For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky, crossover prompt, R
Title: For the World is Hollow, and I Have Touched the Sky (part one)
Author: virtualinsomnia
Prompt: crossover (Supernatural)
Pairing: River, Sam, Dean, Mal
Rating: R
Warnings: none.
Summary: Dean swallowed nervously. "Well, Toto," he whispered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Timeline: For Firefly, it's set one year after Serenity (the movie, not the episode), and for Supernatural, it's set a couple of weeks after "Mystery Spot" and "Jus In Bello."
TEAM LEADER'S NOTE: This is part one of two. We will try our best to post the conclusion before reveals occur this week.
*
River dreamt of fire. Pain. Putrid yellow eyes. She dreamt she was on the ceiling, one of Serenity's bulkheads pressing painfully into the small of her back, and then she blinked once, with eyelids that felt sluggish and heavy, and suddenly she was her mother, Regan, many years ago. Inside her belly, she felt life forming, the beginning of everything. She looked at her husband and smiled, while little Simon touched the rounded curve of her stomach with awed reverence.
She felt a kick from the child in her womb, still without a name - it has to be one befitting a Tam, Gabriel says with a winning smile as he pulls the blue gloves onto his hands with a snap of latex, and she smiles, too, one hand curled into a fist, the nails cutting half-moon shapes into the flesh of her palm, while the other hand lies limp and motionless at her side, and she says, it will be, my love, of course it will be - and smiled at her son-brother-father, but young Simon didn't return her smile. He looked horrified and ran to Gabriel's side. She opened her mouth, but there were no words of comfort waiting on her tongue. She could only taste ash and blood, and as she watched, young Simon's skin began to blister and peel, his eyes turning black, while Gabriel smiled with teeth that had been sharpened into points.
"Hey buddy!" Gabriel said as he gazed down at Simon's tortured face, his smile growing wider. She saw something black squirming between his teeth. "What do you think? You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?"
She looked to her right, and she saw a crib with a baby boy inside. Several drops of blood adorned his forehead like a crown.
She felt a sharp pain from between her legs and looked down, her mouth hanging open in shock. The front of her dress was soaked through with blood, and her thighs felt sticky. She saw rivulets of red run down her calves and form a puddle on the floor beneath her. The blood formed shapes on the hardwood floor, and she could see faces screaming in the swirls of red.
The lace curtains that adorned the nursery's windows burst into flames. The baby began to cry as the fire licked at his crib. Across from her, Gabriel laughed as his fingernails turned into claws, and he tore out Simon's throat. River-Regan-Mary screamed, and as she felt the flames consume her, she saw the man with the yellow eyes, and she knew that he was laughing at her.
*
River woke up screaming and thrashing. Before she knew what was happening, she'd tumbled out of bed and landed on her hands and knees on the cold, metal floor.
Simon burst into her room, dressed in his soft, gray sleep-pants and little else, his bare feet slapping against the metal flooring. "River," he whispered urgently as he fell to his knees by her side. "Mei mei, what happened? Are you alright?"
River felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes and took a deep breath. It had been over a year since her last nightmare. She was supposed to be better now. She was better now.
"Cortisol levels rise over the course of a night's sleep, decreasing the flow of information between the hippocampus and neocortex and affecting the amount of illogical data in the dream flow," she recited from memory, unable to look her brother in the eye. She could sense his frustration, though, and finally had to meet his concerned gaze. "It was just a dream," she offered, fully aware that it would do little to make him feel better. One slim shoulder rose in a helpless shrug. "Doesn't mean anything."
She heard soft footsteps outside, followed by the sleepy thoughts of a familiar mind. "I'm okay," River told her brother. "Go back to Kaylee."
Simon looked like he was about to protest, but River shushed him with a finger against his lips. Then she stood up and slipped out the door, effectively ending the conversation. A rumpled Kaylee stood outside, looking uncertain, and River smiled at her, though it didn't reach her eyes. She could still taste blood on her tongue, and everything around her smelled of smoke.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" Kaylee asked.
"It was just a dream," River said, but deep in her bones, she knew that was a lie. This was something entirely different.
*
"Dude, this is so not cool. Hell, we shouldn't even be doing this right now. We're supposed to be looking for Bella and the colt, unless you're just itchin' for us to get caught with our pants down around our ankles again like last month at the police station."
Sam Winchester rolled his eyes, only partially listening as his brother ranted. For the most part, he let the words roll off of him like water. He was used to Dean's occasional hissy fits. It was just part and parcel of the whole Dean package: loud music, loud car, and even louder mouth. Take it or leave it.
While Dean continued to grumble, Sam kept his focus on the task at hand, carefully pouring the bag of black powder into the small, stone chalice that sat on the ground in front of him. "I told you already," he informed his brother quietly. "This might help us find Bella."
Sam carefully tucked one of the more incriminating pages of notes underneath his backpack while Dean was too busy pouting to notice. It wouldn't do for Dean to get suspicious this early on in the game. Sam had to keep his brother in the dark about his real intentions for his own good. He hated lying to Dean about this, but it was a necessary evil, because if Dean knew what spell he was really casting... well, it wouldn't be pretty. There would be yelling. And cursing. And things would probably get thrown at Sam's head.
Dean sighed, oblivious to his brother's inner turmoil. "It's the 'might' part that's bothering me, Sammy. You said it yourself, bucko, you're not sure exactly how this spell works. If you ask me, we're just begging for trouble by doing magic we don't understand."
Sam huffed indignantly. "I never said I didn't understand it. You might not understand it, but I get it just fine, thanks."
Dean made placating gestures with his hands. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you do, but maybe we should call Bobby in on this one, just to be safe. Couldn't hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes go over all this stuff, right? After all, you could've missed something. You've been burnin' the candle at both ends lately, Sammy; don't think I haven't noticed."
Left unspoken was the fact that they both knew why Sam had been working so hard for the past few weeks. Dean had a matter of months left on his deal. If Sam didn't find the answer soon, it would be too late, and he'd already seen what his life was like without his brother thanks to the Trickster. He didn't want to go through that hell twice.
Sam shot his brother a defiant glare, and quickly snagged another page of notes away from Dean's questing fingers. "It's fine. I'm fine. It's just that a few of these translations are a little vague, that's all. But don't worry; I can wing it."
"YOU'LL WING IT???" Dean exclaimed. "I don't think so! You're gonna shrink me to the size of a bug, aren't you? Or give me a third eye? Well, you know what, you can just forget about it, because I ain't doing it. No way."
"It was just a figure of speech, moron." Sam ran an agitated hand through his unruly mop of hair. He needed to keep Dean from figuring out this spell's true purpose, yes, but if he got him so spooked that he refused to do it all, Sam would be just as screwed. It was time for the big guns. "Look, I've been going over these translations for the past two weeks. I've checked out every angle, okay? This is going to work. You just have to trust me." His brother still looked skeptical, so Sam decided he had to go all in. It was time for the puppy dog eyes. "Please, Dean. Trust me."
Dean pursed his lips and studied Sam for a long moment. "Fine, whatever," he said eventually, flopping over to lie on his back while Sam went back to his powders and his notes and tried not to look too relieved. "But I'm telling you, man, if you screw this up and, like, turn me into a freakish half-goat-man or something..."
"It's called a Satyr, brainiac."
"...I will personally chew holes in every damn pair of underwear you own."
