Never Come Back
15. Dem Bones
It turns out everything Sam ever saw on TV cop shows about stakeouts is true: the room is a garbage dump of discarded takeout boxes, coffee cups with cigarette butts floating in brackish dregs, half-eaten donuts.
He flashes his fake badge for effect, grimaces. "Don't you ever clean up?" he asks the big guy, Coop, Kathleen said, as he pulls on his coat and lights up another cancer stick.
"I leave it to her," the man snarks, jerking his head over to where Hudak is using her foot to clear space for two more chairs in front of the window. "On account of she's the female."
Hudak pulls a face. "I just leave it," she says. "On account of the fact that being female doesn't equate to being the maid. Remind me how many ex-wives you have, Coop?"
The big man laughs as he leaves, points over at a box on the table. "Fresh donuts," he says. "Coffee's on the go too. Don't say I never did nothing for you, Katie."
Sam wrinkles his nose, breaches the strewn trash on his way over to the window to gaze out at a row of nondescript storefronts and a chunk of scrubland that might be a park or might be waste ground. "So what are we looking at?"
Hudak points. "Just over there is where we found the latest victim, on that patch of ground under the tree, so you can see it's pretty well sheltered from the road. The alleyway," she points in the opposite direction, "is just over there."
There's a soft knock at the door and she crosses to open it. "We were hoping one of the hookers might have seen who dumped Garner, but zip," she continues, as Bobby skulks in.
Sam catches sight of a couple of women hovering at the top of the alley, and he shakes his head. "How do they do it?" he murmurs. "Sell themselves for money?"
Hudak shrugs. "They need to eat," she says simply.
It flips Sam to his brother, half-cut and slumped on his butt behind the bar in Hibbing, to Dean's broken confession, I was too young to hustle pool, and he breathes out past a sudden wave of nausea.
"I don't think they see it as sex per se," Hudak is saying. "They see it as a profession."
Bobby starts clattering cups around on the table, pouring coffee. "The oldest profession," he remarks, neutral, as he moves over to stand next to them. "How likely is it really that this guy's going to show up here again?"
"I don't know," Hudak says. "Coop has this theory that it's one of these sadist types who likes to take trophies and show up at the scene of the crime to relive it. That's what the profilers reckon too."
"But this isn't the scene of the crime," Sam points out.
"Definitely not," she says. "Just the dump. But the profile says the place could still have meaning for him, so it's worth a shot. We've got people on the other dumps too. If he's here and he sees Dean hovering, well. We could strike lucky."
Bobby sniggers as he settles in a chair. "If he tries anything on Dean, he'll be missing limbs," he retorts. "Kid's lethal. It'll be rough fuckin' justice, that's for sure."
Sam glances at his wristwatch. "He'll be here any minute," he says. "He's going to hover, see what happens, maybe it won't be too-"
"Where is your brother?"
It's tense, loaded, panicked almost, the words uttered in almost the same instant as the breeze and the eerie wafting, flapping sound of wings beating have Sam whirling around.
"Where is your brother?" Castiel repeats, and now it's edgy, hard, intense, it's weak knees as the angel's eyes blaze beams of bluish fire at Sam, and now it's louder too, now it's the power to smite. "I have lost him. Something is wrong. Where is your brother, Sam?"
Sam flaps his jaw uselessly for a second, bleats, "But you can track him," even as Hudak snatches her car keys up off the table and throws them to Bobby.
"EconoLodge, it's on Arlington," the old man barks as he strides to the door through the airspace the angel vacated the minute he heard Bobby's words. "Sam. Move it."
Alastair murmurs words of love, soft and tender, in Dean's ears, tells him about his favorite game, snap, crackle and pop, Dean, and Dean stares, and weeps, and whimpers along to the dry snap of bone, the crackle of compound fractures, jagged bone ends moving and shifting as his master twists his limbs, the dull, sickly pop of joints ripped from their moorings, I'll grind your bones to make my bread, sweet child of mine. And Dean learns well, and he leans and murmurs the same words of love, soft and tender, in their ears, the damned, his death's work, the leg bone's connected to the knee bone, knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, thigh bone's connected to the back bone, back bone's connected to the neck bone, neck bone's connected to the head bone-
-The cold wakes Dean, and he's fisting handfuls of damp grass and biting into the ground because he hurts so bad and he can't draw breath to scream. His legs are in water, icy, soaking his clothes up as far as his ribs. It's pitch-black, quiet, no, not quiet, because his head throbs so violently he can hear it pulse. He can feel his brain inside his skull, as if his gray matter grew hands and is hammering on the bone, hammering to be let out of there, and now it's taking a few steps back and launching itself, hurling itself against the thin shell that imprisons it, and Dean knows it's only a matter of time before it occurs to his neurons that they need to team up, chop down a tree and use it as a battering ram, the Battle of Helm's Deep going on inside his cranium, until they smash through the bone and spill out onto the soil to freedom.
S'nothin'… had worse…
He tries to piece together what happened and it all comes down to black eyes looking down at him from… Lilith's latest meatsuit? Hidden in shadows as she hooked her foot under him and sent him rolling off the verge and into the ditch, but she didn't take him. He ponders it for a minute through the haze of pain, and thinks it must mean he isn't as important as Cas thinks, or that maybe it's already over, the last seal dust in the wind and the earth cracking open for the world to fall into Hell.
Need help. Godhurtshurts. Cas. Now. Need you right the fuck now.
He digs his fingers into the soil, and it's a horrifying reminder of digging his way up to the light. Dean chokes out a whimper, savors the tendrils of pain that trail up and around him, uses it, braces against it, it's something to fight, it's a target, something he understands, has intimate knowledge of. And he starts to pull himself up to the top, cries out his agony into the dirt as his muscles shriek in protest and his bones grate, because something is very wrong with his leg.
"Motherfuckin'," he groans out into the grass, tasting it wet on his tongue. He sucks up the moisture and thinks idiotically that a good dose of pesticide is just what he needs to get this finished and done right the fuck soon. "Someone help me," he whimpers, and he can't help it, wants to scream it through his cheese grater throat, but it's weak, he can barely hear himself. "Cas. Please help me."
