Tracks
Seven
Sam’s last text message was a set of coordinates sent an hour ago. Since then, Dean’s done little else besides steer the vehicle and complain about dead zones.
The automotive plant looked empty, but then again, these types of places always appear that way, following the abandoned building trope to the letter. It was a place where, as Dean had said, a ton of shady shit probably went down on a regular basis.
To Castiel, though, the site didn’t look empty at all, even if most of the equipment was long gone and its doors had closed more than half a decade ago. Contained within its vast perimeter, the place would’ve typified industrial Detroit had it still been in operation, but now it only looked post-apocalyptic, eerily abandoned and possessing all the markers of human life but no living population to show for it. Entire floors had been crushed by time and laid stacked one on top of the next like pancakes. Corridors and pedestrian bridges collapsed at breaking points like gashes, as if great giants or beasts had grabbed handfuls of building to rip them open so as to take a peek inside. More than anything else, though, it was the graffiti that grabbed Castiel’s attention the most, maybe because he conceived graffiti as a sign that life could survive in a place where destruction had once occurred. Splashes of painted colors popped against the charmless concrete and red brick, and parted the sea of endless broken glass window panels to make modish declarations of love and hate and war and peace. They were beautiful, and Castiel wished he could read and understand them all.
“I don’t like being alone so far off the grid,” Dean said after having parked the car outside a lot out back. Huffing, he checked his cell phone. No missed calls. He tried Sam again, but no dice. Straight to voicemail.
Castiel pulled out the EMF detector, and it lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Should we wait?” Castiel asked as Dean walked toward the entrance ramp to a parking garage. There was a rusted vehicle abandoned there, the claws of wildlife springing up around it through cracks in the concrete, causing Castiel to ponder the miracle of life while Dean might’ve been sizing up the vehicle for its parts.
Then a jolt, and Castiel’s entire world went black.
An unknown amount of time had passed before Castiel came to. He tried moving his hands but couldn’t. Then he tried to take a step, but he couldn’t do that, either. Still, he was vaguely aware of the fact that he was more or less standing in an upright position, so that was a start.
Except then he felt bands around his wrists and chains crisscrossing his midsection, and he couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt this terror-stricken before. If only he could open his eyes. He was afraid to, though. Afraid he’d see Dean, tied up like he was or worse. He wiggled his fingers, grabbing at nothing but air. Before he could stop himself, he started praying that Dean had managed to escape unharmed.
Positioned on a number of cinderblocks were candles, glowing against the scrap metal and debris littered across the floor, and when he saw them, it occurred to him that he could see. He didn’t see Dean, which was a good sign at this point.
“Heaven,” sang a voice from the opposite end of the room. “I’m in Heaven. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.” A voice at first. Then a shadow, and then a figure dancing closer.
It was a man or something like one, probably one of Lucifer’s miscreants, but Castiel’s head kept pounding the knowledge right out of him. He couldn’t smell the difference between the sulfur from a demon and the sulfur dioxide from the matches used to set the swell of candles alight.
It smiled at him. “Don’t recognize me inside the meat suit, do you? God, it’s so hot and tight and incredibly wet in here. Even better than I remembered.” Definitely a demon. Dean had referred to them as smart-mouthed bastards once, and Castiel couldn’t have agreed more.
“Although,” the demon continued, “it almost makes this too easy, doesn’t it? You can’t even defend yourself, but that’s all right, I suppose. I kind of like it when a bitch fights back, but I like it more of he doesn’t. Like it best when he can’t.”
Castiel’s current state prevented him from pretending that the demon wasn’t right. He couldn’t pull sound out of a radio, nor could he light up a television on command. He couldn’t manipulate forces of nature. Couldn’t see beyond his mortal eyes. Couldn’t move past the human senses. He couldn’t hear home. He couldn’t kill a demon, especially not while bound to a steel support beam.
“Do you like art, Castiel?” the demon asked in a singsong voice, making a point to pronounce Castiel’s name carefully. “Dean’s such the artist. Sculpting you from stone into the shape of a man, the shape he thinks you ought to be. He’s good at it, isn’t he? Surely you remember. It’s rather poetic, no? Being rescued from Hell by an angel. You’d almost think we’re all a bunch of goddamn romantics if it weren’t for the bloodbath we’ve got planned.”
