Knowledge of Dead Secrets (4 of 10)
They stop for the night outside of Coalinga, close to the highway. Dean gets a room with two queen beds, and the sound of trucks on the highway serves as a somewhat soothing lull in the background of the heater going, the drone of a television next door.
Sam slings his duffel on the floor between the beds, looks at both and then asks, “Which one?”
Dean’s about to call his brother an idiot because Dean always takes the bed closer to the window and door, but he stops himself in time, reminds himself that it’s been three years, that Sam’s just left the two people he’s used to sleeping with and doesn’t know when he’ll see them again, if ever. “I’ll take this one,” he says, sitting on the one near the door. “Unless the mattress is lumpy.” Dean feels around, shrugs, says, “Yeah. I’ll take this one. You want the shower?”
“No,” Sam says. “Go ahead. You’ve been driving all day.”
Dean nods in thanks, grabs some clean clothes, and goes into the bathroom.
He comes out half an hour later, towel wrapped around his head, and stops. Sam’s sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding a small drum in his lap, fingers tapping out a rhythm on the edges. Sam’s facing southeast, and when Dean looks at his brother, he sees that Sam’s eyes are closed, that Sam’s breathing deep and even, looks like he’s meditating.
Dean doesn’t say anything, just moves around Sam, puts on his shoes, rubs the towel over his hair, and goes out in search of food and beer.
--
When Dean gets back, Sam’s lying in bed, asleep, light from the parking lot coming in past the blinds and casting odd shadows on Sam’s body. Dean stands in the doorway for a moment, staring at the tattoos on Sam’s back, before Sam turns over, mumbles something under his breath.
Dean steps inside, closes the door and kicks off his shoes, takes off his jacket, wrinkles his nose at the smell of beer on his clothes. He debates a trip to the bathroom for one last piss before bed, but instead collapses on the mattress, shifts when he finds a lump just under his ass, and falls asleep on his side, staring at Sam’s face, the curve of Sam’s chin, the way Sam’s chest rises with every inhale, the sheet bunched around his waist, waistband of his pyjama bottoms peeking out.
--
Two days later, they’re driving around the edges of Baton Rouge. Sam’s said they need to go to Ascension Parish, and Dean was about ready to remind his brother that Ascension’s bayou land, swamp country, but Sam used a Sharpie and drew on his hands that morning, can see something that Dean can’t, looking out the windows. The way Sam says it, ‘Ascension,’ it sounds French, not English, four syllables with the heat of the South, sprawled out loose and lazy, and hearing it, seeing Sam sitting so still in the passenger side, it makes Dean’s skin crawl.
They get off of I-10 and hang a right; Dean drives as far as he can on that road, then hangs another right when the road ends.
“Bluff Road,” Dean reads, right off the sign, and though this isn’t following a cliff or mountain, it runs along the curve of the swamp, just as dangerous.
“Turn right,” Sam says. “There’ll be a street, Rue Lamont, on the right. There’s one house. That’s where we need to be.”
Dean doesn’t ask how Sam knows this, but he can’t resist looking over at his brother. Sam’s tense, stock-still, doesn’t look like he’s much looking forward to this meeting. Sam mentioned the parish first a day ago, halfway through Texas, and Dean’s not sure why they’re here first, but if Sam doesn’t want to be, they don’t have to be.
“You sure?” Dean asks, and when Sam looks at him, something flickers in the back of Sam’s eyes.
“Yeah,” Sam says, whisper-quiet. “And when we get there, it’d be best if you waited in the car.”
Dean drives, doesn’t say anything else, but when he pulls up in front of the house and parks, turns the Impala off, he gets out of the car as well.
Sam looks at him and sighs but doesn’t argue. “Whatever you do, don’t react,” is all he says, before he’s striding up the sidewalk toward the front porch.
