One Night
Well you do what you do and you pay for your sins, and there's no such thing as what might have been, that's a waste of time, it'll drive you out of your mind.
- Tim McGraw
2007. Miller's Landing, North Dakota.
I leaned back against the hard end of the queen bed in the almost-black room and wondered again if I'd been right to call them here. They were both on Hell's most wanted list, had been for over a year now, if not longer, and this plan that Dean had asked for help on was almost guaranteed to put them further into the spotlight.
I'd met them last year, another demon case in Nebraska. I guess it had been lucky that I'd been there, because back then neither had really known how well-known they were to the hellspawn. Luck or not, we seemed to be following the same trail, at least some of the time. I'd seen them twice times in the last couple of months, once when I had some information to pass onto them, the last time we'd been in the same city on two different cases and had run into each other.
"Question?"
Dean's voice was low. Glancing at him from the end of the other bed, I could just make out his profile in the darkness of the room, outlined by the light of the motel's white neon sign, filtered through the thin curtains behind him.
"Mmm-hmm?"
"How'd you find out about this?" He turned his head a little toward me.
"A friend of mine in Florida is what you might call a world-class geek. He's been running some data for me for the last couple of years and when it comes up with a red flag he calls." It wasn't much of an answer, I knew, but it was all I could give him. The one thing you learn very quickly in this life is that anyone can be gotten to and the less they know, the better it is for everyone.
Ray had called four days ago, his voice squeaking with excitement. We'd devised the search and steal program three years ago, after I'd realised with the benefit of twenty-twenty hindsight, that a string of demon visitations across the southern states had been perfectly forewarned. There are some things that change when demons walk among us, some things that happen in the natural world that warn of their coming. I hadn't known it beforehand, and I'd been one step behind the demon the whole time, but when I'd sat down afterwards and gone back through the events of that year, I'd realised that the signs were there, just not very noticeable. Ray had been involved in the last attack, and when he'd gotten out of the hospital I'd gone to see him. He's a self-taught programmer, system architect and hacker and he has a brilliant mind, possibly the most agile and intelligent that I knew. And he'd wanted vengeance. Not the sort that involved face-to-face encounters, he knew he wasn't cut out for that, but the kind where he could really do some damage by pinpointing locations before it was too late. It had taken eight months to get the bugs out, but what he had set up now was well worth it.
"Uh huh. So this friend can foretell when and where a demon is going to appear?"
The scepticism in his voice was bordering on sarcasm and I smiled slightly. Dean likes things he can see with his own two eyes, touch, prove beyond a doubt. He's very straightforward and it was one of the things that made working with him a pleasure. It was also one of the things that made working with him a nightmare.
"Pretty much." I frowned as a memory of something Sam had told me rose. "Didn't your dad do the same thing? Sam said something about Ash putting together an alert system for you?"
His exhale was noisy in the darkness. "Yeah, kind of. No signs yet."
The veneer of cocky confidence had vanished and resignation and something else filled his voice. Something that was hurting him, inside.
A low buzz sounded from his direction and he pulled out his phone.
"Yeah." He turned his head toward me and I realised it was Sam, calling from the other motel, at the northern end of the town. "No, haven't seen anything here. Hang on, Sam."
"They just saw the demons smoke out and head west." He looked at me questioningly.
I thought about that. "Tell him we'll hold our positions till morning."
He nodded. "Sam, you get that? We'll hold till morning. See if they come back … yeah. Okay."
"You don't think they've bailed?" He closed the phone, tucking it back into his pocket. I shook my head.
"They came here for a reason; I don't think it was just a meeting point. They could have met up a lot closer to the gate." I stood up and stretched, glancing at my watch then looking down at him. "You want to get some sleep? I'll watch for a couple of hours."
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm good. What about you?"
"I'm okay. Thirsty though." I turned away and went to my bag, pulling out a bottle. The kitchenette had glasses and I poured a couple of shots, carrying the glasses back and handing one to him, then returned to my spot on the floor.
The whiskey was smooth and warming and for a few minutes we drank in silence, thinking our own thoughts. I'm not much for talking for the sake of talking. I don't mind silence and I'm happy to let it grow. The man sitting a few feet away, his back against the other bed, was the same, I thought, tipping my head back against the edge of the mattress.
As a group, hunters are probably more secretive than spies. We have secrets we'll take to the grave rather than share with anyone else. We have more than our fair share of shame and guilt and pain in our lives that have shaped us to the people we are. It's rare to find a hunter who doesn't have something dark in their past, something in shades of midnight and indigo that will be buried as deep as can be, but will nonetheless surface in dreams and breakdowns and psychotic behaviour somewhere down the line.
It's one thing to face monsters and things of darkness and evil and destroy them. It's another thing to see the monster when you look in the mirror in the morning, see the stains on the soul. And while I'm not a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, he was right on the money when he said when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
It's one of the pitfalls of the life that those … flaws, those cracks and holes and divots in our psyches often create worse monsters than those we're hunting. The human mind is a miraculous thing, really. A self-aware, self-regulating super-computer that can create work of angelic innocence or the nadir of evil through the power of the imagination. Without it, we would be another species of animal, foraging and hunting, uninterested in anything more than food, reproduction and not being eaten by something more efficient on the food chain. Of course, there are plenty of people who fit that description as well, but every human being has the potential for so much more.
"Ellie?"
I opened my eyes and looked around at him. His voice was very low again, husky and uncertain.
"Yeah?"
"How many people have you lost to this life?"
