Somewhere a Clock is Ticking, 6/9 (R, Sam/Dean)
Title: Somewhere a Clock is Ticking (Part 6 of 9)
Rating: R
Pairing: Eventual Sam/Dean
Disclaimer: Still not mine, sadly.
Wordcount: Approx. 70k for the fic as a whole.
Betas: So, so much love to zooey_glass04 and aynslee, beta readers and Ameripickers extraordinaire, for all their awesomeness. Thank you, darlings! <333
Notes: This is the fic I wrote during Nano 2007; I had only seen up to episode 3.04 (Sin City) at the time. This is therefore set post-3.04 and contains spoilers only up to that point; of course, it has now been completely overtaken by canon and is officially AU. Oh well. The fic is complete, and will be posted chapter by chapter as I sort out my life.
Summary: "Your brother's dead, Sam. What's stored in there, that's just a shade, a faint echo of what he was. There's a reason we have the phrase 'a mere ghost of something', you know."
Previous chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five
Chapter Six
The world came back slowly. Sam groaned and blinked, one hand creeping up to touch his head. The explosion of pain made him moan again, his eyes slamming shut.
Dean.
Sam's eyes flew back open and he tried to force himself up, what felt like every part of his body registering a protest. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he leaned back against the table leg, concentrating on not throwing up, not passing out.
"Dean?" he managed to ask, though his voice was weak and cracked.
Sam scrubbed a hand across his eyes, and realized that it wasn't simply his vision playing tricks on him - the house was fully dark, no daylight filtering through the kitchen window. Jesus, how long had he been out? And where the hell was Dean?
"Dean!" he called, relieved that his voice was stronger this time. Time. He raised his wrist with an effort and squinted at it, trying to remember what time they'd come to the house. Before sunset, he knew that much, because he'd been surprised to see Thomas -
Oh fuck.
"Dean!" Sam yelled, already knowing there would be no reply. That cube - the one the bastard had used to throw him across the room - he could remember it glowing. And what was it Dean had said? Something about "trapping her" in it - Mrs. Green, presumably.
And now Thomas was gone. And he'd trapped Dean and taken him with him.
Sam forced himself to his knees, then levered himself to his feet, bracing himself against the table. The world spun sickeningly around him, but he gritted his teeth and held on until it subsided slightly. He didn't have time to pass out again -
Time. That was what he'd been trying to figure out. Sam twisted his wrist again to see his watch. After ten. He'd been out for a while, then. Adding that to the way his thoughts were jumping, confused, from one topic to another... he exhaled sharply. If he was lucky, it would just be disorientation and fade soon. If he had a concussion...
If he had a concussion, tough. He needed to find Dean. His head would just have to deal with it.
Sam staggered slowly across the room. Stooping to pick up his gun, which was lying near the door, almost made him pass out again, but he leaned against the wall and concentrated on breathing until the dizziness subsided. Opening the back door was a challenge, but he made it outside and leaned against the door for a minute, sucking in the fresh air and enjoying the cool of the night air against his head. God, that feels good.
He realized with a jolt that his eyes had slid shut, and berated himself for getting distracted again, especially when Dean was in danger. He forced himself to step away from the wall and make his way through the back yard, out towards the park.
Sam wished now that they'd left the Impala closer to the house. He was able to hold onto trees for support for most of the way, but his progress felt painfully slow. By the time he reached the car, he didn't have the strength to do much more than drop into the driver's seat. He didn't dare try driving quite yet.
Besides, he didn't have the first clue where to go.
He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial for Bobby.
"Bobby," Sam whispered, listening to the phone ringing. "C'mon, c'mon, pick up."
"Hello?"
Sam had rarely been so grateful to hear Bobby's voice, and given the nasty situations the man had helped them out of in the past, that was saying something. "Bobby."
"Sam, what's happened?" Bobby demanded at once.
"He's got Dean," Sam choked out, and let his eyes slide shut. Just for a moment.
"Sam? SAM!"
The sound of Bobby yelling roused him again. "Don't need to shout."
"How badly are you hurt?" Bobby asked.
Sam rubbed his head. "Not bad. Bobby, he's got Dean."
"Who has?" Bobby prompted. "Tell me what happened."
"That bastard Thomas," Sam spat, and did his best to give Bobby an account of what had happened. He suspected from the way that Bobby prompted him several times that it was a rather wandering version, but Bobby seemed to get the point.
"Sounds like he's a necromancer," Bobby said finally. "From what he said to you, anyway. And the fact that he was able to knock you across the room with that receptacle. He seems to be able to draw on ghosts' energy once he's trapped them."
"Why did nobody know about that?" Sam tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice; it wasn't Bobby he was angry with, not really.
Bobby sighed. "Maybe they did. If he doesn't use the energy to hurt the living..."
"He trapped my brother in a goddamn cube!" Sam yelled.
"I'm trying to explain to you why plenty of hunters might not have thought it worth mentioning, Sam," Bobby said firmly. "Most of them, if not all, see the supernatural as the enemy. Imprisoning ghosts... most wouldn't see that as a bad thing. Hell, Sam, they probably weren't too thrilled by his methods, but from a hunter's point of view, he's damn effective. He's stopping ghosts from interfering with the living, and what hunter's going to get up in arms about ghosts' rights?"
Sam swore. He knew Bobby was right - even he and Dean tended to assume that the supernatural was the enemy, and the few exceptions they'd run into tended to stick out in his mind as unusual cases. Hell, if he was honest with himself, if it hadn't been for the fact that it was Dean who had been trapped - and, okay, also the part where he'd been flung across the room, because his head still hurt like a bitch - Sam probably wouldn't have been too outraged by Thomas's methods.
"Like Dad," he said, remembering. "He said he knew Dad. Did you know about that?"
"No, I didn't," Bobby said. "Your daddy and I weren't always on the best of terms - I guess maybe they met at some point when he and I weren't speaking. Or maybe John had his own reasons for not mentioning him."
"Or maybe he was lying," Sam said, considering. "He can't be much older than Dean, so unless he was already trapping ghosts as a kid..."
"How old did you say he was?" Bobby asked, a strange note in his voice.
Sam frowned. "I just told you - about Dean's age, give or take a year or two."
Bobby was silent for a moment, then said, "Well, there's a thing."
Sam forced himself more upright. "What?"
"Maybe he just looks real young for his age," Bobby said cautiously. "But he's older than that, Sam. A lot older."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked slowly.
"The hunters I know who've run into him, they put him at about that age too," Bobby said. "Only for at least one of them, that was nigh-on twenty years ago. The other, that was maybe ten, fifteen years ago. I thought then he must be ageing well, or that old Pete wasn't real good at judging ages any more. Now, though, I wonder."
Sam opened his mouth and closed it again. "What the hell? So... what, he's not human?"
"I don't know about that," Bobby said. "Necromancy ain't exactly my specialty. Maybe the energy he draws from the spirits he traps lets him... hold off death somehow. Maybe necromancers have other ways of dealing with death, it's their field of expertise, after all. I don't know, Sam, but there's no reason to assume he's not human, not without evidence."
Hold off death... Sam set that aside to think about later; right now he had other priorities. "I need to find him, Bobby. I need to get Dean back."
"I can be there in -" Bobby started.
"No," Sam interrupted hastily. "There's no time, Bobby, it'll take you too long to get here. And I need you there to research for me. I need you to find out where he lives - it must be somewhere near here, but he never said exactly where."
"You're in no fit state to go chasing after him," Bobby told him. "Sam, you need to go see a doctor, get checked out. Go in like this and all you're going to do is get yourself killed."
"I'm fine," Sam insisted. "It was just - disorientation. I'm feeling better now. And I'll go back to the motel and clean myself up while you're researching, okay? I promise. Just - he has Dean, Bobby. I can't waste time."
Bobby sighed. "You boys. What a pair you make."
Sam waited, biting his lip.
"Fine," Bobby said, giving in to the inevitable. "Go take some painkillers and bandage yourself up, Sam. I'll try to find out more about Thomas."
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said gratefully. "Call me as soon as you know anything."
He hung up and turned the key in the ignition, and did his best to concentrate. If he smashed the Impala up after driving with a head injury, Dean would likely threaten to give him another one.
