"Sam?!"
"Adam, over here!" the middle brother yelled, his voice disembodied in the gloom.
"Adam, move!" the split-second shout of warning tore out of the eldest Winchester's throat like a siren. The youngest threw himself sideways, just in time.
The wall crashed to the ground, the goddess' vibrating laughter tearing through the dusty air. Coughing, his ears ringing, Adam Milligan dragged himself onto his feet. Blood was hot and wet down his leg and his eyes were full of dust. His fingers scrabbled for the butt of his gun and he blinked, trying to clear his sight.
"Sam!" he yelled, coughing up dry wall and rubble powder. The massive shape of his brother loomed in the cloudy air.
"Hey! You okay?"
"Yeah-where's Dean?"
Sam wiped blood trickling down his lips from his nose and pointed with his sawn-off at the collapsed wall. Adam followed the gesture and cursed, stepping towards it.
"Dean! Dean, can you hear-"
Sam fisted the back of Adam's jacket and yanked him backwards as a section of the roof fell in.
"We gotta get outta here" he gasped, spluttering around a lungful of dust.
"But Dean-!"
"We'll find 'im, c'mon!"
They bolted for the more stable end of the hallway. There the brothers paused for a moment to catch their breath, to spit out dirt from their dry, gasping mouths and briefly take stock of their injuries so far.
"So, split up?"
Sam gave Adam his patented bitch-face and gestured down the hall.
"Wha-no. We go together"
"We'll never cover this place fast enough!"
"Dean will kick my ass if I let you go off alone. It's exactly what those freaks want. C'mon"
Sam headed off down the hall, the muzzle of the shot gun scouting out his path. Adam sighed wanly, slung his own gun against his shoulder and followed.
Meanwhile, Dean sat stripped down to his t-shirt, tied to a splintering chair in the centre of an empty room. Blood stained the side of his face, he could taste it in his mouth, his ribs ached on every breath. He ignored it, eyeing the goddess' five brain-washed, zombiefied followers who stood around the room, watching him. The door opened and Dean stiffened, eyes shooting to it. He cursed when a young man with wide, blank eyes entered. It was now five against one, he had broken ribs, and he had no idea where his brothers were. The odds were officially bad.
"They're coming this way" reported the newcomer.
"Good. Separate them. One must enter the circle willingly" ordered the woman with the goddess' mark carved into her forehead. She was oblivious to the sheen of white bone showing through the skin, and Dean knew with that black sinking feeling in his gut that she was going to die once they'd taken out the goddess. Now that she'd said those words, however, he couldn't give a damn.
He watched three men walk out, armed to the teeth. His pulse redoubled and he yanked at his bonds, bringing attention back to him.
"You hurt my brothers and I'll kill you. I will kill you all!" he snarled, looking fiercely at the leader. His rapid movement made his head ache, blood spurting again from the wound in his temple.
"Be silenced, hunter, and rejoice. You and your brother will bring about a new world order"
"Oh, you know where you can go with your world order, bitch" he snarled, yanking on the ropes. He felt a little give in them and kept working at them. She smiled serenely.
"The Warrior. The Lamb. The Virgin. These are the things that make the circle strong. She will be very pleased with you" hummed the young man who'd entered before. He was standing close to Dean, holding the silver blade that had slit the throat of the young woman whose blood marked the circle where candles flickered in the unreliable moonlight from the cracked, filthy sky lights above them. Her name had been Abigail and she was beautiful, sixteen and sweet as milk. Her father had said she wanted to be a nurse and had cried when the FBI agents came to his door with questions.
"Ah, bite me" Dean spat, making the chair legs scrap on the concrete as he kicked angrily.
Gunshots rang out and Dean froze. He heard Sam shout and fought harder against the binds as two more of the zombie-slaves headed for the door. They were super strong and as fast as anything Dean had ever gone to bat against. His shoulders felt the strain of his struggles as he swore and caused the back of the chair to crack.
The knife appeared tight to his jaw, stilling him.
"Be silent, Warrior"
"You kill me, your mummy's gunna spit-roast you" the words spilled out and were quickly followed by a bright line of crimson as the silver edge split his skin.
"Do not be so certain, Warrior" hissed the man.
"Dean?! Where are you?!"
