Beatty, Nevada), Simon Walker's been schooled well enough not to say anything like that. But he swears at the screen door, and swears he'll fix it. He doesn't. Then Rita follows him through the maze of trash he calls furniture, heirlooms, and suchlike. Every afternoon (afternoons are slow at the diner; Rita works all night, and nighttime sex is for romantics only), he swears he'll give her the time of her life. Fucking time of her life.
Sometimes he does.
That is the story of Rita and Simon, as Rita tells it.
The wedding was just a formality. She didn't want it; neither did he. Lord knows her mother didn't. The day Simon lays waste to all those plans, and the gold rings, and the white lace, and the Pandora sandwiches--it's a blessing.
It is.
It is, she repeats, because Richard Fainall's got his eyes locked on hers, like he can see the lies tumbling from her mouth. Richard Fainall's still got blood on his shoes. She doesn't owe him anything, least of all the truth. But maybe. Maybe. She owes it to herself.
This is the final chapter of the story of Rita and Simon, last April in Beatty, Nevada. Rita takes a breath.
It starts with the screen door. Simon doesn't go a-screeching after that door, which in retrospect is the first sign. The second is the smell of new sweat. Simon's place is trash and the refrigerator tends only to work during the odd months, but sweat is something Simon Walker doesn't tolerate.
Sit on the towel, babe. Can't have anyone sweating into the upholstery. Gen-u-ine leather.
Maybe if we got the window open--
Air resistance, darling. Air res-ist-ance.
Gen-u-ine leather and air res-ist-ance; that's Simon Walker.
Not this.
It's a long, narrow hallway, lined with boxes and shelves of things never got fully unpacked. It's a dark, narrow hallway, which memory stretches into eternity.
Richard Fainall's got that look in his eye again. Keep going. Same look he uses on his kid--and maybe Rita should be offended, him treating her like that, when he's the one with blood on his shoes. (She keeps staring.) But it's the same look made the kid look a shade over thirty, in between looking miserable and looking nine, so Rita's not sure how to take it.
She makes it through this tale, Richard Fainall's gonna tell her everything; she'll make sure of that.
End of the hallway, door's ajar. Room's spewing sulfur and salt, something septic and something smells a little like sex.
Inside, Simon's got his hands wrapped around some stranger's cock. She can see the cum, dried and cracking at the corner of his mouth. The lube, sticky between that fucking stranger's thighs.
Simon doesn't have the decency to look surprised.
Who've we got here, Rita asks. Who've you got. She's never been stunned into silence and she's not about to start now. It's her waitress voice--the one she uses when folk entertaining out-of-towners stop by the diner and the Stagecoach. Impersonal. Professional.
Brother, of sorts, he claims. Simon splays himself supine, twists in the off-white of this sheets. His neck cranes--sex--and his hips rock--sex--and his lips pull taut as he smiles wide, wide wide. "Tell me, Rita girl. You believe in the Devil?"
Rita's a good girl. All things considered, Rita's a good girl. "I assuredly do now."
"Good." Then he's up, so fast she hardly sees him. She wonders how he did that; she wouldn'ta let him get that close. How did he do that? But she puts the throught from her mind when she feels his wide, wide smile at her neck. His fingers press against her nape, so deep she swears her vertebrae bruise. "Faith like that might save you someday."
She leaves in a hurry, and that is the end of Simon and Rita. Almost.
Rita goes back to work, and so does Simon. The boy (or the man, or the thing, with the lube and the cum all between his legs) is found in a dumpster, back in Carson City. Neck broken, pants down, and--it's the strangest thing--near a quart of salt stuffed down his throat. (Rita keeps looking down at Richard Fainall's boots, crust of pink blood-salt slush hardening at the edges, now. Where were you last April? she asks. Nebraska and Wyoming, he tells her, on beat and matter of fact.)
That's when she files for the restraining order. She doesn't have proof, so she keeps her mouth shut, but things like that are too close and too strange for Beatty; coincidences don't take well in a town like this.
"Rita, this is very important." Voice strained.
Richard Fainall stands up, and Rita steps back.
"Rita."
"Just tell me who you really are. Why you're here. Tell me everything."
Richard Fainall sighs, like he doesn't have time for her peace of mind. Paces, agitated. "I'm headed to California with my boy. Got a stint waiting for me in Oakland. That's all you need to know."
Rita's about to object, when he says: "But I can tell you. Simon on the ground there, Simon back in April--hell, Simon all summer"--which he says like he doesn't quite believe it himself--"That's not the man you thought it was."
"Figured as much."
They stand silent for a spell.
"And you're certain that kid, the one in the Dumpster, is the only thing he talked to?"
Rita wouldn't know. She stopped keeping track.
"Rita, we need to go. We need to go right now. Hell's Gate--just west of here, right?" Even the question is a command.
We're not going anywhere, says Rita. Nobody's going anywhere, they're gonna stay right here, right here in the shop 'til Jenny comes and fixes everything. Nobody, not anywhere. We're not going anywhere.
"Listen to me, Rita. There's not a speck of gas in this town right now, and we need to get out to that gate. No, you stay right there, and you listen--you will not walk out on me. There's something here, something used to be in Simon Walker; it's moving fast, and it's after my boys. We're going to that gate. Every moment we spend thumbing around here is one we don't--"
Rita nods. Fine. She gives up. She doesn't know how to argue anymore; doesn't know if she even wants to.
Just--fine. "Jus' lemme get the keys. Simon has--he had... There's a motorcycle out back. I'll take you to Hell's Gate."
He lets her disappear into Beatty Mercantile's back office. Little plants lining the crusted window are all dead, limp as the plumajillo in April. Keys are on the desk.
So is the phone.
Rita dials red, button neatly marked in Simon's hand as PANIC EMERGENCY HELL ON EARTH. "Jenny, I need you out in Hell's Gate. I know the gas doesn't come for an hour. Just get there. It's important."
fear (iii)
John hasn't ridden since--hell, since before the war, maybe. And even then, all he'd done was test-run the bike Daniel Miller's old man had brought into the shop. (Daniel Miller put that bike through the iron siding of some highway up in Iowa a year or two later. They'd made a bet about death just before shipping out, Danny to Iowa Tech and John to Quang Nam. John won.)