It's enough, he knows, enough for Castiel to hear him, wherever he is. And he hears a voice, someone calling him, Dean… answer me if you can, Dean I'm here. It's soaring high on the wind and almost carried away into the purple sky, but Dean knows the voice, trusts it implicitly because it cut through the horror, and the screaming, and the blood, and the suffering down there; it was comfort, and solace, and love, and salvation, and the light was clean and pure in the squalor.
He forces his own voice to respond and whispers out as his face falls onto his arm. "Cas. M'here. Ditch…"
Soon he'll be lifted and carried into the warm and dry, and Cas will stare at him like he matters, and Sam will make nice with the puppy-dog eyes like old times, and Dean will be fussed over until he wants to hit out in frustration. He closes his eyes, thinks of his bed, but his leg, broken maybe, is saying, fuck bed, I need some traction action, asswad, and every little splinter and shard of shattered bone is getting itself organized, front row kneeling down, back row standing, and they have their bows at the ready and they reach up and over their shoulders and grab arrows from nifty little Robin Hood quivers. They send the arrows up into the sky and they hang in the air like silver raindrops before they fall straight down, dead on target into Dean's brain because the neurons split up and a whole bunch of them are lying down in rows that spell out pain centers here!, and everything explodes in showers of bright red, orange and yellow sparks. Like firecrackers on the fourth of July, he thinks deliriously, and he sighs out and falls into the lights.
Hudak's truck rattles, they're screeching along at take-off speed and taking corners on two wheels, and Sam has the door open, falls out onto the road before Bobby skids to a halt a few yards away from the Impala. Her headlamps are at full-beam, her door is wide open, and Sam in there instantly, looking for signs, blood, clues, blood, evidence of a struggle, blood, but there's nothing save for a quart of Jack tossed carelessly in the footwell.
"He isn't here."
Sam shoots up, cracks his skull on the doorframe as his gaze falls on Castiel. Raindrops are spotting his coat and listening on his hair, and he's as calm, as serene as ever on the surface, but something is humming under the impassive exterior, something like simmering energy, or maybe panic. It scares Sam even more, and he wonders if he can sense it because of what Ruby said, because it's cowboys and indians, Bloods and Crips, because it's an enmity so ancient it's part of their make-up, the boy with demon blood and the angel of the Lord mixing like oil and water.
Sam swallows dryly, gasps, "Where is he? How can you lose him? Aren't you connected?"
"We are," Castiel replies, and then he considers and rephrases. "We were. He's no longer here."
Bobby looms up, brandishing something. "His phone," he says. "And we can see he's no longer here. Where the fuck is he?"
Castiel stares at them both blankly for a second, drifts away, comes back, and his voice is clipped, brisk. "You misunderstand me. I don't mean that he's no longer here. I mean that he's no longer here."
"Fuckin' riddles," Bobby snaps. "Stop talking in fuckin' riddles, man. Track him down, I thought you could-"
The angel takes a step forward and his eyes flare. "He is gone," he enunciates clearly, patiently, but with an edge of acid in his voice that keeps prickling Sam's senses, and he sees Bobby swallow as Castiel continues. "Gone, from this place and from this plane." He raises his eyebrow at the older man. "Capische?"
Sam reels, plants his hand down on the hood of the car, feels cold sweat drip down his back. "Are you saying my brother is dead?"
Castiel's pause seems endless, seems like the stillness of eternity, and when he finally answers, his voice has lost its edge, it's quiet, almost unsure, hesitant. "I would know if that had happened. I would… know."
Sam whirls around again. "So he's alive?"
The angel throws up a hand. "I don't know."
"Well, what the fuck do you know?" Bobby cuts in, his annoyance fueling his bravado again. "Come on. Is he alive or not?"
"We are connected," Castiel says slowly, like he's piecing it together, joining up the dots for himself as well as for them. "But the thread has been snapped. I can't say if he's alive. But I'm certain I would know if he were dead." And then he jerks his head sharply to the left, looks into the trees lining the side of the road for a few seconds. When he looks back it's like something has dawned in his eyes, they're shining with something, Sam thinks, and in the same breath he identifies it as relief, maybe even joy.
"I believe Dean may be flying below radar."
And in amid his own sickly relief, the hot liquid pricking his eyes, Sam knows, just knows, and he starts stumbling away from them, towards the motel. He hears Bobby's muttered curse, hears the crunch of boots hurrying to keep up. He crashes through the door, lights still on, and screeches to a halt at the table, counts, one, two, three, four new hexbags, all present and correct, and he darts his eyes around, this way and that, neatly made bed, marine-neat, and Dean's jacket draped on the chair, Jesus, he'll freeze out there, can't see anything. He snatches up the pillow, Bowie, he left it behind, no; bathroom then, and there it is, discarded in the sink, soaking wet now. Sam picks it up with a shaking hand, and his legs give way, and his ass hits the floor with such force his teeth rattle.
"He took it off," he breathes, as a shadow falls across him. "Bobby. He took it off. He doesn't have one of the new ones. She has him. Lilith has him."
The old man flips the toilet seat closed, sits down heavily, and he doesn't say anything.
There's a sound at the door and Sam looks up. Castiel again, and the angel contemplates him for a second before he suddenly lowers himself to the floor and sits opposite him, rests an arm on one raised knee and stares at him. "I believe this is what Dean would refer to as a snafu," he says dryly.
Bobby lets out a choked noise from up on his seat. "Do you have anything worthwhile to say?" he barks. "Anything productive? Anything that might actually help?"
Castiel scrunches up his face, reaches up to tweak at his chin and sighs, and it's so oddly human, so oddly Dean-like that it sends a chill up Sam's spine, and it occurs to him that maybe the angel is becoming more human under his brother's tutelage, that Dean is rubbing off the sharp corners, might even be gradually molding Castiel in his own image. And his mind flips to his brother drunkenly rambling one night that Cas is like T2, man, we just need to take out his CPU and reset it so it isn't read-only… you know, so he can learn!