"You mean people I couldn't save, or people I've known who've died?" I wondered where this was leading.
"Either. Both." His sigh came out of the dark.
"Four people I couldn't save." My voice was steady, nothing in it to show the feelings that his question had raised. "Three who I knew and cared about."
He was silent for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was little more than a whisper.
"You ever have anyone die for you?"
That wasn't as surprising a question as it might seem. Sam had told me that their father had made a deal with a demon to save Dean's life, a deal that had cost his father his soul. So I knew what Dean was trying to deal with. Still, I hesitated.
I try hard not to revisit the past, try not to look at the pain and blood and tears once the job is finished. I didn't want to revisit the memories now, but I found that I couldn't lie to him, couldn't hide them away and pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about.
"Yes."
The word dropped into the waiting silence and I heard a slow whistling noise, as he let out the breath he'd been holding. He was waiting for me to tell him, and I tipped my glass up, swallowing a mouthful as I wondered where to start.
"You know I had a partner," I said. He made a noise in his throat that I guessed was assent. "He was thirty-two when we met, I was seventeen."
My voice wasn't steady any more and I took a deep breath, hating the tremor in it, the way it betrayed what I was feeling, what I was thinking. "We hunted for two years together. He taught me a lot."
Michael. Michael Furente. He had taught me a lot. He'd been as bent as the rest of us, hurt … inside … from his past, more than most, but he was strong too. And he knew what he was doing, knew things that books and myth couldn't teach, knew them on an instinctual level, as if he'd done the job in a past life … or lives. He'd taught me about protection and defences, about weapons and vulnerabilities and tactics. He'd taught me how to keep my mind clear and focussed, how to husband my strength and energy, not waste it with nervous speculation and worry and fear.
"We were hunting a demon, in Idaho. It had come out of the Bear River gate, where the Shoshone were massacred in 1863."
I took another swallow from my glass, pushing away the details of the memories that rose as I spoke – what had happened, why it had happened, what I'd done.
"The demon got me. Possessed me. Michael trapped it, tried to exorcise it, but what it wanted was him. I was just the bait. Neither of us knew it, though we both should have. The way it showed up, the things that it did, all of it was designed to be a trap for him. And it worked. He offered himself in exchange for me, and the demon took him." I rubbed the heel of my hand over my forehead, wishing I could rub out that memory, that bit of my past. I'd spent a long time wondering, if we'd known, if I'd known that it was a trap for him could we have done things differently, would I have done things differently? Like most questions that come with hindsight, it remains unanswered.
"I woke up four hours later, with a pounding headache and a few cuts and bruises and found his body next to me." The demon had known exactly how to extract the most pain from Michael while it was still in me, but those were memories I shared with no one and never would.
I looked at my glass, not really surprised to find it empty. I refilled it, and resisted the impulse to drink it down quickly and refill it again. Alcohol has more potent effects that simply removing inhibitions and concentration. Being drunk leaves the armour of the mind open to all comers. Of everything I'd learned while I'd hunted with Michael, it had been the most painful lesson. It had been how that demon had managed to breach my defences.
The silence that followed was full of emotion, at least it felt that way to me. Things neither of us could ever say out loud. I couldn't make it right, not that, no matter how many demons I sent back or how many monsters I killed.
Dean was looking straight at me and his face was completely in shadow, the light behind him. I couldn't see his expression or his eyes, but his voice was higher than usual, rougher, cracking around the edges. "How did you … how do you live with that?"
I leaned my head back on the bed and closed my eyes. "Not very well. But there was nothing I could do about it, it was his choice."
I'd raged against that decision. Because it was my fault that he'd had to make it. The thing was … Michael had been condemned to Hell, years before. He'd tried to commit suicide as a teenager, and he'd had one foot in the flames, clinically dead, when a paramedic had pulled him back. Apparently the demon who'd almost had him then didn't like being thwarted. He'd promised that he would see him one day. And I knew that, I knew that it wanted him, and I'd made it easy for it to get him.
Over the time we were together, Michael had told me of his visions of Hell. Told me he could cross over at will, using a variety of mediums, although water was always the best. It was how and why he'd started hunting. It was how I found out that Hell was a location, present between three planes of reality, and the nexus of many dimensions. Like Heaven.
"Was he, uh … were you … together?" he sounded uncomfortable asking and I wondered why he had.
"Yeah." It didn't make it worse or better. He'd been my friend and the pain was just as deep.
"I'm sorry."
I sighed, and shook my head. "Everyone makes mistakes. Some just cost more than others."
In the dimness of the room, I saw him turn his head away, looking toward the windows. I wondered which of his mistakes he was thinking of, or if he was thinking of the mistakes of others.
When I'd met him, he'd been trying to tough it out, hold everything down, keep it inside. The last time I'd spoken to his brother, Sam had told me that there'd been more than just his father's death that had been tormenting Dean.
"Is that why you hunt on your own?" he asked several minutes later, clearing his throat as he heard the roughness in it. I could feel his curiosity. There are only a few hunters who habitually work alone. The attrition rate is high.
I thought about it. It was, of course. But it wasn't the only reason. It's not easy finding someone to trust like that, someone simpatico who can mesh with the way you work, be teacher, confidant, friend … become a partner, not a hindrance.
"That's some of it." I straightened up a little against the bed, and I supposed that some of my reluctance to talk about it must have been in my voice, because he didn't ask anything else.
The silence stretched out, full of all the things we were thinking and neither of us said.
