Fic: Bad Company (5/7)
Fic: Bad Company (5/7)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: Dean and Chloe get in serious trouble. Will Sam realize it in time to save them?
Author: pen37
Beta: Strangevisitor7
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Sarah
Pairing:Chloe/Dean Sam/Sarah
Rating: pg-13
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Dean had been planning on putting up a hell of a fight when they came for him and Chloe. But apparently, they expected as much. A couple of acolytes wearing feathered robes simply stood just inside the doorway, and shot at them with darts.
Their aim was about as good as a storm trooper from Star Wars. But when one hit Chloe and she passed out, he guessed that they were filled with some sort of toxin to make them lose consciousness. He figured that was how they'd been captured in the first place.
Then another man - this one Dean figured was the high priest - stepped into the room. He took one look at the two of them hanging there, Chloe's slumped posture and the darts stuck in the floors and walls all around them, and his face twisted in rage.
“Idiots,” he thumped each archer on the back of the head. “They're chained up!” He picked up a fallen dart.” Just walk up and administer the dart directly!”
“The market for minion material was lean this year, wasn't it?” Dean smirked.
The priest frowned in response, and stuck the dart in Dean's wounded shoulder. Dean felt the world go grey, then he knew nothing more.
When he awoke, he was loosely chained by the ankle to a rock, in what he figured was the same warehouse. Immediately, he reached into his pocket for his lock picks. But they were gone.
Figures, he thought with a roll of his eyes.
The stench of dead animals was more prominent here. And buried under all the animal blood, his enhanced senses could pick out the faintest trace of the human stuff.
He looked around - the walls had been covered with some kind of foam insulation, but over that crude, blocky representations of tropical animals had been hastily painted. With their bugged eyes and wide mouths bristling with teeth, Dean thought they were seriously creepy.
As he paced like a caged lion observing his surroundings, a door opened in a nearby wall, and Daniel MacKenzie walked in, carrying a wrapped package.
Dean immediately leaped to his feet, and charged toward Chloe's Judas friend. Mac must have anticipated the move, because he backpedaled out of reach.
With a frustrated snarl, Dean reached the end of the chain that bound him, and tried to stretch out and grab the former-hunter.
Mac sighed. “You should listen more and react less, Winchester.”
“You should come over here and say that.”
In response, Mac rolled his eyes and then threw the wrapped package at Dean. He caught it reflexively by the cloth that it was wrapped in. Before he could secure his hold, the package unrolled, spilling a feather-covered club at his feet.
“Pick it up,” Mac commanded.
“Fuck you!”
Once again, the former hunter sighed. “This isn't what I wanted, you know.”
“You keep saying that,” Dean snarled. “But I'm still chained to the rock here.”
“My Dad's dead,” Mac said flatly. “And unless I co-operate with these guys, Zach is next. So shut it for once, and pick up the damn club.”
Dean shot Mac a death glare as he knelt down and reached for the so-called weapon. He intended to chuck it at Mac's head, but as his hand closed over the handle, he felt something smooth and hard buried within the feathers.
He furrowed his brow with curiosity, and slid his fingers under the bed of feathers. His questing digits encountered a key hidden there. With a surprised expression, he looked up at Mac, and narrowed his eyes. The detective nodded once - a tiny, curt motion of acknowledgment that anyone would miss if they weren't looking for it.
“In a few moments, they'll bring in a warrior to fight you. You're not expected to win--”
“With a feather-covered club?” Dean snarked. “Imagine that.”
“But if you do, they'll kill you anyway.”
“And Chloe?”
“Is beyond your help,” Mac said. As he spoke, his eyes deliberately moved to an alcove on the left side of the room. Dean followed his gaze. His enhanced vision picked out a recessed doorway in the alcove.
He looked back at Mac and nodded that he'd seen the door. As the detective turned to leave, Dean called out. “Hey Mac?”
“Yeah?” He turned and looked at Dean.
“Your reasons don't justify this. It's still not right.”
“If it was your brother, what would you do?” Mac's shoulders slumped in a defeated posture.
“Not this,” Dean waved around the room and shook his head. “I may've been willing to sell my soul, but I'm not willing to sell someone else's.”
“Guess that's where we're different, Winchester.” Mac said.
“You think your brother is going to appreciate this?” Dean asked. “If it were my brother, I couldn't face him.”
“He'll be alive.” Mac said. “That's all that matters.”
“Whatever you say,” Dean said. “You're the one who has to look yourself in the mirror in the morning.”
Mac turned and lowered his head as he left the room.
Dean immediately pulled the key free and unlocked his chains. He gathered them up and left them hidden by the rock, and then crouched in wait by the main door. He didn't want to take the chance that the cultists would come back with their darts full of sleepy-juice to knock him back out.