The house looks normal from the outside, one story ranch with curtains fluttering in a mid-morning breeze, the smell of pie drifting out from the kitchen. Dean moves to step on to the porch and freezes, has lifted his foot to step up but can’t put it down. Sam, on the porch, looks back and sighs, rolls his eyes, and points at the car.
“What?” Dean asks.
The door behind Sam opens and the woman standing in the doorway has her hands on her hips, over the drawstrings of an apron.
“What’re you doing bringing someone like that here?” she snips.
Dean’s jaw drops, and he says, “Listen, lady,” before she cuts him off.
“I wasn’t talking to you. Now go on, get yourself back in that car like the poto mitan told you, and listen to him next time.”
“Maman,” Sam says, softly. “I was the same way when I first came here. Please, for me?”
She huffs, says, “You could at least plant both your feet on the first step. He’s got blood of your kind and my kind on his hands and he did it willingly, went out searching. You really think I’m gonna let someone like him into my house? Tue es fou, Sam.”
Sam squares his shoulders, says, “He’s one of my kind, maman. Not anymore, the trinity kicked out his rider, but he knows what it feels like, what it is.”
“If he’s bosal, then you better keep an eye on him, poto mitan.” Dean watches as Sam stares the woman down, then Dean flinches when she looks at him, studying him. “Well, all right,” she finally says, reluctantly. She bends down, spits on the porch, and gives Dean a sharp, piercing look. “You behave, boy. Don’t think I won’t throw you out if I have to,” she says, before turning around and going inside, leaving the door open behind her.
Sam grins, says, “That was easier than I thought. Come on, Dean.”
Dean lifts up one foot, and this time he doesn’t have any trouble stepping on to the porch.
“How’d that work?” he asks, following Sam into the house, raising his eyebrow at the line of red dust just outside the front doorway.
“Foot-track magic,” Sam replies, leading Dean through a nice, classy living room into the kitchen. “Snake lines under the steps, five-spots to settle. Don’t touch anything.”
Dean doesn’t say that he won’t, just follows Sam. The house, it’s wide open and airy, wind chimes fluttering in front of some of the windows, but it’s creepy as well, everything too perfect, too clean. He sits on a chair just inside the kitchen once Sam nods at it, looking around, and Sam sits at the table, hands on his lap, watching the woman.
Red curls bounce on her neck as she moves, pale cheeks flushed when she opens the oven and takes out a sheet of cookies. She sets the sheet on top of the stove, gets back to kneading some dough on the counter near the sink, turning her head to look at Sam.
“Well? Tell me why you’re back, child. I’m sure the story’s good, ‘specially if you ain’t got the other two draping themselves all over you.”
Sam takes a deep breath, then tells her, “Loa told me to leave. Things’ve been getting too tight. We’d been tossing around the idea, but then we kicked one of the Petro out of a horse she hijacked and had to kill a hunter who’d gotten too close.”
She stops, fingertips stuck in dough, flour on her elbows, scattered over her arms, and looks at Sam.
“Thought I heard something going on over by the lake. Which one was it? You held a trial?” she asks. “Explains the drawings. You run through any trouble on your way down here?”
“No,” Sam replies. “A little in Texas, but the baron saw us through,” which is news to Dean. “And it was Marinette.”
She takes that in, then shakes her head, gets back to kneading dough. “Marinette’s bound to be upset with you, Sam. Her and her people both. Did you at least get rid of the horse? If she hijacked him once, she’ll do it again. You know she’ll be back in it if she can find it.”
Dean freezes, and he almost doesn’t hear when Sam says, “She won’t be back in him,” steel under the velvet-coated purr.
“Why not?” she asks, turning away completely from the dough lying on the counter. “What’s stopping her?”
Sam bares his teeth, says, “I am.”
“That’s only gonna work if,” she starts to say, then stops, narrows her eyes. She settles that gaze on Sam, then lets her eyes slide over to Dean. “You, boy,” she says, pointing at him. “What’s your name?”
“Dean,” he says after a minute, after looking at Sam to see if it’s all right to answer truthfully. “Sam’s older brother.”
