FIC: - Blind Spot - 11/14
Title: - Blind Spot - Chapter 11/14
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters post Saturdays Dragons Mean Time (DMT). Some liberties have been taken with locations. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Eleven
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
It was just after three a.m. when he woke. The bedroom reeked of antiseptic; a ripe, indelible cocktail of perspiration and vomit underpinning the hospital stench. The first thing Sam became aware of, as he uncurled from the chair beside the bed, was Dean’s breathing. The desperate, labored hiss-and-whistle through his teeth.
Sam hit the bedside lamp, didn’t need a medical degree to assess the situation. He forced himself past his burgeoning fear and horror. Beyond reaction back into action. He padded through to Bobby’s bedroom and shook him awake.
“What do we do?”
Bobby took Dean’s vitals, checked the IV, and shook his head. “His temp’s through the roof. May as well be pouring this stuff straight onto the sheets.”
“So, we need to take him to a hospital. We need to get him to a hospital.” Sam kept his eyes in front of him, glued to Dean’s hand. He couldn’t look at Bobby. Didn’t want to see in the man’s face what he already knew to be true; they’d left that run too late. Dean wasn’t making it to any hospital.
“I’ll see what I can do to cool him down.”
Bobby’s hand closed on Sam’s shoulder - squeezed - as he passed behind him, and the contact sparked a visceral jolt of helpless panic.
Sam leaned forward and gripped Dean’s sticky hand in his. He ran rote laps of the platitude track - shhhhh and okay and hold on - while Bobby got the icepacks going and soaked some towels.
Sam could just about taste his brother’s exhaustion in the thickly scented air. He felt a frantic custodial swell. He’s had enough. Dean had said it a hundred times since Wyoming. I’m tired. As if that might be of some comfort to Sam. But there was no peace awaiting Dean. He’d sold his ports and harbors, bought himself an endless storm.
Sam was going to live, and Dean was never going to rest.
Bobby didn’t have any reassurance, so he gave Sam space instead. “I’ll be in the living room. When you need me, you holler.”
His voice was raw, and Sam saw the weary repulsion in his eyes. He wore the face of a man who had John Winchester’s kid buying it in his back room.
Sam tried, and failed, to get some traction on the thought. He’s dying. He sat at Dean’s bedside - spent and hollowed out - until a slow glacial grief overtook him. He methodically rotated icepacks, moved towels. Stared vacantly while Dean’s breathing slowed, until each pull and push of air seemed to be a decision in and of itself. Waited for the terrible pause between exhale-inhale to yawn into longer, and then maybe, and then no.
Sam got his elbows up on the side of the bed, hands over his face, and closed his eyes.
“I know I’m supposed to be ready for this, but I’m not.” The first sob racked out of him like an eight-ball break. He smoothed the flat of his fingers down his cheeks when the tears spilled. “Okay? I just want you to know, I’m not.”
It was light when he woke. Location and orientation took their sweet time coming back to him, until the fingers beneath his cheek twitched. Sam snapped upright, a guilty charge of adrenalin and relief, because - holy crap - Dean was still breathing. Chest gently rising and falling, his pale clammy face turned away from Sam. Dean’s fingers jumped again in his hand, and Sam squeezed hard in response.
Right here.
Bobby wore a tired smile in the chair beside the window. “Fever broke an hour ago. Swear to God, kid’s got more lives than a fuckin’ cat.”
**********************************************************************************************
“What do you mean?” Dean picked up the photograph, studied the image of the shop front. He lifted his gaze, drilled Marcus with an intense expectant stare.
Marcus slapped another wad of papers on the desk in front of Dean. “Four years ago, the owner of that shop got stabbed in the throat in the back office. His own daughter. I remember. There was a bit of a media frenzy over it.”
Dean picked up the papers, passed his eyes over the newspaper article on top.
“Girl pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and her sentence got commuted on account of it apparently being self-defense. She never did any time. Shop closed down for a while after, and the media got bored, moved on to the six car pile-up on the interstate, or whatever.”
“Okay, so?”
“So, six months later, the pawn shop re-opens. Only now, the daughter’s running it, and it’s not just a pawn shop. May 2004, Christine Picoult starts popping up on the radar as the go-to girl if you got a problem of the ungodly variety.”
“What, she turns hunter?”
“No, that’s just it. She’s running artifacts, weapons, manuscripts. And they cost. She’s no Mother Theresa.”
“So, her Dad gets possessed, she finds out how to kill him, and launches a new career kickin’ demon ass for cash?”
Marcus shrugged. “I called her this morning.”
“And?”
“And I told her I had a problem I’d heard she could help with.”
“You didn’t tell her--”
“No. I didn’t say anything about the virus or the seal. I kept it pretty vague. And you know what she tells me?”
“What?”
“She tells me if I think I got a demon problem in Portland right now, I should hold on to my toupee. And then she hangs up.”
“She knows something’s goin’ on.”
“Sure sounded like it.”
“Okay.” Dean thumbed through the rest of the documents. There was a police identification shot of Christine Picoult, more newspaper articles from the murder, and a stack of detailed information on the pawn shop’s inventory lists and clientele. It was as detailed as any case file Sam had ever handed him, and Dean was grudgingly aware Marcus Kane was finding some decent footholds this morning in the outer walls of the Dean Winchester Compound. He made sure none of this was reflected in his face when he looked up. “Okay,” he said again. “When Sam gets back, I’ll go pay her a visit. See what’s what.”
“I just thought…I mean, we want this demon dead, right? Not just gone.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” Dean dropped the papers back on to the desk. “Listen, Marcus. Sam’s got a lot on his plate right now, and if he thinks I’m runnin’ half-cocked vigilante on the side here, he’s gonna get his jockeys in a twist, so…”
“You don’t want me to tell him.”
“I’m just sayin’: it’s a lead. I’m followin’ it up. ‘Til I got somethin’ more, that’s all he needs to know.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Running half-cocked vigilante.”
“My priority right now is bustin’ up this demon party. I’m not gonna handcuff you to your desk, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
“Jo knows what I’ve told you, too. There’s nothing to stop her telling him.”
“Well, I’ll saddle that bronc if it comes up.” Dean hefted a thick tome from the desk and sat back down in his chair. “Alright. Ritual. Catholic priests. Mid-1349. Let’s see what we got here.”
Marcus selected a book for himself, frowned at Dean.
“Didn’t you need to use the bathroom?”
Dean looked up at him blankly. “Sorry, what?”
“The bathroom. Weren’t you gonna go?”
“Oh. No. S’okay.” Dean gave Marcus a fleeting smile. “Take a piss, smack you in the mouth… urge has passed.”
*********************************************************************************************
They’d found a steaming pile of jack-squat by the time Sam and Bobby followed Jo through the door of the office. Not that Dean had been looking for the ritual. Three hours of nose to the page, and he hadn’t found a single reference to any possession that matched what was happening to Sam.
Marcus’d had a brief eureka over a seal-smashing spell, but after half an hour of painstaking translation, he’d realized it was a partial script from an Italian short film. Aside from that, they’d only succeeded in chalking up another couple of boring old books on the Must-Read List.
Sam seemed on edge, but he dismissed Dean’s questioning look with a distracted shake of his head. Apparently, nothing had happened.
When Bobby asked what they’d been able to dig up, Dean threw the book from his lap onto the desk and officially declared their findings to be “Fuck all.” He stood up, limped the stiffness out of his knee as he stretched his legs around the office. “I say coffee run, then we hit the library. Unless you guys’ve got any better ideas.”
“Dean…” Sam waggled a finger between Jo and Marcus.
Dean clicked his fingers. “Oh, right.” He eyed Jo warily as he leaned beside the door to the office, pressed a protective palm against his crotch. “Just let me establish minimum safe distance here.”
Jo’s stony stare told Dean there wasn’t one.
He let Bobby and Sam do the talking, kept a hawk-eye going between Jo and Marcus as their reactions played.
Dean had a pretty solid grounding in dealing with the unexpected. Nothing much surprised him, but Jo was flying close enough to buzz the tower. She took the news of Sam’s most recent possession with the kind of calm professional interest that made Dean wonder if she needed her hearing checked. A few too many shotgun blasts without the proper protection - and BLAM! - she’d clearly gone deaf. Or maybe he’d dozed off during the conversation, and was dreaming a best case scenario.
She listened intently, then frowned her way through the same series of intelligent and pertinent questions that had immediately sprung to Dean’s mind. Jo wanted to know when, how long, where, and how lucid he’d been.
Sam fielded the inquisition with a genuine openness and honesty that made Dean nervous.
“Well,” she said finally, gaze glancing briefly off Dean en route to Sam, “you guys win crappiest year out. No contest.” She crossed her arms, stamped the heel of her boot twice on the carpet. “So, how do we fix this? What do we know about fixing it?”
Dean spoke up from the doorway. “Not a lot.”