In any case, before Mary. She'd tolerate a lot--indulge a little herself--but motorcycles were the kind of things fell under Not on Your Life, John Winchester. She'd known Daniel Miller, too. And John thought, She's afraid. 'Fraid everyone who gets on one is gonna crash. And he thought, it's safe. Danny's just a damned fool, always has been. It's safe when you're careful.
Turns out it's not. 'The Truth' is a lot of things. Got started on it with Missouri, learned the more pertinent details from Jim Murphy, in Minnesota. Learned the kind of things you tell a guy before you marry him. Woulda taken her either way, of course, but he needed to know. (And maybe he could have--)
The truth is this: Mary was a great hunter, quiet like the Kansas High daddy's girl she was, but ever-vigilant. And she was always, always careful. The truth is this: It didn't matter.
And so now John thinks, maybe fear is the appropriate response, because it keeps you ready, and keeps you watchful. That and vengeance, because something ain't right in the world, it has to be met with fear. Fear keeps his arms 'round Rita's waist as she speeds out through empty Nevada, winding around stunted brush and glittering spines of broken glass, and keeps his thoughts anywhere but. Fear is envisioning Blue Earth, mysteriously devoid of one Sam Winchester. That's the kind of fear gets put away, because there's a thousand miles between them, and there's nothing John can do. Fear is hoping to high hell demons don't lie.
Dry, mirthless chuckle.
There's a thousand different outcomes, every second breeding more. What if Dean and his captors are past the stateline? What if that scrub out left isn't a bush, but a child? What if they never left Beatty? What if 'someone else' has already got Sam (he's missing, missing, missing)? What if the demons give Dean back in pieces? He taught him best he could, but there's a difference between remembering to lay down salt at night, and putting down a demon.
Those are the kind of thoughts that get put away. Don't scare from things you can't fix, Winchester. Go deal with your demons.
In the end, that's all you can ever do.
"Rhyolite," says Rita, and her words are nearly lost to the wind.
They pass a garden of white giants, granite women and calcified ghosts. They edge northwest. The sun is hot, turning red; John tries not to think about sunset.
"Old Town," says Rita, some time later. Six, seven ghost towns, they pass. Like the life was sucked right out of the walls and roofs, feeding the dark things that lurk in the desert. "Cat's Trail," she says. They wind inward.
John doesn't know if she's playing tour guide on his behalf, or if she's just trying to orient herself. Out here, it could swing either way. He knows he's surprised and turned around, when he sees Beech Duchess 76 sitting out there, happy as a clam. She's looking a little dustier, maybe a little sun-bleached, but she hasn't lost any of her sass. John can tell just by looking at her. "There," he says. Rita swerves uncertainly, and he repeats, "There, by that plane. That's the place." Beech Duchess 76. Please supply identifying information.
The radio's still droning. (No, she hasn't lost a bit of sass; not one bit. It's good to know at least one thing hasn't been blown to hell just yet.)
The motorcycle drags to a halt with some uncertainty, and John unwraps himself from Rita's waist. "This yours?" she asks. "Pretty little number."
Time for work.
John scours his pockets first, and then the inside of the plane--for anything of use. There's a little brown journal taped under the pilot's seat that John is pleased to find still there.
"What are we looking for?" asks Rita. Her lips are full and red, puckered with unease. Don't wanna be here, they plead. Don't wanna be here at all. But contrary to classic circumstance, safest place in a hundred mile radius is probably right here.
Hell's Gate.
Is this yours, what are we looking for, what are we doing. She's as inquisitive as Sam. "We work fast," is all John supplies. Turns back to the plane's insides. Back of the plane there's a taped up box, labeled Sienna De Santos, OAKLAND. Rosaries inside, the color of bays and oceans. John thumbs the beads. Could work, maybe. String them all together. "Need to make this." John flips to a dog-eared page of the journal. It's a drawing, a Devil's Trap. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but Beatty's not home to the first demons topside, and John has adequate reason to believe the trap's sound.
(If he does it proper.) He's looking at the page and fingering the beads, and Rita says: "You ain't gonna use those to make that thing."
Is that so?
"You're not going to drag me out to Hell's Gate and snip up a bunch of rosaries! Forgive me for not ascribing to your heathenism. To me, that sounds like a bad idea. To me, that sounds sacreligious."
"You don't know the half."
Rita sidesteps his baited reply, and stands firm. "And I don't aim to. All I know is you're not going to do it."
John sighs. He drops down from inside the plane, and Rita steels herself like she's expecting a tousle. John walks right past her and examines Simon Walker's motorcycle.
Gas tank would work. It would spill like all hell, but it would work. (Pop finally kills his cigarettes when he goes to deal with the ding in Daniel Miller's gas tank. He works buck-naked from the waist down. Shower smells like gasoline for a week. So does Pop, but that's nothing new. Gasoline and cig smoke.)
John doesn't strip down; he just lets it soak into his jeans (and there's a flash, some sideways moment in time, where it feels like blood). Circles the plane with a shaky Devil's Trap. Line for line out of the journal--he checks, double checks. It's his first.
"You're making it seem like we're not going back, throwing all my gas out into the dirt." She's given up on questions, John notes.
"Rita." He's under the plane, squirting chords across the circle. "Rita, you promise me--whatever you see. Whatever you see, you try your damndest to forget after tonight. Just put it away and go back to Beatty, get on with life." You stray too far and you can't ever go back.
"You put us in your rearview first, and I assure you, forgetting'll be my first priority." If aught else, Rita seems comfortable with this one item in John Winchester's Life Philosophy.
Trap's done. Now it's just the waiting. Shadows are longer, and the dust is bathed in red.
"Does Dean know? About all this?"
She knows the answer to that. John wipes the gasoline from his palms onto his jeans. The attempt leaves black streaks in both places, doesn't do much to help his cleanliness.
"And Sammy?"