~*~
By the time Bobby called back, Sam had taken some painkillers and, after examining his head as best he could in the bathroom mirror, concluded that the skin wasn't broken and didn't need bandaging, though he did have a large and tender lump on the back of his head. It still hurt like hell, but he was starting to feel less dizzy and disoriented, and was beginning to think that the line he'd fed Bobby might have actually been the truth.
"How are you feeling?" Bobby asked.
"I'm fine," Sam told him. "What have you found?"
Bobby sighed. "I've got a rough location, but not an exact address or anything."
"Where?" Sam asked, grabbing a pen.
"Chesterfield, just outside Anderson," Bobby said. "Just under an hour away from Cicero."
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said, already assessing how long it would take him to pack up his things. Would it be better to check out and take everything with him, or leave it and come back once he had Dean?
"Not so fast, Sam," Bobby warned. "You're injured, you're bound to be exhausted, you've got no plan and no idea what you're facing. You can't go charging over there tonight."
Sam tried not to tense up. "He's got Dean."
"And Dean's dead," Bobby said gruffly. "Don't see as Thomas can do too much damage to him overnight. Whereas you could very easily get yourself killed, Sam. Which won't help Dean one jot, less you count keeping him company in whatever receptacle Thomas has got him trapped in."
Sam swallowed. Bobby was right, and he knew it. And the memory of trying to reason with Dean about the same issue, before finding himself bent over his brother's bloodstained body, was still too fresh for him to argue.
"Go to bed, Sam," Bobby said more gently into the silence. "Assuming you really haven't got yourself a concussion, that is - take yourself off to a hospital in that case. But either way, get some rest. I'll try to pin down a more accurate location for you, and do some quick research into necromancy, see if I can find out more about what you're up against and how to reverse whatever he's done to Dean. You're not going to get anywhere by rushing in tonight."
Sam closed his eyes and gave in. "Thanks, Bobby. I do appreciate it, you know."
"Bed, Sam," Bobby ordered. "I'll call you in the morning."
Sam hung up and stared at the bed. He knew Bobby was right, that he needed sleep and to recover a bit if he was going to go up against Thomas again the next day. He was almost certain now that he didn't have a concussion and could risk sleeping in that respect.
But the thought of getting into that bed without Dean there beside him, close enough to touch, held no appeal at all.
He shrugged it off and began to get ready for bed, setting an alarm for six, though he seriously doubted he would be able to sleep that late knowing Dean was trapped. When he ran out of excuses to delay, he turned off the light and slipped into the bed.
It felt resoundingly empty, somehow, without Dean there. Sam had gotten used to being able to reach out and touch him. Not that he'd taken it for granted, not at all - he'd simply come to rely on it, since Dean's death, on having that reassurance, proof of his brother's presence whenever he needed it. They'd lost so much of each other with Dean's death that they'd tried to make the most of the ways they still had each other. Sam had half-expected them to dial back on touching each other so much once he could hear Dean again, but it hadn't happened, and he was stupidly glad about that.
But it made the empty bed all the more difficult to cope with, now; like losing Dean a second time.
Sam forced himself to close his eyes. He clutched Dean's amulet, still hanging around his neck, and told himself that it wasn't going to be a permanent loss.
~*~
It was almost eight o'clock by the time Sam arrived in Chesterfield. He checked the signpost at the end of the street and pulled his phone out.
Bobby sounded just as tired as he had when they'd spoken at six, but also like he'd drunk an awful lot of coffee in the intervening two hours. "I take it you're there."
"Yeah, I'm parked a couple of streets away from the address you gave me," Sam said. "I decided against driving by to take a look at the place - Thomas has seen the Impala, I don't want him to know I'm coming."
"Please tell me you're not going to just go in there blind," Bobby said, sounding like he already had a good idea what the answer was.
Sam suspected the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth was an expression he'd picked up from Dean. Instead of answering, he asked, "Have you found out anything else since we spoke earlier?"
"Well, I confirmed it probably is the right address," Bobby said. "It ain't changed hands for ninety years, it seems."
Sam whistled low between his teeth. "Wow. He really is ageing well."
"Which means he must have a hell of a lot of power at his fingertips," Bobby warned him. "You're going to need to be real careful, Sam."
"Do you have any idea what he might be capable of?" Sam asked. "Other than trapping spirits and flinging me around, that is."
Bobby sighed. "Not much, no - there hasn't really been enough time to research it thoroughly. My feeling is he could probably do a fair bit, if he's got enough power to extend his life that far. I guess the question is what he's prepared to use it for. If he's really a hunter, and that's his main motivation for trapping those spirits, it may be he won't use that power for too much else."
"But you suspect otherwise," Sam said, stating a fact rather than asking.
"I do," Bobby confirmed. "He took you out too fast. If he was a real hunter, he'd have tried to reason with you for longer, tried to talk you round to his way of seeing things. And if that hadn't worked, he'd have tried taking you out of the equation without hurting you that badly. If he was able to fling you across the room, he could surely have pinned you to a wall instead. He may tell himself his real motivation is protecting people from spirits, and maybe it even was, way back when, but I'm thinking that nowadays he's in it for the power."
"So he probably won't hesitate to use it," Sam said. "Okay. Did you turn up anything on the glass cube? How to get Dean out?" He hesitated for a second and added, as casually as he could, "How he draws on the power in one?"
Bobby didn't seem to notice anything odd in his voice. "Well, it seems to be a kind of receptacle; he traps the ghosts and stores them inside it. He's probably built up quite a collection of them over the years, I'm thinking. I'm not sure whether he has to be touching one to draw on the energy in it - probably makes it easier, but I doubt it's essential, so don't go relaxing your guard if he don't have one on him. How exactly it works, I don't know, that'd take more research than I've had time for. As for getting Dean out... I'm not sure about that either. There's gotta be a way of reversing the process, but I ain't found it yet."
"So you're saying I can't just - smash it or whatever?" Sam asked.
"I don't know that that would be wise," Bobby said. "Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. But if it did, I don't know what the shock would do to Dean. Besides, from the sounds of it, there's at least one other ghost trapped in there with him, probably more - and if it did work, you'd be setting all of them free, too. It wouldn't be pretty."
Sam sighed. "So you're saying I should grab the cube and run, right?"
"That's about the size of it," Bobby agreed. "Bring it back here and we'll see what we can figure out. And if you see any helpful-looking books while you're in there, you might try grabbing them, so long as it don't put you in too much danger."
Sam nodded to himself. "Okay. Thanks, Bobby. I'll call you afterwards."
He hung up before Bobby could say anything else, and switched his phone off.
~*~
As soon as he saw it, Sam knew he had the right house. It wasn't that it looked any different from any of the few other houses on that road, but there was something about it - it almost seemed to be standing in shadow, despite the cool morning sunshine. He'd sensed something similar when he'd gone into Mrs. Green's house the previous night. There was something dark there.
He stayed behind cover as best he could and studied what he could see of the house from a distance. Two stories plus a basement, he guessed. Maybe an attic too, if he was unlucky. He wondered how many of those cubes Thomas had. The one the necromancer had trapped Dean in had been fairly small, but if he had a lot of them, then either the basement or the attic might be the most likely places for them to be stored. Though that was still far from guaranteed. For all Sam knew, Thomas might keep them in his bedroom.
Well, there was only one real way to find out.
Sam began working his way towards the house, keeping a close eye on it and doing his best to stay out of sight in turn. He was quite close, and had paused to study the front one last time before moving round to the back of the house, when the front door opened and Thomas walked out.
Sam ducked behind a bush, making himself as small as possible and peering through a gap in the leaves. Thomas looked much as he had the day before, but Sam was looking at him with fresh eyes now. His clothes were not merely shabby, they were old-fashioned. His glasses, too, would have better suited a much older man.
Thomas climbed into a battered old car parked outside the house, and Sam held his breath. Surely he couldn't be that lucky?
But it did look like his luck might have finally turned, because after a moment the car roared to life and Thomas drove off down the street.
Sam didn't waste any time: there was no way to know how long Thomas would be gone. He got to his feet and made his way quickly around to the back of the house, scanned it for a second, and picked the lock on the back door.
He wasn't sure what exactly he'd been expecting to find inside, but it wasn't something so thoroughly normal. Old pictures hanging on the walls, a television in the living room, a microwave in the kitchen as he walked past. It could have been anyone's house - except for that subtle sense of darkness, like a faint sheen over everything, though Sam suspected no one normal would notice it.