She pinned him with a stare that was all business. “By not a lot, you mean…?”
“I mean nothing,” he supplied. “I had a look around this morning and I can’t see any reference to anything like it. Short of a normal exorcism - which I’m not keen on for obvious reasons - we dunno. I’m startin’ to think Meg’s our best resource on what’s happening here and…” Dean pointed to the cut in his head, “Sam’s right. I’m not walkin’ away from another round with her. I pissed her off pretty good last night.”
“Oh, now I’m right?” Sam interjected, and Dean silenced him with a look that clearly stated he wasn’t taking any crap from the demon boy.
“So, you can just turn at any time?” They were the first words Marcus had spoken since Sam and Bobby had wrapped the round-up. He looked as though someone had emptied a bag of snakes into the room.
“We don’t know that.” Dean was pretty sure the only thing preventing Marcus from throwing himself out the nearest window was the fact he’d have to pass Sam to get there.
“Exactly,” Marcus agreed, eyes wild. “We don’t know. Jesus Christ.”
Dean came off the wall. “Look, I know it’s a little unsettling--”
“Unsettling?”
Marcus had lost his volume control, and Dean couldn’t really blame the guy.
“Marcus, something’s triggering it.” Dean threw a palm wide as he continued. “We just don’t know what right now. Situation’s containable. Sam got it under control with the back end of a License to Depart incantation last night, and we got no reason to think he can’t do that again. If anything, he had more control over it the second time. We just need to stay calm, and concentrate on figuring this out.”
Jo swiveled to face Marcus. “He’s right. He’s a jackass, but he’s right. Panicking’s not gonna help.” She turned to Sam. “If we have to, how do we stop you? I mean, short of blowing your head off.”
“You so much as think about pulling a trigger on him, and I’ll drop you where you stand, Jo.” Dean meant it. He had no clue how much until the threat passed his lips, a growl courting neither apology nor remorse.
Sam lifted an exasperated hand to his suddenly flushed face. “Jesus, Dean.”
Jo twisted slowly to look at Dean, eyes blazing. “Which is why I’m asking,” she ground out.
“Belt ‘a holy water and a fist to the face works just fine, last I checked.” Bobby stepped up between Dean and Jo, looked from one to the other. “Now, if you two are done tossin’ the evil eye, we got ourselves a little research to do.”
Dean broke his stare-off with Jo, sniffed in Bobby’s direction. “I’ll drop you guys at the library. I got a lead I wanna check out downtown.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “I thought you guys didn’t find anything.”
Dean motioned at Marcus. “We didn’t. Marcus just dug somethin’ up, I wanna go rule it out.”
“Well, you can’t drive with that shoulder. I’ll take you.”
“I got it, Sam. Shoulder’s fine,” he lied. “I’ll be an hour, tops. Hit the books with these guys. I just wanna go talk to this chick, make sure she doesn’t have anything we can use.”
When Sam looked at Marcus, he dropped his eyes to the carpet.
Oh, that’s subtle.
Sam was far from convinced. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“No? What a shock. Look, I’ve been sittin’ on my ass half the day readin' Dear Diary extracts of Religious Nuts R Us. I’m sore, and I’m frustrated, and I need to take a break. I’m just gonna go for a drive, move around and get some air. I’ll be back before you’re done droolin’ over the Dewey decimals.”
It was close enough to the truth, and it did the trick. Sam backed right off, held up a hand and nodded reluctantly.
“Okay. But I want you armed, and I want a phone call when you get there, and when you leave. Deal?”
Dean motioned to the door. “You got it, Granny Winchester. Let’s go.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean stopped at a gas station on the way to the pawn shop. He fueled up; checked oil, water and tire pressure when it occurred to him he couldn’t remember doing it in the last couple of weeks. The wheels, arches and undercarriage were filthy from the dirt roads up at Timber, so he took ten minutes in one of the car wash bays and got the worst of it off with the high pressure hose. By the time he was done, the throb in his shoulder was nudging up into his back molars again, and the fingers of his left hand were completely numb.
He kept his fist lap-bound for the rest of the drive, managed as best he could one-handed. Sam was right. He had no more business being behind the wheel of the car than he had crouched beside it with a hose.
But still, you couldn’t leave that shit on.
Sam’s never gonna notice the wheel arches.
The realization brought a rise of thick regret, and Dean was pretty sure it had nothing to do with his car. There were a lot of good reasons Dean hadn’t given much thought to Sam on the road alone, and none of them related to the frequency with which he cleaned the Impala.
He’ll be fine. Sam does alone just fine. He’s gonna be cut, and then he’s gonna be fine.
He was glad for the distraction when the search for a parking space turned mission impossible on his ass. By the time he exited the Impala, he was sufficiently removed from the unsolicited train of thought, and formidably displaced five blocks from the pawn shop. His knee was complaining vocally about the impromptu cross-town hike by the first corner.
The shop front was a dirty white stucco that showcased every smear, spit, splash and spatter it had been privy to in the decades since its original application. It was a fact that seemed to have escaped the drunk guy folded against the base of the wall, cheek to the plaster.
“Fuck you, you fucker,” he grunted.
Dean’s response was amicable as he limped to the door. “Copy that. Fuck you too, buddy.”
The inside of the shop was as desperately in need of a makeover as the outside. It was as though an antique store had somehow vomited inside a garden shed. The chaos appealed to Dean’s genetic male code nonetheless, tugged on a primal need for the acquisition of things bizarre and useless. Under any other circumstances, he could have killed an hour here, angled a little spray-back on Sam for all those never-ending ages spent in the Obscure Section of Generic Library number four hundred and seventy-five. But Dean wasn’t there to fondle the merchandise.
Except… That, over there, is a fucking Rochester carburetor.
“You win?”
He snapped his attention to the woman behind the counter in the far corner, and he recognized her instantly from the photographs. She looked a little older, but she was a lot easier on the eye in reality than her mug shot had suggested. It was usually the case, Dean found. Weren’t too many of those things framed and gracing living room walls.
“Sorry?”
Christine pointed at him, then straightened and went back to assembling the jigsaw of greasy metal parts on the counter in front of her. “Your face. Did you win?”
Dean considered his answer, pouted a little. “I wouldn’t say I lost, exactly. More of a draw.”
“’Cause I was going to say: if you won, I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like.”
“Right. You Christine Picoult?”
“Yeah,” she clipped, blew a wayward strand of dark hair out of her eyes. “You gonna buy that carburetor or just eye-fuck it?”
“I’m not really here for car parts.”
“I gathered. What can I do for you, Dean?”
The name drop sent an ice cold flash from the nape of his neck to the back of his knees. He stumbled mentally over the lost footing.
“You are Dean Winchester, right? Live and in the flesh. Right here in my little shop.” She motioned to the wall with a tight, annoyed gesture. “I should get a picture; have you sign it or something.”
Dean was suddenly grateful for the cool press of the Glock at the small of his back. Always was, when the rug got pulled out from beneath his feet. A 9mil wasn’t exactly a substitute for solid ground, but it could sure make a lot of noise while you found some.
He narrowed his eyes. “Alright. Who are you really?” There was no curiosity in the demand.
“I’m Christine Picoult. My husband’s not here right now, but his name is Jerry. We run this pawn shop. I inherited it from my father. But that’s not really what you should be asking, is it? You already knew all that, or you wouldn’t be here.” She wiped a greasy hand across her cheek and devoted her attention to him. “Those Winchester genes sure know how to throw a looker.”
“How do you know who I am?” He could feel the familiar adrenal tingle in the fingers of his right hand.
“You’re still asking the wrong questions, Dean.”
He could hear the faint whumpwhumpwhump of his blood rushing in his ears. His shoulder throbbed a sickening accompaniment to his pulse. He hooked the thumb of his left hand in the belt loop of his jeans, got some of the weight out of his arm. Then he tried again: “You’ve been expecting me.”
“Much better. Although, technically? Not a question.” She smiled slyly. “Yes.”
Dean was developing an intense dislike for this game. “Why have you been expecting me?”
“Because you have a problem with a demon. And sooner or later, people who have problems with demons? They end up in my shop.”
“Well, I hate to bust your bubble there, Christine, but I’ve had a lot of problems with a lot of demons, and up until a few hours ago, I’d never heard your name before.”
“Uh-huh. And the last time you needed a demon dead, you had the Colt on your side.”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it again. He was wading into an ocean, the seabed rapidly falling away beneath his feet. He took a step towards the counter. “’Kay, I’m gonna ask again: who are you?”
Her eyes flashed with a sudden violence, and Dean felt a twitch of some innate realization. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose.
“And I’m going to tell you again: wrong question.”
Dean cast his eyes sideways down to the floor, nodded. He came forward another step as he looked back up, locked eyes with her so she knew he meant business.