At one o'clock the motel sign in the car park went off. Guess they didn't care if they missed out on potential customers through the night. The room was much darker without it, only the dimmest outlines could be seen. I heard a long, indrawn breath. Then the soft scrape of denim over the cheap, synthetic carpet. I reached out to move the bottle and my glass from his path as he got closer. He found the edge of the bed, and I felt the mattress dip a little behind me as he rested his hand on it.
"Bottle still there?"
"Give me your glass." I reached up, and ran my hand lightly along his forearm to his hand, taking the glass and pouring out a couple of inches mostly by feel and sound.
He dropped to the floor beside me, his shoulder against mine, and finding his hand was easier. I let go of the glass as I felt his fingers curl around it. I shouldn't have put so much in because he tossed it back like a shot. He wasn't making a sound but he was trembling, I could feel it through the bed we were both leaning against, through the heavy muscle that pressed against my shoulder.
He wanted to talk. But he couldn't. I knew that feeling, the words struggling deep in the chest but the throat shut tight and all the wishing in the world wouldn't open it, wouldn't let those words out where their pain might be lessened, the impact softened.
I could've pushed him. Could have asked him about himself, given him the opening to get it out. I don't think it would've taken much, right then. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't. Or maybe I knew why, maybe I just couldn't admit to it.
At Ellen's place, when he'd introduced himself, I'd remembered his eyes. That jolt of memory had been a shock. It was the only fragment to have returned from the time in Spokane.
Wrapped around that piece of memory, there'd been a seething mass of emotion that had hit like a freight train, uncontrollably and for the most part, inexplicably, since I couldn't remember the circumstances; pain and terror and horror that I hadn't been ready to deal with, or even known how to deal with.
I'd known for awhile that something was coming, faster than I could've believed possible. Every hunter I knew, had contact with, said the same thing … there were more and more demons walking on this plane now than had been seen since practically biblical times. That meant gates were being opened. It meant that somewhere down in the pit, there was a plan, a strategy. And that was a worry because demonkind has never been big on strategy. They're opportunists, they look for openings, they don't create them.
In the last few months, I'd caught up with people, friends and acquaintances, in London and Los Angeles. The information had been the same from both cities. Hell was stirring and in the middle of the mostly garbled information that had been known was the Winchesters. I was pretty sure that neither of them knew what it was, or why they were there, although both were getting more and more doubtful about the way events were building around them. Sam was desperately trying to pretend that he wasn't different, that he was still himself, that his visions and abilities meant nothing special. And Dean … he was desperately trying to pretend that everything was going to stay the same, nothing would change, his brother was still safe, he could still protect him, determinedly ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
He coughed, clearing his throat and against my shoulder I felt the trembling dissipate as he regained his control.
"Sam tell you what's been going on?" he asked, his voice still a bit raspy.
"Some of it, I guess," I said, not sure if his brother had told me everything.
He was silent for a long moment, then he straightened against the bed, his exhale loud. "Before he died, my Dad told me something."
Sam hadn't mentioned their father, and I held my breath, wondering if this was the thing that was hurting the man beside me so much.
From the change in the sound of his breathing, I realised he was looking at me, maybe waiting for something, some kind of response before he could keep going.
"He told you what he'd found about the demon?"
The sharply indrawn breath told me I was somewhere in the ballpark.
"Yeah," he said, his voice dropping. "He said that it'd infected him, somehow. He said …"
He hesitated again and I wondered why he was telling me this, wondered a second later if there was no one else he could tell.
"He told me that I had to protect Sam, had to save him," he said, the depth gone from his voice completely, it was whisper soft and even in the darkness, he sounded scared. "Told me if I couldn't save him … uh … I might have to kill him."
I hadn't been expecting that and not even knowing the brothers that well, it was still a shock, the sort of shock it takes a few seconds to shake free. The one thing that I had learned of Dean was how deeply he felt the need to keep his brother safe.
"What did he mean?" I asked, my voice barely louder than a breath.
"I don't know," he said helplessly. "He said Sam might turn into something, something he wouldn't want to be."
Christ, that was vague, I thought but didn't say out loud. I got the feeling Dean's thoughts had already run along those lines.
"He was possessed, not long ago," he said a second later, shifting slightly against the foot of the bed frame. "The demon tried to get me to kill him then."
Another blow, another shock and I clamped my teeth together to stop the questions coming out. Sam had told me he'd been possessed by the demon they'd thought had been sent back to Hell. Meg, he'd called it. He'd killed while Meg had been in him and I think he'd talked about it because his guilt had been unbearable. He'd said he'd attacked Jo, at the bar she'd split to after another fight with Ellen. He hadn't mentioned that Meg's goal had been to force his brother into killing him.
The longer term ramifications were clear, if ugly. Up till now, there'd been no interest in Dean. It looked like now there was.
"But you didn't," I said finally and I heard the deeply sucked in breath beside me.
"I couldn't."
No, it was something he couldn't do, no matter what.
"Did Sam know why the demon wanted you to do it?"
His shoulders moved, brushing against mine again as he shook his head. "No."
His father's death, the reason for it, where he was now, and that terrible last order; Sam's possession and the seeming contradictory nature of it, considering the way the demons had hungered for him just a short while ago … I could see that Dean was barely hanging on, trying everything he knew to keep going, to keep trying to figure what the hell it meant, that they were in the middle of something that had too many questions and no visible answers.
"I'm not supposed to be here."
I barely heard the words, more breathed out than spoken.