"I guess that's a no," Bobby finishes.
Castiel glances up at him. "If Dean comes to any harm, then… heads will roll," he says quietly.
Sam thinks about how the angel held his brother's slumped body in the back of the Impala on the drive to the hospital in Wyoming, too drained by Alastair to beam them there, how he crooned words of comfort in Dean's ear; thinks of the way he tensed with alarm and placed his hand over Dean's to soothe him when Sam's anger at his brother kept him from doing the same. And it doesn't fit, the respect, the affection that he sees in Castiel's eyes when Dean tries to outstare him, and the fact the angel is steering his brother straight back to Hell.
"You care about my brother," Sam says. "I can see it in the way you look at him. But still you'd send him up against Lilith with no way to kill her."
Castiel's eyes flicker away from Sam, look down towards the tile floor. "It's necessary," he replies softly. "So I'm told."
"Well, it looks like you got what you wanted," Sam whispers.
"Perhaps not."
Bobby is still gruff. "Meaning what exactly?"
The angel shakes his head. "I sense no demons in this vicinity. I think it's unlikely they would all be… cloaked. As unlikely as it would be for Lilith to be here alone, which leads me to believe-"
"So you don't think it's her?" Bobby cuts in, and Castiel looks up at him again.
"I don't know," he says placidly. "I find myself wondering why Lilith would be here in Duluth, since this city is an…" He pauses briefly, searches for the right words. "Epic fail. Or so I'm told. However, as unlikely it may be, it is possible."
Bobby leans forward, buries his head in his hands and his voice is muffled. "Christ. We're just going round in circles here."
"…And that wasn't a no," the angel continues, as he pushes back up onto his feet.
Bobby's head whips up, and Sam springs upright, fists his hands. "Can you find him?" he grates out.
"It depends," Castiel says.
"Christ," Bobby growls. "Must you be so damned inscrutable?"
"I may be able to find him," the angel says cautiously. "In a manner of speaking."
"What does that mean?" Sam says wearily, and he's so sick of the double talk, because the clock is ticking on his brother, counting down each breath, each heartbeat, and if he listens he can hear Dean screaming inside his head.
"I can find him when he sleeps."
"When he sleeps?" Bobby says, puzzled, and he's wringing his cap between his hands.
Castiel nods. "I can walk in his dreams."
"Like Uriel did…" And Sam falters, blinks hard. "What if he doesn't dream?"
He knows what he's really asking and he knows Castiel does too, and for the first time he sees compassion in the angel's eyes as he regards him, a softer look he usually reserves for Dean.
"He will sleep, Sam. And then he will dream."
"But. If he doesn't. Cas… what if he doesn't?"
And just like that, Castiel is gone.
"I fucking hate it when he does that," Sam breathes.
The cold wakes Dean again, and why the fuck am I still here? his brain asks, righteously pissed off and indignant. "Cas," he croaks. "Cas. 'S'taking so long?"
Flashes of lights in the sky, a rumble, a crash, a distant memory of a petite blonde, the cussin' weather, and Dean is suspended above the abyss, crying for his brother. But it isn't real, not anymore, I got out. Didn't I?
Something hooks him under the arm, rolls him over, and Dean opens his mouth to cry out but he makes no sound as he stares up at her, because he's sliding down into his panic like he's sliding down the deck of the Titanic towards the boiling surf. He's so terrified he doesn't even flinch as she trails a cold finger along his cheek, cups his face.
"You," she murmurs reverently. "I knew I'd find you. I knew I'd get you back."
And Dean bullets straight into the chill Atlantic waters feet first, and sinks into the depths.
A car honks from outside and Bobby peers through the window into the dull gray dawn. "She's here. Don't seem like she's coming in."
Sam downs the rest of his coffee. "She can probably sense Castiel," he mutters as he pulls on his jacket. "It's her version of spraying the corners with Raid."
Bobby snorts. "That just creeps me out," he says irritably. "Don't it creep you out? That they can - smell each other, or whatever it is they do?"
"I haven't really thought about it, Bobby," Sam says tiredly, scrubbing a hand through his hair, but he does now, and suddenly wonders if Castiel can find Dean wherever he is because his brother stinks of the Pit. He shivers, remembers what Dean said about being turned, and for some reason it makes him think of the way his brother teased the skin of his neck with the blade of his knife back in the woods when he was Gabe Bender, how Dean's eyes glowed, but now in his head his brother's eyes are bottomless black, I tortured souls and I liked it, and Sam's gut lurches as he strides to the door, slams through it and breathes in the cold.
He leans back on the wood for a minute, inhales deeply, blows out until he's steady, and she honks again, leans on it until he steps over and folds himself inside.
She doesn't beat around the bush.
"I've turned over every possible demon haunt in this toilet, and no one knows where he is. I'm all out of leads, Sam." He can feel her looking at him. "I'm so sorry."
He chews a thumbnail. "You know her," he chokes out. "What will she do with him?"
She looks away, down, then to the side out of the window and she doesn't answer him.
"Ruby. Will she have done it already?"
She huffs. "Lilith likes to play first."
"Will he-"
"Look, Sam," she says then, harsh, and she raises a hand. "Don't. Don't ask me this. Don't do this to yourself. Just…" She slides a hand over, rests it on his leg. "Keep your eyes on the prize. You're angry, yes? Stoke that rage, Sammy. Use it. Know that whatever happens, we'll get that bitch for what she did. We'll end this. And then we'll work on getting Dean back."
Sam stares ahead, sees the curtain twitch at the motel room window. "What kind of hex do you think she'd use to cloak him?" he mutters. "Isn't there anything we can do to reverse it? Override it?"
Ruby frowns. "Well… I guess if the angel can't find him either, she must be using something similar to what I gave you. That's-"
"A good thing, yes?" Sam jumps in. "You know what's in it? You can cast some sort of spell to cancel it out?"
She stares at him, bites her lower lip. "It isn't that straightforward, Sam," she says gently. "I mean… it's Enochian, old as the hills. I can try to reverse it, but if she's got it planted on him it's going to be pretty difficult to override it from a distance."