“Okay, listen up. I’ve been doin’ this job a long time and I can spot a demon clear across a fuckin’ ocean, lady. So let’s get one thing straight here. I am absolutely fluent in the kind of Latin that can turn the heat up on your day by about a thousand degrees. And I’m a little busy right now tryin’ to stop an apocalypse, but I can sure as hell see my way clear to makin’ you priority number two.” He blinked at her. “So, how about you tell me what the fuck is goin’ on, before I start gettin’ pissed off?”
“You’ve got a temper like your father, Dean.”
“Well, you’re the one with the manslaughter conviction. You demons aren’t real big on family, huh?”
“It might surprise you to know, I deeply regret that situation.”
“Yeah. Nothin’ says sorry like an opened jugular. I can see you’re real cut up about it. You wanna tell me how you came to be trafficking for the wrong team? Can’t imagine your demon buddies are very impressed with your little moonlighting gig here.”
She blinked. “No. I can’t say they are.”
She got up and came around the counter. Dean stepped sideways, lifted the Glock smoothly out of the back of his jeans and chambered it as he leveled the muzzle at her face. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Christine pointed towards the front of the shop. “I was going to lock the door.”
“And why the fuck would I be okay with that?”
She rolled her eyes as she passed him. “I don’t really give a shit if you are or not. You can put the gun away, Dean. Or keep it, if it makes you feel safer. I don’t know why it would, but I don’t understand half the things you people do. If you’d like to exit at any point, feel free. You flip it like this.” She performed an exaggerated demonstration as she turned the mechanism of the lock.
Dean was starting to get that waist-deep-in-water feeling again.
Christine crossed back to the counter and bounced lightly up to sit on it. “You know what my father used to say, Dean?”
“‘Oh, my God, my daughter’s a demon?’”
She snorted, amused. “No. My father was a military man. Pretty high up on the chain, too. Right hand man to a special friend of yours, actually. But you cut that little friendship short in Wyoming a while back, didn’t you?”
“The Yellow Eyed Demon?”
“Well, that’s not the name he went by in our circles, but yeah. You threw quite a spanner in some pretty big works. And you sure did piss his daughter off.”
“Oh, she gives as good as she gets, trust me. I wouldn’t worry about Meg.”
“Again, not what I’d call her. And not just because it’s not her name.” She shook her head. “That is a nasty piece of shit you stepped in there, Dean.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re funny. Anyway, my father used to say: The side that loses a war goes in knowing what they want to keep. To win a war, you need to know what you’re prepared to lose.” She gave him a long hard stare. “You’ve got a war on your hands, Dean. Do you know what you’re prepared to lose?”
“Oh, I know what you sons of bitches aren’t getting. Don’t you worry about that.”
She smiled sadly. “That’s not even nearly the same thing.”
“If your dad was such an awesome quotable guy, why’d you stick him?”
“It was my job.”
“You were hired to kill your own father?”
“Not hired. Asked. I was very committed to the cause back then, you have to understand. In November of 2003, the soldier you refer to as the Yellow Eyed Demon and my father were responsible for heading up an offensive very similar to the one you’ve stumbled across here. At the last minute, my father back-flipped and put a stop to it.”
Dean dipped the muzzle of the Glock. “How?”
She smiled conspiratorially. “That’s the difference between you and your brother, Dean. You’re all about how. If Sam were standing there, he’d be asking why.”
“You can shut up about my brother, lady.”
“Au contraire. But we’ll get to that in a second.” Christine slid off the glass top, made her way back behind the counter. She leaned on her forearms and the corners of her eyes crinkled. Her gaze felt like an assessment, and when she finally bit her lip and arched an eyebrow, she didn’t seem especially thrilled with her drawn conclusion.
“My father razed one of the symbols using an ancient ritual. Afterwards, he claimed he’d had a visitation from the demon Gaap, and that the destruction of the seal had been carried out at his request. It was a heresy tantamount to suicide. I was the logical assassin; no one believed he would ever see it coming.”
Christine paused, and Dean gathered from her bittersweet expression that the assumption had been incorrect.
“Well,” he interjected, when she failed to continue. “This is a real tearjerker, Christine. You told someone who gave a shit? Wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.”
“I’m not here to inspire pathos, Dean. What happened between my father and I was regrettable, but ultimately inevitable. If you survive this mess, you might live long enough to figure that out. Some things were always going to be.” She narrowed dark eyes. “Are always going to be.”
“You guys make this shit up on the spot or is there a Roget’s Pocket Demon Rhetoric?” The Glock felt like it was humming in his hands; trigger siren-calling for contact.
Christine’s mouth quirked up. “It wasn’t the first time a seal had been destroyed in this fashion, but the ritual hadn’t been used for the better part of a millennium. Part of my instructions were to destroy any documentation on the specifics of the ritual.” She gave him a black, impassive stare. “You won’t find any detail in any library or on any website. Hell, you could fly to Prague and then on to the Vatican itself and still come home none the wiser. I was very thorough. But luckily for you, attention to detail runs in the family.”
Dean was twanging on a fairly molecular level with the desire to strangle out of her every ounce of information she contained. But the realization was building inside him, came up out of his mouth still laced with a vestige of unchecked surprise. “You’re gonna tell me how to stop this thing.”
“Right. How.”
She stressed the how as though she were talking to a small child, and Dean’d had just about enough condescending demon-chick to last this lifetime. He caught the twinge of his finger against the trigger, bit down hard on the inside of his lip.
Christine straightened, assumed a business-like demeanor. “First things first. You’re looking at this problem with Sam from entirely the wrong angle.”
Dean’s heart skipped and dropped through his feet.
“Problem?” The monotone was forced but Dean’s poker face was polished. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Whatever you say, soldier.” She gave him an indulgent smile. “Here’s the thing: you’ve spent how many years fighting demons, hunting things, and I could tell from the get-go, from the moment you walked in that door, that you are not a shades-of-grey kinda guy. You’ve got your demons, and you’ve got your humans, right?”
“Yahtzee.”
“And you’re barking up the wrong tree. You think something’s in him. The only thing inside Sam, is Sam.”
“Like I said: I got no clue what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Sam hasn’t changed. He’s what he’s always been. What he always will be. It’s the playing field that’s different. The road, as they say, has risen. So, Sammy Winchester has some choices to make. Some now. Some later.”
“You know, that is exactly the kind of dime-store bullshit palmistry that chafes my fuckin’ ass. Way to vague it out there, Chrissie. You don’t know shit.”
“Okay,” she agreed easily. “You’ll see.” She blinked at him expectantly. “You have another question to ask me. Or have you forgotten why you came?”
Dean just about had. The Glock hung loosely by his side. He was pretty sure they were having multiple conversations at once. It was the kind of annoying doubletalk that made his fist itch. He sent a couple of breaths down his nose, regrouped.
“You’ve been killin’ demons. I wanna know how.”
“Is this about Meg or Sam?”
That got the Glock back up. “This is gonna be about you if you don’t stop pissin’ me off. How does that sound?”
“You’re going to regret this, later. This attitude.”
“I’ll add it to the list.”
“Good. Because you’re not going to have any idea the kind of effort I’ve gone to until long after you walk out that door. And then? It’s going to be too late to come back and be nice.” Christine reached below the counter and laid a dagger on the glass top in front of her. “But I don’t want you to feel bad. Because you’re about to do something for me in return.”
“Oh, here we go. Ante up.”
“You could call it that, yes. But don’t worry. I think you’ll like the recommended retail. It’s right in your ball park.” She held out the blade, hilt first. “So, there’s a couple of things you need to know. First, Meg grabbing you in that alley? It was just a coincidence. It’s going to occur to you later; that she might have known about the book. She has no idea, and you really need to keep it that way, if you want a hope in hell of stopping this.”
A swarm of hornets awoke at the base of Dean’s skull. He gave the question a third airing: “Who the fuck are you, lady?”
Christine thrust the knife at him again. “I’m Tristan Bradley’s daughter. Four years ago, almost exactly where we stand, my father handed me this blade and I killed him with it. The time’s come for me to pass it to you.”
Dean blinked at her. “S’cuse me?”
The smile she dealt him was calm. “We’ll call it a test drive.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sam ditched his cab a block out and walked the rest of the way. He found a serviceable stake-out point in a secondhand bookstore across the street from the pawn shop. Didn’t quite understand how he’d arrived before Dean until a notably shiny Impala cruised past.
Leave it to his brother to stop en route to the end of the world and wash the car.
When Dean limped through the door of the shop, Sam’s cell still hadn’t rung.
Jesus Christ, Dean. How hard is it to punch a speed dial and say, “Hey”? Jackass.
The irritation was followed immediately with a swift dousing of guilt. About as hard as it is to just stay in the goddamn library, you jerk.
Sam picked him up an hour later, coming out of the pawn shop. He hung back as Dean crossed the street and headed downtown. If his brother had bought anything in the store, Sam couldn’t see where he’d stashed the purchase. It didn’t mean he hadn’t, and Sam was considering this fact when he realized he’d lost him. He looked up and down the street.