"Gee, I'm so frightened, Dean."
"Shut up."
*
Around her, Serenity breathed. River placed her hand against a bulkhead and felt the echoes of all the lives that had touched this vessel. It was reassuring. A solid, dependable presence. Always there. More than anything else in her life, it represented safety.
She passed Jayne in the mess hall, cleaning his guns, but River didn't feel like dealing with him. She padded by him, barefoot, silent as a cat. He never even looked up.
Soon she was standing just outside the cockpit. The captain was sitting inside, feet propped up on one of the consoles and head tipped back. His eyes were closed, but River knew he wasn't asleep. His thoughts were too loud.
"It's rude to be lurkin' in doorways, girl," he said after a few minutes had passed by in silence. "Ain't that brother of yours taught you any manners?"
He didn't bother to open his eyes, and for a moment River wondered what had given her away. Few things could be as quiet as she could when she wanted to.
She went to the pilot's chair and sat down, bringing her knees up against her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. She stared down at her bare toes for a few seconds, wiggling each one in order. A yawn caught her off guard, and she thought fleetingly of her empty bed, the sheets untouched for the second night in a row. Aside from Mal and Jayne, everyone else was asleep. Simon and Kaylee were curled up in the engineer's hammock; Zoe slept alone in quarters still outfitted for two; Inara's shuttle was dark and warm, keeping the Companion and her current client safe in its womblike embrace. River thought wistfully about just closing her eyes right there in the cockpit, like the captain, but she was afraid of what she might see.
Blue hands, yellow eyes, red blood. All the primary colors were represented in her dreams. The symmetry of it was appropriate, if nothing else.
"You haven't been sleepin' much lately," Mal noted, breaking the silence.
"Neither have you," River replied.
"Your brother says you had a nightmare the other night," the captain continued as if she hadn't spoken. "A bad one." He cracked open one eye and studied her for a moment. "There somethin' I should know about, little albatross?"
River made a face. "She's not broken. She has bad dreams, just like everyone. Doesn't mean anything."
Mal rolled his eyes. "You know I don't much like it when you talk about yourself in the third person, girl."
River smiled. "That's why she does it," she replied impishly, which caused Mal to chuckle indulgently.
She rested her chin on her knees, stared out into the black and tried not to notice when the stars watched her in return, thousands of glowing eyes all focused intently on her. It sent a chill down her spine, and she picked up one of the dinosaurs that sat on top of the console and turned it back and forth in her hands. It was easier to look at the toy. At least its eyes weren't yellow.
*
Sam propped their father's book open in front of him, using his dagger to hold the pages in place. Dean sat across from him, legs crossed "Indian" style, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin propped on one hand. He watched as Sam began sketching an outline in chalk on the cement floor between them, occasionally referring back to Dad's book as a guide, his large hands handling the intricate detail work with the light and easy touch of an artist. Shapes appeared, swirls and lines and symbols that flowed together in a way that was strangely foreboding. Dean told himself it was simply because he had a healthy dose of caution where this kind of stuff was concerned, and not anything to do with this spell in particular. After all, when magic was involved, things had a tendency to get really weird really fast, or at least they did in Dean's experience, so that was probably why he felt so on edge. But regardless of his misgivings, Sam had said to trust him, so Dean was doing his best to keep his apprehensions to himself.
Once Sam finished the drawing, he put the chalk away and carefully moved the stone chalice filled with most of the spell's ingredients into the very center of the design. "Okay," he said, checking the book one last time before looking up and meeting Dean's gaze. "It's ready."
"So now what?" Dean asked, trying not to sound too wary.
Sam picked up the dagger. "Time for the last ingredient."
"I knew it," Dean growled. He took off his jacket and laid it over his lap, leaving him in a short-sleeved, black t-shirt. He held out his arm, allowing Sam to grip him by the wrist and center his arm above the chalice. "Damn it, why does this stuff always come back to blood? I mean, just once, I'd like to do a spell that tells me to have a steak dinner first, you know? Or one that tells me to get laid. You always hear about all this kinky sex stuff getting mixed in with magic, but is that ever the spell we need? Hell, no. We get the 'take this dagger and slice open your veins' spell."
"Quit being such a baby," Sam said, as he positioned the dagger above Dean's arm, just a little ways beneath the inside of the elbow. Sam moved the dagger in a swift, horizontal slash, and Dean winced as it bit into his flesh. Blood welled up and trickled down his arm, dripping into the chalice. Soon, he was finished, and Sam handed him a scrap of clean fabric - from the looks of it, all that remained of Dean's favorite AC/DC t-shirt, which had been tragically ripped to pieces during a werewolf hunt in Minneapolis. Dean pressed it against the wound to stop the blood flow. Then Sam held out his own arm and repeated the procedure on himself.
"Alright," Sam said a few minutes later, putting the dagger back into his backpack while Dean pulled his coat back on. He held his hands out on either side of the chalice. "Take my hands, close your eyes, and breathe in deeply."
Dean snorted. "If you follow this up with a round of Kumbaya, I may have to shoot myself."
Sam ignored the remark, simply reaching out and grabbing Dean's hands himself. "Eyes," he instructed gruffly, and Dean grudgingly complied, allowing his eyelids to flutter closed.
"Now whatever you do," Sam whispered. "Don't forget to breathe."
*
River took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Behind her closed eyelids, she saw fire. There were faces trapped in the flames, and they screamed in agony. River screamed with them. The man with the yellow eyes was there, laughing, but he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him, and her eyes were empty. They had no color at all. Her name sat perched on the tip of River's tongue, and as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, she whispered it.
"Lilith."
*
Dean felt pain unlike anything he'd ever known before. It ripped through him from the inside out, and his heart felt like it was about to burst. He was burning up; he could feel his skin blistering and peeling, and he wondered if this was what hell felt like. He wondered if his time was finally up, if his check had come due.
He could hear screaming. It took him a while to realize that one of the voices he heard was his brother's. It took even longer to realize that the other one was his own. It was all he could do to keep his grip on Sam's hands, but even that was slipping.
In the midst of the screams, he could hear his father's voice in his head. Don't you let him go, Dean. You watch out for your brother, you hear me? You keep holding on!
The pain, the fire threatened to overwhelm him, but Dean bit his tongue to keep from losing himself to the madness. It hurt. He tasted blood, and in the sudden moment of clarity that followed, he gripped his brother's hands even tighter.
He saw a little girl standing before him, her long, dark hair reaching down to her waist, and in her empty eyes there was only one thing. Death. She lifted one delicate hand and pointed at him; there was a flash of white light, and he felt claws tearing his skin to ribbons. Then something else ripped at him, like it was trying to pull out his very soul.
He heard Sam screaming his name, but his hands were slipping again, and this time he had no strength left to fight back.
Soon darkness overtook him, and Dean let go of his brother's hands.
*
"Hey, girl. Wake up!"
River's eyes snapped open. The screams were gone. It had been another dream. She was in the boat they'd rented in Xini, and they were just now docking at Haizhong. Mal and Zoe sat in the front; Jayne sat beside her further in the back. He was giving her a funny look.
"You were talkin' in your sleep," he said, brows furrowing. "About fires and souls and somebody named Lilith. I couldn't make no sense of it. It was five shades past crazy, if you ask me."
River looked down at her hands, bits and pieces of the dream still swirling around in her head. Whatever was happening to her, it was getting worse.