"I don't care how hard it is," Sam snaps. "Do it. And I want a list of what's in the bags, so Bobby can get on it too. And the spell." He swallows thickly. "And the flask."
He thinks her eyes might harden, glitter at him for a second. "You know, you do actually have one of the turbo-powered versions, Sam," she snaps. "You could always 'fess up to uncle Bobby and let him check what's in there himself." And then she's looking away, pulling open the glovebox, rummaging. "Here's the flask," she says tightly. "It's fresh from the vein."
Same takes it wordlessly, slips it in his jacket pocket.
"There's no paper," she says.
"Text it to me," he says as he opens the door. "Right now, before you leave. Or email it. And keep looking."
Ruby leans towards him as he straightens. "Hey wait a minute, aren't we going to-"
The thud of the door cuts her off, and walking away feels like escape.
"She's looked everywhere Lilith might be," he says, as he closes the motel room door behind him. "Nothing. She's texting the hexbag ingredients and the spell."
Bobby is pulling the curtain aside again, looking out. "Shame you didn't keep the ones she gave you," he grouses. "If I'd had the chance to figure the damn things out back then, we could've been working on this for the last two hours instead of sitting here cooling our heels waiting to be touched by a fuckin' angel."
And Sam starts, starts to tell Bobby, starts to walk over to his duffel, precious time, but when his phone beeps, it's like salvation, because he doesn't ever want to have that conversation with the old man, the one where he has to tell him in dripping scarlet detail what he and Ruby really do together, that it's way more than the demon-ganking equivalent of shooting bottles off the wall out back, and that he can't risk having the God squad flapping overhead while he does it.
"Okay, got it," he races out as he scans the message. "Let's do this."
Bobby pulls out a chair, pops his computer open. "There's a limit to what I can find out online, Sam," he says quietly. "There might be some people I can email… Ellen, maybe. But this is a longshot."
"Castiel might know something," Sam says as he drops into the chair opposite, cracks his own laptop. "Ruby says she thinks it's Enochian. He knows all that stuff."
"Wherever the hell he is," Bobby mutters. "Let's hope he's looking." He taps at the keyboard for a few minutes. "New wheels," he says absently, as he stares at the screen.
"Huh?"
"New wheels. Different car." He rolls his eyes at Sam's puzzled expression. "Ruby. She traded up, I see. Some poor sap's missing a sweet little Mustang this morning."
Dean comes round to pitch black again, cold again. His head is still throbbing, and he reaches to rub it into submission but his hand jerks back against cold metal. Grass, there was grass, he thinks, and he's confused, and he feels chill air on his face, the cussin' weather, that memory again.
He remembers where his other hand is, hopes it's still attached, doesn't want to play the stumpy game with Alastair again. And he finds his fingers are right where they should be, and he touches his thumb to each of them in turn, all four, who'd have thunk? He taps his hand out across something hard, damp, pooled water just there, concrete? Rock? He aches and jars over every inch of himself, fuckin' whiplash everywhere, and it's like that time his dad's truck got rear-ended and for weeks afterwards his neck split with pain, grinding, creaking pain that had him full sure his head wasn't attached any more, and he walked around ramrod straight in case it fell off his neck and rolled away.
He moves his leg, big fuckin' mistake, bites off a shriek, buries his teeth in his sleeve, and he can feel tears sliding out of his eyes because the pain is like his flesh boiling, sizzling, and dripping down off his bones onto the floor, but he's had worse. "Had worse," he breathes out. "Fuck you, bitch."
"You mind your mouth, boy," her voice hisses back from the blackness, and Dean tenses so rigid he thinks his other three limbs might snap, has to clench his insides tighter than a drum so he doesn't piss himself in terror, bite down on his tongue so he doesn't start begging for mercy before it even starts.
His eyes search the darkness frantically, spy what might be a shadow in the corner, and he summons up what's left of his guts, croaks out, "Where is this?"
She doesn't answer, but he hears the rustle of her clothes, senses her prowling, and right then her breath is in his ear. "My place," she whispers moistly, and her lips tickle Dean's ear so that he shudders. "My place and yours, little angel mine, all special for you because I knew I'd find you one day…"
Dean feels her fingers dance up his chest, feels the tug of the cord at his neck as she runs her fingers over his amulet. "When I saw this I knew it was you," she murmurs, "when all those others weren't you."
"Lilith," he mutters, and he blinks his eyes hard closed as she leans down.
She rains kisses on his eyelids, rubs her cheek on his, teases his bottom lip between her teeth, and he squeaks as she bites down, and he tastes blood. "I can be anyone you want me to be," she says. "I waited for you, and I searched for you for years, and I can be anyone you want me to be…"
There's something not right, not logical in that, Dean thinks, and he dares to creep his hand between them as she grinds against him, and he pushes gently, says, "I… don't… want to."
Her hands roam up and down, and they rub, and press, and squeeze, and her voice is like silk. "You never wanted to then either, boy, but he took what he wanted and now it's my turn." She licks a wet stripe up his cheek. "I'm going to make you scream," she purrs throatily. "I'm going to do things to you that you never even heard of."
Dean pushes harder, more insistently, until she draws back and he hears the whistle of her hand slicing through the air. His head rings when she hits him. Hell's fuckin' bells, he thinks dazedly, and through the fog her voice is like a razor.
"I can get my buddy Al in here to teach you some manners if you don't behave, boy…"
It resounds in Dean's head like the crack of a rifle, panic, Alastair, fright, Alastair, dread, Alastair. It's a crescendo, the thunderous rumble of hooves hitting the ground, stampede, steers, mustangs, antelope, buffalo, caribou, fuckin' dinosaurs, in his brain. They pounding across the plateau of his sanity, throwing up dust, and whooping redskins race their painted ponies along in back of it all, waving tomahawks, and they run any residual rational thought off the cliff to its death and then they skin it and live off it all winter long.
Dean turns his face to the side and stares into the dark while she works on him, and he accepts Jesus Christ as his savior in his head, again and again, but he isn't redeemed.