"None of this would be happening if I'd died when I was supposed to," he continued a few seconds later.
I didn't know if that was true, but there was something in me that denied it, that insisted it wasn't.
"What's dead should stay dead!" The vehemence in his voice made me flinch guiltily, as if he'd heard my thoughts and reacted to them. I didn't disagree. Even so, my doubts about the way he was seeing all of what had happened were strengthening.
"Dead or alive, if the demon did something to Sam, the only thing your death would have achieved would be for Sam to be alone," I pointed out softly.
He shook his head again, his voice thick. "No, Dad would've been alive, Dad could've protected him."
I felt his arm move, heard the scrape of his boots as he drew up his legs, the shaking in his body becoming more pronounced.
"Dad should've been here, not me," he said, all the fight and anger gone from him. The big muscles of his arm bunched beside me as he hunched forward. "They're all I have – all I had – and now … Sam …"
The misery in his voice shocked me for a moment. I would have laid money on my belief that Dean would let his throat be cut before he showed vulnerability in front of anyone else but his brother. Maybe it was the darkness. Maybe he was literally at the end of his rope and couldn't cope with it anymore. I didn't know and I couldn't ask.
I reached out tentatively, the way I would've done with a wild animal, moving slowly and giving him a lot of time to get away. He reacted like a wild animal, tensing up as he felt my hand touch his shoulder, and I could almost feel the decision making process he went through, to pull away and retreat into himself or to stay and accept something from someone else.
I'm not, by nature, a nurturer. Most people think I'm a cold-hearted bitch. The charitable ones put it down to my past. The others think I just don't have a heart, since I don't show much emotion and I don't do a lot of talking about myself. My take on the situation is probably somewhere in between the two. Michael had changed that to some extent. I'd learned the value of friendship and the need I think we all have to be able to let some things out, to have people in our lives that it's safe to do that with. And I have emotions, too many of them at times. It was too easy to feel what he felt.
He didn't pull away. I wished that there was a bit more light. I was relying on hearing how he was reacting, instead of being able to see it.
"What happened with your father?" I asked, very quietly.
It was a question I don't think he'd've answered at any other time or in any other place. A question that seemed to be at the centre of his confusion. Both of us knew I wasn't talking about the deal his dad had made.
The silence stretched out between us but I could feel him trembling under my fingers again, trying maybe to get those words out, stop them from poisoning him.
"We had a lead on the demon, but it was ahead of us," he said, minutes later, his voice raw and defeated. "They got Dad and I missed my shot and when we finally found him – we didn't know he was possessed."
I nodded, not wanting to interrupt him. The abduction had been a ruse, a way to get the demon close to them. For what purpose, Sam hadn't known. He'd told me that they'd tried holy water. The demon hadn't reacted. If it was one of the Fallen, the powers of the church were useless against it.
"It didn't kill us," he said, and there was a question in his tone, as if he'd just remembered that, a detail forgotten in the events that had overrun the moment. "It wanted to," he added, leaning closer to me, so my hand slid along the hard muscle of his shoulder to his neck. I felt him turn his head toward me and my fingertips slid over his skin, sending a faint shock through me at the touch.
"But it didn't."
I shifted slightly, my arm curving further around him. He didn't move away. "Or it couldn't."
His breath gusted out. "I don't think that was it."
"Dad got hold of it, just for a minute," he continued. "He told Sam to kill him, while he had it, kill him to end it all. I told Sam not to, I begged him not to."
The tremble got worse and I tightened my hold on him. I didn't think he'd take any words of comfort, or reassurance.
"I couldn't deal," he whispered. "Couldn't handle the thought of losing him."
Then John had made a far worse deal less than a week later, I thought to myself. Dean's guilt at forcing that decision onto his father, or his idea that he had done that, was now clear to me.
Talking about it might have made it clearer to him, but it wasn't going to vent the way he felt, I thought unhappily. The demon wouldn't've made a deal like that if he hadn't wanted John Winchester for something.
"The last year," he said, and I felt the movement of his shoulder under my hand as he shook his head again. "I had no idea what the hell I was doing. The decisions I made, trying to keep Sam safe, trying to do what I thought he'd want me to do –"
"You did your job," I said, not knowing where that had come from, but somehow feeling it was the right thing to say.
He turned his head toward me and I felt leap of his pulse against my fingers, where they rested against the side of his neck.
"Didn't you?" I asked. I had the uncomfortable feeling I'd crossed a boundary but I wasn't sure of what that meant.
I thought of what Sam'd told me, of the year they'd spent looking for their father. Most of it he'd just brushed over, hunts and travelling. He'd talked about the fights. Told me about the asylum and what had happened there. Told me about the rawhead and the preacher whose wife had bound a reaper. Dean had been making decisions, at first following his father's clues, then instigating the hunts on his own. Their father had been keeping clear of them, deliberately, and I wondered fleetingly if that hadn't been a part of an attempt to convince his eldest that he could do it on his own, that he didn't need his father as much as he thought he did.
It was strange, but talking to Sam was easy, and a lot of things had been shared between us on the odd occasions we'd had some time, waiting for something, or at the roadhouse. It was strange because I felt a stronger connection to the man beside me than I did to his brother. It could've been as simple as that tiny fragment of memory from my past.
"Being close to death and recovering isn't the same as being resurrected, Dean," I tried again.
His breath gusted out loudly and I wondered if he'd considered that.
"Dad should be here, not me," he said again, as if it that conclusion was the only correct one.