"Just a dream," she muttered. She quickly unstrapped her safety harness and stood up, gesturing for Jayne to follow her. The captain and Zoe were already on the dock waiting for them. "Let's go."
There wasn't time to dwell on her dreams right now. They had a job to do.
*
Dean woke up in an alley, sprawled in a large bin full of trash. He sat up, wincing when his head began to pound mercilessly. "Damn it, Sammy," he muttered with a groan, "What the hell was that?"
He seemed to be intact for the most part, though he felt like he'd just gone several rounds with a brick wall, and then followed that up with a spin through a blender. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, trying really hard not to think about the way the trash squished unpleasantly beneath his boots. He reached out and grabbed the rim of the bin, using it to steady himself as he stood, lest he fall ass over teakettle and wind up back in the garbage again.
"Sam?" he called out, blinking blurry eyes as he tried to focus in on his surroundings. Nothing looked familiar. He was in a city, he knew that much. A big one, if the height of the buildings around the alley was any indication. But that didn't narrow down the possibilities by much. "Yo, Sammy," he growled, "Look alive, would ya?"
There was no response. Dean looked around, expecting to spot his brother's familiar lanky form and mop of tousled brown hair somewhere nearby, but it was a small alley. And he was most definitely alone.
That was the exact moment when Dean began to panic.
He hastily clambered over the lip of the trash bin, but he lost his balance and tumbled to the ground with a muffled curse, landing on his hands and knees. The palms of his hands hurt, and he turned them over to find blood and several tiny, embedded pebbles digging into his skin. He brushed them off on his jeans as he stood up, noticing the ragged, bloody holes in the knees that hadn't been there before and wincing. He steadied himself by bracing one hand against the garbage bin and forced back the dizziness that threatened to overtake him by sheer force of will before he headed for the mouth of the alley. Man, but that spell had really done a number on him.
"Sam!" he yelled, hoping against hope that his brother was somewhere close by, just out of sight. After all, it must have been some kind of teleportation spell, right? It found Bella, and then it sent them to where she was. His brother hadn't mentioned anything about teleportation, though, whispered the skeptical little voice inside his head that always seemed to sound like his dad. And that wasn't the sort of detail his brother was likely to forget.
No, Dean decided grimly, telling the annoying little voice to stuff it. This was the only thing that made sense. Sam had to be here. Heck, he was probably right around the corner. It had been one hell of a ride getting here, so he was just a little out of it. That was why he wasn't answering Dean's calls. It had to be.
Dean emerged from the alley and squinted into the late afternoon sunlight. And what he saw made him freeze on the spot. He was in a city all right, but it wasn't like any kind of city he'd ever seen before.
Tall buildings spiraled up into the sky, giving him a sense of vertigo as he craned his head back to follow them to their summits. Mounted on nearly every edifice were billboards, only they weren't like the billboards Dean was used to seeing on various back roads while he clocked in the hours in the Impala. Images flashed and danced across these screens, showing advertisements, news bulletins, and even cartoons. Subtitles ran underneath some of them, but they appeared to be written entirely in Chinese.
The highway that stretched before him split off into two roads, one of them staying at ground level, and the other one winding high up into the air, weaving between the rooftops and seemingly floating on its own power without any kind of support structure that Dean could see. And even further above him, he saw hundreds of ships -- honest to god spaceships! -- flitting about through the clouds. From this distance, they looked almost like mosquitoes as they darted around each other, but the way the sunlight flashed off of their metallic hulls served to remind him otherwise.
Dean swallowed nervously. "Well, Toto," he whispered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Bringing his gaze back down to street level, Dean saw people hurrying to and fro on the sidewalks. All of them wore clothing that looked impeccable, no wrinkles, no tears, shoes gleaming and pants pressed smartly, and Dean immediately felt out of place in his ripped jeans and battered leather jacket. He spotted what looked like a distant relative of a phone booth from across the street, if the phone booth had gone all Star Trek on him and replaced dials and receivers with touch screens and flashing lights.
Someone bumped into his shoulder, and Dean was still so out of it that he almost lost his footing. It was a man dressed in a charcoal grey business suit with a vest made out of some kind of shiny material that caught the sunlight and reflected it in a rainbow of dazzling colors. The guy's hair was slicked back so that not a single strand was out of place, and he carried what looked liked a portable computer in one hand. He glanced up from the device's tiny screen as he passed, shooting Dean a haughty look and hissing something that sounded like gibberish to Dean's ears.
Dean's internal scumbag radar went off; he glared at what he was positive had been some kind of insult and flipped the guy off. The man's outraged squawk told him his meaning was understood, and Dean decided the language barrier in this freak-show world could kiss his ass. Math wasn't the only universal language.
"Making friends everywhere you go, I see," said a smug voice from behind him.
Dean whirled around and came face to face with a woman in uniform. He didn't recognize the badge she wore, but he figured that was irrelevant. Any way you sliced it, the law was the law, and the Winchesters had never gotten along well with the law. From the condescending smirk on this woman's lips, Dean figured his luck wasn't about to change any time soon.
At least she was speaking in English, Dean thought gratefully, as he offered her his most charming smile. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, feigning contriteness. "I'm not looking for any trouble."
"Aw, don't be such a spoilsport," she practically purred, slowly running a fingernail down his bicep and smiling at him in a possessive way that gave him the heebie jeebies. "After all, I know how good you are at causing trouble."
She blinked, and her eyes turned pitch black. Dean jerked his arm away from her and went for the knife he kept in a sheath on his wrist, but she was too fast. The next thing he knew, his body had somehow turned to jelly, and he was collapsing to the ground at her feet.
"Who...?" he gasped, as his vision began to fade.
"Just an old friend," she cooed. She holstered something that looked like a cross between a gun and a TV remote, and the last thing Dean saw before the darkness overtook him was her smug smile. "I've been waiting a long time for this, Dean. Try not to disappoint me."
*
"Hey, kid! You all right?"
A pair of hands gripped Sam by the shoulders and shook him hard. His eyes flew open, and he acted on instinct, twisting free of the grip. He immediately regretted it when he fell backwards onto the ground in a heap. He waited for a minute until the dizziness passed before pushing himself into a sitting position and looking around, quickly realizing that he was no longer in Seattle.
He sat in the middle of a wooden dock that extended out into a vast ocean. At the far end of the dock, it split into a large T, and dozens of boats of all sorts of shapes and sizes were tethered there. Sam could see several more boats out in the distance, some of them far enough away to appear simply as specks on the horizon. He craned his neck around to look behind him and felt for a moment like he was looking in a mirror. Instead of the land he expected to see, it was just more dock, extending for the equivalent of several town blocks before it, too, split into a T where boats could be tethered. Everywhere Sam looked beyond the dock, he could see only water. Miles and miles of water. And not a cell tower in sight, so his phone was pretty much useless.
Several small buildings lined the dock, suspended above the water on stilts, creating a small town of sorts that floated above the waves. Their wooden storefronts and hand-made signs could have been plucked straight out of that old John Wayne movie that he and Dean had watched late at night last week in Bellevue, though the Chinese characters underneath all the store names were a strange touch, and the windows had an odd shimmery quality to them that didn't quite look like glass. He counted a hotel, a general store, and a bank among the dozen some-odd buildings. The place directly across from him was called the Dancing Buddha Saloon, and its sign featured a stylized drawing of a Buddha with a friendly smile.