She tilts her head, looks at Sam but then back at Dean, and breathes out, “Ayah. You didn’t even know. A loa like Marinette, uninvited, and you couldn’t tell.”
“He wasn’t exactly looking for it, maman,” Sam says, coming to Dean’s defence. “And she didn’t make herself known, only took over once, and even that was in something he was still going to do. She just,” he says, pausing, searching for words, “she just amped it up a little.”
She looks at Dean longer, then back at Sam, and says, “Danny in there, too? Have to be, wouldn’t she, now that you left your girl back in Cali. I wanna talk to her, ask her what the hell she’s thinking, letting you go running around half-cocked like.” Sam’s shaking his head before she even trails off, and she sighs, says, “Well, ain’t this a putain de bordel..”
“What’s your name?” Dean asks, as she goes back to kneading dough, tearing it apart and forming it into balls, dropping them onto another cookie sheet.
“People around here call me la sorcière,” she says.
Sam snorts, but when Dean looks at his brother, Sam shakes his head. “She’s not a witch, Dean. She works hoodoo, but that’s folk magic, not sorcery.”
“M’name’s Lissa,” she says. “And I don’t want you calling me nothing else, not until you’ve earned it, y’hear me?”
Dean’s response is automatic. “Yes, ma’am.”
--
She cooks while Sam talks and Dean listens to all of it, though he doesn’t understand more than a few things. Lissa hums when Sam tells her about the trial, clucks her tongue when Sam mentions what happened with Gordon. With her rolls in the oven and the counter cleaned up, she takes out a loaf from a bread-bin at the end of the counter and cuts thick slices, cooks up a couple grilled cheese sandwiches for Sam and Dean, serves them up with milk and potato chips.
Sam looks up from his plate, gives Dean a half-smile, and Dean wonders if Sam remembers all those times John left them alone, all those times they ate grilled cheese for dinner, night after night, just like there was cereal every morning and Spaghetti-Os for lunch, weekend meals.
“What’d you come to me for, then?” Lissa asks once the two have finished eating and are attacking thick slices of rich chocolate cake. “I ain’t one of yours, Sam.”
“No, but you know what’s going on down here,” Sam says once he swallows, wipes stray crumbs from the corners of his mouth. “Some of the houngons and mambos have been dying off over the past few weeks. I know that, and I know which ones, and I know what the loa have done about it, but I don’t know what I’ll be getting myself into if I start calling gatherings to discuss Marinette.”
Lissa nods, bites her lower lip while she thinks. Dean puts his fork down, knowing now that his actions, the killings, they’re making trouble for Sam, they were people Sam knew. He’s split, trying to decide how he feels about it; on one hand, they were vodouisantes, they deserved to be hunted, killed, but on the other, they were Sam’s friends, colleagues at the very least, and the people he met thanks to Sam, they’re not so bad, maybe the others weren’t, either.
“They all know it was a hunter,” she says, looking at Sam, though her eyes flick to Dean quickly, guiltily. “They ain’t keen on getting together in one place, though they would for the poto mitan. They really ain’t keen on outsiders right now, not with everything so up in the air. Asogwe Stefanie gone and Erzulie’s favourite horse in Cali, a couple sur points dead without leaving their konesans.”
She trails off, shakes her head, and says, “You wanna call gatherings, I’d start with the Rada. Let ‘em calm everyone down. You call the Petro together, you gonna be having a battle on your hands real quick, ‘specially with Marinette up in arms.”
Sam nods, puts his fork down and picks up crumbs from the plate using his thumb. “Baron says the guédé are fine, their horses doing all right. All I’ll have to worry about are the Rada and the Petro vodouisantes.”
Lissa snorts, says, “All you’ll have to worry about? Honey-child, either you’re being optimistic, or you’re crazy. All you’ll have to worry about,” she mutters again, shaking her head.
Dean looks back and forth between them, Lissa muttering as she clears off the table, puts the dishes in the sink and starts to wash, Sam grinning even while his eyes look thoughtful, making plans and preparations.