When the door opened, he sprang through it and ran bodily into a group of four demon acolytes in vivid jaguar-pelt robes. Had Sam been in his place, he probably would have rattled off an exorcism by memory. But Dean didn't have that kind of finesse. He'd always thought of himself more as a blunt instrument. He could get the job done, but it wasn't always pretty.
The first acolyte wasn't expecting him. Dean stunned him with a sucker punch. Then he grabbed the cultist by the shoulder, and whipped him around to make a quickly improvised shield.
Just in time, as well. By this point the other three demons realized that their victim was loose, and was attacking on them. They fled down the hallway a little way to regroup, and the two closest to him drew their weapons - clubs like the kind that Mac had supplied him with. Only their weapons had been studded with obsidian chips, rather than feathers.
The third acolyte, meanwhile, lifted a bow, nocked another one of those darts, and shot it at him.
Buy this point, the demon that Dean had stunned was shaking off his lassitude. Dean knew that it took a lot to knock a demon down for the count. They literally wore the human host like a cheap suit. One they would keep animating like a zombie until it was too broken to be of further use. So he wasn't sure how he could win a physical fight against one, even with his extra abilities.
His musing was answered when the dart hit the demon shielding him. Automatically, the fast-acting toxin knocked the creature out. Dean threw the now-unconscious cultist into the pointed weapons of the second and third. The force of momentum caused the three of them to crash to the floor in a tangle of limbs, feathers and pelts.
While they were struggling to untangle themselves, Dean took a running leap over the pile, and landed on the last demon. The black-eyed cultist dropped under the force of his boots, twitched once, and was still. Dean ripped the bow from its nerveless fingers, grabbed its shoulder and rolled it - to see that he'd pushed it down on top of one of its own darts.
One of Dean's two remaining adversaries pulled free, turned, and thrust his weapon at Dean. He whipped the bow around, and used it to turn the obsidian-barbed club aside. Then he stepped into the arc of the demon's swing and shoved the heel of his palm into the demon's jaw.
While the creature was stumbling back, Dean dropped the bow, reached down and pulled its weapon out of its slack hands. Then he whipped the club around and sent it crashing down on the creature's head.
Although a demon can keep a corpse animated, they --like a horror-movie zombie-- need the head to survive. Black smoke poured out of the body of the dropped cultist.
Dean felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that he'd just killed the demon's host. But before he could contemplate his guilt, the last demon freed himself from his fallen compatriot. It turned, spotted what Dean had done to his remaining allies, and fled down the hallway.
Dean lowered the end of the club, shook his head to dispel any lingering self-doubt and set his jaw. Chloe was still in danger. And he'd mow his way through a thousand demons to keep her safe.
He marched back into the room where they had planned on staging his gladiatorial combat and over to the alcove where Mac had indicated that she would be. There was no discernible latch on the recessed doorway, but he wasn't going to let that keep him from his wife. He aimed a kick waist-high at the door.
The force of his momentum splintered at the latch and the door swung inwards. He stepped through and looked around to quickly get his bearings.
The room was dimly lit. At least a dozen unpossessed human devotees -- blood mages hoping to reap power from the ceremony taking place before them - circled a raised dais and filled the air with a monotonous chant. The noise was so loud, in fact, that it seemed to have covered his noisy entrance into the room.
Up on the platform, Savage watched with passive amusement as Chloe struggled against a high priest and his two demonic acolytes. The three men were obviously trying to chain her to an altar and had succeeded in getting one arm locked into restraints. But with a surge of pride, Dean realized that the tiny blonde was putting up a hell of a fight; three of them couldn't quite subdue her.
That's my girl, he grinned.
One or two of the humans nearest the platform moved uncertainly forward, as if unsure whether they should be helping the demons or not. But they were abruptly quelled by a fierce look from the high priest.
“You know your job!” He yelled at them with a curl of his lip. “If the ritual isn't ready by the time we are, you'll be under the knife next.”
Dean took all this in a single glance. Then he crossed to the raised platform in a couple of running steps. He took out two of the mages from behind that were in his way as he went. The chanting broke off into a confused buzz as he fought his way through the assembly. The confusion he left in his wake was enough to keep the mages from sounding an alarm for the moment.
By the time he climbed up on the platform, the high priest had seized Chloe by the hair, pulled her backward at a vulnerable angle and raised an obsidian dagger high over his head. Dean's blood boiled, and he snarled in anger as he charged the priest. His intent was to take the monster down in a flying tackle. To make the man pay for daring to harm what was his.
A/N: I meant to post yesterday, but I was unexpectidly away from my computer all day. Sorry about that.