All of that was strange enough in and of itself, but most distressing of all was that Dean was nowhere in sight.
"The spell wasn't supposed to affect us physically," Sam muttered, trying to think beyond the pounding in his head. "We should still be in Seattle. Something's obviously gone wrong."
"What are you babblin' about, son? And what's a See-At-Tell?"
The voice came as a surprise. Sam had been so caught up in trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong that he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. There was a man squatting down in front of him dressed in old, worn clothing with a hat on his head that had a wide brim, which cast his face in shadows. On his feet, he wore a pair of black, rubber boots that looked like they originally belonged with a matching rain slicker and hat. He was obviously the man who had shaken Sam awake a few moments ago.
"Sir," Sam began, trying his best to appear non-threatening and, perhaps more importantly judging from the strange looks the guy was giving him, not crazy. "I seem to be lost. Could you tell me where I am?"
"You musta got conked on the head somethin' fierce, boy," the man said, giving Sam a wry grin. He stood up and offered a hand to help Sam to his feet as well. "You're in Haizhong. It's a way station halfway between Port Phillipsburg and Xini. It's also the tiniest shithole on the whole of New Melbourne, which is really sayin' somethin' considerin' some'a the other shitholes we got on this waterlogged rock."
Sam nodded, though inside he was on the verge of a full-out panic attack. None of those names were at all familiar; this place was like nothing he'd ever seen before, and he still had no idea what had happened to his brother.
"You haven't seen another guy around here, have you? With short, brown hair and wearing clothes a lot like mine?"
"Nope, nobody like that."
"Are you positive?" Sam asked.
"This here's a small town, son," the man replied, not unkindly. "Strangers tend to stick out."
"Right," Sam sighed. He had no clue where he was, but the spell must be at fault somehow. He must've missed something in his research. If he wanted to make this right and find Dean, he needed to figure out exactly where things went wrong and how to fix them.
He looked around and saw that his backpack lay on the ground next to his feet. It must've been in contact with him when the spell was cast and somehow got pulled along with him. He grabbed it up and quickly checked its contents, sighing in relief when he saw his father's journal and all his notes were still inside. It was a place to start, at least.
"Look, why don't you come on over to the Dancin' Buddha with me, kid? I'll buy you a drink, and you can take a load off. Besides, if that friend of yours has been through town, Bonnie is the gal to ask. Nobody comes within a mile of this joint without her catchin' wind of it."
Sam nodded gratefully and followed the man into the saloon. If nothing else, he could use a chance to sit down and go over his notes to figure out what he'd missed. Once they'd seated themselves at the bar, he smiled at his companion and extended his hand to shake. "My name's Sam, by the way," he said. "Thank you for all your help."
"They call me Wilson," the man replied, taking Sam's hand in a firm grip. "And it was nothin' to be goin' on about." He waved to the bartender, and soon they each had a glass of the local brew sitting in front of them. "Hey, Carl," Wilson asked the bartender after he'd passed several small, metallic chips across the counter that Sam didn't recognize as any kind of currency he'd ever seen before. "You seen Bonnie hereabouts? This kid's lookin' for a friend of his; thought she might be able to help."
"She's out at the general store placin' an order for next month's supply run," the bartender replied. "She'll be back in a while. You boys are welcome to wait for her."
Sam nodded. "Thank you." As Carl moved away, he looked over at Wilson. "Not that I'm not grateful for the company, but I need to go over some notes, it's... for my work," he said. "You don't mind if I...?"
"No, go right ahead," Wilson replied, his gaze fixating on something over Sam's shoulder. Sam turned to follow the older man's gaze and saw a pretty, dark haired waitress giving the man a wide smile. Sam waved him over to her, grateful that he wouldn't have to worry about Wilson noticing anything he shouldn't in his notes and his father's journal. Somehow Sam thought that demons and witchcraft were not the kinds of things one wanted to get noticed for in a place like this.
As he reached down to get his backpack up off of the floor, he heard a jingle of bells and looked over in time to see a new group of people enter the bar. Two men and two women. The men and the dark-skinned woman all wore serviceable clothing and well-worn brown coats. They moved like soldiers, and Sam was willing to bet that between the three of them they had an entire arsenal of weaponry stashed on their persons. The fourth member of the party was different, though. She wore a flowing, sleeveless blue dress and a pair of dark boots that reached to mid-calf. Her hair was long, and unlike the other woman who had her hair pulled back out of her face in a combat-ready style, this girl's hair hung down loose about her shoulders. She didn't move like the others, either. Instead of a soldier's steady stride, this girl seemed to float through the room with the grace of a dancer.
The other three hardly gave him a second glance as they walked passed him whilst heading towards a table in the back. He got the feeling that they'd assessed him as non-threatening, along with everyone else here, and were now focusing on things they deemed more important. The girl, however, stopped right in front of him and cocked her head to one side, staring at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Several moments passed without her moving a muscle, and the stillness would've been creepy if Sam hadn't already faced down enough demons and monsters in his life to drive a lesser man insane. As it was, though, it still sent a weird chill down his spine.
"Can I... help you?" he asked, uncertainly. He noticed the man with the lighter colored hair stand up and start to move towards them, the dark-skinned woman right on his heels. Apparently, having attracted the girl's attention, he was now worthy of theirs as well, something neither of them looked pleased about. Just great. He'd been in this strange place less than ten minutes, and he was already in danger of getting into a fight. It must've been a new record. Dean would be proud. If he ever saw him again to tell him about it, Sam thought grimly.
The man and woman had nearly reached him by now, and still the girl stood there frozen. Sam decided to take the initiative and slid off the stool, hands raised in front of his body defensively. He didn't miss the way the man's hand moved instinctively towards his right side, filing that little tell away in case things got dicey. "I don't know what's going on with your friend here," he began in his friendliest voice, "but it's got nothing to do with me. So let's all just remain calm, okay? Nobody wants any trouble."
"You don't want it, but it finds you anyway," the girl said, her voice as clear as a bell. "You're like a beacon; one if by land, two if by sea, and now you've led it straight to us." The man and woman tensed noticeably, and Sam saw the second, darker-haired man begin to rise from his seat.
She doesn't say much, but when she does it sure packs a wallop, he thought grimly, as he took a step to the side, readying himself to make a jump for the first man if he needed to. The woman also took a step to the side, matching him easily and letting him know she was onto him.
"Look," Sam tried again. "I don't have a clue what she's talking about."
"Neither do we some days," the first man replied, his lips curving up into a cocksure smirk, though his eyes remained cold. "But she says you're trouble, that much I got loud 'n clear."
"She's coming," the girl whispered; her fingers twitched anxiously at her sides. When she met Sam's gaze again, he saw fear in her eyes.
"Who's coming?" Sam asked. He looked around him and saw that the entire bar was frozen, watching the scene unfold. He noticed the bartender reach one hand beneath the counter, and wondered whom he'd shoot at first if things got dicey: Sam, or the four strangers. Of course, knowing his luck, Sam really hoped it didn't come to that.
The girl spoke again, and when she did, it sent chills racing down Sam's spine, and everything else was forgotten. She said one name. A name Sam would never forget for as long as he lived.
"Lilith."
That was when the shooting started.