“Maman,” Sam says.
Lissa lifts a hand, dripping with soap suds, stopping Sam before he can get any further. “Go ahead. Just not the lake tonight, ayah? I’ve got things brewing, don’t want no Rada-ridden traipsing around my things.”
Sam stands up, moves across the kitchen in a few quick strides, leans down and kisses Lissa on the cheek. “Not tonight,” he agrees mildly, before walking out of the kitchen.
Dean gets up to follow, but Lissa must see the reflection in the window, because she doesn’t turn around to say, “Not you, boy. You stay here with me and let your brother make his phone calls. It shouldn’t take long to start the hountogi.”
“The what?” Dean asks, settling back into his chair, keeping an eye on the woman.
“The drummers,” Lissa replies, tilting her head as if she’s listening to something. “Sam’s putting out a call for meetin’s. They’ll pass the message along for him, so he don’t have to spend the next two days on the phone.”
Dean nods, distracted, while he thinks. From what Lissa just said, it would take two days to arrange a meeting with two thirds of the vodou practitioners in this area, and he thought he’d struck a real blow by killing nine of them. His throat dries up at the thought, that there are more than anyone ever knew about, dozens more waiting in the wings, and he only feels the slightest bit guilty about his part in thinning the numbers.
Still, he’s not comfortable with that, because he didn’t feel any guilt when he was on his way to San Francisco, to pick up Sam. Things have changed, and changed quickly, and Dean’s not at all sure that he likes it.
“What’s Sam, that he can do this?” Dean asks. “The way everyone’s so concerned about him, that they’ll jump the second he snaps his fingers.”
Lissa pauses, then rinses whatever she was washing, grabs a towel and dries her hands as she turns to look at Dean. “He ain’t told you?” she asks, almost like she doesn’t believe that. “Even with you being a killer, you a horse, too, and he didn’t say nothing?”
Dean shakes his head.
“Ayah,” Lissa sighs. “Well, I’ll tell you this. What they call him, the poto mitan, that ain’t all he is,” she says. “Next time you talk to the baron, you ask him what it means, and then you ask him about zo regleman, see what he tells you. ‘S’better than me going ‘round and spilling secrets that ain’t mine to spill.”
--
They leave when Sam comes back, looking older than his years, like the weight of a thousand people rests on his shoulders. Lissa raises an eyebrow, and Sam says, “Not tonight. People’ll be coming ‘round tomorrow and for the next few days, though. Any chance you could ward the road in?”
Lissa clucks her tongue, says, “O’course I will, child. And here,” she says, going over to a drawer at the far end of the kitchen, pulling out a small red flannel bag. Sam opens his mouth to argue when he sees it, but she narrows her eyes and presses it into his hand. “Ain’t no use arguing, Sam. I threw sticks yesterday, and you know you get a new one every time I see you.”
Sam takes the bag, slides it into his pocket, and leans up, kisses Lissa’s cheek. “Merci, maman,” he whispers.
Her fingers stroke his cheek, his jawline, run through his hair, like she’s memorising the feel of him, smiling slightly, sadly. “Be careful Sam. Ne tue personne à moins que tu doives.”
--
Once they get into the Impala, Dean asks, “You speak Creole and French?” trying to sound as if it doesn’t bother him as much as it does. Finding out all of these things about Sam, just when he thinks he has a handle on his brother, it’s like having the door to a place shut right in his face when he’s trying to walk through it.
“Maman, Lissa, she’s French,” Sam says, buckling his seat-belt. “When I stayed with her, that’s all she spoke. Drove me crazy at first, but it’s a good way to learn a language. The Creole came later.”
Dean hums, listening, and turns the car on, backs out of Lissa’s driveway. “Where to?” he asks, looking over at his brother.
“Nothing’s happening until tomorrow afternoon,” Sam says with a shrug. “As far as I’m concerned, we can find a motel with a bar nearby and drink until we get thrown out, then go back and sleep half the day away.”