Ohshit. Nonononononono-
"Adam! Adam it's a trap! IT'S A TRAP, GEDDOUTTA HERE-" he roared. The chair legs creaked. He flexed his calf muscles, trying to pull away from the ropes that held him. His words choked in his mouth when the knuckles of the man with the knife cascaded into his face, throwing his head to the side. A shotgun shouted in the hall.
"ADAM, IT'S A TRAP DAMMIT!"
The air buzzed when the female leader looked at Dean's torturer, silent commands between them and before Dean could register anything more, the tip of the silver blade slammed into the flesh of his thigh. He raged in agony, and the sound was amplified by the concrete walls.
"DEAN!"
Panting, shaking, Dean tried to shout out another warning, but then the hilt of the blade collided with his head wound and the deep blackness rushed in.
He came to like always; like swimming through honey filled with bees and to the soundtrack of his brother's voice saying his name. Squinting against the sudden yellow light of the room full of candles, Dean took stock of the ten disciples and there, standing with her arms raised and blood dripping from her plump lips, the goddess herself. The guttered body of a follower lay at her feet.
"Oh shit" he groaned.
"Yeah, no kidding"
His head whipped to the side and sure enough, from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the back of Adam's head, tied to a chair behind Dean.
"Goddammit, kid, what part of it's a trap did you not get?" he snapped.
"The part where you were screaming like a girl" Adam shot back, relief palpable in his tone. If Dean was chewing him out, it meant he wasn't as badly hurt as Adam had first thought, when he'd run in—and okay, if Dean had seen the way he'd charged in without thinking, he'd totally kick him into next week—bloodied, still and silent. Dean made small sound of disagreement and scanned the room again. The usual creepy world-domination chanting was going on as he looked for Sam.
"Where-"
"I don't know" Adam cut him off tightly, anticipating his words. Dean tried to glare at him, but the effect was dissipated by their awkward position.
" 'the hell do'ya mean, you don't know?!"
"I lost him, okay?"
"What the hell were you doing by yourself?! Dammit, Adam-"
"Shut up and help me here"
At his hands, Dean felt the coolness of a small blade being fiddled with between he and Adam's fingers. He smothered a small grin because damn if his kid brother wasn't a genius sometimes.
"You're smarter than you look, ya know that?"
Adam snorted. Dean's eyes remained on the goddess, then flicked across the semi-circle of 'believers' that he could see on his side. It was less than a second, but in that time-
"Holycrap"
"Adam?"
From Dean's position, he couldn't see that their blood-thirsty, power-hungry quarry had appeared before Adam, the words of power still staining her mouth as she raised a hand equipped with talon-like claws above him.
"DEAN!" and in that moment, in those syllables, Adam sounded younger than Dean remembered knowing him.
"ADAM-fuck-NO! ADAM!"
The little blade between them had frozen still as terror iced Adam's veins, solidifying his very heart. The goddess' eyes glowed red, the crimson flood already covering her front shining, glittering like rubies in the candlelight. Dean's shouts rushed away and suddenly the whole world was nothing but the claws falling towards Adam's chest, the glowing eyes of the goddess and the inevitability of death. His eyes shut before he could stop them, his head turning to the side in an instinctive, human attempt to dodge this terrible oncoming fate.
The boom of the gun cracked the spell and all the sounds and smell of life collided into Adam's senses again. His eyes flew open, the black blood of the goddess dotting his face, sticking to his eyelashes and he stared in horror at the great hole that had opened on the side of her face, her jawbone splintered and her eye dangling in the mess of gore left behind by the iron bullet from Sam's handgun.
"SAM!"
The goddess turned around and shrieked piercingly. Her followers rushed towards Sam, standing stooped and in pain at the doorway, and he started firing, heading step by precious step towards his prone brothers.
"GODDAMMIT ADAM C'MON!" Dean's roar awoke response in the mess of terror and liberation that clogged Adam's mind. He jumped and then set to work frantically sawing the ropes from their hands. Dean gritted his teeth at the sharp bite of the steel edge on his fingers but said nothing. He was kicking viciously against the ropes until, all at once, the wrecked furniture gave up with a groan. Which, in retrospect, he probably could have thought out as it gave way and he crashed to the concrete in a mess of half-tied ropes and shattered wood, taking Adam with him.