"But he's not, and you are." For some reason, I wanted him to acknowledge that, to break free of the loop of guilt and face things as they were, not as he thought they should be. "That's not your fault."
He did pull away then, his voice harsh as he said, "You don't know anything about me."
"No," I agreed straight away. "You're right, I'm sorry."
I stayed where I was, tipping my head back against the foot of the bed and closing my eyes. Sometimes it wasn't the right time.
It could've been a few minutes later or an hour, I don't really know, but he shifted back, and I felt his shoulder brush up against mine again.
"I don't think I can do this," he said, his voice low.
I didn't move, didn't even open my eyes. "Do you have a choice?"
There was another long period of silence then a sigh. "No."
"You think dying an easy out?"
There was a fractional hesitation then he answered, and I had to smile at the slightly affronted tone of his voice, "Giving up? No."
"Good." I turned my head to look at him. "What else happened?"
"Nothing."
"Something," I said.
"You ever run into my Dad?" he asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.
I shook my head. "My partner met him."
"What'd he say about him?"
"Said he was a good man driven pretty close to the edge by what'd happened to his family," I said cautiously. "What else happened, Dean?"
"Jo said that Dad worked with her father, a hunt in Pasadena," he said and the tension was back. "Said that Dad let Bill down, got him killed."
I bit my lip. It wasn't my story and it wasn't my place to tell, but the blow to the way he'd felt about his father seemed to demand that I say something. He was swimming in so much guilt, about everything that'd happened, that he couldn't get free of it. Couldn't even see what was his and what wasn't.
"I remember when he got back from that hunt," he added, rubbing a hand over his face. "We were staying with Bobby Singer, and he got back, got into a fight with Bobby that pretty much ended them as friends. We never went back there until last year."
"Bobby tell you he got Jim Murphy's stuff from Blue Earth when he was killed?" I asked.
He looked at me, his brows drawing together as he tried to figure out what that had to do with anything.
"Jim kept a journal," I added, wincing inwardly at the weakness of my hinting, but unable to think of a better way to encourage him to check it out for himself. "It's interesting reading."
He thinks of himself as dumb, sometimes, I think. Not dumb, but not as smart as he believes Sam to be. He's wrong. He thinks about things in a different way to his brother but he doesn't have a problem with figuring out whatever has to be figured out in his own way.
"You know something about this?" he asked, leaning closer.
"Not my place," I told him, smelling the whiskey on his breath, the scents of motor oil and gun solvent and the aged leather of his coat just underneath that.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Your father was a good man," I told him. If Michael believed it, I could too. He had a good eye for people.
"If you know something, Ellie –"
"I don't," I cut him off. "Me telling you something is no better than Jo telling you or Ellen. Only your father knew what really happened."
We sat in silence for a while longer. I had a feeling that I'd had an opportunity to do or say something that might've made a difference to him, but I'd missed it. When his cell rang, he pulled it out of his pocket and I shifted further away, bumping into the bottle beside me, nearly knocking the glass over.
"What?" His voice held a strange mixture of emotion, relief and worry and irritability, and in the faint light from his phone, I picked up the bottle and glass, rolling onto my knees and then my feet, walking to the table and putting them on it, keeping my back to him as he spoke.
"Now? Alright, we'll be ready." I heard the snap of the phone being shut. "Sam says they're back."
I straightened up and walked to the bed. The knife that I'd acquired from the demon in Black Springs was sheathed against my hip already; the SIG Sauer that I habitually used was in the modified shoulder holster, hanging over the closet handle, along with my jacket. I pulled on the holster and adjusted it till it sat flat and comfortable against my ribs, the gun in exactly the right position for my left hand, then drew my jacket over it.
"Let's rock." I turned around and saw his outline, faint against the barely lit window. For a moment he remained still, looking my way, though I couldn't be sure of that, then he nodded and turned, picking up his sawn off from the bed. I grabbed the pump action and followed him out of the door, closing it behind me.
We'd just reached the corner when every streetlight along Main Street went out.
There were four of them to begin with. Unfortunately, one got carried away and tried to kill Sam, and I had to stab it before it could finish the job. Now there were only three. They stood in the double trap inside the warehouse loading dock, watching us with flat black eyes.
Marcus was chalking a second, smaller trap in the office. I had four chains made for this kind of work. They were iron and where they were fastened, they held seals of iron, stamped with the sigils of binding for demons. It was the only way we could hope to move them around. I'd used them before and they were strong enough to withstand any of the lower hierarchies. Sam and Marcus had looked at them carefully as they'd wound them around the demons held in the traps. I could see Marcus was going to be making a few of his own as soon as he got home.
"It's ready," Sam called out and Dean broke the main trap. The demons struggled to get free, but the chains did their job, and the brothers were able to push the first one, clothed in the body of a middle-aged businesswoman, clear and move it to the office.
I waited by the others, remaking the trap, until Marcus returned, then walked into the office.
The demon watched me curiously, turning around in the circle as I walked around it, the chains clanking heavily with every movement. The Winchesters it knew, I was an unknown element.
القانون الالهي والحق الالهي، وباسم الآب والابن والروح القدس سوف تقول لي اسمك. الاسم هو القوة.
سوف تقول لي اسمك. كما يتطرق الله لك، وسوف تقول لي اسمك.
I watched it's eyes widen as I spoke to it in Arabic, it's mouth opening wide as it struggled against the seals and the iron, the elements binding it to the flesh it possessed, binding its will at the same time. The words were a formality, a demand for its name, a demand for the true name of the demon that the Winchesters knew only as Meg.