Castiel grumbled something in response that even he didn’t understand. The demon only laughed before a wicked grin possessed his face. The stupid thing didn’t even need to turn around because it could sense Dean standing there behind him at the door without even looking. Dean to the rescue, looking as if he could take this monster down, but so ridiculously beautiful, too. Castiel could’ve sworn he saw one brief moment of naked emotion on Dean’s face upon entering the room and finding Castiel chained there before his expression turned to steel. Beautiful steel.
A soft glow from the candles washed over Dean in flickering waves like quicksilver, the light getting caught in his eyes and dancing around there, captured and animated. The incandescence burnished his skin, buffering out most of his freckles and exaggerating the cut of his jaw in effulgent highlights and deep, bottomless shadows. Castiel knew each of these shadows, each line and indent, each vein and muscle. He held his breath; he watched.
“You’ve got one minute to let him go before I rip your lungs out and shank your ass back to Hell,” Dean said, and the demon slid closer to Castiel in response.
“Dean, Dean. I’ve got to admit that I think I’ve missed you. Hasn’t been the same back home since you left.”
“Alastair,” Dean said. Alastair, who had been raised from the Pit, no doubt another seal broken, too. A white-eyed demon turned this showdown into a whole different ballgame. Infamously reputed as Picasso with a razor, Alastair would prove to be a foe much more powerful than Dean was equipped to handle, especially by himself.
“You’re like paint trapped beneath my fingernails, Dean,” Alastair said impatiently, and then he turned to Castiel. “You can never get rid of him, can you? Don’t forget that he was mine before he was yours. The artist is dead, I suppose, or is it the author? I’m afraid the world has fallen out of love with the use of metaphor.” He leaned closer, breathing along the curve of Castiel’s neck. “You know what he is, Cas? Blood. Blood like paint. You’re stained, marred. Your hands won’t ever be clean again.”
“What’s your game, Alastair?” Dean asked. “If you wanted us dead, we’d be dead by now, so what gives?”
“Hold your horses, speedy. One of you will be dead soon enough.”
“Let him go. Take me,” Dean offered, much to Castiel’s horror.
“Sorry, Dean, but I don’t need you anymore. Only Castiel can give me what I want.”
“Then take me,” Castiel spoke up. “Take me, and leave Dean out of this.”
“This is sad. Sad, sad. Sad in the adorable, fucked up kind of sense, like how three-legged dogs are sad. Poor little angel, playing the infamous Winchester game of self-sacrifice at last. Tell me something. How do you decide who wins and who loses?”
“We flip for it,” Dean said, stern.
“You know,” baited Alastair as he pulled Castiel’s hair back, further exposing the skin of his neck. “I smell him on you, Castiel. Inside you. You could be separated from him for a thousand years, yet still reek of his scent as deeply as you do now, standing in front of me. Tied up in front of me, I should say.”
“Don’t deflect the issue,” Castiel said. “If this isn’t about Dean, then let him go unharmed.”
“If this isn’t about Dean? If this isn’t about Dean? Well, I should be paying better attention because clearly we’re not on the same page here. You’re following the Book of Dean last I checked. I know you buy into his lip service, and I don’t blame you. Let’s face it. The boy’s got a fine pair of lips.” Alastair catcalled.
“Enough bullshit, Alastair. Tell us what you want,” Dean demanded.
“I already told you.”
“Be more specific.”
“You’re the bait, Dean, and your boyfriend’s the sacrifice. The last seal is the spilled blood of a fallen angel, and that’s you, Castiel. Your human blood will set Lucifer free. Hilarious to think that the one to drag the Righteous Man from the Pit is the same one responsible for burning the world he was meant to save.”
Castiel could’ve sworn it was only a blink, but he missed so much in that short period of time before the room became alive with movement and sound and pain. Three voices turned into a thousand-a thousand people dancing around the room to a new music. A drumbeat to an anguished pulse. Dean spoke in a foreign language that couldn’t have been English. Someone spoke the name of God.
Blood gargled in his throat, and he coughed it up as a pool of black engulfed his vision, triumphing over sight and sound. All Castiel could recall thereafter was the dark canvas of unconsciousness that was his death.