"What do you know about Sammy?" Honestly, sometimes he can't believe that kid. He leaves Dean a couple hours and some waitress knows their family history? But then, he supposes 'some waitress' Rita has ceased to be. After all, she trusts the man who killed her boyfriend who was possessed by a demon who fucked a stranger who died in Carson, with salt jammed down his throat. Generally speaking, things tend to come unhinged somewhere down the line.
Rita laughs. "Not much. I frankly can't remember what's been heard and what's been filled in by yours truly. Thought he was a drug runner for a while. One of your ring, bailed out on you--you were yellin' on the phone, said he was gone."
John snorts. Little drug runner Sammy. It almost makes his being missing less offensive. (Trust Jim Murphy; he'll do you right. He'll do you more right than you have ever done him.)
"And then, he's actually your boy, isn't he? Your other one."
John nods.
"Sodapop Curtis?"
"What?"
"Never mind. The Outsiders. It's a book--and a movie, I think. 'Bout kids."
John gets the impression that 'kids' has a more specific definition than she's letting on.
"Dean looks up to him, huh?"
Now John's lost. "What?" he repeats.
"His brother."
A grin cracks open on John's face. "Maybe someday, maybe someday. Sammy's gonna be tall, I can tell. Right now, he's five years old, and he's the one looking up to anything that moves. But he knows his clocks and his calendars and maybe how to read a little. Dean'd probably look up to him if he could remember how he was at five."
Rita laughs, bright and full, like they're not sprawled in the dirt and covered in grease and gas; like they're not waiting bait for demons, at the mouth of Hell's very own gate (or one of them; there's one in Texas, he knows. Maybe Wyoming). "Is he, now." She's picking at the brush, plumajillo and sage like the rest of the area. "Your boy treats him like a safety net, seems like, so I just assumed."
"Yeah, well. I told him, 'keep him safe.' Everything goes so far south it ain't coming back, just keep him safe. Just that one thing."
Rita looks at John. She's reading too much into what he said. He continues: "So, no. Sammy doesn't know. Not yet." Maybe it'll all be over, before he needs to. Maybe it ends here. (Deep down: You can't ever go back.)
"Must be nice. The not having to know, but still having people to protect you."
John's not so sure. He'd want to know. There has to be a fire-and-brimstone lining to the world, he'd want to know. But maybe he's wrong. He looks at Rita, and he thinks, You're a waitress in Nevada, coulda gotten married. He thinks of Sammy, and it's You're four, shooting off a Nebraska hill in a shopping cart; you're just a kid.
Thinks of Dean, and it's just, I'm sorry.
Rita sighs. Folds her hands into her lap and waits for sunset.
our fathers.
Flash of red, in Jim Murphy's peripheral vision.
The kite, the kite that's been stuck up there who knows how long--a couple seasons at least (got lost in the spring foliage, and Jim thought it had gone; come the end of August, the tree starts shedding early, and there it is again, bright red against greying sky). The kite comes falling down, crowned with leaves. Sam Winchester comes down after it.
Heart palpitations aren't exactly an exaggeration. Sorry, John, I dropped your kid out a second-story window. The panic, which rages in his ears like an August downpour on sheet metal ceilings, relents when he realizes Sam isn't falling, but being carried.
He watches as a girl slips down from the last branch, hears the crunch of leaves (and not the crunch of bones) and she lands them both with inhuman grace.
Monstrous grace.
Panic's back.
The stairwell screams. Jim flies.
--
The door slams, and Sam gasps. The girl--call me Ruby, she says--tenses her hold on Sam's hand. He's familiar with the signal. Whatever happens, we're good. I'm here. But it doesn't feel right, if it's not Dean's hand. (Soft, fleshy fingers. Shiny nails. These are not Dean's hands.)
When Pastor Jim rounds the corner, Sam is nearly happy to see him, the morning's morbidity almost forgotten.
"I found him," says Ruby. "Don't worry."
Pastor Jim says nothing. Ruby keeps hold of Sam's hand. Sam doesn't move.
"We were just going out for french fries, weren't we, Sammy?"
"Sam doesn't like french fries," says Pastor Jim. "Dean does." (Truth is, Sam doesn't mind them. He just hates eating them in the silence of fast food joints in highway gas stops at midnight. It's Dean who tells Pastor Jim Sam doesn't like french fries, the one time he serves them. Ever since, Pastor Jim hasn't strayed once from peas and fancy ridged carrots. Sam feels guilty every time, on Dean's behalf, though he knows he shouldn't feel sorry about carrots.)
Pastor Jim turns his gaze to Sam. So does Ruby, though her expression is one of nearly comical digust. You lied? Eyes pinched into an accusatory glare. Sam looks down at his shoes.
"What are you?" asks Pastor Jim. Back to Ruby. What are you?
Ruby draws a knife from her belt. It sends a jagged burst of raw fear through Sam all over again. The blood rushes to his fingers and his feet and his hand is hot in hers and she won't let go and his fingers are sweaty and his legs are panicking, go go run--
"I sent a demon back to Hell in Carson City." She lets the sun run over the blade, turns cold steel to something warm, shimmering like water. It's etched with shapes and squiggly letters. "I am not little Sammy's enemy."
Sam is transfixed by the blade. Dean has one like that.
Sam does not think Pastor Jim is as impressed. Pastor Jim says: "Christo."
--
The woman's eyes dilate matte black, flicker, and fade to their normal human shade of blue. She shrugs. "I said I wasn't Sammy's enemy. I didn't say anything about you."
She throws Sam back against the tree with a crash and a crackle of leaves. Flings herself forward with the momentum.
She's good with the knife, Jim will allow her that. Vertical slice, that could open man up from groin to ribs. The blade is razor-thin, invisible almost.
Jim dodges, feels the air as it skims past the billow of his vestments, and looks to Sam. Sam keeps himself prostrate in the nest of leaves, red and gold, spitting mulch from his mouth. As yet unharmed. Jim tries to close the distance between himself and Sam and the tree, but the demon is faster.
She has him by the shoulder, and wrenches him back before she draws in again with her knife. She is wary; never comes too close. Which is a boon to Jim, because her caution is overcaution. Precious little he had could hurt her.
The knife, though, is a curious object. He knows the symbols, at least in part. Occult, perhaps, but not demonic. That question again: What are you?