Shit. He slowed as he passed some shop fronts, peered in the windows. Then his cell rang.
“You’re about as stealthy as a nun in a whorehouse, you know that?”
Busted.
“Um, Dean. Hey.”
“Seriously. You got a tail like a fuckin’ peacock. How are we even related?”
Sam turned and saw Dean stepping out from the doorway of a diner half a block back, cell at his ear. He didn’t seem amused.
“You ask him, or did he just come out with it?” Dean said it into the phone, eyes on Sam as he approached.
Sam raised his eyebrows, clapped his phone shut as Dean got close enough to hear. “I asked him. Would you have told me?” he called.
Dean stopped a few feet short of him, flicked his cell shut. For a second he just stood there, eyes flat and colorless. “Nope,” he confirmed finally, and there was no apology in it.
“What’s the deal with the pawn shop?”
Dean smiled at him, his eyes doing entirely their own thing. “Why don’t you ask your new best buddy, Marcus?”
Sam nearly hit him. Almost clocked Dean right in his fucked up, Technicolor face. He teetered for a moment on a double-edged saw of fury and frustration.
“Fuck you, Dean.” He turned and headed down the street.
Five minutes and a couple of blocks later, the Impala rumbled to a crawl on the street beside him.
“Sam, get in the car.”
Sam kept walking, ignored him. Dean hit the gas, sent the Impala gunning forward, waited for Sam to pass the window again.
“I said, get in the car, you sulky little shit.”
“Yeah, and I said, fuck you, Dean.”
Dean shook his head, dropped the clutch and laid some rubber getting the Impala to the end of the street. He parked her there, left her running while he got out and rounded the front fender. As Sam got level with the trunk, Dean yanked open the passenger door, pointed inside.
“Get in, or I’ll put you in.”
It was an empty threat and they both knew it, but Sam was done making his point. He veered off the sidewalk and slumped into the passenger seat, let Dean slam the door on him.
They drove back to the library in a silence as taut as Sam’s clenched jaw. In the lot, Dean threw the car into park and turned to face him. He stretched his right arm out across the seat back, motioned with his left hand between them. “Okay, let’s have it.”
Sam dialed up the incredulous to eleven. “What?”
Dean waggled his fingers again. “Whatever you’ve got to say. Let’s have it.”
Sam nearly exploded. “Oh, nononono. I’m not the one who needs to be spilling his guts here, Dean.”
Dean sighed, raked a hand down his face. “Here we go.”
“Yeah, here we go. I’m on your side. Do you even get that anymore?” Sam lifted both hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand you. You tell me this morning nothing’s changed, but then you… I can’t believe you’re still keeping shit from me. After everything’s that’s--”
“Owner of the pawn shop was a demon named Christine Picoult.”
“What?”
“You wanna know, I’m tellin’ you. Marcus found her. Four years ago she took out another demon here in Portland. I’m not talkin’ exorcism. I’m talkin’ Colt dead. She killed him.”
“Dean, what are you- What?”
Dean fished the knife out his jacket and laid it on the seat between them. “She used that. Demon was Tristan Bradley.”
Sam knew the name. He cut eyes to the steering wheel in front of Dean, fumbled in the dark corners of his skull until the lights went on. “Oh, my God. As in, that book we picked up for Bobby, Tristan Bradley? What--? Is that--?” He shut his mouth on the inquisitorial meltdown brewing behind his lips. Took a breath and thought for a second.
“He was her father.”
“She killed her own father?”
Dean was nodding at him, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. Hard to believe, huh? There’s a family out there more fucked up than ours.” He jerked a thumb down at his lap. “You know, I found that book under this seat last night.”
“Well, what’s in it?”
“According to that demon? The last remaining how-to on the ritual those priests used in Prague. Tristan Bradley used it to stop a demon war just like this one in 2003.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Where’s the book now?” Sam looked around frantically.
Dean motioned to the library entrance. “It’s not in here. I checked. We had a stack of books in and out of this car this morning. Odds on, it’s inside with Bobby. At least, I really hope it is, or we are smack up shit creek.”
Sam turned his attention to the knife. “And you think that thing can kill a demon?”
“I know it can. She wasn’t lying.”
“Why? ‘Cause you don’t want her to be?” Sam shook his head slowly. “Dean, don’t get me wrong, man. I want Meg dead, too. Like, repeatedly, if possible. And I hate to say it, but you’ve got a blind spot a mile wide about this right now. Think about it. What the hell does this demon gain by handing this over?”
“Not a lot,” Dean conceded. “I just killed her with it.”
“You just -” Sam’s eyes fell to the blade again, and he noticed that the markings on the hilt weren’t red by design. Dean had wiped the blade, but the telltale evidence remained in the grooves and indents of the engraving. Sam’s mouth dropped open a little, cogs turning on the inescapable. “Dean, what did you do?”
Dean rubbed his mouth, looked out the windshield. “Look, I had to. She asked me. It’s complicated, Sam. She knew about dad, Wyoming, the deal. She knew about what’s happening to you.”
Sam blinked at him. “And? What did she say?”
Dean screwed up his nose, shook his head as he looked away. “She said we’re looking at this wrong.”
“Okay. So, how do we get this thing outta me?” The mix of hope and dread plaited up through his throat like a braid of barbed wire. When Dean didn’t answer, Sam shifted on the seat, rubbed his suddenly clammy palm down his jeans. “Dean?”
His brother looked a little nauseous when he finally met Sam’s eye. “Sammy, I don’t know we can.”
*********************************************************************************************
There should have been a barrage of questions; demands for repetition both verbatim and ad nauseam. But instead Sam seemed resigned as he listened to what Christine Picoult had told Dean. He absorbed the information silently, thousand yard stare leveled through the windshield at the library entrance.
He already knew. Dean cracked his door. He knows. “It doesn’t mean she was right.”
Sam chuffed out a humorless laugh. “What’s it gonna take, Dean?”
Dean ignored the question. Hauled himself upright off the door frame, winced a little as he thumped a fist on the roof of the car. “Outta the car, dude. Let’s go.”
Sam opened fire again across the top of the Impala. “I gotta get my hands bloody before you face up to this? Is that it?”
Dean came round the hood of the car onto the sidewalk, one agitated finger raised. “Listen to me, we’re gonna go into this library and find that damn book. Then we’re gonna read the fuckin’ thing until we figure out how to stop these demonic sons of bitches from wiping out half the population of North America. I’m gonna kill Meg, and you’re gonna be fine. She says the playing field’s changed? I say fuck that. We’re gonna change it back.”
“Dean--”
“You’re gonna be fine, Sam,” he snapped.
But Sam wasn’t arguing anymore. He grimaced, pointed. “No, Dean. Jesus. Your shirt.”
Dean looked down. It didn’t leap right out, but the spatter was obvious enough now that he was looking.
Shit.
He flipped his hands, saw he hadn’t done such a bang-up job there, either. Blood was wicked around his nails, in the lines of his knuckles. Dean looked around the parking lot, waved towards the library entrance. “Alright, go find ‘em. I’ll wait in the car. Make sure you get the book.”
When he glanced up, he couldn’t tell if it was repulsion or concern that curled Sam’s lip beneath his furrowed brow.
Dean made a tight gesture, sent him away. “Go. You remember what it looks like?”
“Yeah. Dean, are y--?”
“I’m fine, Sam. Just… go find ‘em so we can get back to the motel and start makin’ some fuckin’ progress here.”
Sam was gone a while. Long enough for Dean to get antsy, sitting there with the quiet ping and pop of the cooling engine. He flicked on the radio, sat through half a minute of excruciating pop-rock on some local station before a breaking news report sent him scrabbling out of the car.
At 4:15pm, a man had marched out of the Providence Vincent Medical Center Morgue in West Haven, and slaughtered fifteen people on his way to the street. Police were reviewing security footage after initial reports from the shaken morgue staff identified the machete-wielding madman as Robert Wells, a trucker who’d arrived at the hospital several hours earlier; a confirmed DOA.
Dean was halfway through the library doors when his cell rang.
“First rule of event management, Dean,” Meg told him, as he passed the returns counter at a jog. “Always have a Plan B.”
Chapter Twelve
Author:
pdragon76
Rating: NC-17 (language, whump, sex)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: AU, set six months after AHBL2
Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke, not me (rinse & repeat).
Summary: Dean’s on a slow burn after a bloody confrontation with an old nemesis. Sam’s got his hands full picking up the pieces. The Crossroads Deal isn’t the only timer ticking. Warnings for language, whump and sex.