Sam decided to quickly check the upstairs floor of the house before he tried the basement, which he still thought was the most likely location for Thomas to have stored the receptacles. There was a chance that Thomas hadn't added the cube in which Dean was trapped to his collection yet. And he might be able to find some books up there.
Upstairs proved to be a bust, though - the only books Sam found were normal paperbacks, well-thumbed mystery stories and the occasional thriller. He was at least able to rule out the possibility of an attic, as there was no entrance that he could see. Which confirmed his suspicion that the basement was where he needed to look.
The door to the basement was locked, but Sam had no real difficulty in picking it. When he pulled the door open, he knew at once that he had found the right place. The darkness which the stairs led down into was more complete than the mere lack of light would suggest. He reached out and found a light switch, and while it lit the stairs up well enough for him to see the way down, it didn't lift the oppressive atmosphere at all.
Sam took a deep breath and headed down the stairs.
He had to stop when he reached the bottom. Bobby's comment that Thomas would likely have amassed a fairly large collection of receptacles had given him some idea of what to expect, but the sight of them, dozens upon dozens of glinting glass cubes, stacked on shelves that ran right along one wall -
"Shit," Sam whispered, staring around.
The cubes were creepy enough: the sheer number of them, and the way they glinted so oddly, as if catching light that wasn't there. Sam didn't like the look of what was stored on another set of shelves against the next wall, either - two tall glasses, almost vase-like, filled with a dark red liquid that he was willing to bet wasn't wine, and on the shelf below several bones he preferred not to examine too closely. On his side of the room there was a table covered with books and papers, and Sam made a mental note to take as many with him as he could carry when he left.
He turned his attention back to the receptacles, suppressing a shudder as he looked at them. There had to be well over a hundred on the shelves, far too many for him to take them all. How was he meant to know which one Dean was trapped in? How did he know it was even there? What if Thomas had taken it with him?
Sam crossed the room and examined the cubes on the right-hand side of the shelves, figuring that the most likely system would be for Thomas to have begun on the left, though whether from top to bottom or vice versa was less certain. He caught his breath as he drew close and saw for the first time that there was a small label stuck to the shelf in front of each receptacle, with a number written on it. If they were numbered, that meant...
He headed back over to the table covered with books and started examining them. Sure enough, one of them appeared to be a log book of sorts. Sam leafed hastily through it, finding the last entry easily enough.
147.01.12.08 - James Williamson, 35, car accident.
02.27.08 - Mary Aves, 16, suicide, violent.
03.10.08 - Simon Holloway, 54, possible demon involvement, bloodloss, violent.
03.12.08 - Karen Holloway, 52, probable demon involvement, bloodloss, violent.
03.27.08 - Lara Sinclair, 3, drowning.
04.05.08 - Martin Purves, 40, demon involvement, throat slit, violent.
04.16.08 - Rosalie Green, 72, possible suicide, possible demon involvement, violent.
04.16.08 - Dean Winchester, 29, demon involvement, unknown.
Sam took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. He had a number now, and that was the main thing. But seeing Dean's name written down like that, just a short, hastily scribbled entry in some kind of log... it turned his stomach.
He hurried back across the room to the shelves of cubes, checking the numbered labels. Receptacle 147 turned out to be on the right-hand side, as he'd suspected, and low enough that he had to crouch down. He hesitated for a second, wondering what effect touching it might have. If Bobby was right that touch made it easier for Thomas to draw on the energy of the ghosts trapped inside the cube - eight, god, eight of them trapped in this tiny thing - then there was at least the potential for it to have unpleasant effects.
But what other option did he have? He had to get Dean out of there. He took another deep breath and reached out for the cube.
It was cold to the touch, colder than it should have been even in that dark basement, and tingled against his skin, making him shudder. Sam stood up quickly. Time to grab the log book and go.
"Hello, Sam," Thomas said from behind him.
Sam turned around slowly, holding on tightly to the cube. Thomas was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and the power Sam could feel radiating from him in this place completely belied his unassuming appearance.
"You shouldn't have come here," Thomas said quietly. "I know the loss of a loved one can make you... desperate, but this isn't the way. You can still go. I'll let you leave."
Sam tightened his grip on the cube. "Not without my brother."
"Your brother's dead," Thomas said. "He's gone, Sam. What's stored in there, that's not your brother. It's just a shade, a faint echo of what he was. There's a reason we have the phrase 'a mere ghost of something', you know."
"It's my brother," Sam said steadily. "I spoke to him. I touched him. It's him, not just an echo, no matter what you think. And I want him back."
Thomas laughed softly, bitterly. "So sure that your loved one's the exception. That's what everyone thinks. No, we loved each other, she wouldn't... It happens to them all, Sam. They're not human any more, and they all lose their humanity - some sooner, some later, but all of them eventually."
He walked slowly across to the left-hand side of the shelves. Sam turned warily to watch him. "You think you're the only one who's thought that? Who's clung to that delusion until they paid the price?"
Sam said nothing, simply watched.
"You seem like a decent enough kid," Thomas said. "You love your brother, no crime in that. But you don't know what you're doing, so let me tell you a story."
He leaned against the shelves, his eyes dark and knowing on Sam. "I grew up in a haunted house. Things moved, doors opened and closed, there were footsteps on the stairs... well, I'm sure you're familiar with the kind of thing. It scared me. I could feel the presence of the ghost, could feel the darkness it spread through the house. I begged my mother to do something, for us to move, anything."
Thomas paused. "She said to me, 'Your father just wants to be near us, watch over us.'"
Sam didn't allow his expression to change.
"She didn't seem to feel the malevolence of his spirit," Thomas continued quietly. "She found it romantic, I think. Thought he was a good father for taking an interest in me. She didn't want to see the truth. Even when he grew stronger and more violent as the years passed. I tried to get through to her that he was dangerous, that he was going to kill us both if we didn't do something, but she refused to accept it. She loved him, and she wouldn't see that the ghost in our house wasn't really him. I realized I would have to be the one to act."
"So you turned to necromancy," Sam said.
"I read everything I could about controlling and banishing spirits," Thomas said. "And I learned that the only sure way, the only way I could be certain neither of them could stop me, was to trap his ghost. So I studied the ritual as best I could, made my preparations. But I was too slow."
Sam waited.
"He pinned her to the table during dinner one evening." Thomas's voice was emotionless. "She was still laughing, chiding him, acting like it was a joke. I ran for the receptacle I'd prepared, hidden up in my room. When I got back to the dining room he had a knife suspended above her, and I saw her face change as she finally realized... that it was no longer the man she loved."
He met Sam's eyes evenly. "She screamed as he drove the knife through her heart."
Sam swallowed. "I'm sorry."
"I performed the ritual," Thomas said, as if he hadn't heard him. "I was clumsy, though - I was... upset, and it was my first time. I managed to trap him - but not just him. My mother's spirit had barely had time to form. I hadn't taken it into my calculations, didn't know how to control the ritual I was using. She was sucked into the receptacle and trapped with him."
He reached out and touched the first glass cube on the shelf beside him, and Sam winced as it sparked, sharp metallic blue flaring and fading.
"For a long time I agonized about trying to bring her back. The thought of her spirit trapped together forever with her murderer..." Thomas stared at the cube. "But then I realized I was falling into the same trap she had, thinking of the spirit as my mother. If I'd brought her back, I'd have just had to trap her again, because sooner or later she'd have gone the same way he did. And so I left her, trapped in there with him."
He smiled at Sam. "I wonder sometimes what it's like for her in there. Whether his spirit overpowered and devoured hers. Whether she slowly turned the same way he did, became just as dark and malevolent, and now they're ripping each other to shreds in there. Or whether she's happy to have been reunited with him for all eternity, just like she always wanted."
"I'm sorry about your family," Sam said quietly. "But I don't believe it always has to be that way. And even if it does... Dean's my brother. And I won't give up on him."
Thomas sighed. "I was afraid you'd see it that way." He took a step away from the shelves and brought one hand up sharply in Sam's direction -
- and Sam found himself flying backwards until he was crashing into the wall. Instead of falling to the floor, though, he found himself pinned, an unseen force pressing him back.
Thomas extended his hand, and Sam felt the cube jerk in his grasp. He tightened his fingers as best he could, though he was pinned so securely that it was difficult to move them, and he had no real doubt that Thomas would be able to take it from him.