Next
It turns out everything Sam ever saw on TV cop shows about stakeouts is true: the room is a garbage dump of discarded takeout boxes, coffee cups with cigarette butts floating in brackish dregs, half-eaten donuts.
He flashes his fake badge for effect, grimaces. "Don't you ever clean up?" he asks the big guy, Coop, Kathleen said, as he pulls on his coat and lights up another cancer stick.
"I leave it to her," the man snarks, jerking his head over to where Hudak is using her foot to clear space for two more chairs in front of the window. "On account of she's the female."
Hudak pulls a face. "I just leave it," she says. "On account of the fact that being female doesn't equate to being the maid. Remind me how many ex-wives you have, Coop?"
The big man laughs as he leaves, points over at a box on the table. "Fresh donuts," he says. "Coffee's on the go too. Don't say I never did nothing for you, Katie."
Sam wrinkles his nose, breaches the strewn trash on his way over to the window to gaze out at a row of nondescript storefronts and a chunk of scrubland that might be a park or might be waste ground. "So what are we looking at?"
Hudak points. "Just over there is where we found the latest victim, on that patch of ground under the tree, so you can see it's pretty well sheltered from the road. The alleyway," she points in the opposite direction, "is just over there."
There's a soft knock at the door and she crosses to open it. "We were hoping one of the hookers might have seen who dumped Garner, but zip," she continues, as Bobby skulks in.
Sam catches sight of a couple of women hovering at the top of the alley, and he shakes his head. "How do they do it?" he murmurs. "Sell themselves for money?"
Hudak shrugs. "They need to eat," she says simply.
It flips Sam to his brother, half-cut and slumped on his butt behind the bar in Hibbing, to Dean's broken confession, I was too young to hustle pool, and he breathes out past a sudden wave of nausea.
"I don't think they see it as sex per se," Hudak is saying. "They see it as a profession."
Bobby starts clattering cups around on the table, pouring coffee. "The oldest profession," he remarks, neutral, as he moves over to stand next to them. "How likely is it really that this guy's going to show up here again?"
"I don't know," Hudak says. "Coop has this theory that it's one of these sadist types who likes to take trophies and show up at the scene of the crime to relive it. That's what the profilers reckon too."
"But this isn't the scene of the crime," Sam points out.
"Definitely not," she says. "Just the dump. But the profile says the place could still have meaning for him, so it's worth a shot. We've got people on the other dumps too. If he's here and he sees Dean hovering, well. We could strike lucky."
Bobby sniggers as he settles in a chair. "If he tries anything on Dean, he'll be missing limbs," he retorts. "Kid's lethal. It'll be rough fuckin' justice, that's for sure."
Sam glances at his wristwatch. "He'll be here any minute," he says. "He's going to hover, see what happens, maybe it won't be too-"
"Where is your brother?"
It's tense, loaded, panicked almost, the words uttered in almost the same instant as the breeze and the eerie wafting, flapping sound of wings beating have Sam whirling around.
"Where is your brother?" Castiel repeats, and now it's edgy, hard, intense, it's weak knees as the angel's eyes blaze beams of bluish fire at Sam, and now it's louder too, now it's the power to smite. "I have lost him. Something is wrong. Where is your brother, Sam?"
Sam flaps his jaw uselessly for a second, bleats, "But you can track him," even as Hudak snatches her car keys up off the table and throws them to Bobby.
"EconoLodge, it's on Arlington," the old man barks as he strides to the door through the airspace the angel vacated the minute he heard Bobby's words. "Sam. Move it."
Alastair murmurs words of love, soft and tender, in Dean's ears, tells him about his favorite game, snap, crackle and pop, Dean, and Dean stares, and weeps, and whimpers along to the dry snap of bone, the crackle of compound fractures, jagged bone ends moving and shifting as his master twists his limbs, the dull, sickly pop of joints ripped from their moorings, I'll grind your bones to make my bread, sweet child of mine. And Dean learns well, and he leans and murmurs the same words of love, soft and tender, in their ears, the damned, his death's work, the leg bone's connected to the knee bone, knee bone's connected to the thigh bone, thigh bone's connected to the back bone, back bone's connected to the neck bone, neck bone's connected to the head bone-
-The cold wakes Dean, and he's fisting handfuls of damp grass and biting into the ground because he hurts so bad and he can't draw breath to scream. His legs are in water, icy, soaking his clothes up as far as his ribs. It's pitch-black, quiet, no, not quiet, because his head throbs so violently he can hear it pulse. He can feel his brain inside his skull, as if his gray matter grew hands and is hammering on the bone, hammering to be let out of there, and now it's taking a few steps back and launching itself, hurling itself against the thin shell that imprisons it, and Dean knows it's only a matter of time before it occurs to his neurons that they need to team up, chop down a tree and use it as a battering ram, the Battle of Helm's Deep going on inside his cranium, until they smash through the bone and spill out onto the soil to freedom.
S'nothin'… had worse…
He tries to piece together what happened and it all comes down to black eyes looking down at him from… Lilith's latest meatsuit? Hidden in shadows as she hooked her foot under him and sent him rolling off the verge and into the ditch, but she didn't take him. He ponders it for a minute through the haze of pain, and thinks it must mean he isn't as important as Cas thinks, or that maybe it's already over, the last seal dust in the wind and the earth cracking open for the world to fall into Hell.
Need help. Godhurtshurts. Cas. Now. Need you right the fuck now.
He digs his fingers into the soil, and it's a horrifying reminder of digging his way up to the light. Dean chokes out a whimper, savors the tendrils of pain that trail up and around him, uses it, braces against it, it's something to fight, it's a target, something he understands, has intimate knowledge of. And he starts to pull himself up to the top, cries out his agony into the dirt as his muscles shriek in protest and his bones grate, because something is very wrong with his leg.
"Motherfuckin'," he groans out into the grass, tasting it wet on his tongue. He sucks up the moisture and thinks idiotically that a good dose of pesticide is just what he needs to get this finished and done right the fuck soon. "Someone help me," he whimpers, and he can't help it, wants to scream it through his cheese grater throat, but it's weak, he can barely hear himself. "Cas. Please help me."