A/N: Chapters post Saturdays Dragons Mean Time (DMT). Some liberties have been taken with locations. Apologies to any mortified Oregonians. Mad props to my iron-fisted, velvet-gloved betas.
kimonkey7 - you relentlessly demand more from my writerly self than I am capable of giving, and sometimes you get it. For that, the Dragons is eternally in your debt.
ailleann23 - you question, you prod, you poke, you cheer, you champion, you rock. What more can I say?
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4 Ch 5 Ch 6 Ch 7 Ch 8 Ch 9 Ch 10
- Blind Spot - : Chapter Eleven
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
~Dwight D. Eisenhower
It was just after three a.m. when he woke. The bedroom reeked of antiseptic; a ripe, indelible cocktail of perspiration and vomit underpinning the hospital stench. The first thing Sam became aware of, as he uncurled from the chair beside the bed, was Dean’s breathing. The desperate, labored hiss-and-whistle through his teeth.
Sam hit the bedside lamp, didn’t need a medical degree to assess the situation. He forced himself past his burgeoning fear and horror. Beyond reaction back into action. He padded through to Bobby’s bedroom and shook him awake.
“What do we do?”
Bobby took Dean’s vitals, checked the IV, and shook his head. “His temp’s through the roof. May as well be pouring this stuff straight onto the sheets.”
“So, we need to take him to a hospital. We need to get him to a hospital.” Sam kept his eyes in front of him, glued to Dean’s hand. He couldn’t look at Bobby. Didn’t want to see in the man’s face what he already knew to be true; they’d left that run too late. Dean wasn’t making it to any hospital.
“I’ll see what I can do to cool him down.”
Bobby’s hand closed on Sam’s shoulder - squeezed - as he passed behind him, and the contact sparked a visceral jolt of helpless panic.
Sam leaned forward and gripped Dean’s sticky hand in his. He ran rote laps of the platitude track - shhhhh and okay and hold on - while Bobby got the icepacks going and soaked some towels.
Sam could just about taste his brother’s exhaustion in the thickly scented air. He felt a frantic custodial swell. He’s had enough. Dean had said it a hundred times since Wyoming. I’m tired. As if that might be of some comfort to Sam. But there was no peace awaiting Dean. He’d sold his ports and harbors, bought himself an endless storm.
Sam was going to live, and Dean was never going to rest.
Bobby didn’t have any reassurance, so he gave Sam space instead. “I’ll be in the living room. When you need me, you holler.”
His voice was raw, and Sam saw the weary repulsion in his eyes. He wore the face of a man who had John Winchester’s kid buying it in his back room.
Sam tried, and failed, to get some traction on the thought. He’s dying. He sat at Dean’s bedside - spent and hollowed out - until a slow glacial grief overtook him. He methodically rotated icepacks, moved towels. Stared vacantly while Dean’s breathing slowed, until each pull and push of air seemed to be a decision in and of itself. Waited for the terrible pause between exhale-inhale to yawn into longer, and then maybe, and then no.
Sam got his elbows up on the side of the bed, hands over his face, and closed his eyes.
“I know I’m supposed to be ready for this, but I’m not.” The first sob racked out of him like an eight-ball break. He smoothed the flat of his fingers down his cheeks when the tears spilled. “Okay? I just want you to know, I’m not.”
It was light when he woke. Location and orientation took their sweet time coming back to him, until the fingers beneath his cheek twitched. Sam snapped upright, a guilty charge of adrenalin and relief, because - holy crap - Dean was still breathing. Chest gently rising and falling, his pale clammy face turned away from Sam. Dean’s fingers jumped again in his hand, and Sam squeezed hard in response.
Right here.
Bobby wore a tired smile in the chair beside the window. “Fever broke an hour ago. Swear to God, kid’s got more lives than a fuckin’ cat.”
**********************************************************************************************
“What do you mean?” Dean picked up the photograph, studied the image of the shop front. He lifted his gaze, drilled Marcus with an intense expectant stare.
Marcus slapped another wad of papers on the desk in front of Dean. “Four years ago, the owner of that shop got stabbed in the throat in the back office. His own daughter. I remember. There was a bit of a media frenzy over it.”
Dean picked up the papers, passed his eyes over the newspaper article on top.
“Girl pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and her sentence got commuted on account of it apparently being self-defense. She never did any time. Shop closed down for a while after, and the media got bored, moved on to the six car pile-up on the interstate, or whatever.”
“Okay, so?”
“So, six months later, the pawn shop re-opens. Only now, the daughter’s running it, and it’s not just a pawn shop. May 2004, Christine Picoult starts popping up on the radar as the go-to girl if you got a problem of the ungodly variety.”
“What, she turns hunter?”
“No, that’s just it. She’s running artifacts, weapons, manuscripts. And they cost. She’s no Mother Theresa.”
“So, her Dad gets possessed, she finds out how to kill him, and launches a new career kickin’ demon ass for cash?”
Marcus shrugged. “I called her this morning.”
“And?”
“And I told her I had a problem I’d heard she could help with.”
“You didn’t tell her--”
“No. I didn’t say anything about the virus or the seal. I kept it pretty vague. And you know what she tells me?”
“What?”
“She tells me if I think I got a demon problem in Portland right now, I should hold on to my toupee. And then she hangs up.”
“She knows something’s goin’ on.”
“Sure sounded like it.”
“Okay.” Dean thumbed through the rest of the documents. There was a police identification shot of Christine Picoult, more newspaper articles from the murder, and a stack of detailed information on the pawn shop’s inventory lists and clientele. It was as detailed as any case file Sam had ever handed him, and Dean was grudgingly aware Marcus Kane was finding some decent footholds this morning in the outer walls of the Dean Winchester Compound. He made sure none of this was reflected in his face when he looked up. “Okay,” he said again. “When Sam gets back, I’ll go pay her a visit. See what’s what.”
“I just thought…I mean, we want this demon dead, right? Not just gone.”
“Yeah. Yeah, we do.” Dean dropped the papers back on to the desk. “Listen, Marcus. Sam’s got a lot on his plate right now, and if he thinks I’m runnin’ half-cocked vigilante on the side here, he’s gonna get his jockeys in a twist, so…”
“You don’t want me to tell him.”
“I’m just sayin’: it’s a lead. I’m followin’ it up. ‘Til I got somethin’ more, that’s all he needs to know.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Running half-cocked vigilante.”
“My priority right now is bustin’ up this demon party. I’m not gonna handcuff you to your desk, if that’s what you’re askin’.”
“Jo knows what I’ve told you, too. There’s nothing to stop her telling him.”
“Well, I’ll saddle that bronc if it comes up.” Dean hefted a thick tome from the desk and sat back down in his chair. “Alright. Ritual. Catholic priests. Mid-1349. Let’s see what we got here.”
Marcus selected a book for himself, frowned at Dean.
“Didn’t you need to use the bathroom?”
Dean looked up at him blankly. “Sorry, what?”
“The bathroom. Weren’t you gonna go?”
“Oh. No. S’okay.” Dean gave Marcus a fleeting smile. “Take a piss, smack you in the mouth… urge has passed.”
*********************************************************************************************
They’d found a steaming pile of jack-squat by the time Sam and Bobby followed Jo through the door of the office. Not that Dean had been looking for the ritual. Three hours of nose to the page, and he hadn’t found a single reference to any possession that matched what was happening to Sam.
Marcus’d had a brief eureka over a seal-smashing spell, but after half an hour of painstaking translation, he’d realized it was a partial script from an Italian short film. Aside from that, they’d only succeeded in chalking up another couple of boring old books on the Must-Read List.
Sam seemed on edge, but he dismissed Dean’s questioning look with a distracted shake of his head. Apparently, nothing had happened.
When Bobby asked what they’d been able to dig up, Dean threw the book from his lap onto the desk and officially declared their findings to be “Fuck all.” He stood up, limped the stiffness out of his knee as he stretched his legs around the office. “I say coffee run, then we hit the library. Unless you guys’ve got any better ideas.”
“Dean…” Sam waggled a finger between Jo and Marcus.
Dean clicked his fingers. “Oh, right.” He eyed Jo warily as he leaned beside the door to the office, pressed a protective palm against his crotch. “Just let me establish minimum safe distance here.”
Jo’s stony stare told Dean there wasn’t one.
He let Bobby and Sam do the talking, kept a hawk-eye going between Jo and Marcus as their reactions played.
Dean had a pretty solid grounding in dealing with the unexpected. Nothing much surprised him, but Jo was flying close enough to buzz the tower. She took the news of Sam’s most recent possession with the kind of calm professional interest that made Dean wonder if she needed her hearing checked. A few too many shotgun blasts without the proper protection - and BLAM! - she’d clearly gone deaf. Or maybe he’d dozed off during the conversation, and was dreaming a best case scenario.
She listened intently, then frowned her way through the same series of intelligent and pertinent questions that had immediately sprung to Dean’s mind. Jo wanted to know when, how long, where, and how lucid he’d been.
Sam fielded the inquisition with a genuine openness and honesty that made Dean nervous.