“Things went that good, huh,” Dean asks, pulling back onto Bluff Road, heading down towards Dutchtown. It doesn’t sound like something Sam would say, even this new Sam.
“Pretty much,” Sam says, and then falls into silence.
Dean looks over at Sam again, decides not to try breaking the look on his brother’s face, popping in some Robert Johnson instead. Sam snorts the second he hears guitar strings being plucked.
“Hey,” Dean says. “When in Rome, right? Isn’t that what you always used to say?”
Sam’s smile, the beginnings of one, wipes itself away at that, and he looks out the window, says, “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”
--
They grab a room halfway to Saint Gabriel, nice big place, almost an old plantation home, Ciel et Chanson. Sam silently points out brick dust around the doorways, five-spots etched into things, the way five boards on the porch look different, the way the tiles just inside the door are patterned. Dean feels his skin crawl, being around all of this hoodoo, but Sam walks in as if it doesn’t bother him, and maybe it doesn’t.
Dean lets Sam deal with checking in, it goes easier than Dean expected, and they’re given a room on the second floor, decorated nice but not too girly, big and spacious, two beds, sitting area to one side. Sam drops his duffel on the floor by the window, leans and looks out before he looks down. Dean sees him swipe his finger across the sill, and frowns when Sam’s tongue darts out to taste what’s on his fingertip.
His own stuff forgotten, Dean goes over, looks at the windowsill and narrows his eyes, seeing red dust, black dust, and salt, mixed together.
“An old house,” Sam says, eyes distant, gazing out over the back yard, one that butts up against bayou. “This is an old house with an older history. It would be good to keep that in mind, Dean.”
Shivers run up and down Dean’s back, and he asks, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sam shakes his head, seems to shake himself out of whatever trance he was in, and he looks at Dean, eyes deep, too knowing. “Don’t go anywhere without me,” he says, and then starts taking clothes out of his duffel.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean asks, following his brother after one last look out of the window. “Is there something going on here I should know about?”
“No,” Sam says, forceful. “Nothing. Just don’t go anywhere outside of this house without me.”
Dean purses his lips but nods, because Sam’s the expert on all of this, knows what it all means, and even if Dean would like a hell of a lot more explanation than that, he knows he isn’t going to get it.
--
Dean drives to a bar and the two Winchesters sit inside and drink until the place closes, two or three in the morning, Dean’s not sure. Sam’s a little less drunk, switched to water an hour or so before, so he drives them back to the house.
“What’s that mean?” Dean asks, eyes fuzzy, nowhere close to being sober. Sam gives him a look, a raised eyebrow, and Dean adds, “The name of the house.”
“Ciel et Chanson,” Sam murmurs, and Dean smiles lazily, aware of but not encouraging the heat swimming through his veins as he listens to his brother speak French. “Sky and Song,” Sam says. “A good name. Hopeful. The people reflect it.”
Dean nods, feeling like his head and stomach are sloshing with all the liquid he drank, and doesn’t say anything else, thinking too hard about how he’s losing more and more hope that his brother can be saved from all of this with every minute he spends with Sam.
Sam helps him inside and up the stairs, smiling at the girl sitting behind the desk, her eyes wide as she follows their progress.
Once inside their room, Dean sits down on his bed, kicks off his shoes, and falls backwards, letting out a quiet, “Oof,” when his head hits the pillow.
He must drift off, because when he opens his eyes, his head’s pounding and the light coming from the small sitting area makes him wince. Dean groans, sits up, and squints in the direction of his apparently-shirtless brother, curled up on the couch.
“There’s aspirin on the nightstand along with a glass of water,” Sam murmurs, without looking up from a book. “It’s half an hour from sunrise; go back to sleep.”