END PART ONE
Author: virtualinsomnia
Prompt: crossover (Supernatural)
Pairing: River, Sam, Dean, Mal
Rating: R
Warnings: none.
Summary: Dean swallowed nervously. "Well, Toto," he whispered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Timeline: For Firefly, it's set one year after Serenity (the movie, not the episode), and for Supernatural, it's set a couple of weeks after "Mystery Spot" and "Jus In Bello."
TEAM LEADER'S NOTE: This is part one of two. We will try our best to post the conclusion before reveals occur this week.
*
River dreamt of fire. Pain. Putrid yellow eyes. She dreamt she was on the ceiling, one of Serenity's bulkheads pressing painfully into the small of her back, and then she blinked once, with eyelids that felt sluggish and heavy, and suddenly she was her mother, Regan, many years ago. Inside her belly, she felt life forming, the beginning of everything. She looked at her husband and smiled, while little Simon touched the rounded curve of her stomach with awed reverence.
She felt a kick from the child in her womb, still without a name - it has to be one befitting a Tam, Gabriel says with a winning smile as he pulls the blue gloves onto his hands with a snap of latex, and she smiles, too, one hand curled into a fist, the nails cutting half-moon shapes into the flesh of her palm, while the other hand lies limp and motionless at her side, and she says, it will be, my love, of course it will be - and smiled at her son-brother-father, but young Simon didn't return her smile. He looked horrified and ran to Gabriel's side. She opened her mouth, but there were no words of comfort waiting on her tongue. She could only taste ash and blood, and as she watched, young Simon's skin began to blister and peel, his eyes turning black, while Gabriel smiled with teeth that had been sharpened into points.
"Hey buddy!" Gabriel said as he gazed down at Simon's tortured face, his smile growing wider. She saw something black squirming between his teeth. "What do you think? You think Sammy's ready to toss around a football yet?"
She looked to her right, and she saw a crib with a baby boy inside. Several drops of blood adorned his forehead like a crown.
She felt a sharp pain from between her legs and looked down, her mouth hanging open in shock. The front of her dress was soaked through with blood, and her thighs felt sticky. She saw rivulets of red run down her calves and form a puddle on the floor beneath her. The blood formed shapes on the hardwood floor, and she could see faces screaming in the swirls of red.
The lace curtains that adorned the nursery's windows burst into flames. The baby began to cry as the fire licked at his crib. Across from her, Gabriel laughed as his fingernails turned into claws, and he tore out Simon's throat. River-Regan-Mary screamed, and as she felt the flames consume her, she saw the man with the yellow eyes, and she knew that he was laughing at her.
*
River woke up screaming and thrashing. Before she knew what was happening, she'd tumbled out of bed and landed on her hands and knees on the cold, metal floor.
Simon burst into her room, dressed in his soft, gray sleep-pants and little else, his bare feet slapping against the metal flooring. "River," he whispered urgently as he fell to his knees by her side. "Mei mei, what happened? Are you alright?"
River felt tears prick at the corners of her eyes and took a deep breath. It had been over a year since her last nightmare. She was supposed to be better now. She was better now.
"Cortisol levels rise over the course of a night's sleep, decreasing the flow of information between the hippocampus and neocortex and affecting the amount of illogical data in the dream flow," she recited from memory, unable to look her brother in the eye. She could sense his frustration, though, and finally had to meet his concerned gaze. "It was just a dream," she offered, fully aware that it would do little to make him feel better. One slim shoulder rose in a helpless shrug. "Doesn't mean anything."
She heard soft footsteps outside, followed by the sleepy thoughts of a familiar mind. "I'm okay," River told her brother. "Go back to Kaylee."
Simon looked like he was about to protest, but River shushed him with a finger against his lips. Then she stood up and slipped out the door, effectively ending the conversation. A rumpled Kaylee stood outside, looking uncertain, and River smiled at her, though it didn't reach her eyes. She could still taste blood on her tongue, and everything around her smelled of smoke.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" Kaylee asked.
"It was just a dream," River said, but deep in her bones, she knew that was a lie. This was something entirely different.
*
"Dude, this is so not cool. Hell, we shouldn't even be doing this right now. We're supposed to be looking for Bella and the colt, unless you're just itchin' for us to get caught with our pants down around our ankles again like last month at the police station."
Sam Winchester rolled his eyes, only partially listening as his brother ranted. For the most part, he let the words roll off of him like water. He was used to Dean's occasional hissy fits. It was just part and parcel of the whole Dean package: loud music, loud car, and even louder mouth. Take it or leave it.
While Dean continued to grumble, Sam kept his focus on the task at hand, carefully pouring the bag of black powder into the small, stone chalice that sat on the ground in front of him. "I told you already," he informed his brother quietly. "This might help us find Bella."
Sam carefully tucked one of the more incriminating pages of notes underneath his backpack while Dean was too busy pouting to notice. It wouldn't do for Dean to get suspicious this early on in the game. Sam had to keep his brother in the dark about his real intentions for his own good. He hated lying to Dean about this, but it was a necessary evil, because if Dean knew what spell he was really casting... well, it wouldn't be pretty. There would be yelling. And cursing. And things would probably get thrown at Sam's head.
Dean sighed, oblivious to his brother's inner turmoil. "It's the 'might' part that's bothering me, Sammy. You said it yourself, bucko, you're not sure exactly how this spell works. If you ask me, we're just begging for trouble by doing magic we don't understand."
Sam huffed indignantly. "I never said I didn't understand it. You might not understand it, but I get it just fine, thanks."
Dean made placating gestures with his hands. "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure you do, but maybe we should call Bobby in on this one, just to be safe. Couldn't hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes go over all this stuff, right? After all, you could've missed something. You've been burnin' the candle at both ends lately, Sammy; don't think I haven't noticed."
Left unspoken was the fact that they both knew why Sam had been working so hard for the past few weeks. Dean had a matter of months left on his deal. If Sam didn't find the answer soon, it would be too late, and he'd already seen what his life was like without his brother thanks to the Trickster. He didn't want to go through that hell twice.
Sam shot his brother a defiant glare, and quickly snagged another page of notes away from Dean's questing fingers. "It's fine. I'm fine. It's just that a few of these translations are a little vague, that's all. But don't worry; I can wing it."
"YOU'LL WING IT???" Dean exclaimed. "I don't think so! You're gonna shrink me to the size of a bug, aren't you? Or give me a third eye? Well, you know what, you can just forget about it, because I ain't doing it. No way."
"It was just a figure of speech, moron." Sam ran an agitated hand through his unruly mop of hair. He needed to keep Dean from figuring out this spell's true purpose, yes, but if he got him so spooked that he refused to do it all, Sam would be just as screwed. It was time for the big guns. "Look, I've been going over these translations for the past two weeks. I've checked out every angle, okay? This is going to work. You just have to trust me." His brother still looked skeptical, so Sam decided he had to go all in. It was time for the puppy dog eyes. "Please, Dean. Trust me."
Dean pursed his lips and studied Sam for a long moment. "Fine, whatever," he said eventually, flopping over to lie on his back while Sam went back to his powders and his notes and tried not to look too relieved. "But I'm telling you, man, if you screw this up and, like, turn me into a freakish half-goat-man or something..."
"It's called a Satyr, brainiac."
"...I will personally chew holes in every damn pair of underwear you own."
"Gee, I'm so frightened, Dean."