But he could feel it tingling, feel little jolts, like electricity, spreading up into his arm, and he managed to close his fingers around it more securely, feeling the jerking towards Thomas stop. Thomas lowered his arm, looking slightly perturbed for the first time.
Sam grinned in savage satisfaction. "That's my brother in there. And you can't take him from me."
Thomas stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe so. But I don't need to."
He raised his hand again, and the pressure against Sam's chest increased sharply, making it hard to breathe.
"I offered you the chance to leave," Thomas said quietly, almost sadly. "I explained to you why it was necessary. But you wouldn't listen, and I don't think you ever will. Your love for your brother blinds you to reason. I don't think you'll ever face up to the truth, no matter what the cost. And I can't take that risk. I've spent my life trapping these monsters and protecting people from them - I've even extended my own life to make sure these receptacles remain intact and secure. I can't let you try to undo that."
The pressure against Sam's chest increased further, and Sam tipped his head back, struggling for air.
The tingling in his arm spread further, jolting up and across his chest, shooting down into his legs. The pressure didn't ease, but it didn't increase either, and Sam was pretty sure that otherwise he'd have crushed ribs by now. He could see a pale glow emanating from the cube clenched in his hand.
"It's not enough," Thomas said. "Even if you can tap into it through your connection with your brother, you don't know how to use it, and I have far more power at my disposal." Sam could almost hear the sad smile in his voice as Thomas continued, "I'll add your spirit to the same receptacle as your brother, you have my word on that. You'll be together again."
Sam's mind raced, searching desperately for options. Thomas was right, he couldn't use the cube's power well enough to free himself, and he couldn't reach any other weapon. Which meant his options were limited.
He thought again of what Bobby had said: I don't know what the shock would do to Dean. But whatever the consequences, it might be Sam's only chance to try to free his brother before he died.
My arm, Dean, he thought as loudly as he could. I need my right arm free.
It took a moment, but the tingling shifted away from his chest again, concentrating in his arm. The shock of the increased pressure against his chest almost made Sam pass out, but it had worked - he could move his arm.
Please, god, let this work, Sam thought, and threw the cube as hard as he could at the ground between him and Thomas.
The sound of the glass shattering was very loud in the oppressive atmosphere of the basement.
The pressure on his chest was suddenly gone, and Sam sagged against the wall, gasping for breath. He forced himself to focus as quickly as he could on the scene in front of him. Thomas had backed up next to the table with the books piled on it, and the ghosts from the receptacle were bearing down on him. Sam had to take a deep breath in relief at the sight of Dean just a few feet away.
He looked much the same as he had in the alleyway, still wearing his leather jacket, the one Sam had carefully removed from his cold corpse. He was paler than usual - bloodloss, Sam thought, half-hysterically - but otherwise seemed unharmed.
Then he shifted, moving round to get a better angle of attack at Thomas, and Sam caught his breath. Dean's face was distorted with rage, snarling with fury in a way Sam knew he would never have done in life. And as Sam stared, Dean's outstretched hands seemed to shift into claws like Mrs. Green's.
Remember Jake, Sam told himself, trying to force down panic. Remember how furious you were with him when you realized what he'd done and the price Dean had paid. It's understandable.
The other ghosts seemed equally as furious, doing their best to attack Thomas, clustered around him. Thomas seemed to be managing to hold them off, however, with some kind of invisible barrier similar to the force he'd used to pin Sam; the spirits were clawing at it, throwing themselves against it, circling it and snarling as they tried to find a way through. But the receptacles on the shelves were all glowing blue, casting an eerie light over the basement, and Sam knew the ghosts wouldn't be able to break through. Thomas was throwing everything he could into that barrier.
Sam pulled himself away from the support of the wall. He might be able to do something about that.
He moved to the other end of the shelves, and reached out for the receptacle Thomas had touched earlier, the cube with the label 1 in front of it, and picked it up. The glass was not merely cool to the touch, as the one containing Dean had been; it was bitingly cold, almost painful to handle.
"No!" Thomas yelled as Sam turned. He looked genuinely afraid for the first time, and extended a hand in Sam's direction. Sam was not surprised to see Dean snarl and swoop in, trying to break through the barrier.
Sam hurled the cube to the floor and watched it shatter.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected to emerge from the receptacle: perhaps mostly human-like ghosts similar to those which had come from Dean's cube. Instead, something resembling a cloud of black smoke appeared, spiraling up from the shattered glass, curling around itself in a dark, shapeless mass.
Then it lunged at him.
Sam gasped and leapt back against the wall, fumbling desperately in his pocket and cursing himself for not thinking to bring the shotgun. The only salt he had on him was the small packet he always carried in his pocket. He'd brought his handgun in case he had to take on Thomas (for all the good it had done him), but he'd been thinking mostly of Dean, of the ghosts as Thomas's victims.
Victims they might be, but that didn't mean they weren't deadly.
Suddenly Dean was there, appearing without warning between Sam and the black shade. He was snarling loudly, and Sam could see again the claws he'd noticed before, growing and flexing as Dean threatened the shade. He held his breath.
The shade hovered for a moment, hesitating, then sped towards Thomas.
Sam heard a screeching sound which he knew had to be Thomas's barrier shattering, and the snarling of the ghosts as they closed in. The blue glow of receptacles on the shelves flickered and went out, and Thomas screamed.
Sam ignored it all, his eyes focused on his brother. He reached out hesitantly to press a hand against Dean's back. "Dean?"
Dean shifted, suddenly facing him. His face was still distorted with the same wild rage as before.
Sam swallowed, and extended a hand carefully. "Dean. Hey."
Dean's expression shifted slightly, the rage fading, blending into a possessive protectiveness and hunger that was no less wild. And suddenly Dean was in his arms, pressed up against him, hands clutching Sam's arms, claws digging in painfully.
Sam gasped, but closed his arms around Dean, holding on as tightly as he could. "Dean," he said again. "Dean, come back to me, man."
Dean was freezing cold, colder than when he'd touched him before Thomas had trapped him. His face was pressed against Sam's neck, and Sam could feel teeth grazing against his skin, as if Dean was seeking the warmth of his blood.
"Dean," Sam tried again, reaching up to touch Dean's hair. "Hey. I've got you. You're going to be okay, Dean, I've got you, I promise."
His brother pulled back far enough to meet his gaze. Sam caught his breath at the wild need still in Dean's eyes. Dean, god...
And without warning, Dean lunged forward and pressed his mouth to Sam's.
It wasn't a kiss, not exactly. More than anything, the memory it brought back for Sam was his desperate attempt to resuscitate Dean in the alleyway, a final attempt to reach his brother and bring him back. Sam could no more have pulled away than he could have deliberately chosen to let Dean's life slip away. If this connection was what Dean needed to come back to himself and to Sam, Sam would give him it.
And if he was honest, maybe he needed it himself, too. Needed the feeling of Dean pressed so close against him, real like nothing else had seemed while he was gone. Needed to feel Dean's lips responding to his own like they hadn't in the alleyway. Needed to feel something but that horrible, blank rage from his brother.
He was slightly lightheaded when he finally pulled back, but Dean felt warmer than he had, and his eyes were shining with an intensity that reminded Sam of his brother much more than the wild rage of before.
A ghost snarled, close beside them.
Dean shifted at once, rounding on it. Sam recognized the ghost of Mrs. Green, her dark eyes focused on him. Beyond her, the other spirits were starting to turn towards him too, the dark shade at the center.
Dean snarled, fingers lengthening into claws again. Mine, Sam sensed more than heard. He held his breath for a moment, but then the ghosts backed off, and spiraled out of the basement with a screeching wail.
Sam let his breath out slowly and looked across at where Thomas had been, then winced and looked hastily away. There was blood everywhere, splattered all over the books on the table. What was lying on the floor barely even resembled a corpse any more.
Dean turned again with the same ghostly abruptness, the rage slowly fading from his eyes, and was suddenly back in Sam's arms, nuzzling against his neck. Sam could feel the claws trailing over his arms, but slowly shortening and shifting back into normal fingers.
He let Dean cling to him, and took a deep breath. He could fix this. He could.
"Sammy," Dean murmured thickly, as if the word was a foreign language he was rediscovering. But it was the first word Sam had heard him speak since he'd been trapped.
Sam exhaled slowly, and wrapped his arms around his brother, feeling hope spark in him at that sound. "I got you, Dean. It's going to be okay."