Sam’s last text message was a set of coordinates sent an hour ago. Since then, Dean’s done little else besides steer the vehicle and complain about dead zones.
The automotive plant looked empty, but then again, these types of places always appear that way, following the abandoned building trope to the letter. It was a place where, as Dean had said, a ton of shady shit probably went down on a regular basis.
To Castiel, though, the site didn’t look empty at all, even if most of the equipment was long gone and its doors had closed more than half a decade ago. Contained within its vast perimeter, the place would’ve typified industrial Detroit had it still been in operation, but now it only looked post-apocalyptic, eerily abandoned and possessing all the markers of human life but no living population to show for it. Entire floors had been crushed by time and laid stacked one on top of the next like pancakes. Corridors and pedestrian bridges collapsed at breaking points like gashes, as if great giants or beasts had grabbed handfuls of building to rip them open so as to take a peek inside. More than anything else, though, it was the graffiti that grabbed Castiel’s attention the most, maybe because he conceived graffiti as a sign that life could survive in a place where destruction had once occurred. Splashes of painted colors popped against the charmless concrete and red brick, and parted the sea of endless broken glass window panels to make modish declarations of love and hate and war and peace. They were beautiful, and Castiel wished he could read and understand them all.
“I don’t like being alone so far off the grid,” Dean said after having parked the car outside a lot out back. Huffing, he checked his cell phone. No missed calls. He tried Sam again, but no dice. Straight to voicemail.
Castiel pulled out the EMF detector, and it lit up like a Christmas tree.
“Should we wait?” Castiel asked as Dean walked toward the entrance ramp to a parking garage. There was a rusted vehicle abandoned there, the claws of wildlife springing up around it through cracks in the concrete, causing Castiel to ponder the miracle of life while Dean might’ve been sizing up the vehicle for its parts.
Then a jolt, and Castiel’s entire world went black.
An unknown amount of time had passed before Castiel came to. He tried moving his hands but couldn’t. Then he tried to take a step, but he couldn’t do that, either. Still, he was vaguely aware of the fact that he was more or less standing in an upright position, so that was a start.
Except then he felt bands around his wrists and chains crisscrossing his midsection, and he couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt this terror-stricken before. If only he could open his eyes. He was afraid to, though. Afraid he’d see Dean, tied up like he was or worse. He wiggled his fingers, grabbing at nothing but air. Before he could stop himself, he started praying that Dean had managed to escape unharmed.
Positioned on a number of cinderblocks were candles, glowing against the scrap metal and debris littered across the floor, and when he saw them, it occurred to him that he could see. He didn’t see Dean, which was a good sign at this point.
“Heaven,” sang a voice from the opposite end of the room. “I’m in Heaven. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.” A voice at first. Then a shadow, and then a figure dancing closer.
It was a man or something like one, probably one of Lucifer’s miscreants, but Castiel’s head kept pounding the knowledge right out of him. He couldn’t smell the difference between the sulfur from a demon and the sulfur dioxide from the matches used to set the swell of candles alight.
It smiled at him. “Don’t recognize me inside the meat suit, do you? God, it’s so hot and tight and incredibly wet in here. Even better than I remembered.” Definitely a demon. Dean had referred to them as smart-mouthed bastards once, and Castiel couldn’t have agreed more.
“Although,” the demon continued, “it almost makes this too easy, doesn’t it? You can’t even defend yourself, but that’s all right, I suppose. I kind of like it when a bitch fights back, but I like it more of he doesn’t. Like it best when he can’t.”
Castiel’s current state prevented him from pretending that the demon wasn’t right. He couldn’t pull sound out of a radio, nor could he light up a television on command. He couldn’t manipulate forces of nature. Couldn’t see beyond his mortal eyes. Couldn’t move past the human senses. He couldn’t hear home. He couldn’t kill a demon, especially not while bound to a steel support beam.
“Do you like art, Castiel?” the demon asked in a singsong voice, making a point to pronounce Castiel’s name carefully. “Dean’s such the artist. Sculpting you from stone into the shape of a man, the shape he thinks you ought to be. He’s good at it, isn’t he? Surely you remember. It’s rather poetic, no? Being rescued from Hell by an angel. You’d almost think we’re all a bunch of goddamn romantics if it weren’t for the bloodbath we’ve got planned.”