"Shut up."
*
Around her, Serenity breathed. River placed her hand against a bulkhead and felt the echoes of all the lives that had touched this vessel. It was reassuring. A solid, dependable presence. Always there. More than anything else in her life, it represented safety.
She passed Jayne in the mess hall, cleaning his guns, but River didn't feel like dealing with him. She padded by him, barefoot, silent as a cat. He never even looked up.
Soon she was standing just outside the cockpit. The captain was sitting inside, feet propped up on one of the consoles and head tipped back. His eyes were closed, but River knew he wasn't asleep. His thoughts were too loud.
"It's rude to be lurkin' in doorways, girl," he said after a few minutes had passed by in silence. "Ain't that brother of yours taught you any manners?"
He didn't bother to open his eyes, and for a moment River wondered what had given her away. Few things could be as quiet as she could when she wanted to.
She went to the pilot's chair and sat down, bringing her knees up against her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs. She stared down at her bare toes for a few seconds, wiggling each one in order. A yawn caught her off guard, and she thought fleetingly of her empty bed, the sheets untouched for the second night in a row. Aside from Mal and Jayne, everyone else was asleep. Simon and Kaylee were curled up in the engineer's hammock; Zoe slept alone in quarters still outfitted for two; Inara's shuttle was dark and warm, keeping the Companion and her current client safe in its womblike embrace. River thought wistfully about just closing her eyes right there in the cockpit, like the captain, but she was afraid of what she might see.
Blue hands, yellow eyes, red blood. All the primary colors were represented in her dreams. The symmetry of it was appropriate, if nothing else.
"You haven't been sleepin' much lately," Mal noted, breaking the silence.
"Neither have you," River replied.
"Your brother says you had a nightmare the other night," the captain continued as if she hadn't spoken. "A bad one." He cracked open one eye and studied her for a moment. "There somethin' I should know about, little albatross?"
River made a face. "She's not broken. She has bad dreams, just like everyone. Doesn't mean anything."
Mal rolled his eyes. "You know I don't much like it when you talk about yourself in the third person, girl."
River smiled. "That's why she does it," she replied impishly, which caused Mal to chuckle indulgently.
She rested her chin on her knees, stared out into the black and tried not to notice when the stars watched her in return, thousands of glowing eyes all focused intently on her. It sent a chill down her spine, and she picked up one of the dinosaurs that sat on top of the console and turned it back and forth in her hands. It was easier to look at the toy. At least its eyes weren't yellow.
*
Sam propped their father's book open in front of him, using his dagger to hold the pages in place. Dean sat across from him, legs crossed "Indian" style, his elbows resting on his knees and his chin propped on one hand. He watched as Sam began sketching an outline in chalk on the cement floor between them, occasionally referring back to Dad's book as a guide, his large hands handling the intricate detail work with the light and easy touch of an artist. Shapes appeared, swirls and lines and symbols that flowed together in a way that was strangely foreboding. Dean told himself it was simply because he had a healthy dose of caution where this kind of stuff was concerned, and not anything to do with this spell in particular. After all, when magic was involved, things had a tendency to get really weird really fast, or at least they did in Dean's experience, so that was probably why he felt so on edge. But regardless of his misgivings, Sam had said to trust him, so Dean was doing his best to keep his apprehensions to himself.
Once Sam finished the drawing, he put the chalk away and carefully moved the stone chalice filled with most of the spell's ingredients into the very center of the design. "Okay," he said, checking the book one last time before looking up and meeting Dean's gaze. "It's ready."
"So now what?" Dean asked, trying not to sound too wary.
Sam picked up the dagger. "Time for the last ingredient."
"I knew it," Dean growled. He took off his jacket and laid it over his lap, leaving him in a short-sleeved, black t-shirt. He held out his arm, allowing Sam to grip him by the wrist and center his arm above the chalice. "Damn it, why does this stuff always come back to blood? I mean, just once, I'd like to do a spell that tells me to have a steak dinner first, you know? Or one that tells me to get laid. You always hear about all this kinky sex stuff getting mixed in with magic, but is that ever the spell we need? Hell, no. We get the 'take this dagger and slice open your veins' spell."
"Quit being such a baby," Sam said, as he positioned the dagger above Dean's arm, just a little ways beneath the inside of the elbow. Sam moved the dagger in a swift, horizontal slash, and Dean winced as it bit into his flesh. Blood welled up and trickled down his arm, dripping into the chalice. Soon, he was finished, and Sam handed him a scrap of clean fabric - from the looks of it, all that remained of Dean's favorite AC/DC t-shirt, which had been tragically ripped to pieces during a werewolf hunt in Minneapolis. Dean pressed it against the wound to stop the blood flow. Then Sam held out his own arm and repeated the procedure on himself.
"Alright," Sam said a few minutes later, putting the dagger back into his backpack while Dean pulled his coat back on. He held his hands out on either side of the chalice. "Take my hands, close your eyes, and breathe in deeply."
Dean snorted. "If you follow this up with a round of Kumbaya, I may have to shoot myself."
Sam ignored the remark, simply reaching out and grabbing Dean's hands himself. "Eyes," he instructed gruffly, and Dean grudgingly complied, allowing his eyelids to flutter closed.
"Now whatever you do," Sam whispered. "Don't forget to breathe."
*
River took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Behind her closed eyelids, she saw fire. There were faces trapped in the flames, and they screamed in agony. River screamed with them. The man with the yellow eyes was there, laughing, but he wasn't alone. There was a woman with him, and her eyes were empty. They had no color at all. Her name sat perched on the tip of River's tongue, and as tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, she whispered it.
"Lilith."
*
Dean felt pain unlike anything he'd ever known before. It ripped through him from the inside out, and his heart felt like it was about to burst. He was burning up; he could feel his skin blistering and peeling, and he wondered if this was what hell felt like. He wondered if his time was finally up, if his check had come due.
He could hear screaming. It took him a while to realize that one of the voices he heard was his brother's. It took even longer to realize that the other one was his own. It was all he could do to keep his grip on Sam's hands, but even that was slipping.
In the midst of the screams, he could hear his father's voice in his head. Don't you let him go, Dean. You watch out for your brother, you hear me? You keep holding on!
The pain, the fire threatened to overwhelm him, but Dean bit his tongue to keep from losing himself to the madness. It hurt. He tasted blood, and in the sudden moment of clarity that followed, he gripped his brother's hands even tighter.
He saw a little girl standing before him, her long, dark hair reaching down to her waist, and in her empty eyes there was only one thing. Death. She lifted one delicate hand and pointed at him; there was a flash of white light, and he felt claws tearing his skin to ribbons. Then something else ripped at him, like it was trying to pull out his very soul.
He heard Sam screaming his name, but his hands were slipping again, and this time he had no strength left to fight back.
Soon darkness overtook him, and Dean let go of his brother's hands.
*
"Hey, girl. Wake up!"
River's eyes snapped open. The screams were gone. It had been another dream. She was in the boat they'd rented in Xini, and they were just now docking at Haizhong. Mal and Zoe sat in the front; Jayne sat beside her further in the back. He was giving her a funny look.
"You were talkin' in your sleep," he said, brows furrowing. "About fires and souls and somebody named Lilith. I couldn't make no sense of it. It was five shades past crazy, if you ask me."
River looked down at her hands, bits and pieces of the dream still swirling around in her head. Whatever was happening to her, it was getting worse.