Chapter Seven
Rating: R
Pairing: Eventual Sam/Dean
Disclaimer: Still not mine, sadly.
Wordcount: Approx. 70k for the fic as a whole.
Betas: So, so much love to zooey_glass04 and aynslee, beta readers and Ameripickers extraordinaire, for all their awesomeness. Thank you, darlings! <333
Notes: This is the fic I wrote during Nano 2007; I had only seen up to episode 3.04 (Sin City) at the time. This is therefore set post-3.04 and contains spoilers only up to that point; of course, it has now been completely overtaken by canon and is officially AU. Oh well. The fic is complete, and will be posted chapter by chapter as I sort out my life.
Summary: "Your brother's dead, Sam. What's stored in there, that's just a shade, a faint echo of what he was. There's a reason we have the phrase 'a mere ghost of something', you know."
Previous chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five
Chapter Six
The world came back slowly. Sam groaned and blinked, one hand creeping up to touch his head. The explosion of pain made him moan again, his eyes slamming shut.
Dean.
Sam's eyes flew back open and he tried to force himself up, what felt like every part of his body registering a protest. A wave of dizziness swept over him and he leaned back against the table leg, concentrating on not throwing up, not passing out.
"Dean?" he managed to ask, though his voice was weak and cracked.
Sam scrubbed a hand across his eyes, and realized that it wasn't simply his vision playing tricks on him - the house was fully dark, no daylight filtering through the kitchen window. Jesus, how long had he been out? And where the hell was Dean?
"Dean!" he called, relieved that his voice was stronger this time. Time. He raised his wrist with an effort and squinted at it, trying to remember what time they'd come to the house. Before sunset, he knew that much, because he'd been surprised to see Thomas -
Oh fuck.
"Dean!" Sam yelled, already knowing there would be no reply. That cube - the one the bastard had used to throw him across the room - he could remember it glowing. And what was it Dean had said? Something about "trapping her" in it - Mrs. Green, presumably.
And now Thomas was gone. And he'd trapped Dean and taken him with him.
Sam forced himself to his knees, then levered himself to his feet, bracing himself against the table. The world spun sickeningly around him, but he gritted his teeth and held on until it subsided slightly. He didn't have time to pass out again -
Time. That was what he'd been trying to figure out. Sam twisted his wrist again to see his watch. After ten. He'd been out for a while, then. Adding that to the way his thoughts were jumping, confused, from one topic to another... he exhaled sharply. If he was lucky, it would just be disorientation and fade soon. If he had a concussion...
If he had a concussion, tough. He needed to find Dean. His head would just have to deal with it.
Sam staggered slowly across the room. Stooping to pick up his gun, which was lying near the door, almost made him pass out again, but he leaned against the wall and concentrated on breathing until the dizziness subsided. Opening the back door was a challenge, but he made it outside and leaned against the door for a minute, sucking in the fresh air and enjoying the cool of the night air against his head. God, that feels good.
He realized with a jolt that his eyes had slid shut, and berated himself for getting distracted again, especially when Dean was in danger. He forced himself to step away from the wall and make his way through the back yard, out towards the park.
Sam wished now that they'd left the Impala closer to the house. He was able to hold onto trees for support for most of the way, but his progress felt painfully slow. By the time he reached the car, he didn't have the strength to do much more than drop into the driver's seat. He didn't dare try driving quite yet.
Besides, he didn't have the first clue where to go.
He fumbled his cell phone out of his pocket and hit the speed dial for Bobby.
"Bobby," Sam whispered, listening to the phone ringing. "C'mon, c'mon, pick up."
"Hello?"
Sam had rarely been so grateful to hear Bobby's voice, and given the nasty situations the man had helped them out of in the past, that was saying something. "Bobby."
"Sam, what's happened?" Bobby demanded at once.
"He's got Dean," Sam choked out, and let his eyes slide shut. Just for a moment.
"Sam? SAM!"
The sound of Bobby yelling roused him again. "Don't need to shout."
"How badly are you hurt?" Bobby asked.
Sam rubbed his head. "Not bad. Bobby, he's got Dean."
"Who has?" Bobby prompted. "Tell me what happened."
"That bastard Thomas," Sam spat, and did his best to give Bobby an account of what had happened. He suspected from the way that Bobby prompted him several times that it was a rather wandering version, but Bobby seemed to get the point.
"Sounds like he's a necromancer," Bobby said finally. "From what he said to you, anyway. And the fact that he was able to knock you across the room with that receptacle. He seems to be able to draw on ghosts' energy once he's trapped them."
"Why did nobody know about that?" Sam tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice; it wasn't Bobby he was angry with, not really.
Bobby sighed. "Maybe they did. If he doesn't use the energy to hurt the living..."
"He trapped my brother in a goddamn cube!" Sam yelled.
"I'm trying to explain to you why plenty of hunters might not have thought it worth mentioning, Sam," Bobby said firmly. "Most of them, if not all, see the supernatural as the enemy. Imprisoning ghosts... most wouldn't see that as a bad thing. Hell, Sam, they probably weren't too thrilled by his methods, but from a hunter's point of view, he's damn effective. He's stopping ghosts from interfering with the living, and what hunter's going to get up in arms about ghosts' rights?"
Sam swore. He knew Bobby was right - even he and Dean tended to assume that the supernatural was the enemy, and the few exceptions they'd run into tended to stick out in his mind as unusual cases. Hell, if he was honest with himself, if it hadn't been for the fact that it was Dean who had been trapped - and, okay, also the part where he'd been flung across the room, because his head still hurt like a bitch - Sam probably wouldn't have been too outraged by Thomas's methods.
"Like Dad," he said, remembering. "He said he knew Dad. Did you know about that?"
"No, I didn't," Bobby said. "Your daddy and I weren't always on the best of terms - I guess maybe they met at some point when he and I weren't speaking. Or maybe John had his own reasons for not mentioning him."
"Or maybe he was lying," Sam said, considering. "He can't be much older than Dean, so unless he was already trapping ghosts as a kid..."
"How old did you say he was?" Bobby asked, a strange note in his voice.
Sam frowned. "I just told you - about Dean's age, give or take a year or two."
Bobby was silent for a moment, then said, "Well, there's a thing."
Sam forced himself more upright. "What?"
"Maybe he just looks real young for his age," Bobby said cautiously. "But he's older than that, Sam. A lot older."
"What do you mean?" Sam asked slowly.
"The hunters I know who've run into him, they put him at about that age too," Bobby said. "Only for at least one of them, that was nigh-on twenty years ago. The other, that was maybe ten, fifteen years ago. I thought then he must be ageing well, or that old Pete wasn't real good at judging ages any more. Now, though, I wonder."
Sam opened his mouth and closed it again. "What the hell? So... what, he's not human?"
"I don't know about that," Bobby said. "Necromancy ain't exactly my specialty. Maybe the energy he draws from the spirits he traps lets him... hold off death somehow. Maybe necromancers have other ways of dealing with death, it's their field of expertise, after all. I don't know, Sam, but there's no reason to assume he's not human, not without evidence."
Hold off death... Sam set that aside to think about later; right now he had other priorities. "I need to find him, Bobby. I need to get Dean back."
"I can be there in -" Bobby started.
"No," Sam interrupted hastily. "There's no time, Bobby, it'll take you too long to get here. And I need you there to research for me. I need you to find out where he lives - it must be somewhere near here, but he never said exactly where."
"You're in no fit state to go chasing after him," Bobby told him. "Sam, you need to go see a doctor, get checked out. Go in like this and all you're going to do is get yourself killed."
"I'm fine," Sam insisted. "It was just - disorientation. I'm feeling better now. And I'll go back to the motel and clean myself up while you're researching, okay? I promise. Just - he has Dean, Bobby. I can't waste time."
Bobby sighed. "You boys. What a pair you make."
Sam waited, biting his lip.
"Fine," Bobby said, giving in to the inevitable. "Go take some painkillers and bandage yourself up, Sam. I'll try to find out more about Thomas."
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said gratefully. "Call me as soon as you know anything."
He hung up and turned the key in the ignition, and did his best to concentrate. If he smashed the Impala up after driving with a head injury, Dean would likely threaten to give him another one.
~*~
By the time Bobby called back, Sam had taken some painkillers and, after examining his head as best he could in the bathroom mirror, concluded that the skin wasn't broken and didn't need bandaging, though he did have a large and tender lump on the back of his head. It still hurt like hell, but he was starting to feel less dizzy and disoriented, and was beginning to think that the line he'd fed Bobby might have actually been the truth.