“Well,” she said finally, gaze glancing briefly off Dean en route to Sam, “you guys win crappiest year out. No contest.” She crossed her arms, stamped the heel of her boot twice on the carpet. “So, how do we fix this? What do we know about fixing it?”
Dean spoke up from the doorway. “Not a lot.”
She pinned him with a stare that was all business. “By not a lot, you mean…?”
“I mean nothing,” he supplied. “I had a look around this morning and I can’t see any reference to anything like it. Short of a normal exorcism - which I’m not keen on for obvious reasons - we dunno. I’m startin’ to think Meg’s our best resource on what’s happening here and…” Dean pointed to the cut in his head, “Sam’s right. I’m not walkin’ away from another round with her. I pissed her off pretty good last night.”
“Oh, now I’m right?” Sam interjected, and Dean silenced him with a look that clearly stated he wasn’t taking any crap from the demon boy.
“So, you can just turn at any time?” They were the first words Marcus had spoken since Sam and Bobby had wrapped the round-up. He looked as though someone had emptied a bag of snakes into the room.
“We don’t know that.” Dean was pretty sure the only thing preventing Marcus from throwing himself out the nearest window was the fact he’d have to pass Sam to get there.
“Exactly,” Marcus agreed, eyes wild. “We don’t know. Jesus Christ.”
Dean came off the wall. “Look, I know it’s a little unsettling--”
“Unsettling?”
Marcus had lost his volume control, and Dean couldn’t really blame the guy.
“Marcus, something’s triggering it.” Dean threw a palm wide as he continued. “We just don’t know what right now. Situation’s containable. Sam got it under control with the back end of a License to Depart incantation last night, and we got no reason to think he can’t do that again. If anything, he had more control over it the second time. We just need to stay calm, and concentrate on figuring this out.”
Jo swiveled to face Marcus. “He’s right. He’s a jackass, but he’s right. Panicking’s not gonna help.” She turned to Sam. “If we have to, how do we stop you? I mean, short of blowing your head off.”
“You so much as think about pulling a trigger on him, and I’ll drop you where you stand, Jo.” Dean meant it. He had no clue how much until the threat passed his lips, a growl courting neither apology nor remorse.
Sam lifted an exasperated hand to his suddenly flushed face. “Jesus, Dean.”
Jo twisted slowly to look at Dean, eyes blazing. “Which is why I’m asking,” she ground out.
“Belt ‘a holy water and a fist to the face works just fine, last I checked.” Bobby stepped up between Dean and Jo, looked from one to the other. “Now, if you two are done tossin’ the evil eye, we got ourselves a little research to do.”
Dean broke his stare-off with Jo, sniffed in Bobby’s direction. “I’ll drop you guys at the library. I got a lead I wanna check out downtown.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “I thought you guys didn’t find anything.”
Dean motioned at Marcus. “We didn’t. Marcus just dug somethin’ up, I wanna go rule it out.”
“Well, you can’t drive with that shoulder. I’ll take you.”
“I got it, Sam. Shoulder’s fine,” he lied. “I’ll be an hour, tops. Hit the books with these guys. I just wanna go talk to this chick, make sure she doesn’t have anything we can use.”
When Sam looked at Marcus, he dropped his eyes to the carpet.
Oh, that’s subtle.
Sam was far from convinced. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“No? What a shock. Look, I’ve been sittin’ on my ass half the day readin' Dear Diary extracts of Religious Nuts R Us. I’m sore, and I’m frustrated, and I need to take a break. I’m just gonna go for a drive, move around and get some air. I’ll be back before you’re done droolin’ over the Dewey decimals.”
It was close enough to the truth, and it did the trick. Sam backed right off, held up a hand and nodded reluctantly.
“Okay. But I want you armed, and I want a phone call when you get there, and when you leave. Deal?”
Dean motioned to the door. “You got it, Granny Winchester. Let’s go.”
*********************************************************************************************
Dean stopped at a gas station on the way to the pawn shop. He fueled up; checked oil, water and tire pressure when it occurred to him he couldn’t remember doing it in the last couple of weeks. The wheels, arches and undercarriage were filthy from the dirt roads up at Timber, so he took ten minutes in one of the car wash bays and got the worst of it off with the high pressure hose. By the time he was done, the throb in his shoulder was nudging up into his back molars again, and the fingers of his left hand were completely numb.
He kept his fist lap-bound for the rest of the drive, managed as best he could one-handed. Sam was right. He had no more business being behind the wheel of the car than he had crouched beside it with a hose.
But still, you couldn’t leave that shit on.
Sam’s never gonna notice the wheel arches.
The realization brought a rise of thick regret, and Dean was pretty sure it had nothing to do with his car. There were a lot of good reasons Dean hadn’t given much thought to Sam on the road alone, and none of them related to the frequency with which he cleaned the Impala.
He’ll be fine. Sam does alone just fine. He’s gonna be cut, and then he’s gonna be fine.
He was glad for the distraction when the search for a parking space turned mission impossible on his ass. By the time he exited the Impala, he was sufficiently removed from the unsolicited train of thought, and formidably displaced five blocks from the pawn shop. His knee was complaining vocally about the impromptu cross-town hike by the first corner.
The shop front was a dirty white stucco that showcased every smear, spit, splash and spatter it had been privy to in the decades since its original application. It was a fact that seemed to have escaped the drunk guy folded against the base of the wall, cheek to the plaster.
“Fuck you, you fucker,” he grunted.
Dean’s response was amicable as he limped to the door. “Copy that. Fuck you too, buddy.”
The inside of the shop was as desperately in need of a makeover as the outside. It was as though an antique store had somehow vomited inside a garden shed. The chaos appealed to Dean’s genetic male code nonetheless, tugged on a primal need for the acquisition of things bizarre and useless. Under any other circumstances, he could have killed an hour here, angled a little spray-back on Sam for all those never-ending ages spent in the Obscure Section of Generic Library number four hundred and seventy-five. But Dean wasn’t there to fondle the merchandise.
Except… That, over there, is a fucking Rochester carburetor.
“You win?”
He snapped his attention to the woman behind the counter in the far corner, and he recognized her instantly from the photographs. She looked a little older, but she was a lot easier on the eye in reality than her mug shot had suggested. It was usually the case, Dean found. Weren’t too many of those things framed and gracing living room walls.
“Sorry?”
Christine pointed at him, then straightened and went back to assembling the jigsaw of greasy metal parts on the counter in front of her. “Your face. Did you win?”
Dean considered his answer, pouted a little. “I wouldn’t say I lost, exactly. More of a draw.”
“’Cause I was going to say: if you won, I’d hate to see what the other guy looks like.”
“Right. You Christine Picoult?”
“Yeah,” she clipped, blew a wayward strand of dark hair out of her eyes. “You gonna buy that carburetor or just eye-fuck it?”
“I’m not really here for car parts.”
“I gathered. What can I do for you, Dean?”
The name drop sent an ice cold flash from the nape of his neck to the back of his knees. He stumbled mentally over the lost footing.
“You are Dean Winchester, right? Live and in the flesh. Right here in my little shop.” She motioned to the wall with a tight, annoyed gesture. “I should get a picture; have you sign it or something.”
Dean was suddenly grateful for the cool press of the Glock at the small of his back. Always was, when the rug got pulled out from beneath his feet. A 9mil wasn’t exactly a substitute for solid ground, but it could sure make a lot of noise while you found some.
He narrowed his eyes. “Alright. Who are you really?” There was no curiosity in the demand.
“I’m Christine Picoult. My husband’s not here right now, but his name is Jerry. We run this pawn shop. I inherited it from my father. But that’s not really what you should be asking, is it? You already knew all that, or you wouldn’t be here.” She wiped a greasy hand across her cheek and devoted her attention to him. “Those Winchester genes sure know how to throw a looker.”
“How do you know who I am?” He could feel the familiar adrenal tingle in the fingers of his right hand.
“You’re still asking the wrong questions, Dean.”
He could hear the faint whumpwhumpwhump of his blood rushing in his ears. His shoulder throbbed a sickening accompaniment to his pulse. He hooked the thumb of his left hand in the belt loop of his jeans, got some of the weight out of his arm. Then he tried again: “You’ve been expecting me.”
“Much better. Although, technically? Not a question.” She smiled slyly. “Yes.”
Dean was developing an intense dislike for this game. “Why have you been expecting me?”
“Because you have a problem with a demon. And sooner or later, people who have problems with demons? They end up in my shop.”
“Well, I hate to bust your bubble there, Christine, but I’ve had a lot of problems with a lot of demons, and up until a few hours ago, I’d never heard your name before.”
“Uh-huh. And the last time you needed a demon dead, you had the Colt on your side.”
Dean opened his mouth, shut it again. He was wading into an ocean, the seabed rapidly falling away beneath his feet. He took a step towards the counter. “’Kay, I’m gonna ask again: who are you?”