"Just a dream," she muttered. She quickly unstrapped her safety harness and stood up, gesturing for Jayne to follow her. The captain and Zoe were already on the dock waiting for them. "Let's go."
There wasn't time to dwell on her dreams right now. They had a job to do.
*
Dean woke up in an alley, sprawled in a large bin full of trash. He sat up, wincing when his head began to pound mercilessly. "Damn it, Sammy," he muttered with a groan, "What the hell was that?"
He seemed to be intact for the most part, though he felt like he'd just gone several rounds with a brick wall, and then followed that up with a spin through a blender. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, trying really hard not to think about the way the trash squished unpleasantly beneath his boots. He reached out and grabbed the rim of the bin, using it to steady himself as he stood, lest he fall ass over teakettle and wind up back in the garbage again.
"Sam?" he called out, blinking blurry eyes as he tried to focus in on his surroundings. Nothing looked familiar. He was in a city, he knew that much. A big one, if the height of the buildings around the alley was any indication. But that didn't narrow down the possibilities by much. "Yo, Sammy," he growled, "Look alive, would ya?"
There was no response. Dean looked around, expecting to spot his brother's familiar lanky form and mop of tousled brown hair somewhere nearby, but it was a small alley. And he was most definitely alone.
That was the exact moment when Dean began to panic.
He hastily clambered over the lip of the trash bin, but he lost his balance and tumbled to the ground with a muffled curse, landing on his hands and knees. The palms of his hands hurt, and he turned them over to find blood and several tiny, embedded pebbles digging into his skin. He brushed them off on his jeans as he stood up, noticing the ragged, bloody holes in the knees that hadn't been there before and wincing. He steadied himself by bracing one hand against the garbage bin and forced back the dizziness that threatened to overtake him by sheer force of will before he headed for the mouth of the alley. Man, but that spell had really done a number on him.
"Sam!" he yelled, hoping against hope that his brother was somewhere close by, just out of sight. After all, it must have been some kind of teleportation spell, right? It found Bella, and then it sent them to where she was. His brother hadn't mentioned anything about teleportation, though, whispered the skeptical little voice inside his head that always seemed to sound like his dad. And that wasn't the sort of detail his brother was likely to forget.
No, Dean decided grimly, telling the annoying little voice to stuff it. This was the only thing that made sense. Sam had to be here. Heck, he was probably right around the corner. It had been one hell of a ride getting here, so he was just a little out of it. That was why he wasn't answering Dean's calls. It had to be.
Dean emerged from the alley and squinted into the late afternoon sunlight. And what he saw made him freeze on the spot. He was in a city all right, but it wasn't like any kind of city he'd ever seen before.
Tall buildings spiraled up into the sky, giving him a sense of vertigo as he craned his head back to follow them to their summits. Mounted on nearly every edifice were billboards, only they weren't like the billboards Dean was used to seeing on various back roads while he clocked in the hours in the Impala. Images flashed and danced across these screens, showing advertisements, news bulletins, and even cartoons. Subtitles ran underneath some of them, but they appeared to be written entirely in Chinese.
The highway that stretched before him split off into two roads, one of them staying at ground level, and the other one winding high up into the air, weaving between the rooftops and seemingly floating on its own power without any kind of support structure that Dean could see. And even further above him, he saw hundreds of ships -- honest to god spaceships! -- flitting about through the clouds. From this distance, they looked almost like mosquitoes as they darted around each other, but the way the sunlight flashed off of their metallic hulls served to remind him otherwise.
Dean swallowed nervously. "Well, Toto," he whispered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Bringing his gaze back down to street level, Dean saw people hurrying to and fro on the sidewalks. All of them wore clothing that looked impeccable, no wrinkles, no tears, shoes gleaming and pants pressed smartly, and Dean immediately felt out of place in his ripped jeans and battered leather jacket. He spotted what looked like a distant relative of a phone booth from across the street, if the phone booth had gone all Star Trek on him and replaced dials and receivers with touch screens and flashing lights.
Someone bumped into his shoulder, and Dean was still so out of it that he almost lost his footing. It was a man dressed in a charcoal grey business suit with a vest made out of some kind of shiny material that caught the sunlight and reflected it in a rainbow of dazzling colors. The guy's hair was slicked back so that not a single strand was out of place, and he carried what looked liked a portable computer in one hand. He glanced up from the device's tiny screen as he passed, shooting Dean a haughty look and hissing something that sounded like gibberish to Dean's ears.
Dean's internal scumbag radar went off; he glared at what he was positive had been some kind of insult and flipped the guy off. The man's outraged squawk told him his meaning was understood, and Dean decided the language barrier in this freak-show world could kiss his ass. Math wasn't the only universal language.
"Making friends everywhere you go, I see," said a smug voice from behind him.
Dean whirled around and came face to face with a woman in uniform. He didn't recognize the badge she wore, but he figured that was irrelevant. Any way you sliced it, the law was the law, and the Winchesters had never gotten along well with the law. From the condescending smirk on this woman's lips, Dean figured his luck wasn't about to change any time soon.
At least she was speaking in English, Dean thought gratefully, as he offered her his most charming smile. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, feigning contriteness. "I'm not looking for any trouble."
"Aw, don't be such a spoilsport," she practically purred, slowly running a fingernail down his bicep and smiling at him in a possessive way that gave him the heebie jeebies. "After all, I know how good you are at causing trouble."
She blinked, and her eyes turned pitch black. Dean jerked his arm away from her and went for the knife he kept in a sheath on his wrist, but she was too fast. The next thing he knew, his body had somehow turned to jelly, and he was collapsing to the ground at her feet.
"Who...?" he gasped, as his vision began to fade.
"Just an old friend," she cooed. She holstered something that looked like a cross between a gun and a TV remote, and the last thing Dean saw before the darkness overtook him was her smug smile. "I've been waiting a long time for this, Dean. Try not to disappoint me."
*
"Hey, kid! You all right?"
A pair of hands gripped Sam by the shoulders and shook him hard. His eyes flew open, and he acted on instinct, twisting free of the grip. He immediately regretted it when he fell backwards onto the ground in a heap. He waited for a minute until the dizziness passed before pushing himself into a sitting position and looking around, quickly realizing that he was no longer in Seattle.
He sat in the middle of a wooden dock that extended out into a vast ocean. At the far end of the dock, it split into a large T, and dozens of boats of all sorts of shapes and sizes were tethered there. Sam could see several more boats out in the distance, some of them far enough away to appear simply as specks on the horizon. He craned his neck around to look behind him and felt for a moment like he was looking in a mirror. Instead of the land he expected to see, it was just more dock, extending for the equivalent of several town blocks before it, too, split into a T where boats could be tethered. Everywhere Sam looked beyond the dock, he could see only water. Miles and miles of water. And not a cell tower in sight, so his phone was pretty much useless.
Several small buildings lined the dock, suspended above the water on stilts, creating a small town of sorts that floated above the waves. Their wooden storefronts and hand-made signs could have been plucked straight out of that old John Wayne movie that he and Dean had watched late at night last week in Bellevue, though the Chinese characters underneath all the store names were a strange touch, and the windows had an odd shimmery quality to them that didn't quite look like glass. He counted a hotel, a general store, and a bank among the dozen some-odd buildings. The place directly across from him was called the Dancing Buddha Saloon, and its sign featured a stylized drawing of a Buddha with a friendly smile.