Castiel grumbled something in response that even he didn’t understand. The demon only laughed before a wicked grin possessed his face. The stupid thing didn’t even need to turn around because it could sense Dean standing there behind him at the door without even looking. Dean to the rescue, looking as if he could take this monster down, but so ridiculously beautiful, too. Castiel could’ve sworn he saw one brief moment of naked emotion on Dean’s face upon entering the room and finding Castiel chained there before his expression turned to steel. Beautiful steel.
A soft glow from the candles washed over Dean in flickering waves like quicksilver, the light getting caught in his eyes and dancing around there, captured and animated. The incandescence burnished his skin, buffering out most of his freckles and exaggerating the cut of his jaw in effulgent highlights and deep, bottomless shadows. Castiel knew each of these shadows, each line and indent, each vein and muscle. He held his breath; he watched.
“You’ve got one minute to let him go before I rip your lungs out and shank your ass back to Hell,” Dean said, and the demon slid closer to Castiel in response.
“Dean, Dean. I’ve got to admit that I think I’ve missed you. Hasn’t been the same back home since you left.”
“Alastair,” Dean said. Alastair, who had been raised from the Pit, no doubt another seal broken, too. A white-eyed demon turned this showdown into a whole different ballgame. Infamously reputed as Picasso with a razor, Alastair would prove to be a foe much more powerful than Dean was equipped to handle, especially by himself.
“You’re like paint trapped beneath my fingernails, Dean,” Alastair said impatiently, and then he turned to Castiel. “You can never get rid of him, can you? Don’t forget that he was mine before he was yours. The artist is dead, I suppose, or is it the author? I’m afraid the world has fallen out of love with the use of metaphor.” He leaned closer, breathing along the curve of Castiel’s neck. “You know what he is, Cas? Blood. Blood like paint. You’re stained, marred. Your hands won’t ever be clean again.”
“What’s your game, Alastair?” Dean asked. “If you wanted us dead, we’d be dead by now, so what gives?”
“Hold your horses, speedy. One of you will be dead soon enough.”
“Let him go. Take me,” Dean offered, much to Castiel’s horror.
“Sorry, Dean, but I don’t need you anymore. Only Castiel can give me what I want.”
“Then take me,” Castiel spoke up. “Take me, and leave Dean out of this.”
“This is sad. Sad, sad. Sad in the adorable, fucked up kind of sense, like how three-legged dogs are sad. Poor little angel, playing the infamous Winchester game of self-sacrifice at last. Tell me something. How do you decide who wins and who loses?”
“We flip for it,” Dean said, stern.
“You know,” baited Alastair as he pulled Castiel’s hair back, further exposing the skin of his neck. “I smell him on you, Castiel. Inside you. You could be separated from him for a thousand years, yet still reek of his scent as deeply as you do now, standing in front of me. Tied up in front of me, I should say.”
“Don’t deflect the issue,” Castiel said. “If this isn’t about Dean, then let him go unharmed.”
“If this isn’t about Dean? If this isn’t about Dean? Well, I should be paying better attention because clearly we’re not on the same page here. You’re following the Book of Dean last I checked. I know you buy into his lip service, and I don’t blame you. Let’s face it. The boy’s got a fine pair of lips.” Alastair catcalled.
“Enough bullshit, Alastair. Tell us what you want,” Dean demanded.
“I already told you.”
“Be more specific.”
“You’re the bait, Dean, and your boyfriend’s the sacrifice. The last seal is the spilled blood of a fallen angel, and that’s you, Castiel. Your human blood will set Lucifer free. Hilarious to think that the one to drag the Righteous Man from the Pit is the same one responsible for burning the world he was meant to save.”
Castiel could’ve sworn it was only a blink, but he missed so much in that short period of time before the room became alive with movement and sound and pain. Three voices turned into a thousand-a thousand people dancing around the room to a new music. A drumbeat to an anguished pulse. Dean spoke in a foreign language that couldn’t have been English. Someone spoke the name of God.
Blood gargled in his throat, and he coughed it up as a pool of black engulfed his vision, triumphing over sight and sound. All Castiel could recall thereafter was the dark canvas of unconsciousness that was his death.