They circle, like water down a drain, and the sun follows, red into purple. It will be a cool night in Blue Earth.
Sam is quiet, his only noise his breathing. Staccato syncopation. His small shoulders are rigid with shock and incomprehension. Jim can't see much more.
The demon doesn't give him a chance.
Less wary, now. She floods in closer, all heat and power and sulfur.
(Precision, Jim.)
Jim catches her next blow at her wrist, and the force knocks the blade from her hand. She wrenches back instantaneously, Sam dragging behind.
Knife in hand. Jim regards her, lips thin-pressed, expression cool. She steps back. She cannot dodge near so well with Sam in tow, and she knows it.
Jim lets the knife fly.
The demon sets Sam free, but catches the knife with unperturbed ease. Stalks forward.
Jim steps back, back toward the house. Calves primed to run. Sam scrambles toward him on hands and knees. He's favoring one shoulder.
"Gonna run inside? To consecrated ground?" Her eyes are clear blue slits, and her pert smile looks all wrong on her face. "I'll spare you the story, but... You don't carry around a knife like this if you're small fry in Hell. After all... how many times has the Church saved anyone?"
"Sam," Jim whispers furiously. He should check, make sure the child is unharmed, but one look in his eyes, and he knows it's futile. Some things can't be unseen; all he sees in Sam's eyes is fear. "Sam, I need you to run inside and call--"
"Call?" says the demon. "Let me guess. John Winchester? Our savior, John Winchester? Hear tell he's halfway across the country, and not doing anyone any good. You know what I'm talking about, Sammy. Think about it."
"Go, Sam."
A beat of hesitation.
"Go."
Sam goes. Pitter patter through the church foyer. Children's steps.
But Sam can't reach the phone, and he doesn't know the number, Jim realizes. He can't do this. And Jim cannot protect him.
It's like the demon can read his uncertainties. "Go ahead, pastor. Call him. Call John." She lets Sam run, keeps her focus on Jim. She could have followed, could have swept past, could have been long gone, into the red of the dying sun. But Jim gets the impression she's not quite done here (not anymore--not the way she's looking at him, hungry. French fries, thinks. How silly.). "Call him. Then he'll be able to hear you gurgle, just bleed out, when I slit your throat."
Before Jim flees (gear in the basement; rack of gear in the basement, but none of it fit for her. It's time he needs, not weapons), he asks one thing: "What does the Devil want with Sam Winchester?"
Simple answer. "He's little Sammy Winchester. Everybody wants him."
Parts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 + a/n | Full Story (.PDF) | Artwork by starry_ice
the ballad of simon and rita (i).
Simon Walker is newly dead. (He will never be newlywed, but she told him this months ago. That much isn't news.)
Simon Walker is newly dead, and his corpse is so fresh it still smells like a human being. Even in this heat--late August, a Sunday afternoon just edging into evening reds. His blood's not a rich crust on the ground, but liquid still. Pool's getting bigger, so he's not even done bleeding out. He's face down, skull crushed all to hell, flecks of bone (shouldn't be there) in his hair. She can't see much else, but she's seen enough.
Remembers Jerry Walker, Simon's kid brother, spring of '85. He'd slit his inner thighs, bled out on the family toilet. Seen her first dead body that day--same as all the rest of the neighborhood. She remembers all the blood. Never seen a murder before today, though. Mess is all the same, but for one thing.
John Winchester's boots track wet prints all inside the store, and he's still there when Rita finds them.
--
"This isn't what it looks like, Rita." John kicks a canister used to be full of salt, and he has no trouble empathizing with the weary uncertainty of its roll. Circles and loops--no forward progress. Salt's a pink slush on the ground, too little, too late.
He's not going to bother telling her more; he had a choice, he'd wish it was exactly what it looks like. World's exactly what it seems. Wishes he was the worst thing in this town. Not a good streak of happenstance by any estimation, but not near so bad as what he's beginning to suspect.
Fifteen minutes prior, and Simon Walker was still mostly alive. Thought you'd be back, Winchester, he'd said, which isn't ever a good thing to hear. At best, means you fucked up and Bobby's barking at you from behind a bent screen door, waiting to grudgingly accept whatever mini-mart apology you've got warming in the back seat. When today your name is Richard Fainall, it's considerably worse.
Simon Walker's expression is truly reptilian when John slips through the door, barrel first. "Expected you a little sooner, actually. Hear you had a run-in with the authorities. You keep waving a gun on very first date, people're going to think you're some kind of freak."
"Heard you'd been here a while," John replies, and if he is nonplussed he is determined not to show it. "Jim Beatty, huh? Interesting he's running around lately. Though there'd be a policy about trips topside." He doesn't make a habit of drawing conversation out of his marks (or anyone else, for that matter), but he's never been one-on-one with an outright demon before. Smart bet to draw things along as best he can.
If that's what this is. Simon's (last name, 'SAYS: Shut up and buy something; Thank you for Shopping at Beatty Mercantile') eyes pool dark as an oil slick, and John's thinking that's as hard as proof comes in this business.
"Please. As if I'd answer a crossroads call. That's whores' work; some of us have standards, even in Hell." Even as he lays out the words, Simon's movement is all seduction, not unlike a black widow's courtship dance. "Borderlands, Winchester. You know you were thinking it. Hell's Gate? The American West is an amazingly literal place. You had to be thinking it. It helps your little thought process any, things make the jump all the time. Wriggle up topside when the moon is right, or God's not looking, or--well. Fuck if I know. Jim's just a soul out of hell; doesn't even know it. No a demon yet, unfortunately. But a ghost? He couldn't be so lucky. Don't tell me you're surprised this happens. So many people like you, Hell's burstin' at the seams. Someone like Jim swimming at the edges slips out and...we follow him."
John doesn't have time for this. "Your kind are all the same to me."
"Oh really?" Simon flashes a smile, white teeth and crinkles at the edges of black eyes. "I'd have pegged you for a more personal type. You've got a vicious streak a mile wide when it comes to 'my kind,' and I'm supposed to believe you're on some selfless, holy crusade? I'm sorry, baby, but your kind don't work that way. Besides... A while back all the wires in Hell were vibrating a little message, talked about something big going down, made you a hunter.