All of that was strange enough in and of itself, but most distressing of all was that Dean was nowhere in sight.
"The spell wasn't supposed to affect us physically," Sam muttered, trying to think beyond the pounding in his head. "We should still be in Seattle. Something's obviously gone wrong."
"What are you babblin' about, son? And what's a See-At-Tell?"
The voice came as a surprise. Sam had been so caught up in trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong that he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. There was a man squatting down in front of him dressed in old, worn clothing with a hat on his head that had a wide brim, which cast his face in shadows. On his feet, he wore a pair of black, rubber boots that looked like they originally belonged with a matching rain slicker and hat. He was obviously the man who had shaken Sam awake a few moments ago.
"Sir," Sam began, trying his best to appear non-threatening and, perhaps more importantly judging from the strange looks the guy was giving him, not crazy. "I seem to be lost. Could you tell me where I am?"
"You musta got conked on the head somethin' fierce, boy," the man said, giving Sam a wry grin. He stood up and offered a hand to help Sam to his feet as well. "You're in Haizhong. It's a way station halfway between Port Phillipsburg and Xini. It's also the tiniest shithole on the whole of New Melbourne, which is really sayin' somethin' considerin' some'a the other shitholes we got on this waterlogged rock."
Sam nodded, though inside he was on the verge of a full-out panic attack. None of those names were at all familiar; this place was like nothing he'd ever seen before, and he still had no idea what had happened to his brother.
"You haven't seen another guy around here, have you? With short, brown hair and wearing clothes a lot like mine?"
"Nope, nobody like that."
"Are you positive?" Sam asked.
"This here's a small town, son," the man replied, not unkindly. "Strangers tend to stick out."
"Right," Sam sighed. He had no clue where he was, but the spell must be at fault somehow. He must've missed something in his research. If he wanted to make this right and find Dean, he needed to figure out exactly where things went wrong and how to fix them.
He looked around and saw that his backpack lay on the ground next to his feet. It must've been in contact with him when the spell was cast and somehow got pulled along with him. He grabbed it up and quickly checked its contents, sighing in relief when he saw his father's journal and all his notes were still inside. It was a place to start, at least.
"Look, why don't you come on over to the Dancin' Buddha with me, kid? I'll buy you a drink, and you can take a load off. Besides, if that friend of yours has been through town, Bonnie is the gal to ask. Nobody comes within a mile of this joint without her catchin' wind of it."
Sam nodded gratefully and followed the man into the saloon. If nothing else, he could use a chance to sit down and go over his notes to figure out what he'd missed. Once they'd seated themselves at the bar, he smiled at his companion and extended his hand to shake. "My name's Sam, by the way," he said. "Thank you for all your help."
"They call me Wilson," the man replied, taking Sam's hand in a firm grip. "And it was nothin' to be goin' on about." He waved to the bartender, and soon they each had a glass of the local brew sitting in front of them. "Hey, Carl," Wilson asked the bartender after he'd passed several small, metallic chips across the counter that Sam didn't recognize as any kind of currency he'd ever seen before. "You seen Bonnie hereabouts? This kid's lookin' for a friend of his; thought she might be able to help."
"She's out at the general store placin' an order for next month's supply run," the bartender replied. "She'll be back in a while. You boys are welcome to wait for her."
Sam nodded. "Thank you." As Carl moved away, he looked over at Wilson. "Not that I'm not grateful for the company, but I need to go over some notes, it's... for my work," he said. "You don't mind if I...?"
"No, go right ahead," Wilson replied, his gaze fixating on something over Sam's shoulder. Sam turned to follow the older man's gaze and saw a pretty, dark haired waitress giving the man a wide smile. Sam waved him over to her, grateful that he wouldn't have to worry about Wilson noticing anything he shouldn't in his notes and his father's journal. Somehow Sam thought that demons and witchcraft were not the kinds of things one wanted to get noticed for in a place like this.
As he reached down to get his backpack up off of the floor, he heard a jingle of bells and looked over in time to see a new group of people enter the bar. Two men and two women. The men and the dark-skinned woman all wore serviceable clothing and well-worn brown coats. They moved like soldiers, and Sam was willing to bet that between the three of them they had an entire arsenal of weaponry stashed on their persons. The fourth member of the party was different, though. She wore a flowing, sleeveless blue dress and a pair of dark boots that reached to mid-calf. Her hair was long, and unlike the other woman who had her hair pulled back out of her face in a combat-ready style, this girl's hair hung down loose about her shoulders. She didn't move like the others, either. Instead of a soldier's steady stride, this girl seemed to float through the room with the grace of a dancer.
The other three hardly gave him a second glance as they walked passed him whilst heading towards a table in the back. He got the feeling that they'd assessed him as non-threatening, along with everyone else here, and were now focusing on things they deemed more important. The girl, however, stopped right in front of him and cocked her head to one side, staring at him with an unreadable expression on her face. Several moments passed without her moving a muscle, and the stillness would've been creepy if Sam hadn't already faced down enough demons and monsters in his life to drive a lesser man insane. As it was, though, it still sent a weird chill down his spine.
"Can I... help you?" he asked, uncertainly. He noticed the man with the lighter colored hair stand up and start to move towards them, the dark-skinned woman right on his heels. Apparently, having attracted the girl's attention, he was now worthy of theirs as well, something neither of them looked pleased about. Just great. He'd been in this strange place less than ten minutes, and he was already in danger of getting into a fight. It must've been a new record. Dean would be proud. If he ever saw him again to tell him about it, Sam thought grimly.
The man and woman had nearly reached him by now, and still the girl stood there frozen. Sam decided to take the initiative and slid off the stool, hands raised in front of his body defensively. He didn't miss the way the man's hand moved instinctively towards his right side, filing that little tell away in case things got dicey. "I don't know what's going on with your friend here," he began in his friendliest voice, "but it's got nothing to do with me. So let's all just remain calm, okay? Nobody wants any trouble."
"You don't want it, but it finds you anyway," the girl said, her voice as clear as a bell. "You're like a beacon; one if by land, two if by sea, and now you've led it straight to us." The man and woman tensed noticeably, and Sam saw the second, darker-haired man begin to rise from his seat.
She doesn't say much, but when she does it sure packs a wallop, he thought grimly, as he took a step to the side, readying himself to make a jump for the first man if he needed to. The woman also took a step to the side, matching him easily and letting him know she was onto him.
"Look," Sam tried again. "I don't have a clue what she's talking about."
"Neither do we some days," the first man replied, his lips curving up into a cocksure smirk, though his eyes remained cold. "But she says you're trouble, that much I got loud 'n clear."
"She's coming," the girl whispered; her fingers twitched anxiously at her sides. When she met Sam's gaze again, he saw fear in her eyes.
"Who's coming?" Sam asked. He looked around him and saw that the entire bar was frozen, watching the scene unfold. He noticed the bartender reach one hand beneath the counter, and wondered whom he'd shoot at first if things got dicey: Sam, or the four strangers. Of course, knowing his luck, Sam really hoped it didn't come to that.
The girl spoke again, and when she did, it sent chills racing down Sam's spine, and everything else was forgotten. She said one name. A name Sam would never forget for as long as he lived.
"Lilith."
That was when the shooting started.
END PART ONE