"How are you feeling?" Bobby asked.
"I'm fine," Sam told him. "What have you found?"
Bobby sighed. "I've got a rough location, but not an exact address or anything."
"Where?" Sam asked, grabbing a pen.
"Chesterfield, just outside Anderson," Bobby said. "Just under an hour away from Cicero."
"Thanks, Bobby," Sam said, already assessing how long it would take him to pack up his things. Would it be better to check out and take everything with him, or leave it and come back once he had Dean?
"Not so fast, Sam," Bobby warned. "You're injured, you're bound to be exhausted, you've got no plan and no idea what you're facing. You can't go charging over there tonight."
Sam tried not to tense up. "He's got Dean."
"And Dean's dead," Bobby said gruffly. "Don't see as Thomas can do too much damage to him overnight. Whereas you could very easily get yourself killed, Sam. Which won't help Dean one jot, less you count keeping him company in whatever receptacle Thomas has got him trapped in."
Sam swallowed. Bobby was right, and he knew it. And the memory of trying to reason with Dean about the same issue, before finding himself bent over his brother's bloodstained body, was still too fresh for him to argue.
"Go to bed, Sam," Bobby said more gently into the silence. "Assuming you really haven't got yourself a concussion, that is - take yourself off to a hospital in that case. But either way, get some rest. I'll try to pin down a more accurate location for you, and do some quick research into necromancy, see if I can find out more about what you're up against and how to reverse whatever he's done to Dean. You're not going to get anywhere by rushing in tonight."
Sam closed his eyes and gave in. "Thanks, Bobby. I do appreciate it, you know."
"Bed, Sam," Bobby ordered. "I'll call you in the morning."
Sam hung up and stared at the bed. He knew Bobby was right, that he needed sleep and to recover a bit if he was going to go up against Thomas again the next day. He was almost certain now that he didn't have a concussion and could risk sleeping in that respect.
But the thought of getting into that bed without Dean there beside him, close enough to touch, held no appeal at all.
He shrugged it off and began to get ready for bed, setting an alarm for six, though he seriously doubted he would be able to sleep that late knowing Dean was trapped. When he ran out of excuses to delay, he turned off the light and slipped into the bed.
It felt resoundingly empty, somehow, without Dean there. Sam had gotten used to being able to reach out and touch him. Not that he'd taken it for granted, not at all - he'd simply come to rely on it, since Dean's death, on having that reassurance, proof of his brother's presence whenever he needed it. They'd lost so much of each other with Dean's death that they'd tried to make the most of the ways they still had each other. Sam had half-expected them to dial back on touching each other so much once he could hear Dean again, but it hadn't happened, and he was stupidly glad about that.
But it made the empty bed all the more difficult to cope with, now; like losing Dean a second time.
Sam forced himself to close his eyes. He clutched Dean's amulet, still hanging around his neck, and told himself that it wasn't going to be a permanent loss.
~*~
It was almost eight o'clock by the time Sam arrived in Chesterfield. He checked the signpost at the end of the street and pulled his phone out.
Bobby sounded just as tired as he had when they'd spoken at six, but also like he'd drunk an awful lot of coffee in the intervening two hours. "I take it you're there."
"Yeah, I'm parked a couple of streets away from the address you gave me," Sam said. "I decided against driving by to take a look at the place - Thomas has seen the Impala, I don't want him to know I'm coming."
"Please tell me you're not going to just go in there blind," Bobby said, sounding like he already had a good idea what the answer was.
Sam suspected the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth was an expression he'd picked up from Dean. Instead of answering, he asked, "Have you found out anything else since we spoke earlier?"
"Well, I confirmed it probably is the right address," Bobby said. "It ain't changed hands for ninety years, it seems."
Sam whistled low between his teeth. "Wow. He really is ageing well."
"Which means he must have a hell of a lot of power at his fingertips," Bobby warned him. "You're going to need to be real careful, Sam."
"Do you have any idea what he might be capable of?" Sam asked. "Other than trapping spirits and flinging me around, that is."
Bobby sighed. "Not much, no - there hasn't really been enough time to research it thoroughly. My feeling is he could probably do a fair bit, if he's got enough power to extend his life that far. I guess the question is what he's prepared to use it for. If he's really a hunter, and that's his main motivation for trapping those spirits, it may be he won't use that power for too much else."
"But you suspect otherwise," Sam said, stating a fact rather than asking.
"I do," Bobby confirmed. "He took you out too fast. If he was a real hunter, he'd have tried to reason with you for longer, tried to talk you round to his way of seeing things. And if that hadn't worked, he'd have tried taking you out of the equation without hurting you that badly. If he was able to fling you across the room, he could surely have pinned you to a wall instead. He may tell himself his real motivation is protecting people from spirits, and maybe it even was, way back when, but I'm thinking that nowadays he's in it for the power."
"So he probably won't hesitate to use it," Sam said. "Okay. Did you turn up anything on the glass cube? How to get Dean out?" He hesitated for a second and added, as casually as he could, "How he draws on the power in one?"
Bobby didn't seem to notice anything odd in his voice. "Well, it seems to be a kind of receptacle; he traps the ghosts and stores them inside it. He's probably built up quite a collection of them over the years, I'm thinking. I'm not sure whether he has to be touching one to draw on the energy in it - probably makes it easier, but I doubt it's essential, so don't go relaxing your guard if he don't have one on him. How exactly it works, I don't know, that'd take more research than I've had time for. As for getting Dean out... I'm not sure about that either. There's gotta be a way of reversing the process, but I ain't found it yet."
"So you're saying I can't just - smash it or whatever?" Sam asked.
"I don't know that that would be wise," Bobby said. "Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. But if it did, I don't know what the shock would do to Dean. Besides, from the sounds of it, there's at least one other ghost trapped in there with him, probably more - and if it did work, you'd be setting all of them free, too. It wouldn't be pretty."
Sam sighed. "So you're saying I should grab the cube and run, right?"
"That's about the size of it," Bobby agreed. "Bring it back here and we'll see what we can figure out. And if you see any helpful-looking books while you're in there, you might try grabbing them, so long as it don't put you in too much danger."
Sam nodded to himself. "Okay. Thanks, Bobby. I'll call you afterwards."
He hung up before Bobby could say anything else, and switched his phone off.
~*~
As soon as he saw it, Sam knew he had the right house. It wasn't that it looked any different from any of the few other houses on that road, but there was something about it - it almost seemed to be standing in shadow, despite the cool morning sunshine. He'd sensed something similar when he'd gone into Mrs. Green's house the previous night. There was something dark there.
He stayed behind cover as best he could and studied what he could see of the house from a distance. Two stories plus a basement, he guessed. Maybe an attic too, if he was unlucky. He wondered how many of those cubes Thomas had. The one the necromancer had trapped Dean in had been fairly small, but if he had a lot of them, then either the basement or the attic might be the most likely places for them to be stored. Though that was still far from guaranteed. For all Sam knew, Thomas might keep them in his bedroom.
Well, there was only one real way to find out.
Sam began working his way towards the house, keeping a close eye on it and doing his best to stay out of sight in turn. He was quite close, and had paused to study the front one last time before moving round to the back of the house, when the front door opened and Thomas walked out.
Sam ducked behind a bush, making himself as small as possible and peering through a gap in the leaves. Thomas looked much as he had the day before, but Sam was looking at him with fresh eyes now. His clothes were not merely shabby, they were old-fashioned. His glasses, too, would have better suited a much older man.
Thomas climbed into a battered old car parked outside the house, and Sam held his breath. Surely he couldn't be that lucky?
But it did look like his luck might have finally turned, because after a moment the car roared to life and Thomas drove off down the street.
Sam didn't waste any time: there was no way to know how long Thomas would be gone. He got to his feet and made his way quickly around to the back of the house, scanned it for a second, and picked the lock on the back door.
He wasn't sure what exactly he'd been expecting to find inside, but it wasn't something so thoroughly normal. Old pictures hanging on the walls, a television in the living room, a microwave in the kitchen as he walked past. It could have been anyone's house - except for that subtle sense of darkness, like a faint sheen over everything, though Sam suspected no one normal would notice it.