"Wanna talk about that?"
John flips the safety on Dean's (because it's his, isn't it; some tacit coming-of-age rite John had missed which proclaimed, Dean is your son, he's a hunter, and this is his) gun and aims squarely at Simon's skull. Means No.
"How long have you been hunting, Winchester?" Simon asks, and there's a girlish trill to his voice. "'Cause I'm guessing five years. December twenty-third, you ship out and you never look back. It's funny, see, because me? I've been hunting you since around then, too. Coincidence, you think? Been hunting you and your little baby boy. Off and on. I'm not obsessed. I have other priorities, see. Speaking of which. Where is your little hellspawn?"
"Not anywhere you'll find him." John keeps the gun trained on Simon.
"Oh," says Simon, and he purses his lips; tight little frown. "We know little Sammy's not here. You know, you weren't supposed to leave him. All alone, especially."
You're telling me, John thinks.
"We can work around that; we'll find him, don't you worry. But I was talking about Dean." Everything rocks, rolls, and crashes. "Hear tell he's quite the kicker!"
John shakes, though every part of him wishes he hadn't. It isn't much--is almost nothing, really; tremor down his arms and through the tips of his fingers--but Simon smiles anyway.
"We need Sammy's whereabouts, see. We found you, but we need the whole three-piece set if we want our gold star. Oh, don't glare at me like that; it's nothing you wouldn't like. I promise you I wouldn't dream of splitting a single hair on his head--I just want to see the little prince for myself." Wink. "So, we'll give you Dean... and all I need in return is an address. You don't even need to deliver. But think fast, Winchester; we find what we're looking for on our own and your one bargaining chip doesn't mean a whole lot to us, see? Hell's Gate at sundown, what do you say?"
Why, John asks. And Simon, coy and toothsome and slippery, won't say. Instead, he says, "Because that's when the gate opens, sweetheart. There's others looking for Sammy and believe me, they don't play by the same rules as I do. I don't play well with them, so if you think about how nice I am, think of what they are. Something tells me you know a good deal when you smell one."
John smells a trap, is what he smells. Simon doesn't bother convincing him otherwise; doesn't nudge him away from his own machinations, either. John's not sure if it's carelessness, or a pure and simple challenge.
He's not sure it matters. Whatever's stirring in Beatty has them by the throat, and it's never gonna just let go.
"You know, John--something I also heard, while perusing the wires. Dean's not such a big fan of flying, is he?" says Simon, lips puckered with a mockery of parental concern. "Do you think it's the crashing he's afraid of, or the never coming down?"
Hell's Gate at sundown, duly noted.
John unloads rounds into Simon Walker 'til there's nothing left of his face but wrecked sinews and a red spray across the back wall.
When the onslaught breaks, Simon screams. Lunges forward.
the ballad of simon and rita (ii).
It's April in Nevada. Warm already, but not the baked outsides and sweat-slicked insides that come with summer proper. Gonna be a scorcher, when it comes--plumajillo and sage that line the road are already greying and limp against cracked earth. Rita swears she can see the steam rise from the pavement in front of Simon Walker's place, darkened with hosewater that morning.
She pulls open the screen door and pushes in the wooden one. Makes a screech like the kind you hear down alleyways in big city movies. In the movies, the neighbors in the flats above shout, shut the fuck up, cunt! as the woman is ravaged, and swept into a dumpster with the next morning's trash.
In Rita's life, which is not at all a televised crime drama (it's Beatty; it's Beatty, and nothing happens in Beatty, Nevada), Simon Walker's been schooled well enough not to say anything like that. But he swears at the screen door, and swears he'll fix it. He doesn't. Then Rita follows him through the maze of trash he calls furniture, heirlooms, and suchlike. Every afternoon (afternoons are slow at the diner; Rita works all night, and nighttime sex is for romantics only), he swears he'll give her the time of her life. Fucking time of her life.
Sometimes he does.
That is the story of Rita and Simon, as Rita tells it.
The wedding was just a formality. She didn't want it; neither did he. Lord knows her mother didn't. The day Simon lays waste to all those plans, and the gold rings, and the white lace, and the Pandora sandwiches--it's a blessing.
It is.
It is, she repeats, because Richard Fainall's got his eyes locked on hers, like he can see the lies tumbling from her mouth. Richard Fainall's still got blood on his shoes. She doesn't owe him anything, least of all the truth. But maybe. Maybe. She owes it to herself.
This is the final chapter of the story of Rita and Simon, last April in Beatty, Nevada. Rita takes a breath.
It starts with the screen door. Simon doesn't go a-screeching after that door, which in retrospect is the first sign. The second is the smell of new sweat. Simon's place is trash and the refrigerator tends only to work during the odd months, but sweat is something Simon Walker doesn't tolerate.
Sit on the towel, babe. Can't have anyone sweating into the upholstery. Gen-u-ine leather.
Maybe if we got the window open--
Air resistance, darling. Air res-ist-ance.
Gen-u-ine leather and air res-ist-ance; that's Simon Walker.
Not this.
It's a long, narrow hallway, lined with boxes and shelves of things never got fully unpacked. It's a dark, narrow hallway, which memory stretches into eternity.
Richard Fainall's got that look in his eye again. Keep going. Same look he uses on his kid--and maybe Rita should be offended, him treating her like that, when he's the one with blood on his shoes. (She keeps staring.) But it's the same look made the kid look a shade over thirty, in between looking miserable and looking nine, so Rita's not sure how to take it.
She makes it through this tale, Richard Fainall's gonna tell her everything; she'll make sure of that.
End of the hallway, door's ajar. Room's spewing sulfur and salt, something septic and something smells a little like sex.
Inside, Simon's got his hands wrapped around some stranger's cock. She can see the cum, dried and cracking at the corner of his mouth. The lube, sticky between that fucking stranger's thighs.
Simon doesn't have the decency to look surprised.