It's enough, he knows, enough for Castiel to hear him, wherever he is. And he hears a voice, someone calling him, Dean… answer me if you can, Dean I'm here. It's soaring high on the wind and almost carried away into the purple sky, but Dean knows the voice, trusts it implicitly because it cut through the horror, and the screaming, and the blood, and the suffering down there; it was comfort, and solace, and love, and salvation, and the light was clean and pure in the squalor.
He forces his own voice to respond and whispers out as his face falls onto his arm. "Cas. M'here. Ditch…"
Soon he'll be lifted and carried into the warm and dry, and Cas will stare at him like he matters, and Sam will make nice with the puppy-dog eyes like old times, and Dean will be fussed over until he wants to hit out in frustration. He closes his eyes, thinks of his bed, but his leg, broken maybe, is saying, fuck bed, I need some traction action, asswad, and every little splinter and shard of shattered bone is getting itself organized, front row kneeling down, back row standing, and they have their bows at the ready and they reach up and over their shoulders and grab arrows from nifty little Robin Hood quivers. They send the arrows up into the sky and they hang in the air like silver raindrops before they fall straight down, dead on target into Dean's brain because the neurons split up and a whole bunch of them are lying down in rows that spell out pain centers here!, and everything explodes in showers of bright red, orange and yellow sparks. Like firecrackers on the fourth of July, he thinks deliriously, and he sighs out and falls into the lights.
Hudak's truck rattles, they're screeching along at take-off speed and taking corners on two wheels, and Sam has the door open, falls out onto the road before Bobby skids to a halt a few yards away from the Impala. Her headlamps are at full-beam, her door is wide open, and Sam in there instantly, looking for signs, blood, clues, blood, evidence of a struggle, blood, but there's nothing save for a quart of Jack tossed carelessly in the footwell.
"He isn't here."
Sam shoots up, cracks his skull on the doorframe as his gaze falls on Castiel. Raindrops are spotting his coat and listening on his hair, and he's as calm, as serene as ever on the surface, but something is humming under the impassive exterior, something like simmering energy, or maybe panic. It scares Sam even more, and he wonders if he can sense it because of what Ruby said, because it's cowboys and indians, Bloods and Crips, because it's an enmity so ancient it's part of their make-up, the boy with demon blood and the angel of the Lord mixing like oil and water.
Sam swallows dryly, gasps, "Where is he? How can you lose him? Aren't you connected?"
"We are," Castiel replies, and then he considers and rephrases. "We were. He's no longer here."
Bobby looms up, brandishing something. "His phone," he says. "And we can see he's no longer here. Where the fuck is he?"
Castiel stares at them both blankly for a second, drifts away, comes back, and his voice is clipped, brisk. "You misunderstand me. I don't mean that he's no longer here. I mean that he's no longer here."
"Fuckin' riddles," Bobby snaps. "Stop talking in fuckin' riddles, man. Track him down, I thought you could-"
The angel takes a step forward and his eyes flare. "He is gone," he enunciates clearly, patiently, but with an edge of acid in his voice that keeps prickling Sam's senses, and he sees Bobby swallow as Castiel continues. "Gone, from this place and from this plane." He raises his eyebrow at the older man. "Capische?"
Sam reels, plants his hand down on the hood of the car, feels cold sweat drip down his back. "Are you saying my brother is dead?"
Castiel's pause seems endless, seems like the stillness of eternity, and when he finally answers, his voice has lost its edge, it's quiet, almost unsure, hesitant. "I would know if that had happened. I would… know."
Sam whirls around again. "So he's alive?"
The angel throws up a hand. "I don't know."
"Well, what the fuck do you know?" Bobby cuts in, his annoyance fueling his bravado again. "Come on. Is he alive or not?"
"We are connected," Castiel says slowly, like he's piecing it together, joining up the dots for himself as well as for them. "But the thread has been snapped. I can't say if he's alive. But I'm certain I would know if he were dead." And then he jerks his head sharply to the left, looks into the trees lining the side of the road for a few seconds. When he looks back it's like something has dawned in his eyes, they're shining with something, Sam thinks, and in the same breath he identifies it as relief, maybe even joy.
"I believe Dean may be flying below radar."
And in amid his own sickly relief, the hot liquid pricking his eyes, Sam knows, just knows, and he starts stumbling away from them, towards the motel. He hears Bobby's muttered curse, hears the crunch of boots hurrying to keep up. He crashes through the door, lights still on, and screeches to a halt at the table, counts, one, two, three, four new hexbags, all present and correct, and he darts his eyes around, this way and that, neatly made bed, marine-neat, and Dean's jacket draped on the chair, Jesus, he'll freeze out there, can't see anything. He snatches up the pillow, Bowie, he left it behind, no; bathroom then, and there it is, discarded in the sink, soaking wet now. Sam picks it up with a shaking hand, and his legs give way, and his ass hits the floor with such force his teeth rattle.
"He took it off," he breathes, as a shadow falls across him. "Bobby. He took it off. He doesn't have one of the new ones. She has him. Lilith has him."
The old man flips the toilet seat closed, sits down heavily, and he doesn't say anything.
There's a sound at the door and Sam looks up. Castiel again, and the angel contemplates him for a second before he suddenly lowers himself to the floor and sits opposite him, rests an arm on one raised knee and stares at him. "I believe this is what Dean would refer to as a snafu," he says dryly.
Bobby lets out a choked noise from up on his seat. "Do you have anything worthwhile to say?" he barks. "Anything productive? Anything that might actually help?"
Castiel scrunches up his face, reaches up to tweak at his chin and sighs, and it's so oddly human, so oddly Dean-like that it sends a chill up Sam's spine, and it occurs to him that maybe the angel is becoming more human under his brother's tutelage, that Dean is rubbing off the sharp corners, might even be gradually molding Castiel in his own image. And his mind flips to his brother drunkenly rambling one night that Cas is like T2, man, we just need to take out his CPU and reset it so it isn't read-only… you know, so he can learn!