Sam decided to quickly check the upstairs floor of the house before he tried the basement, which he still thought was the most likely location for Thomas to have stored the receptacles. There was a chance that Thomas hadn't added the cube in which Dean was trapped to his collection yet. And he might be able to find some books up there.
Upstairs proved to be a bust, though - the only books Sam found were normal paperbacks, well-thumbed mystery stories and the occasional thriller. He was at least able to rule out the possibility of an attic, as there was no entrance that he could see. Which confirmed his suspicion that the basement was where he needed to look.
The door to the basement was locked, but Sam had no real difficulty in picking it. When he pulled the door open, he knew at once that he had found the right place. The darkness which the stairs led down into was more complete than the mere lack of light would suggest. He reached out and found a light switch, and while it lit the stairs up well enough for him to see the way down, it didn't lift the oppressive atmosphere at all.
Sam took a deep breath and headed down the stairs.
He had to stop when he reached the bottom. Bobby's comment that Thomas would likely have amassed a fairly large collection of receptacles had given him some idea of what to expect, but the sight of them, dozens upon dozens of glinting glass cubes, stacked on shelves that ran right along one wall -
"Shit," Sam whispered, staring around.
The cubes were creepy enough: the sheer number of them, and the way they glinted so oddly, as if catching light that wasn't there. Sam didn't like the look of what was stored on another set of shelves against the next wall, either - two tall glasses, almost vase-like, filled with a dark red liquid that he was willing to bet wasn't wine, and on the shelf below several bones he preferred not to examine too closely. On his side of the room there was a table covered with books and papers, and Sam made a mental note to take as many with him as he could carry when he left.
He turned his attention back to the receptacles, suppressing a shudder as he looked at them. There had to be well over a hundred on the shelves, far too many for him to take them all. How was he meant to know which one Dean was trapped in? How did he know it was even there? What if Thomas had taken it with him?
Sam crossed the room and examined the cubes on the right-hand side of the shelves, figuring that the most likely system would be for Thomas to have begun on the left, though whether from top to bottom or vice versa was less certain. He caught his breath as he drew close and saw for the first time that there was a small label stuck to the shelf in front of each receptacle, with a number written on it. If they were numbered, that meant...
He headed back over to the table covered with books and started examining them. Sure enough, one of them appeared to be a log book of sorts. Sam leafed hastily through it, finding the last entry easily enough.
147.01.12.08 - James Williamson, 35, car accident.
02.27.08 - Mary Aves, 16, suicide, violent.
03.10.08 - Simon Holloway, 54, possible demon involvement, bloodloss, violent.
03.12.08 - Karen Holloway, 52, probable demon involvement, bloodloss, violent.
03.27.08 - Lara Sinclair, 3, drowning.
04.05.08 - Martin Purves, 40, demon involvement, throat slit, violent.
04.16.08 - Rosalie Green, 72, possible suicide, possible demon involvement, violent.
04.16.08 - Dean Winchester, 29, demon involvement, unknown.
Sam took a deep breath and forced himself to stay calm. He had a number now, and that was the main thing. But seeing Dean's name written down like that, just a short, hastily scribbled entry in some kind of log... it turned his stomach.
He hurried back across the room to the shelves of cubes, checking the numbered labels. Receptacle 147 turned out to be on the right-hand side, as he'd suspected, and low enough that he had to crouch down. He hesitated for a second, wondering what effect touching it might have. If Bobby was right that touch made it easier for Thomas to draw on the energy of the ghosts trapped inside the cube - eight, god, eight of them trapped in this tiny thing - then there was at least the potential for it to have unpleasant effects.
But what other option did he have? He had to get Dean out of there. He took another deep breath and reached out for the cube.
It was cold to the touch, colder than it should have been even in that dark basement, and tingled against his skin, making him shudder. Sam stood up quickly. Time to grab the log book and go.
"Hello, Sam," Thomas said from behind him.
Sam turned around slowly, holding on tightly to the cube. Thomas was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and the power Sam could feel radiating from him in this place completely belied his unassuming appearance.
"You shouldn't have come here," Thomas said quietly. "I know the loss of a loved one can make you... desperate, but this isn't the way. You can still go. I'll let you leave."
Sam tightened his grip on the cube. "Not without my brother."
"Your brother's dead," Thomas said. "He's gone, Sam. What's stored in there, that's not your brother. It's just a shade, a faint echo of what he was. There's a reason we have the phrase 'a mere ghost of something', you know."
"It's my brother," Sam said steadily. "I spoke to him. I touched him. It's him, not just an echo, no matter what you think. And I want him back."
Thomas laughed softly, bitterly. "So sure that your loved one's the exception. That's what everyone thinks. No, we loved each other, she wouldn't... It happens to them all, Sam. They're not human any more, and they all lose their humanity - some sooner, some later, but all of them eventually."
He walked slowly across to the left-hand side of the shelves. Sam turned warily to watch him. "You think you're the only one who's thought that? Who's clung to that delusion until they paid the price?"
Sam said nothing, simply watched.
"You seem like a decent enough kid," Thomas said. "You love your brother, no crime in that. But you don't know what you're doing, so let me tell you a story."
He leaned against the shelves, his eyes dark and knowing on Sam. "I grew up in a haunted house. Things moved, doors opened and closed, there were footsteps on the stairs... well, I'm sure you're familiar with the kind of thing. It scared me. I could feel the presence of the ghost, could feel the darkness it spread through the house. I begged my mother to do something, for us to move, anything."
Thomas paused. "She said to me, 'Your father just wants to be near us, watch over us.'"
Sam didn't allow his expression to change.
"She didn't seem to feel the malevolence of his spirit," Thomas continued quietly. "She found it romantic, I think. Thought he was a good father for taking an interest in me. She didn't want to see the truth. Even when he grew stronger and more violent as the years passed. I tried to get through to her that he was dangerous, that he was going to kill us both if we didn't do something, but she refused to accept it. She loved him, and she wouldn't see that the ghost in our house wasn't really him. I realized I would have to be the one to act."
"So you turned to necromancy," Sam said.
"I read everything I could about controlling and banishing spirits," Thomas said. "And I learned that the only sure way, the only way I could be certain neither of them could stop me, was to trap his ghost. So I studied the ritual as best I could, made my preparations. But I was too slow."
Sam waited.
"He pinned her to the table during dinner one evening." Thomas's voice was emotionless. "She was still laughing, chiding him, acting like it was a joke. I ran for the receptacle I'd prepared, hidden up in my room. When I got back to the dining room he had a knife suspended above her, and I saw her face change as she finally realized... that it was no longer the man she loved."
He met Sam's eyes evenly. "She screamed as he drove the knife through her heart."
Sam swallowed. "I'm sorry."
"I performed the ritual," Thomas said, as if he hadn't heard him. "I was clumsy, though - I was... upset, and it was my first time. I managed to trap him - but not just him. My mother's spirit had barely had time to form. I hadn't taken it into my calculations, didn't know how to control the ritual I was using. She was sucked into the receptacle and trapped with him."
He reached out and touched the first glass cube on the shelf beside him, and Sam winced as it sparked, sharp metallic blue flaring and fading.
"For a long time I agonized about trying to bring her back. The thought of her spirit trapped together forever with her murderer..." Thomas stared at the cube. "But then I realized I was falling into the same trap she had, thinking of the spirit as my mother. If I'd brought her back, I'd have just had to trap her again, because sooner or later she'd have gone the same way he did. And so I left her, trapped in there with him."
He smiled at Sam. "I wonder sometimes what it's like for her in there. Whether his spirit overpowered and devoured hers. Whether she slowly turned the same way he did, became just as dark and malevolent, and now they're ripping each other to shreds in there. Or whether she's happy to have been reunited with him for all eternity, just like she always wanted."
"I'm sorry about your family," Sam said quietly. "But I don't believe it always has to be that way. And even if it does... Dean's my brother. And I won't give up on him."
Thomas sighed. "I was afraid you'd see it that way." He took a step away from the shelves and brought one hand up sharply in Sam's direction -
- and Sam found himself flying backwards until he was crashing into the wall. Instead of falling to the floor, though, he found himself pinned, an unseen force pressing him back.
Thomas extended his hand, and Sam felt the cube jerk in his grasp. He tightened his fingers as best he could, though he was pinned so securely that it was difficult to move them, and he had no real doubt that Thomas would be able to take it from him.