Who've we got here, Rita asks. Who've you got. She's never been stunned into silence and she's not about to start now. It's her waitress voice--the one she uses when folk entertaining out-of-towners stop by the diner and the Stagecoach. Impersonal. Professional.
Brother, of sorts, he claims. Simon splays himself supine, twists in the off-white of this sheets. His neck cranes--sex--and his hips rock--sex--and his lips pull taut as he smiles wide, wide wide. "Tell me, Rita girl. You believe in the Devil?"
Rita's a good girl. All things considered, Rita's a good girl. "I assuredly do now."
"Good." Then he's up, so fast she hardly sees him. She wonders how he did that; she wouldn'ta let him get that close. How did he do that? But she puts the throught from her mind when she feels his wide, wide smile at her neck. His fingers press against her nape, so deep she swears her vertebrae bruise. "Faith like that might save you someday."
She leaves in a hurry, and that is the end of Simon and Rita. Almost.
Rita goes back to work, and so does Simon. The boy (or the man, or the thing, with the lube and the cum all between his legs) is found in a dumpster, back in Carson City. Neck broken, pants down, and--it's the strangest thing--near a quart of salt stuffed down his throat. (Rita keeps looking down at Richard Fainall's boots, crust of pink blood-salt slush hardening at the edges, now. Where were you last April? she asks. Nebraska and Wyoming, he tells her, on beat and matter of fact.)
That's when she files for the restraining order. She doesn't have proof, so she keeps her mouth shut, but things like that are too close and too strange for Beatty; coincidences don't take well in a town like this.
"Rita, this is very important." Voice strained.
Richard Fainall stands up, and Rita steps back.
"Rita."
"Just tell me who you really are. Why you're here. Tell me everything."
Richard Fainall sighs, like he doesn't have time for her peace of mind. Paces, agitated. "I'm headed to California with my boy. Got a stint waiting for me in Oakland. That's all you need to know."
Rita's about to object, when he says: "But I can tell you. Simon on the ground there, Simon back in April--hell, Simon all summer"--which he says like he doesn't quite believe it himself--"That's not the man you thought it was."
"Figured as much."
They stand silent for a spell.
"And you're certain that kid, the one in the Dumpster, is the only thing he talked to?"
Rita wouldn't know. She stopped keeping track.
"Rita, we need to go. We need to go right now. Hell's Gate--just west of here, right?" Even the question is a command.
We're not going anywhere, says Rita. Nobody's going anywhere, they're gonna stay right here, right here in the shop 'til Jenny comes and fixes everything. Nobody, not anywhere. We're not going anywhere.
"Listen to me, Rita. There's not a speck of gas in this town right now, and we need to get out to that gate. No, you stay right there, and you listen--you will not walk out on me. There's something here, something used to be in Simon Walker; it's moving fast, and it's after my boys. We're going to that gate. Every moment we spend thumbing around here is one we don't--"
Rita nods. Fine. She gives up. She doesn't know how to argue anymore; doesn't know if she even wants to.
Just--fine. "Jus' lemme get the keys. Simon has--he had... There's a motorcycle out back. I'll take you to Hell's Gate."
He lets her disappear into Beatty Mercantile's back office. Little plants lining the crusted window are all dead, limp as the plumajillo in April. Keys are on the desk.
So is the phone.
Rita dials red, button neatly marked in Simon's hand as PANIC EMERGENCY HELL ON EARTH. "Jenny, I need you out in Hell's Gate. I know the gas doesn't come for an hour. Just get there. It's important."
fear (iii)
John hasn't ridden since--hell, since before the war, maybe. And even then, all he'd done was test-run the bike Daniel Miller's old man had brought into the shop. (Daniel Miller put that bike through the iron siding of some highway up in Iowa a year or two later. They'd made a bet about death just before shipping out, Danny to Iowa Tech and John to Quang Nam. John won.)
In any case, before Mary. She'd tolerate a lot--indulge a little herself--but motorcycles were the kind of things fell under Not on Your Life, John Winchester. She'd known Daniel Miller, too. And John thought, She's afraid. 'Fraid everyone who gets on one is gonna crash. And he thought, it's safe. Danny's just a damned fool, always has been. It's safe when you're careful.
Turns out it's not. 'The Truth' is a lot of things. Got started on it with Missouri, learned the more pertinent details from Jim Murphy, in Minnesota. Learned the kind of things you tell a guy before you marry him. Woulda taken her either way, of course, but he needed to know. (And maybe he could have--)
The truth is this: Mary was a great hunter, quiet like the Kansas High daddy's girl she was, but ever-vigilant. And she was always, always careful. The truth is this: It didn't matter.
And so now John thinks, maybe fear is the appropriate response, because it keeps you ready, and keeps you watchful. That and vengeance, because something ain't right in the world, it has to be met with fear. Fear keeps his arms 'round Rita's waist as she speeds out through empty Nevada, winding around stunted brush and glittering spines of broken glass, and keeps his thoughts anywhere but. Fear is envisioning Blue Earth, mysteriously devoid of one Sam Winchester. That's the kind of fear gets put away, because there's a thousand miles between them, and there's nothing John can do. Fear is hoping to high hell demons don't lie.
Dry, mirthless chuckle.
There's a thousand different outcomes, every second breeding more. What if Dean and his captors are past the stateline? What if that scrub out left isn't a bush, but a child? What if they never left Beatty? What if 'someone else' has already got Sam (he's missing, missing, missing)? What if the demons give Dean back in pieces? He taught him best he could, but there's a difference between remembering to lay down salt at night, and putting down a demon.
Those are the kind of thoughts that get put away. Don't scare from things you can't fix, Winchester. Go deal with your demons.
In the end, that's all you can ever do.
"Rhyolite," says Rita, and her words are nearly lost to the wind.
They pass a garden of white giants, granite women and calcified ghosts. They edge northwest. The sun is hot, turning red; John tries not to think about sunset.
"Old Town," says Rita, some time later. Six, seven ghost towns, they pass. Like the life was sucked right out of the walls and roofs, feeding the dark things that lurk in the desert. "Cat's Trail," she says. They wind inward.