I tried again in Hebrew.
על-ידי החוק האלוהי, זכות, בשמו של אביו של בנו ואת רוח הקודש תגיד לי את השם שלך. השם הוא הכוח. תגיד לי את השם שלך. כפי האל נוגע לך, תגיד לי את השם שלך.
This time the demon threw itself to the floor, twisting and writhing, shouting and screaming, the noise of the chains on the concrete cacophonous in the small space. I repeated the demand and the volume increased, the demon lashing from side to side, the small blood vessels in the throat of its victim beginning to rupture and every scream accompanied by a fine spray of blood and spit.
"Nomen cantus, canticum spiritu spiritus est communis ... Quid est tibi nomen, Lucifer fili? Quod est nomen? Quod est nomen?" I switched to Latin and the demon rose from the ground, the body lifting and turning slowly in the air, despite the chains and seals, its face twisted into a rictus of agony and torment, blood pouring from the woman's mouth and nose as the screams continued, ululating impossibly high.
"Est hoc puer de angelus Azazel? Quod nomen pueri principum cecidit in Azazel? Quod nomen pueri septimo princeps?"
Abruptly and shockingly, the noise stopped and the demon fell. It lay on the floor staring at me, shaking its head.
"Iure divino jure divino nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti nomine narrabis. Nomen est in potentia. Dices nomen tuum. Attingit deum tibi me tuis. Est hoc puer de angelus Azazel? Quod nomen pueri principum cecidit in Azazel? Quod nomen pueri septimo princeps?" I insisted that the demon give me Meg's name, her true name. The demon began to cough, sending gouts of blood across the floor.
"Iure divino jure divino nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti nomine narrabis. Nomen est in potentia. Dices nomen tuum. Attingit deum tibi me tuis."
For a moment the black eyes rolled upward and showed only the whites, then they returned to black.
"In Hell, stronger demons drink the pain and suffering of the lesser demons as well as the torment of the souls," it said clearly in English. "In inferno, ut terris infirmior fortiori convivium. Unum tui dei multis iocis in vita in hoc planeta."
I inclined my head slightly. "Deus aliquando crudelis sensu humor."
"But not as cruel nor as capricious as your masters'," I added.
It looked at me and I cut my eyes to one side, looking at the chains binding it. "No, that is true," it agreed mildly. "The child of Azazel is no longer in Hell. It found a way out, a gate that is never truly shut. It was one it could use, you understand?"
I nodded. Some gates could only be used by certain demons, and some demons could only use certain gates. I didn't know why, only that it was a part of the rules of the underworld.
"Which gate?" I glanced at Sam and he nodded, his fingers over the keyboard of his laptop, set up on the desk in the corner.
"I led the angel pack on the road to sin," it quoted, the bloodied mouth stretched out in a sneer.
"Knock down the gates, let me in, let me in," I finished the stanza and snorted. "Devil's Gate. In Pasadena, Sam."
Dean looked from the demon to me, taking in the demon's disappointed expression. "What was that?"
"Song. I'll tell you later." I looked at the demon. "Your name."
It stared back at me, fury contorting its features, its eyes dead black and bulging. "You cannot –"
"Ego servus Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, qui omnia creavit omnia et in quo consistat. In nomine obligo vobis et vos volo quaestionem. Quod est nomen?"
"I will not –"
"Ego servus Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, qui omnia creavit omnia et in quo consistat. In nomine obligo vobis et vos volo quaestionem. Quod est nomen?"I repeated the binding command, feeling strength pour through me as I recited the words, my will hardening against the forces of evil.
"Meum nomen est diaboli spiritus, meretrix scriptor sucus –"
"Ego servus Dei omnipotentis, Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, qui omnia creavit omnia et in quo consistat. In nomine obligo vobis et vos volo quaestionem. Quod est nomen?"
"My name is Levelle Fortusia!" It screamed the last two words, unable to resist the binding command, unable to hold in its secrets.
"By your name and the power it holds over you, Levelle Fortusia, I cast thee out of this vessel you have violated." The chains dropped from the demon as it smoked free of the woman it had taken over.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Dean and Sam exchange a look as I recited the exorcism ritual. The demon smoke vanished. I looked at the woman lying in trap, and walked over to her slowly. There was a pulse, beating slowly against the thin skin of her neck. Her face and chest were covered in blood and visible through the tears in her clothes, bruising and grazes marked her from head to foot. Dean picked her up carefully and carried her out to the car. There were two hospitals within easy reach. He'd have to split his deliveries between them.
I walked to the table and sat down in the chair opposite Sam, feeling as if I'd just done a twenty-mile hike, or six rounds with several berserkers.
"Where did you learn how to do that?" Sam asked curiously.
I looked up at him. "Your dad didn't teach you that demons can provide answers, if you can bind them with their name?"
He shook his head. "Dad didn't tell us much about this life. Just how to hunt and how to stay alive."
"Maybe he thought you'd be safer that way?" I suggested.
"He was wrong about that, wasn't he?" Sam retorted, the bitterness seeping out in his voice. He shook his head, at himself, I think and ran a hand through his hair. "We need to know this stuff, we need information about what they want."
"Dean said that Meg tried to get him to kill you," I said, watching his face.
He looked away. "Yeah."
"Why would they want you dead, now?"
"I don't know," he said, his forehead creasing up. "That's just it."
Marcus stuck his head in the door. "You ready for the next one?"