Her eyes flashed with a sudden violence, and Dean felt a twitch of some innate realization. The hairs on the nape of his neck rose.
“And I’m going to tell you again: wrong question.”
Dean cast his eyes sideways down to the floor, nodded. He came forward another step as he looked back up, locked eyes with her so she knew he meant business.
“Okay, listen up. I’ve been doin’ this job a long time and I can spot a demon clear across a fuckin’ ocean, lady. So let’s get one thing straight here. I am absolutely fluent in the kind of Latin that can turn the heat up on your day by about a thousand degrees. And I’m a little busy right now tryin’ to stop an apocalypse, but I can sure as hell see my way clear to makin’ you priority number two.” He blinked at her. “So, how about you tell me what the fuck is goin’ on, before I start gettin’ pissed off?”
“You’ve got a temper like your father, Dean.”
“Well, you’re the one with the manslaughter conviction. You demons aren’t real big on family, huh?”
“It might surprise you to know, I deeply regret that situation.”
“Yeah. Nothin’ says sorry like an opened jugular. I can see you’re real cut up about it. You wanna tell me how you came to be trafficking for the wrong team? Can’t imagine your demon buddies are very impressed with your little moonlighting gig here.”
She blinked. “No. I can’t say they are.”
She got up and came around the counter. Dean stepped sideways, lifted the Glock smoothly out of the back of his jeans and chambered it as he leveled the muzzle at her face. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Christine pointed towards the front of the shop. “I was going to lock the door.”
“And why the fuck would I be okay with that?”
She rolled her eyes as she passed him. “I don’t really give a shit if you are or not. You can put the gun away, Dean. Or keep it, if it makes you feel safer. I don’t know why it would, but I don’t understand half the things you people do. If you’d like to exit at any point, feel free. You flip it like this.” She performed an exaggerated demonstration as she turned the mechanism of the lock.
Dean was starting to get that waist-deep-in-water feeling again.
Christine crossed back to the counter and bounced lightly up to sit on it. “You know what my father used to say, Dean?”
“‘Oh, my God, my daughter’s a demon?’”
She snorted, amused. “No. My father was a military man. Pretty high up on the chain, too. Right hand man to a special friend of yours, actually. But you cut that little friendship short in Wyoming a while back, didn’t you?”
“The Yellow Eyed Demon?”
“Well, that’s not the name he went by in our circles, but yeah. You threw quite a spanner in some pretty big works. And you sure did piss his daughter off.”
“Oh, she gives as good as she gets, trust me. I wouldn’t worry about Meg.”
“Again, not what I’d call her. And not just because it’s not her name.” She shook her head. “That is a nasty piece of shit you stepped in there, Dean.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You’re funny. Anyway, my father used to say: The side that loses a war goes in knowing what they want to keep. To win a war, you need to know what you’re prepared to lose.” She gave him a long hard stare. “You’ve got a war on your hands, Dean. Do you know what you’re prepared to lose?”
“Oh, I know what you sons of bitches aren’t getting. Don’t you worry about that.”
She smiled sadly. “That’s not even nearly the same thing.”
“If your dad was such an awesome quotable guy, why’d you stick him?”
“It was my job.”
“You were hired to kill your own father?”
“Not hired. Asked. I was very committed to the cause back then, you have to understand. In November of 2003, the soldier you refer to as the Yellow Eyed Demon and my father were responsible for heading up an offensive very similar to the one you’ve stumbled across here. At the last minute, my father back-flipped and put a stop to it.”
Dean dipped the muzzle of the Glock. “How?”
She smiled conspiratorially. “That’s the difference between you and your brother, Dean. You’re all about how. If Sam were standing there, he’d be asking why.”
“You can shut up about my brother, lady.”
“Au contraire. But we’ll get to that in a second.” Christine slid off the glass top, made her way back behind the counter. She leaned on her forearms and the corners of her eyes crinkled. Her gaze felt like an assessment, and when she finally bit her lip and arched an eyebrow, she didn’t seem especially thrilled with her drawn conclusion.
“My father razed one of the symbols using an ancient ritual. Afterwards, he claimed he’d had a visitation from the demon Gaap, and that the destruction of the seal had been carried out at his request. It was a heresy tantamount to suicide. I was the logical assassin; no one believed he would ever see it coming.”
Christine paused, and Dean gathered from her bittersweet expression that the assumption had been incorrect.
“Well,” he interjected, when she failed to continue. “This is a real tearjerker, Christine. You told someone who gave a shit? Wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.”
“I’m not here to inspire pathos, Dean. What happened between my father and I was regrettable, but ultimately inevitable. If you survive this mess, you might live long enough to figure that out. Some things were always going to be.” She narrowed dark eyes. “Are always going to be.”
“You guys make this shit up on the spot or is there a Roget’s Pocket Demon Rhetoric?” The Glock felt like it was humming in his hands; trigger siren-calling for contact.
Christine’s mouth quirked up. “It wasn’t the first time a seal had been destroyed in this fashion, but the ritual hadn’t been used for the better part of a millennium. Part of my instructions were to destroy any documentation on the specifics of the ritual.” She gave him a black, impassive stare. “You won’t find any detail in any library or on any website. Hell, you could fly to Prague and then on to the Vatican itself and still come home none the wiser. I was very thorough. But luckily for you, attention to detail runs in the family.”
Dean was twanging on a fairly molecular level with the desire to strangle out of her every ounce of information she contained. But the realization was building inside him, came up out of his mouth still laced with a vestige of unchecked surprise. “You’re gonna tell me how to stop this thing.”
“Right. How.”
She stressed the how as though she were talking to a small child, and Dean’d had just about enough condescending demon-chick to last this lifetime. He caught the twinge of his finger against the trigger, bit down hard on the inside of his lip.
Christine straightened, assumed a business-like demeanor. “First things first. You’re looking at this problem with Sam from entirely the wrong angle.”
Dean’s heart skipped and dropped through his feet.
“Problem?” The monotone was forced but Dean’s poker face was polished. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Whatever you say, soldier.” She gave him an indulgent smile. “Here’s the thing: you’ve spent how many years fighting demons, hunting things, and I could tell from the get-go, from the moment you walked in that door, that you are not a shades-of-grey kinda guy. You’ve got your demons, and you’ve got your humans, right?”
“Yahtzee.”
“And you’re barking up the wrong tree. You think something’s in him. The only thing inside Sam, is Sam.”
“Like I said: I got no clue what you’re talkin’ about.”
“Sam hasn’t changed. He’s what he’s always been. What he always will be. It’s the playing field that’s different. The road, as they say, has risen. So, Sammy Winchester has some choices to make. Some now. Some later.”
“You know, that is exactly the kind of dime-store bullshit palmistry that chafes my fuckin’ ass. Way to vague it out there, Chrissie. You don’t know shit.”
“Okay,” she agreed easily. “You’ll see.” She blinked at him expectantly. “You have another question to ask me. Or have you forgotten why you came?”
Dean just about had. The Glock hung loosely by his side. He was pretty sure they were having multiple conversations at once. It was the kind of annoying doubletalk that made his fist itch. He sent a couple of breaths down his nose, regrouped.
“You’ve been killin’ demons. I wanna know how.”
“Is this about Meg or Sam?”
That got the Glock back up. “This is gonna be about you if you don’t stop pissin’ me off. How does that sound?”
“You’re going to regret this, later. This attitude.”
“I’ll add it to the list.”
“Good. Because you’re not going to have any idea the kind of effort I’ve gone to until long after you walk out that door. And then? It’s going to be too late to come back and be nice.” Christine reached below the counter and laid a dagger on the glass top in front of her. “But I don’t want you to feel bad. Because you’re about to do something for me in return.”
“Oh, here we go. Ante up.”
“You could call it that, yes. But don’t worry. I think you’ll like the recommended retail. It’s right in your ball park.” She held out the blade, hilt first. “So, there’s a couple of things you need to know. First, Meg grabbing you in that alley? It was just a coincidence. It’s going to occur to you later; that she might have known about the book. She has no idea, and you really need to keep it that way, if you want a hope in hell of stopping this.”
A swarm of hornets awoke at the base of Dean’s skull. He gave the question a third airing: “Who the fuck are you, lady?”
Christine thrust the knife at him again. “I’m Tristan Bradley’s daughter. Four years ago, almost exactly where we stand, my father handed me this blade and I killed him with it. The time’s come for me to pass it to you.”
Dean blinked at her. “S’cuse me?”
The smile she dealt him was calm. “We’ll call it a test drive.”
*********************************************************************************************
Sam ditched his cab a block out and walked the rest of the way. He found a serviceable stake-out point in a secondhand bookstore across the street from the pawn shop. Didn’t quite understand how he’d arrived before Dean until a notably shiny Impala cruised past.