John doesn't know if she's playing tour guide on his behalf, or if she's just trying to orient herself. Out here, it could swing either way. He knows he's surprised and turned around, when he sees Beech Duchess 76 sitting out there, happy as a clam. She's looking a little dustier, maybe a little sun-bleached, but she hasn't lost any of her sass. John can tell just by looking at her. "There," he says. Rita swerves uncertainly, and he repeats, "There, by that plane. That's the place." Beech Duchess 76. Please supply identifying information.
The radio's still droning. (No, she hasn't lost a bit of sass; not one bit. It's good to know at least one thing hasn't been blown to hell just yet.)
The motorcycle drags to a halt with some uncertainty, and John unwraps himself from Rita's waist. "This yours?" she asks. "Pretty little number."
Time for work.
John scours his pockets first, and then the inside of the plane--for anything of use. There's a little brown journal taped under the pilot's seat that John is pleased to find still there.
"What are we looking for?" asks Rita. Her lips are full and red, puckered with unease. Don't wanna be here, they plead. Don't wanna be here at all. But contrary to classic circumstance, safest place in a hundred mile radius is probably right here.
Hell's Gate.
Is this yours, what are we looking for, what are we doing. She's as inquisitive as Sam. "We work fast," is all John supplies. Turns back to the plane's insides. Back of the plane there's a taped up box, labeled Sienna De Santos, OAKLAND. Rosaries inside, the color of bays and oceans. John thumbs the beads. Could work, maybe. String them all together. "Need to make this." John flips to a dog-eared page of the journal. It's a drawing, a Devil's Trap. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but Beatty's not home to the first demons topside, and John has adequate reason to believe the trap's sound.
(If he does it proper.) He's looking at the page and fingering the beads, and Rita says: "You ain't gonna use those to make that thing."
Is that so?
"You're not going to drag me out to Hell's Gate and snip up a bunch of rosaries! Forgive me for not ascribing to your heathenism. To me, that sounds like a bad idea. To me, that sounds sacreligious."
"You don't know the half."
Rita sidesteps his baited reply, and stands firm. "And I don't aim to. All I know is you're not going to do it."
John sighs. He drops down from inside the plane, and Rita steels herself like she's expecting a tousle. John walks right past her and examines Simon Walker's motorcycle.
Gas tank would work. It would spill like all hell, but it would work. (Pop finally kills his cigarettes when he goes to deal with the ding in Daniel Miller's gas tank. He works buck-naked from the waist down. Shower smells like gasoline for a week. So does Pop, but that's nothing new. Gasoline and cig smoke.)
John doesn't strip down; he just lets it soak into his jeans (and there's a flash, some sideways moment in time, where it feels like blood). Circles the plane with a shaky Devil's Trap. Line for line out of the journal--he checks, double checks. It's his first.
"You're making it seem like we're not going back, throwing all my gas out into the dirt." She's given up on questions, John notes.
"Rita." He's under the plane, squirting chords across the circle. "Rita, you promise me--whatever you see. Whatever you see, you try your damndest to forget after tonight. Just put it away and go back to Beatty, get on with life." You stray too far and you can't ever go back.
"You put us in your rearview first, and I assure you, forgetting'll be my first priority." If aught else, Rita seems comfortable with this one item in John Winchester's Life Philosophy.
Trap's done. Now it's just the waiting. Shadows are longer, and the dust is bathed in red.
"Does Dean know? About all this?"
She knows the answer to that. John wipes the gasoline from his palms onto his jeans. The attempt leaves black streaks in both places, doesn't do much to help his cleanliness.
"And Sammy?"
"What do you know about Sammy?" Honestly, sometimes he can't believe that kid. He leaves Dean a couple hours and some waitress knows their family history? But then, he supposes 'some waitress' Rita has ceased to be. After all, she trusts the man who killed her boyfriend who was possessed by a demon who fucked a stranger who died in Carson, with salt jammed down his throat. Generally speaking, things tend to come unhinged somewhere down the line.
Rita laughs. "Not much. I frankly can't remember what's been heard and what's been filled in by yours truly. Thought he was a drug runner for a while. One of your ring, bailed out on you--you were yellin' on the phone, said he was gone."
John snorts. Little drug runner Sammy. It almost makes his being missing less offensive. (Trust Jim Murphy; he'll do you right. He'll do you more right than you have ever done him.)
"And then, he's actually your boy, isn't he? Your other one."
John nods.
"Sodapop Curtis?"
"What?"
"Never mind. The Outsiders. It's a book--and a movie, I think. 'Bout kids."
John gets the impression that 'kids' has a more specific definition than she's letting on.
"Dean looks up to him, huh?"
Now John's lost. "What?" he repeats.
"His brother."
A grin cracks open on John's face. "Maybe someday, maybe someday. Sammy's gonna be tall, I can tell. Right now, he's five years old, and he's the one looking up to anything that moves. But he knows his clocks and his calendars and maybe how to read a little. Dean'd probably look up to him if he could remember how he was at five."
Rita laughs, bright and full, like they're not sprawled in the dirt and covered in grease and gas; like they're not waiting bait for demons, at the mouth of Hell's very own gate (or one of them; there's one in Texas, he knows. Maybe Wyoming). "Is he, now." She's picking at the brush, plumajillo and sage like the rest of the area. "Your boy treats him like a safety net, seems like, so I just assumed."
"Yeah, well. I told him, 'keep him safe.' Everything goes so far south it ain't coming back, just keep him safe. Just that one thing."
Rita looks at John. She's reading too much into what he said. He continues: "So, no. Sammy doesn't know. Not yet." Maybe it'll all be over, before he needs to. Maybe it ends here. (Deep down: You can't ever go back.)
"Must be nice. The not having to know, but still having people to protect you."
John's not so sure. He'd want to know. There has to be a fire-and-brimstone lining to the world, he'd want to know. But maybe he's wrong. He looks at Rita, and he thinks, You're a waitress in Nevada, coulda gotten married. He thinks of Sammy, and it's You're four, shooting off a Nebraska hill in a shopping cart; you're just a kid.
Thinks of Dean, and it's just, I'm sorry.
Rita sighs. Folds her hands into her lap and waits for sunset.
our fathers.