Dean rubs his forehead, takes a couple pills and washes them down, grimacing at the chalky aftertaste, the white powder residue on his hands. The headache won’t get much worse, they never do, and he’ll be fine after a couple more hours of sleep, but seeing Sam awake, knowing he can’t have slept, that does nothing for the attitude Dean woke up with.
“You aren’t sleeping?” he asks, knows he sounds snippy but can’t help it. Seeing the tattoos on Sam’s chest doesn’t make it any better. “Loa keeping you up? Giving you new instructions, new people to kill?”
It takes a minute, but Sam slams his book shut, sets it down on the low table, and stands up, hands on his hips. “There something you wanna say to me, Dean?” he asks, voice low, tone restrained, like he’s been holding back anger for too long and it’s finally shaking its way loose. “Something you’ve been wanting to say for a while, now?”
“Gordon,” Dean says, and his own expression turns angry as Sam’s hardens. “He was a psychopathic bitch, but he was a good hunter, even Dad said so. And you just killed him, like he was nothing. Snapped his damn neck like you’re used to killing people.”
Sam scowls, says, “I had to, Dean. You heard what I said. He would’ve come back with more if I’d let him go, and it’s not like we can just make people forget they found us, not when they’re like Gordon. What the hell else was I supposed to do?”
Dean doesn’t answer that, but asks, “What if it had been me, Sam? Or Dad? Would you have killed us, too?” Sam spins, glares at him, and Dean can almost taste the power rising off of his brother. It should scare him, does, but not as much as it should; it just makes him angry, furious. “If your damned loa asked you to kill us, would you? Answer me!”
“What do you wanna hear, Dean?” Sam all but roars back. “You think I chose this? You think I asked for this? Any of this? Dean, if it could go away, if there was the slightest chance that something, anything, could erase the vévés from my head, do you honestly think I’d still be doing this?”
Dean looks at his brother, the hurt and anger in Sam’s eyes, and says, “I don’t know what to think.”
Sam breathes, runs his hands through his hair, and looks away. “All those times I bitched at Dad for the stupidest excuses. All those times I yelled and swore and grumbled about him and his goddamned sense of honour. ‘Doing what needs to be done, Sam,’ you remember? I hated that. And now that’s my line. That’s what I do, I do what needs to be done to keep my people safe, to keep us in line, to keep the loa happy.”
He stops, shakes his head, and adds, quietly, “And I understand why Dad winced every time he said it. I get why he drank, and why he slept, and why he never wanted to talk about it. Because it sucks. It’s a bad excuse but it’s the only one I have.”
“Sam,” Dean says, after a moment of letting Sam’s words wash over him and into his mind. “Sam, if the hunters who came after you before, the ones people say you killed. If they’d been me or Dad, would you have killed us?”
There’s silence in the room for a long, tense moment, but then Sam turns, looks Dean straight in the eye, and says, “Stefanie, no one will blame her death on you, but you killed eight of my people, Dean. Eight, with your own two hands, and you’re still alive. What do you think?”
“I think this is bullshit, Sam,” Dean says immediately. “You’re not a killer. You’re not some crazy vodou priest. All of this, it’s just fucking with your head. You came down here, probably got hexed or something. Yeah, you know? Lissa’s a witch and Pierre, he’s a magician, isn’t he? I bet that’s why he threw his brother’s dick into your ass, to keep you in line.”
Sam growls, steps closer to Dean, says, “Shut up, Dean.”
Dean’s not afraid, not of his little brother. “They needed someone to channel the loa they couldn’t, saw you coming a mile away. Little Sammy, not at all sceptical, because you’d seen this work before, when Dad brought us down here. All they needed to do was work a little magic on you, a little hoodoo, and you’d be all theirs.”
“Shut up, Dean.”
“No, I won’t. You know why? Because I’m right, Sam. You know I’m right. This whole thing, it’s all been orchestrated to make you feel better, make you feel important. They caught you on a down spot, weak, because you left us. If you’d never gone anywhere, this never would’ve happened.”