He threw off the kindling that remained of the chair and ripped a K-Bar knife from his boot, tearing Adam from his own bonds before dragging him bodily to his shaking feet. A follower flew at them; Dean ducked the first shattering blow and opened the guy's throat in his reply. With a terrible gurgle and a rush of blood across his letterman jacket, the follower dropped. Dean's other hand was still on Adam's arm where he'd stood him up and only now did he let go.
Across the room, Sam was going toe-to-toe with the goddess herself. Her face had put itself back together again and she slashed at the tall man with both hands worth of razor-sharp talons. Adam grappled with a woman screaming wordlessly as Dean launched himself across the room at a flat sprint.
Sam must have gotten a few good shots off when he'd first entered because the leader was laying on her back in a pool of blood, the silver sacrificial blade laying beside her, her fingers still loosely clasped around it. She was struggling to rise, but the goddess' power was leaking away as Sam got another hit in—this one a round of buckshot in the chest—and thus so was the life of these puppets.
Her eyes widened as Dean crouched, his boots slipping in blood, and plucked the knife from her limp fingers. Their eyes met like a punch and her words, whatever they were, were drowned in gushing black gunk.
Dean left her there and turned, flicking the knife comfortably into his palm. Sam was slumped against the wall, weapon-less by the looks of it, and the goddess was turning, looking, seeing, disappearing, and in a blinding flash, there she was before Dean. She was slashing with those wicked talons and not even Dean-unkillable-motherfucker-Winchester was fast enough not to have his chest opened up by the strike. His own momentum of trying to evade it sent him tumbling to the ground and she fell upon him, shrieking-
"NO, DEAN, NO!"
Adam flew across the room, hitting the ground like a baseball playing sliding home, grabbing the goddess' neck and throwing her off his brother. Without looking at Dean—don't look, don't see, not yet, can't handle the death clouding his green eyes, the slack mouth, the unseeing eyes, not him, not after losing his mum, Sam-and-Dean, family, no—Adam faced the goddess with nothing but his little belt knife, lips curled in a sneer, ready to fight and protect and die, even if it was only for Dean's corpse...
The knife handle stuck out of the goddess' chest and she didn't move from where Adam had thrown her. For a long moment, he stared at the body, breathing hard, uncomprehending, until Sam's boots echoed on the concrete and Adam twisted on his knees to look down at Dean.
Dean was coughing bloodily, grinning crookedly at Adam's blanched, shell-shocked expression. He propped himself up on one elbow and spat, holding the opposite hand to his shredded t-shirt where blood oozed from the-luckily shallow-cuts across his chest.
"Dick" Dean grunted, spitting messily onto the floor.
"Bitch" Adam's mouth moved instinctively as he stared at his very alive brother.
"You're both jerks" Sam panted and smacked Adam upside of the head.
"That's for taking off on me, you little shit" he growled. Dean laughed breathlessly and winced in the same instance.
As Sam collected Dean's beaten up limbs and dragged his brother onto his tired feet, stooping to accommodate Dean's smaller stature, Adam rose unsteadily and put a foot on the goddess' chest, yanking out the blade. He studied the runic inscriptions on the blade and handles and then tucked it into the back of his jeans. He and Sam could figure out what it was worth back at the Men of Letters bunker. He picked up their guns as the adrenaline left his body, grabbing John Winchester's jacket from where it had been thrown on the ground and fishing in the pockets for the keys to the Impala. Without a backwards glance, he followed Sam and Dean out of the abandoned factory.
They emerged, blinking like newborns, with the sunrise and sirens sounding on the horizon.
"That's our cue, boys" Dean grunted as Sam helped him into the passenger's side then caught the keys Adam threw across the bonnet to him. The younger Winchester tucked their guns back into the boot as Sam started the car, then threw himself into the backseat. They left the bloodied factory behind them in a spray of gravel and dust and headed for their crappy hotel just off the highway.
Two day later, Richard Wilkins paid for the room he and his brothers had stayed at for two weeks and the three young men piled into their classic black Chevy.
Adam sat in the middle of the backseat, reading a science journal, as Sam and Dean argued about Keith Urban and Metellica. Dean still winced every time he had to change gears or they hit a pothole and Sam smart-mouthed him about stitches and painkillers and hospitals. Adam listened to them bicker, occasionally put his own two cents in, and the three Winchester boys returned home. The blacktop welcomed them.