Flash of red, in Jim Murphy's peripheral vision.
The kite, the kite that's been stuck up there who knows how long--a couple seasons at least (got lost in the spring foliage, and Jim thought it had gone; come the end of August, the tree starts shedding early, and there it is again, bright red against greying sky). The kite comes falling down, crowned with leaves. Sam Winchester comes down after it.
Heart palpitations aren't exactly an exaggeration. Sorry, John, I dropped your kid out a second-story window. The panic, which rages in his ears like an August downpour on sheet metal ceilings, relents when he realizes Sam isn't falling, but being carried.
He watches as a girl slips down from the last branch, hears the crunch of leaves (and not the crunch of bones) and she lands them both with inhuman grace.
Monstrous grace.
Panic's back.
The stairwell screams. Jim flies.
--
The door slams, and Sam gasps. The girl--call me Ruby, she says--tenses her hold on Sam's hand. He's familiar with the signal. Whatever happens, we're good. I'm here. But it doesn't feel right, if it's not Dean's hand. (Soft, fleshy fingers. Shiny nails. These are not Dean's hands.)
When Pastor Jim rounds the corner, Sam is nearly happy to see him, the morning's morbidity almost forgotten.
"I found him," says Ruby. "Don't worry."
Pastor Jim says nothing. Ruby keeps hold of Sam's hand. Sam doesn't move.
"We were just going out for french fries, weren't we, Sammy?"
"Sam doesn't like french fries," says Pastor Jim. "Dean does." (Truth is, Sam doesn't mind them. He just hates eating them in the silence of fast food joints in highway gas stops at midnight. It's Dean who tells Pastor Jim Sam doesn't like french fries, the one time he serves them. Ever since, Pastor Jim hasn't strayed once from peas and fancy ridged carrots. Sam feels guilty every time, on Dean's behalf, though he knows he shouldn't feel sorry about carrots.)
Pastor Jim turns his gaze to Sam. So does Ruby, though her expression is one of nearly comical digust. You lied? Eyes pinched into an accusatory glare. Sam looks down at his shoes.
"What are you?" asks Pastor Jim. Back to Ruby. What are you?
Ruby draws a knife from her belt. It sends a jagged burst of raw fear through Sam all over again. The blood rushes to his fingers and his feet and his hand is hot in hers and she won't let go and his fingers are sweaty and his legs are panicking, go go run--
"I sent a demon back to Hell in Carson City." She lets the sun run over the blade, turns cold steel to something warm, shimmering like water. It's etched with shapes and squiggly letters. "I am not little Sammy's enemy."
Sam is transfixed by the blade. Dean has one like that.
Sam does not think Pastor Jim is as impressed. Pastor Jim says: "Christo."
--
The woman's eyes dilate matte black, flicker, and fade to their normal human shade of blue. She shrugs. "I said I wasn't Sammy's enemy. I didn't say anything about you."
She throws Sam back against the tree with a crash and a crackle of leaves. Flings herself forward with the momentum.
She's good with the knife, Jim will allow her that. Vertical slice, that could open man up from groin to ribs. The blade is razor-thin, invisible almost.
Jim dodges, feels the air as it skims past the billow of his vestments, and looks to Sam. Sam keeps himself prostrate in the nest of leaves, red and gold, spitting mulch from his mouth. As yet unharmed. Jim tries to close the distance between himself and Sam and the tree, but the demon is faster.
She has him by the shoulder, and wrenches him back before she draws in again with her knife. She is wary; never comes too close. Which is a boon to Jim, because her caution is overcaution. Precious little he had could hurt her.
The knife, though, is a curious object. He knows the symbols, at least in part. Occult, perhaps, but not demonic. That question again: What are you?
They circle, like water down a drain, and the sun follows, red into purple. It will be a cool night in Blue Earth.
Sam is quiet, his only noise his breathing. Staccato syncopation. His small shoulders are rigid with shock and incomprehension. Jim can't see much more.
The demon doesn't give him a chance.
Less wary, now. She floods in closer, all heat and power and sulfur.
(Precision, Jim.)
Jim catches her next blow at her wrist, and the force knocks the blade from her hand. She wrenches back instantaneously, Sam dragging behind.
Knife in hand. Jim regards her, lips thin-pressed, expression cool. She steps back. She cannot dodge near so well with Sam in tow, and she knows it.
Jim lets the knife fly.
The demon sets Sam free, but catches the knife with unperturbed ease. Stalks forward.
Jim steps back, back toward the house. Calves primed to run. Sam scrambles toward him on hands and knees. He's favoring one shoulder.
"Gonna run inside? To consecrated ground?" Her eyes are clear blue slits, and her pert smile looks all wrong on her face. "I'll spare you the story, but... You don't carry around a knife like this if you're small fry in Hell. After all... how many times has the Church saved anyone?"
"Sam," Jim whispers furiously. He should check, make sure the child is unharmed, but one look in his eyes, and he knows it's futile. Some things can't be unseen; all he sees in Sam's eyes is fear. "Sam, I need you to run inside and call--"
"Call?" says the demon. "Let me guess. John Winchester? Our savior, John Winchester? Hear tell he's halfway across the country, and not doing anyone any good. You know what I'm talking about, Sammy. Think about it."
"Go, Sam."
A beat of hesitation.
"Go."
Sam goes. Pitter patter through the church foyer. Children's steps.
But Sam can't reach the phone, and he doesn't know the number, Jim realizes. He can't do this. And Jim cannot protect him.
It's like the demon can read his uncertainties. "Go ahead, pastor. Call him. Call John." She lets Sam run, keeps her focus on Jim. She could have followed, could have swept past, could have been long gone, into the red of the dying sun. But Jim gets the impression she's not quite done here (not anymore--not the way she's looking at him, hungry. French fries, thinks. How silly.). "Call him. Then he'll be able to hear you gurgle, just bleed out, when I slit your throat."
Before Jim flees (gear in the basement; rack of gear in the basement, but none of it fit for her. It's time he needs, not weapons), he asks one thing: "What does the Devil want with Sam Winchester?"
Simple answer. "He's little Sammy Winchester. Everybody wants him."
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