"I guess that's a no," Bobby finishes.
Castiel glances up at him. "If Dean comes to any harm, then… heads will roll," he says quietly.
Sam thinks about how the angel held his brother's slumped body in the back of the Impala on the drive to the hospital in Wyoming, too drained by Alastair to beam them there, how he crooned words of comfort in Dean's ear; thinks of the way he tensed with alarm and placed his hand over Dean's to soothe him when Sam's anger at his brother kept him from doing the same. And it doesn't fit, the respect, the affection that he sees in Castiel's eyes when Dean tries to outstare him, and the fact the angel is steering his brother straight back to Hell.
"You care about my brother," Sam says. "I can see it in the way you look at him. But still you'd send him up against Lilith with no way to kill her."
Castiel's eyes flicker away from Sam, look down towards the tile floor. "It's necessary," he replies softly. "So I'm told."
"Well, it looks like you got what you wanted," Sam whispers.
"Perhaps not."
Bobby is still gruff. "Meaning what exactly?"
The angel shakes his head. "I sense no demons in this vicinity. I think it's unlikely they would all be… cloaked. As unlikely as it would be for Lilith to be here alone, which leads me to believe-"
"So you don't think it's her?" Bobby cuts in, and Castiel looks up at him again.
"I don't know," he says placidly. "I find myself wondering why Lilith would be here in Duluth, since this city is an…" He pauses briefly, searches for the right words. "Epic fail. Or so I'm told. However, as unlikely it may be, it is possible."
Bobby leans forward, buries his head in his hands and his voice is muffled. "Christ. We're just going round in circles here."
"…And that wasn't a no," the angel continues, as he pushes back up onto his feet.
Bobby's head whips up, and Sam springs upright, fists his hands. "Can you find him?" he grates out.
"It depends," Castiel says.
"Christ," Bobby growls. "Must you be so damned inscrutable?"
"I may be able to find him," the angel says cautiously. "In a manner of speaking."
"What does that mean?" Sam says wearily, and he's so sick of the double talk, because the clock is ticking on his brother, counting down each breath, each heartbeat, and if he listens he can hear Dean screaming inside his head.
"I can find him when he sleeps."
"When he sleeps?" Bobby says, puzzled, and he's wringing his cap between his hands.
Castiel nods. "I can walk in his dreams."
"Like Uriel did…" And Sam falters, blinks hard. "What if he doesn't dream?"
He knows what he's really asking and he knows Castiel does too, and for the first time he sees compassion in the angel's eyes as he regards him, a softer look he usually reserves for Dean.
"He will sleep, Sam. And then he will dream."
"But. If he doesn't. Cas… what if he doesn't?"
And just like that, Castiel is gone.
"I fucking hate it when he does that," Sam breathes.
The cold wakes Dean again, and why the fuck am I still here? his brain asks, righteously pissed off and indignant. "Cas," he croaks. "Cas. 'S'taking so long?"
Flashes of lights in the sky, a rumble, a crash, a distant memory of a petite blonde, the cussin' weather, and Dean is suspended above the abyss, crying for his brother. But it isn't real, not anymore, I got out. Didn't I?
Something hooks him under the arm, rolls him over, and Dean opens his mouth to cry out but he makes no sound as he stares up at her, because he's sliding down into his panic like he's sliding down the deck of the Titanic towards the boiling surf. He's so terrified he doesn't even flinch as she trails a cold finger along his cheek, cups his face.
"You," she murmurs reverently. "I knew I'd find you. I knew I'd get you back."
And Dean bullets straight into the chill Atlantic waters feet first, and sinks into the depths.
A car honks from outside and Bobby peers through the window into the dull gray dawn. "She's here. Don't seem like she's coming in."
Sam downs the rest of his coffee. "She can probably sense Castiel," he mutters as he pulls on his jacket. "It's her version of spraying the corners with Raid."
Bobby snorts. "That just creeps me out," he says irritably. "Don't it creep you out? That they can - smell each other, or whatever it is they do?"
"I haven't really thought about it, Bobby," Sam says tiredly, scrubbing a hand through his hair, but he does now, and suddenly wonders if Castiel can find Dean wherever he is because his brother stinks of the Pit. He shivers, remembers what Dean said about being turned, and for some reason it makes him think of the way his brother teased the skin of his neck with the blade of his knife back in the woods when he was Gabe Bender, how Dean's eyes glowed, but now in his head his brother's eyes are bottomless black, I tortured souls and I liked it, and Sam's gut lurches as he strides to the door, slams through it and breathes in the cold.
He leans back on the wood for a minute, inhales deeply, blows out until he's steady, and she honks again, leans on it until he steps over and folds himself inside.
She doesn't beat around the bush.
"I've turned over every possible demon haunt in this toilet, and no one knows where he is. I'm all out of leads, Sam." He can feel her looking at him. "I'm so sorry."
He chews a thumbnail. "You know her," he chokes out. "What will she do with him?"
She looks away, down, then to the side out of the window and she doesn't answer him.
"Ruby. Will she have done it already?"
She huffs. "Lilith likes to play first."
"Will he-"
"Look, Sam," she says then, harsh, and she raises a hand. "Don't. Don't ask me this. Don't do this to yourself. Just…" She slides a hand over, rests it on his leg. "Keep your eyes on the prize. You're angry, yes? Stoke that rage, Sammy. Use it. Know that whatever happens, we'll get that bitch for what she did. We'll end this. And then we'll work on getting Dean back."
Sam stares ahead, sees the curtain twitch at the motel room window. "What kind of hex do you think she'd use to cloak him?" he mutters. "Isn't there anything we can do to reverse it? Override it?"
Ruby frowns. "Well… I guess if the angel can't find him either, she must be using something similar to what I gave you. That's-"
"A good thing, yes?" Sam jumps in. "You know what's in it? You can cast some sort of spell to cancel it out?"
She stares at him, bites her lower lip. "It isn't that straightforward, Sam," she says gently. "I mean… it's Enochian, old as the hills. I can try to reverse it, but if she's got it planted on him it's going to be pretty difficult to override it from a distance."