I shook my head. "Not until Dean's back. I need some time."
He nodded and retreated to the other room, to keep watch over the two other demons. The office held a long vinyl-covered sofa along one wall and I went over to it, lying down and closing my eyes. Most of what was needed with demons was a strong will. Any doubt, any lack of confidence would give the demon a way to break through. But the human will, confident and sure in its in own strength is a powerful tool. It took a lot of concentration though.
Michael had explained it well. The mind, the imagination and the will were the three foundation stones of all magic. The mind designed, the imagination created and the will carried it through. The triumvirate of power existed in all human beings, to a greater or lesser degree. In the mage or the psychic or the sorcerer, there was a natural preponderance of talent in each aspect. And training honed that talent until it could be called at need, without thought. But never, ever without effort. All power had to be paid for, in some way.
It might have been the tiredness. Or the demon itself.
By the time we got to the third demon, the sky was paling in the east. It was in a man's body and I got the sense immediately it was older, more crafty, than the other two had been. I started with Latin, but got the response we needed from Hebrew, another indication that the demon we were holding was much, much older than the others.
Marcus and Dean stood to either side of the circle, Sam was recording the interrogation onto the computer. The trap was unbroken, and it was the strongest one we had a design for. The demon was chained and bound.
"By the Divine Law, and the Divine Will, you will obey. By the power of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you are bound. What is your name?" I recited the words in Hebrew. I was careful not to look directly at the demon's eyes, to keep my gaze on its chest. I was careful to keep my mind clear, and focussed only on the incantation, only on forcing the demon to accede to my will. In other words, I'd taken every damned precaution I could to prevent anything from happening. Sometimes luck runs out.
It looked around at the men standing in the room and its lip curled. "The Winchesters, the hunter whose daughter killed herself."
I saw Marcus flinch and snapped at him, "Marcus, keep your mind clear or leave."
He looked at me, his face tightening and nodded once.
The demon's mouth lifted slightly. "Dean and Sam … the chosen ones. Your dad is having a great time down in the dark with us."
Both of them stiffened and I turned back to the demon. "By the Divine Law, and the Divine Will, you will obey. By the power of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you are bound. What is your name?"
It hissed at me, turning away from them, and I repeated the words again, demanding obedience, demanding answers.
"Michael sends his regards, Eleanor. He told me that he forgives you for what you did."
The words hit me like a hammer and I had to fight off the shock. No demon I'd encountered knew me, and none had mentioned him before. I felt a crack in my resolve and drew it back together, letting my anger seal it tightly.
Do not get into a conversation with a demon; they know things about us, things that we have hidden in our minds. Keep your mind closed, focus, focus on what you are doing. Michael's words, the first hunt we did together.
"By the Divine Law, and the Divine Will, you will obey. By the power of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, you are bound. What is your name?"
The body of the man the demon inhabited convulsed and I walked to the edge of the trap, staring at its chest, hearing my voice deepen as I said it again.
One minute the face was twisted in anguish, the next it was slack and still.
"What's happening? Where am I?" The man looked around at us, down at the chains that were draped over his shoulders, bound around his chest and ankles. "Who are you?"
None of the demons I'd come across had been able to retreat into the mind of the victim whilst under the chains. I was staring at the man, trying to figure out what we were dealing with, when he turned to Marcus and ran at him, hitting the edge of the circle and bouncing back inside, his nose spouting blood as if he'd run into a brick wall, the chains clanking and clattering on the concrete.
"Help me! Please, help me!" The man cried out, and he started shaking, tears mixing with the blood that flowed from his nose.
Dean looked from Marcus to me, turning slightly. "What the fuck?"
I shook my head, turning away to get my journal from my bag. Somewhere in it there was an incantation to force a demon out of hiding, it was eleventh century, a transcription from an older source, and I knew it was powerful enough.
I had taken only two steps away from the trap when I heard the scream and spun back. The man had somehow managed to lift one of the chains from around his shoulder and it was cutting into his neck. I saw Marcus take a step forward, and realised what he was thinking of doing.
"Marcus, no!"
He stepped into the trap, and bent to lift the chain from the man's throat, and the man's eyes flashed black, his hands rising to Marcus's neck and closing tightly around it.
Dean was across the boundary, hooking an arm around the demon's neck, but his boot sole must have scraped over the chalked edge of the trap and the demon felt it instantly. The chains fell away from it, confirming what I'd been afraid of. This was no low-level demon.
"Dean! Marcus! Get out of there!" I screamed over the triumphant roar of the demon, pulling the knife from the sheath at my back. Sam stood, shotgun cocked and aimed, waiting for his brother and the older hunter to get clear.
The demon was fast, much faster than any of us had seen before, I think. Dean was thrown across the room, hitting the exterior concrete block wall with a sickening thud and dropping bonelessly to the floor. The demon held Marcus in one hand, fingers tight around his neck and threw him at Sam, taking them both down behind the desk, knocking everything to the floor.
It turned to me and looked at the knife for a long moment, then dropped into a half-crouch, lips pulling back from the teeth in a wide grin utterly devoid of humour.
"Michael didn't train you well enough." The voice was unlike the man's now, low and gravelly and with the trace of an eastern accent I couldn't quite place. I finally recognised the syntax of it. "He didn't really forgive you, you know, he blames you for his eternal torment, curses you every day when he's remade."