Sam’s eyes are so dark, it looks like they’re bottomless black holes. He stops in the middle of the room, opens his mouth, and the words that come out of Sam’s lips, they aren’t Sam’s words.
“You trying to make him angry, Dean Winchester? You be doing a good job o’ that. I’d be being careful, though. Makes no sense to unleash it all now.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dean asks, cocky, because the loa are only proving his point. “And why’s that, Lakwa? What’s so scary about Sam’s anger, huh? It’s not like it’s gonna do anything.”
Lakwa tilts his head, smiles. “Boy, what you talking ‘bout? Don’t you know what your brother is?”
Dean racks his brain, calls up the unfamiliar words, says, “They’ve called him a poto mitan. And someone told me to ask you about zo regleman, if I ever saw you again.”
Lawka sits down, crosses his legs, stretching out. “And you ain’t never heard o’ neither of them, that right?”
“That’s right,” Dean says, wary now, because the smile on Lakwa’s face, it isn’t the smile of someone who’s just been called on his games, on his manipulations.
“You ever seen a hounfor, boy?” Dean nods, and Lakwa’s next question makes him think. “You ever notice a post in the middle?”
Dean leans back against the wall, finally says, “Don’t know. What’s that got to do with anything?”
Lawka laughs again, the sound bouncing off the room’s walls. “The post, it’s the poto mitan. It’s a, a conduit, you’d call it, brings us from our plane to yours, gives us time to find a horse. It’s sacred,” he says. “The first thing any houngon or mambo learns, it’s to be protectin’ the poto mitan. In kind, the poto mitan be protecting them by bringing the riders down.”
It makes sense, in a twisted way. What Pierre told him before, about Sam having vévés drawn in his head, why they call Sam a bridge, why they’re so protective of Sam, that all fits. But that doesn’t explain Sam’s need, desire, to protect these people, to defend them at the cost of hunters’ lives.
“Now, the zo regleman,” Lakwa says, stuffing his hands into Sam’s jeans pockets, leaning back and looking at the ceiling. “You listen carefully to me, boy. Zo regleman is bone law. Law of the loa, law of the rites and rituals, law of vodou. Law of the dead and law of the living. It orders everything our people do, top to bottom, everything. And because your brother be the poto mitan, he be the final word. He be the law, and the law say he gotta protect his people. The law say he can’t make none of the others do what he ain’t capable of doing hisself.”
Lawka leans forward, fixes his eyes on Dean, and adds, “Your brother, the second he started dreaming of us, the second he was born, vévés written in his head, he ain’t got no choice. He ain’t got a way out. You know him well, Dean. You think he like hearing that?”
Dean exhales, realises he’s been shaking and forces his muscles to relax, forces himself to calm down. “He would’ve hated it,” he says.
“Fought us for months,” Lakwa says, nodding. “Nearly killed himself doing it. The people you met, the twins and the girl, they brung him down here. Brung him down to the woman you be meeting, the one he called maman. He spent time here, with his people, and they helped. He still bitter, but he be hiding it better now. First hunter he killed, he cried for days, but he ain’t looked back since. Me and Ati, we ain’t letting him.”
“So you don’t give Sam a choice about whether or not he has to carry you around,” Dean says after a minute. “He goes crazy and dopes up when he’s by himself, and you take over from him whenever you want. But if there’s someone to kill, if there’s any danger, you let him do it. Make him do it, do all of your dirty work.”
Lakwa’s eyes flash and he pins them on Dean, dark and angry, so far from the laughing, happy loa Dean’s come to expect. “You think that’s our choice, boy? You think, someone like your brother, someone we’d protect, no matter what it be costing us, would stand for that?”
Dean stares at Lakwa as the sun rises through the window, sets his head back to throbbing. “He won’t let you do it for him,” Dean whispers, reaches out and grabs the edge of a chair before his knees give out. He sits, sinking down slowly, feeling nausea rise up his esophagus, though whether that’s the alcohol or the sudden realisation of what Lakwa means, Dean doesn’t know. “He won’t let you do it,” he says again.