But he could feel it tingling, feel little jolts, like electricity, spreading up into his arm, and he managed to close his fingers around it more securely, feeling the jerking towards Thomas stop. Thomas lowered his arm, looking slightly perturbed for the first time.
Sam grinned in savage satisfaction. "That's my brother in there. And you can't take him from me."
Thomas stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Maybe so. But I don't need to."
He raised his hand again, and the pressure against Sam's chest increased sharply, making it hard to breathe.
"I offered you the chance to leave," Thomas said quietly, almost sadly. "I explained to you why it was necessary. But you wouldn't listen, and I don't think you ever will. Your love for your brother blinds you to reason. I don't think you'll ever face up to the truth, no matter what the cost. And I can't take that risk. I've spent my life trapping these monsters and protecting people from them - I've even extended my own life to make sure these receptacles remain intact and secure. I can't let you try to undo that."
The pressure against Sam's chest increased further, and Sam tipped his head back, struggling for air.
The tingling in his arm spread further, jolting up and across his chest, shooting down into his legs. The pressure didn't ease, but it didn't increase either, and Sam was pretty sure that otherwise he'd have crushed ribs by now. He could see a pale glow emanating from the cube clenched in his hand.
"It's not enough," Thomas said. "Even if you can tap into it through your connection with your brother, you don't know how to use it, and I have far more power at my disposal." Sam could almost hear the sad smile in his voice as Thomas continued, "I'll add your spirit to the same receptacle as your brother, you have my word on that. You'll be together again."
Sam's mind raced, searching desperately for options. Thomas was right, he couldn't use the cube's power well enough to free himself, and he couldn't reach any other weapon. Which meant his options were limited.
He thought again of what Bobby had said: I don't know what the shock would do to Dean. But whatever the consequences, it might be Sam's only chance to try to free his brother before he died.
My arm, Dean, he thought as loudly as he could. I need my right arm free.
It took a moment, but the tingling shifted away from his chest again, concentrating in his arm. The shock of the increased pressure against his chest almost made Sam pass out, but it had worked - he could move his arm.
Please, god, let this work, Sam thought, and threw the cube as hard as he could at the ground between him and Thomas.
The sound of the glass shattering was very loud in the oppressive atmosphere of the basement.
The pressure on his chest was suddenly gone, and Sam sagged against the wall, gasping for breath. He forced himself to focus as quickly as he could on the scene in front of him. Thomas had backed up next to the table with the books piled on it, and the ghosts from the receptacle were bearing down on him. Sam had to take a deep breath in relief at the sight of Dean just a few feet away.
He looked much the same as he had in the alleyway, still wearing his leather jacket, the one Sam had carefully removed from his cold corpse. He was paler than usual - bloodloss, Sam thought, half-hysterically - but otherwise seemed unharmed.
Then he shifted, moving round to get a better angle of attack at Thomas, and Sam caught his breath. Dean's face was distorted with rage, snarling with fury in a way Sam knew he would never have done in life. And as Sam stared, Dean's outstretched hands seemed to shift into claws like Mrs. Green's.
Remember Jake, Sam told himself, trying to force down panic. Remember how furious you were with him when you realized what he'd done and the price Dean had paid. It's understandable.
The other ghosts seemed equally as furious, doing their best to attack Thomas, clustered around him. Thomas seemed to be managing to hold them off, however, with some kind of invisible barrier similar to the force he'd used to pin Sam; the spirits were clawing at it, throwing themselves against it, circling it and snarling as they tried to find a way through. But the receptacles on the shelves were all glowing blue, casting an eerie light over the basement, and Sam knew the ghosts wouldn't be able to break through. Thomas was throwing everything he could into that barrier.
Sam pulled himself away from the support of the wall. He might be able to do something about that.
He moved to the other end of the shelves, and reached out for the receptacle Thomas had touched earlier, the cube with the label 1 in front of it, and picked it up. The glass was not merely cool to the touch, as the one containing Dean had been; it was bitingly cold, almost painful to handle.
"No!" Thomas yelled as Sam turned. He looked genuinely afraid for the first time, and extended a hand in Sam's direction. Sam was not surprised to see Dean snarl and swoop in, trying to break through the barrier.
Sam hurled the cube to the floor and watched it shatter.
He wasn't sure what he'd expected to emerge from the receptacle: perhaps mostly human-like ghosts similar to those which had come from Dean's cube. Instead, something resembling a cloud of black smoke appeared, spiraling up from the shattered glass, curling around itself in a dark, shapeless mass.
Then it lunged at him.
Sam gasped and leapt back against the wall, fumbling desperately in his pocket and cursing himself for not thinking to bring the shotgun. The only salt he had on him was the small packet he always carried in his pocket. He'd brought his handgun in case he had to take on Thomas (for all the good it had done him), but he'd been thinking mostly of Dean, of the ghosts as Thomas's victims.
Victims they might be, but that didn't mean they weren't deadly.
Suddenly Dean was there, appearing without warning between Sam and the black shade. He was snarling loudly, and Sam could see again the claws he'd noticed before, growing and flexing as Dean threatened the shade. He held his breath.
The shade hovered for a moment, hesitating, then sped towards Thomas.
Sam heard a screeching sound which he knew had to be Thomas's barrier shattering, and the snarling of the ghosts as they closed in. The blue glow of receptacles on the shelves flickered and went out, and Thomas screamed.
Sam ignored it all, his eyes focused on his brother. He reached out hesitantly to press a hand against Dean's back. "Dean?"
Dean shifted, suddenly facing him. His face was still distorted with the same wild rage as before.
Sam swallowed, and extended a hand carefully. "Dean. Hey."
Dean's expression shifted slightly, the rage fading, blending into a possessive protectiveness and hunger that was no less wild. And suddenly Dean was in his arms, pressed up against him, hands clutching Sam's arms, claws digging in painfully.
Sam gasped, but closed his arms around Dean, holding on as tightly as he could. "Dean," he said again. "Dean, come back to me, man."
Dean was freezing cold, colder than when he'd touched him before Thomas had trapped him. His face was pressed against Sam's neck, and Sam could feel teeth grazing against his skin, as if Dean was seeking the warmth of his blood.
"Dean," Sam tried again, reaching up to touch Dean's hair. "Hey. I've got you. You're going to be okay, Dean, I've got you, I promise."
His brother pulled back far enough to meet his gaze. Sam caught his breath at the wild need still in Dean's eyes. Dean, god...
And without warning, Dean lunged forward and pressed his mouth to Sam's.
It wasn't a kiss, not exactly. More than anything, the memory it brought back for Sam was his desperate attempt to resuscitate Dean in the alleyway, a final attempt to reach his brother and bring him back. Sam could no more have pulled away than he could have deliberately chosen to let Dean's life slip away. If this connection was what Dean needed to come back to himself and to Sam, Sam would give him it.
And if he was honest, maybe he needed it himself, too. Needed the feeling of Dean pressed so close against him, real like nothing else had seemed while he was gone. Needed to feel Dean's lips responding to his own like they hadn't in the alleyway. Needed to feel something but that horrible, blank rage from his brother.
He was slightly lightheaded when he finally pulled back, but Dean felt warmer than he had, and his eyes were shining with an intensity that reminded Sam of his brother much more than the wild rage of before.
A ghost snarled, close beside them.
Dean shifted at once, rounding on it. Sam recognized the ghost of Mrs. Green, her dark eyes focused on him. Beyond her, the other spirits were starting to turn towards him too, the dark shade at the center.
Dean snarled, fingers lengthening into claws again. Mine, Sam sensed more than heard. He held his breath for a moment, but then the ghosts backed off, and spiraled out of the basement with a screeching wail.
Sam let his breath out slowly and looked across at where Thomas had been, then winced and looked hastily away. There was blood everywhere, splattered all over the books on the table. What was lying on the floor barely even resembled a corpse any more.
Dean turned again with the same ghostly abruptness, the rage slowly fading from his eyes, and was suddenly back in Sam's arms, nuzzling against his neck. Sam could feel the claws trailing over his arms, but slowly shortening and shifting back into normal fingers.
He let Dean cling to him, and took a deep breath. He could fix this. He could.
"Sammy," Dean murmured thickly, as if the word was a foreign language he was rediscovering. But it was the first word Sam had heard him speak since he'd been trapped.
Sam exhaled slowly, and wrapped his arms around his brother, feeling hope spark in him at that sound. "I got you, Dean. It's going to be okay."
Chapter Seven