"I don't care how hard it is," Sam snaps. "Do it. And I want a list of what's in the bags, so Bobby can get on it too. And the spell." He swallows thickly. "And the flask."
He thinks her eyes might harden, glitter at him for a second. "You know, you do actually have one of the turbo-powered versions, Sam," she snaps. "You could always 'fess up to uncle Bobby and let him check what's in there himself." And then she's looking away, pulling open the glovebox, rummaging. "Here's the flask," she says tightly. "It's fresh from the vein."
Same takes it wordlessly, slips it in his jacket pocket.
"There's no paper," she says.
"Text it to me," he says as he opens the door. "Right now, before you leave. Or email it. And keep looking."
Ruby leans towards him as he straightens. "Hey wait a minute, aren't we going to-"
The thud of the door cuts her off, and walking away feels like escape.
"She's looked everywhere Lilith might be," he says, as he closes the motel room door behind him. "Nothing. She's texting the hexbag ingredients and the spell."
Bobby is pulling the curtain aside again, looking out. "Shame you didn't keep the ones she gave you," he grouses. "If I'd had the chance to figure the damn things out back then, we could've been working on this for the last two hours instead of sitting here cooling our heels waiting to be touched by a fuckin' angel."
And Sam starts, starts to tell Bobby, starts to walk over to his duffel, precious time, but when his phone beeps, it's like salvation, because he doesn't ever want to have that conversation with the old man, the one where he has to tell him in dripping scarlet detail what he and Ruby really do together, that it's way more than the demon-ganking equivalent of shooting bottles off the wall out back, and that he can't risk having the God squad flapping overhead while he does it.
"Okay, got it," he races out as he scans the message. "Let's do this."
Bobby pulls out a chair, pops his computer open. "There's a limit to what I can find out online, Sam," he says quietly. "There might be some people I can email… Ellen, maybe. But this is a longshot."
"Castiel might know something," Sam says as he drops into the chair opposite, cracks his own laptop. "Ruby says she thinks it's Enochian. He knows all that stuff."
"Wherever the hell he is," Bobby mutters. "Let's hope he's looking." He taps at the keyboard for a few minutes. "New wheels," he says absently, as he stares at the screen.
"Huh?"
"New wheels. Different car." He rolls his eyes at Sam's puzzled expression. "Ruby. She traded up, I see. Some poor sap's missing a sweet little Mustang this morning."
Dean comes round to pitch black again, cold again. His head is still throbbing, and he reaches to rub it into submission but his hand jerks back against cold metal. Grass, there was grass, he thinks, and he's confused, and he feels chill air on his face, the cussin' weather, that memory again.
He remembers where his other hand is, hopes it's still attached, doesn't want to play the stumpy game with Alastair again. And he finds his fingers are right where they should be, and he touches his thumb to each of them in turn, all four, who'd have thunk? He taps his hand out across something hard, damp, pooled water just there, concrete? Rock? He aches and jars over every inch of himself, fuckin' whiplash everywhere, and it's like that time his dad's truck got rear-ended and for weeks afterwards his neck split with pain, grinding, creaking pain that had him full sure his head wasn't attached any more, and he walked around ramrod straight in case it fell off his neck and rolled away.
He moves his leg, big fuckin' mistake, bites off a shriek, buries his teeth in his sleeve, and he can feel tears sliding out of his eyes because the pain is like his flesh boiling, sizzling, and dripping down off his bones onto the floor, but he's had worse. "Had worse," he breathes out. "Fuck you, bitch."
"You mind your mouth, boy," her voice hisses back from the blackness, and Dean tenses so rigid he thinks his other three limbs might snap, has to clench his insides tighter than a drum so he doesn't piss himself in terror, bite down on his tongue so he doesn't start begging for mercy before it even starts.
His eyes search the darkness frantically, spy what might be a shadow in the corner, and he summons up what's left of his guts, croaks out, "Where is this?"
She doesn't answer, but he hears the rustle of her clothes, senses her prowling, and right then her breath is in his ear. "My place," she whispers moistly, and her lips tickle Dean's ear so that he shudders. "My place and yours, little angel mine, all special for you because I knew I'd find you one day…"
Dean feels her fingers dance up his chest, feels the tug of the cord at his neck as she runs her fingers over his amulet. "When I saw this I knew it was you," she murmurs, "when all those others weren't you."
"Lilith," he mutters, and he blinks his eyes hard closed as she leans down.
She rains kisses on his eyelids, rubs her cheek on his, teases his bottom lip between her teeth, and he squeaks as she bites down, and he tastes blood. "I can be anyone you want me to be," she says. "I waited for you, and I searched for you for years, and I can be anyone you want me to be…"
There's something not right, not logical in that, Dean thinks, and he dares to creep his hand between them as she grinds against him, and he pushes gently, says, "I… don't… want to."
Her hands roam up and down, and they rub, and press, and squeeze, and her voice is like silk. "You never wanted to then either, boy, but he took what he wanted and now it's my turn." She licks a wet stripe up his cheek. "I'm going to make you scream," she purrs throatily. "I'm going to do things to you that you never even heard of."
Dean pushes harder, more insistently, until she draws back and he hears the whistle of her hand slicing through the air. His head rings when she hits him. Hell's fuckin' bells, he thinks dazedly, and through the fog her voice is like a razor.
"I can get my buddy Al in here to teach you some manners if you don't behave, boy…"
It resounds in Dean's head like the crack of a rifle, panic, Alastair, fright, Alastair, dread, Alastair. It's a crescendo, the thunderous rumble of hooves hitting the ground, stampede, steers, mustangs, antelope, buffalo, caribou, fuckin' dinosaurs, in his brain. They pounding across the plateau of his sanity, throwing up dust, and whooping redskins race their painted ponies along in back of it all, waving tomahawks, and they run any residual rational thought off the cliff to its death and then they skin it and live off it all winter long.
Dean turns his face to the side and stares into the dark while she works on him, and he accepts Jesus Christ as his savior in his head, again and again, but he isn't redeemed.
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