“We be trying,” Lakwa says, shifting moods back to upset, back to gentle soothing. “He say if his hands gonna kill someone, his mind gonna do it, too, no one else’s. Me and Ati, we tried telling him, but he ain’t havin’ none of it.” Lakwa sighs, holds out his hands as if to say, ‘What else can we do?’
“I wanna talk to him,” Dean says, abrupt, once he’s swallowed down bile.
Lakwa studies him, finally nods, but says, “Don’t go making him angry. He’ll need that later, when he deals with the Petro. A’right?”
Dean nods, and watches as his brother’s eyelids close.
When they open again, scant seconds later, it’s Sam looking out of expressionless green eyes, it’s Sam who tenses and shifts back in his chair, it’s Sam who looks as if he might be expecting Dean to attack him.
Dean swallows, says, “I’m sorry.” Sam doesn’t say anything, so Dean goes on. “I wasn’t being fair. But Sam, we’re hunters. Our friends are hunters. We’ve always gone after vodouisantes; hell, some of the others specialise in this. What do you expect me to think?”
“I expect you to think that maybe this is as hard for me as it is for you,” Sam says after a minute, voice quiet, restrained. “It’s been two years, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. I’ve had to kill three hunters here in Louisiana, one up in Chicago, and now Gordon in San Francisco. I know just as well as you do that our world’s small, that someone’s bound to put things together soon, and I know that those hunters, they were good people, they were doing good things. Until they came here and started hunting my people.”
Dean blinks, not having expected that, and Sam sees it, gives him a bitter smile.
“I never wanted to get involved with a new family,” Sam says, “not when ours was trouble enough. I sure as hell didn’t want to end up some sort of, of messiah or prodigy or whatever I am. But I did get involved, and I did end up this way. I don’t like it, but I’ve come to accept it.”
“I don’t know if I can,” Dean says, honest the way only the night makes him honest, honest the way he is when the dark outside is enough to hide in. “Dad sent me back to get you out of this. He wanted me to keep you safe, protect you. But I’m not going to be able to convince you to leave the vodou alone, am I?”
Sam shakes his head, though there’s a shell-shocked expression on his face now, one that came up when Dean mentioned John. Still, he blinks it off, something Dean remembers Sam doing before he left for Stanford, the way Sam could compartmentalise better than anyone Dean had ever met before, shut himself off, down, and use what was left.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.” Dean opens his mouth to protest, but Sam keeps going, speaking over whatever Dean was going to say. “I want you to. There’s always the possibility Marinette could try getting into you again, no matter what charms I give you. I’ll be able to tell if she does.”
Dean’s eyes narrow as he asks, “Is that the only reason?”
Sam holds Dean’s gaze for a moment before he looks away, before the mask drops and Dean sees what Sam’s been hiding, the desperate need for reassurance, for security, the loneliness and depression and absolute anguish at being apart from his friends and lovers. Seeing it, Dean could kick himself for going off on Sam like he had, for thinking that Sam was all right with everything that had been happening, because Dean knows masks, knows how to look for them, how to crack them, and he didn’t even realise Sam was wearing one.
“What else, Sam?” Dean asks, and the room turns silent, no noise, nothing, except for the sounds filtering in through the open window, up from downstairs, in from the hallway, as the rest of the house starts to wake up. “Sam?”
“You’re my brother, Dean,” Sam replies, as if the words had been reeled out of him, talisman and curse both. Sam swallows, then shakes his head, stands up, and leaves the room, mentioning something about the bathroom, something about cleaning up for breakfast.
Dean’s left sitting alone in the room, watching as rays of sunlight grow and spread over both beds, as the morning starts to heat up, turn liquid around him, wet and clinging to his skin. He doesn’t move, waiting for Sam, but he falls asleep, still nursing a hangover and drained from the argument he’s just had with Sam, like the southern heat’s grown arms and curled around him, warm and comforting.
Part Five