"Holy water cannot help you now.
See, I've come to burn your kingdom down,
And no rivers and no lakes can put the fire out.
I'm going to raise the stakes, I'm going to smoke you out."
(Seven Devils—Florence + The Machine)

As a Winchester, Sam had been knocked unconscious and woken up in more tight spots than could be counted on both hands, but this was taking the cake by far. He'd been chasing demon after demon, trying to find out who took Dean's body from the bunker, where Crowley was, anything. Just outside of city limits, he'd been surrounded, jumped by at least a dozen demons en masse. They'd kicked the living crap out of him, but none of them had tried to kill him – a disturbing first – and one of them had slammed his head into the pavement until he passed out.

And now he was hanging in a cell, arms pinioned over his head by a set of chains attached to the high-vaulted ceiling, toes barely touching the floor. It was agony on his sprained wrist, and his entire right arm throbbed with white-hot pain. He was in Hell, too. He knew he was; it wasn't a place that one easily forgot. His entire body felt like he'd been thrown down a hill layered with rocks and razorblades, stiff, aching, and bloody. Every joint was clogged with ground glass, and when he tried to speak, all that left him was a hoarse rasp. He opened one eye slowly – the other was swollen shut still – to see a blurry, familiar figure standing in front of him.

"Rise and shine, Sammy-boy."

"Dean?" Sam choked out, voice cracking. His brother looked like he'd never been dead at all, not a bruise or scratch to be seen. Forcing himself to swallow a few times, he coughed and tried again, "Dean, you're...how are you alive? What brought you back?"

Grinning like there was nothing wrong with the world, Dean reached behind him and pulled out the First Blade, twirling it in one hand with deadly precision. "This little bad boy. Well, that and the Mark. Weren't quite willing to let me go so quick," he replied, then slid the ancient weapon through a loop in his belt. "Pretty cool, huh?"

No, not cool, Sam thought, forcing his sticky, slow mind to work, faster as he came more awake. There was something so wrong here that it made his teeth itch. They were standing in the middle of Hell, actual Hell, and Dean couldn't seem to care less about it, nor about the state that Sam was in. "Dean, we have to get out of here. Crowley – "

"Crowley?" His elder brother burst into laughter. "Crowley isn't going to do anything until I tell him to. Ah, Sammy, I tell you, we have been missing out on so much. Well, that's going to end. You and me, we're going to go howl at that moon. What do you say?"

"What is wrong with you? Dean, let me out of here, we need to go," Sam insisted again, a well of panic beginning to bubble up inside him. This was wrong, something was wrong with his brother, that goddamned Mark had done something to him, it must've...

Dean put on a puzzled face, cocking his head to the side in a dead-on impression of Castiel when the angel was confused. "Why would I go anywhere?" he asked. "I'm still redecorating my throne room."

"Your..."

Dean blinked, and his eyes turned black. Whites and all, his eyes became the fathomless black, like jet, an opaque darkness that only threw back light, and Sam imagined that this was what drowning felt like. He blinked again, and the darkness was gone, but that didn't mean anything. "I know what you're thinking, Sammy. And I'm not possessed." He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt, and the anti-possession tattoo was still there, inked dark on his skin. "No, this is all me. The new and improved model."

"So what? Are you going to kill me? If you are, then do it already, and spare me the sermon," Sam snapped, gritting his teeth and blinking away the hot, stinging well of tears that threatened to spring up.

Dean – no, not Dean; the demon – smiled with his brother's face. "Kill you? Oh, Sammy. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. You're thinking too small, little brother. I'm not going to kill you." He, it, reached down and pulled the First Blade from its belt again, and rolling back its sleeve, placed the edge of the Blade against its forearm just below the Mark. With one quick jerk of its wrist, the demon cut open its own forearm, dark blood dripping thickly onto the floor. "Ready to get thrown off the wagon, little bro?" the demon asked with a grin.

"No. No." Sam pulled and twisted the chains, twisted until his wrists screamed and blood began oozing down his arms, his entire body protesting the movement, but the chains didn't give. He bucked and thrashed, trying to pull his head back, but the demon grabbed his jaw in one iron-hard hand, forcing his mouth open.

The blood was at once the best and worst thing that'd he had ever tasted, dark and bitter, sweet and bright, coating his tongue; it was more potent than Ruby's blood had ever been, white lightning curling through his veins and sparking from synapse to synapse. The demon held the bleeding wound against his lips until the blood filled his mouth, then forcibly shut his jaw and held his nose, making him either swallow or choke. Sam shuddered as the thick liquid slid down his throat, gagging even as his entire body tingled, fingertips to toes. The lesser wounds, the scrapes on his palms and knees, tingled as they healed.

"You think that playing vampire with Ruby was something?" the demon said, releasing him. "How's it feel getting juiced by a Knight of Hell?"

Sam spat onto the floor, trying to rid his mouth of the taste; of its own volition, though, his tongue slid around the edges of his teeth, catching lingering traces of blood. "Eat salt," he growled, since telling a demon to go to hell was a bit counterproductive. And redundant, since they were already there.

Dean – the demon – grinned. "That's what I thought. C'mon, Sammy. Don't you want to spend some quality time with your big brother?" It held its bleeding arm out to him again, flexing its arm to keep the wound from closing. Offering.

Already he could feel that back corner of his mind, that dark place he'd tried so hard to wall up and forever ignore, start shaking off its cobwebs, the need whispering to him, Just a little taste. Just a little taste. That's all it is. Nothing more. Come on, it's not that bad. Just one little taste... There was an infinite wellspring of power lurking just below the surface, trapped by the barrier of his humanity, so close, so far, and all he had to do was take one little taste.

Sam jerked his head back as if slapped, screwing his eyes shut. "No!" he shouted again.

The demon laughed, retracted its arm – he was not disappointed, he was not disappointed, he was not – and grabbed his jaw again, fingertips digging in so hard it felt like there would be fingerprints on his bone. "Alright, Sammy. Have it your way, then. Open up."