Leave it to his brother to stop en route to the end of the world and wash the car.
When Dean limped through the door of the shop, Sam’s cell still hadn’t rung.
Jesus Christ, Dean. How hard is it to punch a speed dial and say, “Hey”? Jackass.
The irritation was followed immediately with a swift dousing of guilt. About as hard as it is to just stay in the goddamn library, you jerk.
Sam picked him up an hour later, coming out of the pawn shop. He hung back as Dean crossed the street and headed downtown. If his brother had bought anything in the store, Sam couldn’t see where he’d stashed the purchase. It didn’t mean he hadn’t, and Sam was considering this fact when he realized he’d lost him. He looked up and down the street.
Shit. He slowed as he passed some shop fronts, peered in the windows. Then his cell rang.
“You’re about as stealthy as a nun in a whorehouse, you know that?”
Busted.
“Um, Dean. Hey.”
“Seriously. You got a tail like a fuckin’ peacock. How are we even related?”
Sam turned and saw Dean stepping out from the doorway of a diner half a block back, cell at his ear. He didn’t seem amused.
“You ask him, or did he just come out with it?” Dean said it into the phone, eyes on Sam as he approached.
Sam raised his eyebrows, clapped his phone shut as Dean got close enough to hear. “I asked him. Would you have told me?” he called.
Dean stopped a few feet short of him, flicked his cell shut. For a second he just stood there, eyes flat and colorless. “Nope,” he confirmed finally, and there was no apology in it.
“What’s the deal with the pawn shop?”
Dean smiled at him, his eyes doing entirely their own thing. “Why don’t you ask your new best buddy, Marcus?”
Sam nearly hit him. Almost clocked Dean right in his fucked up, Technicolor face. He teetered for a moment on a double-edged saw of fury and frustration.
“Fuck you, Dean.” He turned and headed down the street.
Five minutes and a couple of blocks later, the Impala rumbled to a crawl on the street beside him.
“Sam, get in the car.”
Sam kept walking, ignored him. Dean hit the gas, sent the Impala gunning forward, waited for Sam to pass the window again.
“I said, get in the car, you sulky little shit.”
“Yeah, and I said, fuck you, Dean.”
Dean shook his head, dropped the clutch and laid some rubber getting the Impala to the end of the street. He parked her there, left her running while he got out and rounded the front fender. As Sam got level with the trunk, Dean yanked open the passenger door, pointed inside.
“Get in, or I’ll put you in.”
It was an empty threat and they both knew it, but Sam was done making his point. He veered off the sidewalk and slumped into the passenger seat, let Dean slam the door on him.
They drove back to the library in a silence as taut as Sam’s clenched jaw. In the lot, Dean threw the car into park and turned to face him. He stretched his right arm out across the seat back, motioned with his left hand between them. “Okay, let’s have it.”
Sam dialed up the incredulous to eleven. “What?”
Dean waggled his fingers again. “Whatever you’ve got to say. Let’s have it.”
Sam nearly exploded. “Oh, nononono. I’m not the one who needs to be spilling his guts here, Dean.”
Dean sighed, raked a hand down his face. “Here we go.”
“Yeah, here we go. I’m on your side. Do you even get that anymore?” Sam lifted both hands in exasperation. “I don’t understand you. You tell me this morning nothing’s changed, but then you… I can’t believe you’re still keeping shit from me. After everything’s that’s--”
“Owner of the pawn shop was a demon named Christine Picoult.”
“What?”
“You wanna know, I’m tellin’ you. Marcus found her. Four years ago she took out another demon here in Portland. I’m not talkin’ exorcism. I’m talkin’ Colt dead. She killed him.”
“Dean, what are you- What?”
Dean fished the knife out his jacket and laid it on the seat between them. “She used that. Demon was Tristan Bradley.”
Sam knew the name. He cut eyes to the steering wheel in front of Dean, fumbled in the dark corners of his skull until the lights went on. “Oh, my God. As in, that book we picked up for Bobby, Tristan Bradley? What--? Is that--?” He shut his mouth on the inquisitorial meltdown brewing behind his lips. Took a breath and thought for a second.
“He was her father.”
“She killed her own father?”
Dean was nodding at him, eyebrows raised. “Yeah. Hard to believe, huh? There’s a family out there more fucked up than ours.” He jerked a thumb down at his lap. “You know, I found that book under this seat last night.”
“Well, what’s in it?”
“According to that demon? The last remaining how-to on the ritual those priests used in Prague. Tristan Bradley used it to stop a demon war just like this one in 2003.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Where’s the book now?” Sam looked around frantically.
Dean motioned to the library entrance. “It’s not in here. I checked. We had a stack of books in and out of this car this morning. Odds on, it’s inside with Bobby. At least, I really hope it is, or we are smack up shit creek.”
Sam turned his attention to the knife. “And you think that thing can kill a demon?”
“I know it can. She wasn’t lying.”
“Why? ‘Cause you don’t want her to be?” Sam shook his head slowly. “Dean, don’t get me wrong, man. I want Meg dead, too. Like, repeatedly, if possible. And I hate to say it, but you’ve got a blind spot a mile wide about this right now. Think about it. What the hell does this demon gain by handing this over?”
“Not a lot,” Dean conceded. “I just killed her with it.”
“You just -” Sam’s eyes fell to the blade again, and he noticed that the markings on the hilt weren’t red by design. Dean had wiped the blade, but the telltale evidence remained in the grooves and indents of the engraving. Sam’s mouth dropped open a little, cogs turning on the inescapable. “Dean, what did you do?”
Dean rubbed his mouth, looked out the windshield. “Look, I had to. She asked me. It’s complicated, Sam. She knew about dad, Wyoming, the deal. She knew about what’s happening to you.”
Sam blinked at him. “And? What did she say?”
Dean screwed up his nose, shook his head as he looked away. “She said we’re looking at this wrong.”
“Okay. So, how do we get this thing outta me?” The mix of hope and dread plaited up through his throat like a braid of barbed wire. When Dean didn’t answer, Sam shifted on the seat, rubbed his suddenly clammy palm down his jeans. “Dean?”
His brother looked a little nauseous when he finally met Sam’s eye. “Sammy, I don’t know we can.”
*********************************************************************************************
There should have been a barrage of questions; demands for repetition both verbatim and ad nauseam. But instead Sam seemed resigned as he listened to what Christine Picoult had told Dean. He absorbed the information silently, thousand yard stare leveled through the windshield at the library entrance.
He already knew. Dean cracked his door. He knows. “It doesn’t mean she was right.”
Sam chuffed out a humorless laugh. “What’s it gonna take, Dean?”
Dean ignored the question. Hauled himself upright off the door frame, winced a little as he thumped a fist on the roof of the car. “Outta the car, dude. Let’s go.”
Sam opened fire again across the top of the Impala. “I gotta get my hands bloody before you face up to this? Is that it?”
Dean came round the hood of the car onto the sidewalk, one agitated finger raised. “Listen to me, we’re gonna go into this library and find that damn book. Then we’re gonna read the fuckin’ thing until we figure out how to stop these demonic sons of bitches from wiping out half the population of North America. I’m gonna kill Meg, and you’re gonna be fine. She says the playing field’s changed? I say fuck that. We’re gonna change it back.”
“Dean--”
“You’re gonna be fine, Sam,” he snapped.
But Sam wasn’t arguing anymore. He grimaced, pointed. “No, Dean. Jesus. Your shirt.”
Dean looked down. It didn’t leap right out, but the spatter was obvious enough now that he was looking.
Shit.
He flipped his hands, saw he hadn’t done such a bang-up job there, either. Blood was wicked around his nails, in the lines of his knuckles. Dean looked around the parking lot, waved towards the library entrance. “Alright, go find ‘em. I’ll wait in the car. Make sure you get the book.”
When he glanced up, he couldn’t tell if it was repulsion or concern that curled Sam’s lip beneath his furrowed brow.
Dean made a tight gesture, sent him away. “Go. You remember what it looks like?”
“Yeah. Dean, are y--?”
“I’m fine, Sam. Just… go find ‘em so we can get back to the motel and start makin’ some fuckin’ progress here.”
Sam was gone a while. Long enough for Dean to get antsy, sitting there with the quiet ping and pop of the cooling engine. He flicked on the radio, sat through half a minute of excruciating pop-rock on some local station before a breaking news report sent him scrabbling out of the car.
At 4:15pm, a man had marched out of the Providence Vincent Medical Center Morgue in West Haven, and slaughtered fifteen people on his way to the street. Police were reviewing security footage after initial reports from the shaken morgue staff identified the machete-wielding madman as Robert Wells, a trucker who’d arrived at the hospital several hours earlier; a confirmed DOA.
Dean was halfway through the library doors when his cell rang.
“First rule of event management, Dean,” Meg told him, as he passed the returns counter at a jog. “Always have a Plan B.”
Chapter Twelve