This time I was expecting the demon's words. It was looking for a breech in the wall of my mind, and it would use a mix of truth and lies to find one, make one. The knowledge brought a sense of calm to me, in a peculiar way. There was nothing it could say to me that I hadn't already said to myself and I was able, for maybe the first time, to push aside my guilt and shame and pain and concentrate completely on the adversary in front of me. I was facing the demon that had taken Michael, and the thought of revenge, for both of us, helped a lot too.
I circled around it. It was taller, heavier and stronger, with a much greater reach. I started reciting the Lord's Prayer very softly, under my breath, as much as a focussing tool as a protection against its psychic abilities. With each repetition, I could see it flinch slightly, the words themselves having an effect on the creature inside the man.
It came in a rush, and I dived to one side, slashing at the hamstring at the back of the leg as it passed by, the wound crackling and lighting up in red and gold, and the demon shrieking in pain, stumbling as the leg no longer supported it. I was already up and moving in behind it, when it turned, hopping awkwardly and reaching out for me. If it got a hand on me, I would be finished, I knew that … it was too strong. I ducked, dropping again to the floor and rolling fast, past it, slashing at the other leg as it swung an arm to grab me.
I didn't get the tendon, but the wound itself was through the big muscle at the side of the calf and it glowed with light as well, the demon forced into remaining where it was.
Fighting anyone bigger than yourself is a mug's game. More weight, more strength, longer muscles, greater reach, that's too many advantages to an opponent to even hope at a win – and that's for a man-to-man fight. Women's bodies are much weaker than a man's, generally speaking. I'd spent a lot of time learning a lot of things when I'd been a teenager, and the first thing my first combat trainer had told me was that I was better off standing fifteen feet from the target and shooting them than messing around with hand-to-hand. I'm not that big, and while I've got good reflexes, no one is that fast all the time. I couldn't tell him that most of what I thought I would be up against wouldn't go down with a bullet, but I'd insisted on learning so he'd taught me to use deflections and speed, dirty tactics and diversions and feints instead of strength.
On my feet, I started to circle it again. Without the use of its meatsuit's legs, it couldn't follow me, and I had a much better chance now of getting in and finishing the job. The demon followed my thoughts, and I saw it glance away, toward Sam who was just rising from behind the desk. He was jerked off his feet and held in the air. I heard Dean's rising shout from behind me, the sound of his steps as he ran toward his brother and saw the demon's head turn to me, that wide empty grin plastered across its face.
There was no time and no choice. Sam started to scream as his body was twisted, his back being bent impossibly far. I went straight into the demon, the knife aimed high, my eyes meeting the flat black ones for the first time. I could feel its mind pawing at mine, the feel like thousands of insects crawling over my skin. Distantly, behind me, I heard Sam's scream cut off as he was dropped to the floor, and I dropped at the same time, feeling the demon's fingers scrabbling for a grip on my hair as I slid into its legs, and it went down over the top of me, shrieking with fury. It tried to roll over, but desperation – the true desperation of being too close and too vulnerable – had given me speed and I was already on top of it, the long knife plunged between the ribs, twisting with all my strength to force the bones apart enough to get the blade into the heart, the body jerking and jumping under me as the inside was lit by a boiling conflagration of red and gold light.
When it stopped moving, I looked up and saw Dean holding Sam and helping him up. He turned his head for a moment, meeting my eyes and nodding. Behind the desk, Marcus was rising too, gingerly feeling a long contusion along the side of his face.
We'd gotten some information at least, although not what they'd really wanted. And we'd managed to save two of the possessed victims, but not the other two. I glanced down at the hand of the man under me and saw the glint of a gold ring on his ring finger. Whatever relief or satisfaction I'd been feeling at getting out of the fight alive disappeared at that sight.
I lifted the gear bag into the back of my pickup and shut the lockbox lid, the hasp of the padlock closing with a loud click.
"You're going … now?" Dean's voice was low and I turned around to find him standing right behind me.
"Yeah, I need to get to Italy by the end of the week and there's some stuff I have to organise first." I looked up at him, unable to read the expression in his eyes, but feeling his bewilderment and uncertainty readily enough. We'd just taken the bodies out of town and finished burning them, and none of us had slept since the previous night.
He nodded reluctantly, looking away. "When are you going to be back?"
"I don't know." I walked past him and opened the driver's door, throwing my bag onto the passenger side of the bench seat. "I gave Ray your number. He'll call if he gets a hit like that again."
"Thanks. Ellie …" He watched as Sam and Marcus came up. "Never mind."
I looked at him, but he'd already turned away, and that was for the best, I thought as I turned around to Marcus.
"You heading out already, Ellie?" Marcus looked at me. His face and arms were covered in grime from the night's work, and I knew I looked no better. I would have stayed, had a shower, a meal, gotten a night's sleep but I couldn't, not now.
"Yeah, no rest for the wicked." I leaned against him as he gave me a fatherly hug. I'd known Marcus for about three years, and he was a good hunter, a good back up. He missed his daughter.
"Look after yourself," he said gruffly, but his eyes said thanks. I smiled at him and nodded.
"Take care, Sam."
"You too, Ellie." He looked from me to his brother, and I saw his forehead wrinkle slightly.
I got into the truck, and started the engine, lifting a hand as I pulled out of the lot and turned onto the road. In the rear view mirror, they were standing next to the Impala, Sam and Marcus talking, Dean's gaze following the truck down the road.
That sense I'd had, that I'd missed an opportunity to say something, or do something, was persisting. I couldn't figure out what I could've possibly done or said, but I couldn't get it out of my head either.
Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star.
E.E. Cummings