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Chapter 3

There was a feeling that Dean got when he was well and truly screwed. It was a cold shuffling up his spine, a curdling in his stomach, a feather-light fluttering in his chest. To call it fear would be a massive underestimation. It was helplessness, hopelessness, and despair all coupled into a paralyzing brew.

Dean gaped at the John's, Bobby's and Sam's journals in shock, eyes scanning over the list of the names, and the notes in the margins or lines through slashed through them. Most of their contacts were dead. Others refused to their calls after rumors spread about the Winchesters' involvement with the apocalypse. And Drex, the hunter who'd sent them into this hunter with incomplete lore, wasn't answering her phone.

Sam shifted in the sagging motel bed from the swath of comforters from both beds and two blankets and one beach towel from the Impala, because on top of the poison leeching its way through his veins, they had to contend with the other injuries from the chase and the hypothermia from the walk back to the car. The venom was insidious. It may have been an anticoagulant, but it was also a hallucinogen. After he finished waxing crazy about the cackling trees, he started waning psychotic about Lucifer crouching behind rocks. And it was also doing something to his muscles. He pulled back the corner of the blankets, grateful that Sam was at the very least quiet and approaching lukewarm, and picked up a grit-stained hand, noticing an undulating beneath the skin, a slight twitch in the fingertips. Dean tucked it back in, and righted the blankets. Dean sat down on the bed at the foot of the bed and bounced up again, needing to be doing something other than watching his brother die.

The least he could do was make another batch of the brew. The worst of the symptoms hadn't manifested until they'd run out. He'd already started boiled the herbs as soon as he got Sam settled. Dean hurriedly tossed in the powders, read the incantation that ignited the purified fire. He blew out the silver flames and heaved the pots outside, packing them in a crumbling snow bank so they'd cool quickly. His phone rang and he leapt to answer it, hurdling the weapons bag and nearly braining himself on a low cabinet. "That better be you, Drex, my brother's in the weeds here."

The responding voice was small but definitively male. "It's me, Dean. Your bro's in dire straits, huh?" Garth said.

Dean whirled around to look at Sam, who was muttering voicelessly, and alarmingly pale. "No actually he's doing a jaunty jig right now. What the hell do you think is happening?"

"I got a lead on something that can help your kin but I don't think you're going to like it."

"Unless it involves Crowley's demony lips on mine, I'm game. Spill."

"There's this healer three states over. She ain't the faithful kind—my intel says she's a two-bit hustler—but she gets results."

Dean rubbed his forehead, anger flashing through him like his own brand of venom. They never had much luck with healers. Most of them turned out to be greedy frauds who were heartless enough to pray on the sick and desperate or thought-dead, double-crossing amnesiac angels. Sam vocalized behind him, giving his agony a wet, dragging sound, and Dean realized they had no other choice. "Tell her we're coming."

After dragging 230 pounds of groggy half-conscious brother into the car and getting him to choke down more brew, Dean hit the road, pushing the engine as hard as it could.

Two hours into the drive, Dean heard a soggy slap against the floorboards, like a dripping faucet. He cranked the heat so Sam could thaw. He chuckled for a minute, thinking it was his own sweat. Or condensation from the windows. Or the soda Sam and left in the car before the hunt, leeching through the paper cup. Sam was pillowed on his lap and Dean dug one-handedly through the blankets he was swaddled in. He pulled back the ripped collar to see that his guesses had been woefully optimistic. Sam's blood flowed in thin rivulets across the Impala's seats and plinked into the floormats below.

By the time he reached the bungalow flanked by mesquite trees that speckled the Plaino terrain, Sam was shaking lightly from blood loss. Dean gently eased out of the driver's seat, stuffing his jacket under Sam's head before bolting to the front door. He knocked with a closed fist. When there was no immediate response, Dean picked the lock in seconds and crept inside. The home was brightly lit and recently remodeled. While it looked quaint from the outside, it was open and airy on the inside with its lacquered wooden floors, white brick fireplace and kitchen detailed in stainless steel and granite. He'd made it almost to the threshold of the kitchen before he heard the racking of a shotgun behind him. He lifted his hands and cautiously turned around.

He had expected Ms. Cleo and was greeted with Rihanna, down to the caramel skin, affinity for guns and tattoos, and risqué wardrobe. "Violet, I presume."

"Dean Winchester." Her voice was rich like caramel.

"Sorry about just bargin' in but time is something m'brother doesn't have. Garth said you could heal him."

Violet seemed unmoved, expression inscrutable. "I'll need payment."

Dean blanched. He didn't have much money. "I don't suppose you couldn't do this out of the kindness of your heart," he hedged.

Violet laughed humorlessly. "Gotta pay the bills, man."

"Yeah, why give your miracles out for free like Sammy and I," Dean said unable to stop himself. "Uh, I left gold bars in my safety deposit box," he patted himself down. "I have about $300. I-I uh, got a Peruvian blade in the armory. It's good for gankin' rogue gods, but it's also pretty pricey."

She rolled her dark eyes and shook her head, her feathered earring dangling against her shoulder. "No."

He tried to catalogued the inventory in the trunk. Sammy was usually the one who kept it organized, the geek probably had a list on his phone, too. "Oh! I have a gun, a colt. It was forged in 1800s and it's solid silver. You could sell it or make some more of those wicked earrings." He smiled, albeit unsteadily. "Kills demons too if you ever happen to run into those. Real handy in an apocalypse…or speed dating."

"I'm not looking for anything that's pricey. I want something of yours that's priceless." Violet amended.

Dean glared. "Sammy ain't for sale."

She lifted an eyebrow and her lips twitched slightly, like she thought his devotion was cute. "An object, moron."

Without hesitation, Dean jingled the keys to the Impala and tossed towards her. Violet caught them deftly, the gun never lowering. "The car is cherry. It's a 1967 Chevy Impala. It's probably worth a lot..." Dean stopped. He cleared his throat as heat rose in his cheeks. "Damn near all the good things that happened to me, which you could probably count on one hand, happened in that car. Sammy grew up in that car."

Violet sat the shotgun in the corner by the fireplace. "This'll do. Go get your brother. Bring him in here."

Dean sprinted and hefted Sam inside. Violet had rolled a large sheet of plastic over the floor and topped it with a bedroll and a few pillows. He sneered as he descended the steps one at a time with his heavy burden that was unwieldy and shivering. "You'd think my payment would include a bed...and a wheelchair." He groaned as he sat Sam down on his bottom and gently guided his head onto the pillows.

Violet peeled back the blankets and dispatched Sam's soiled shirts with expertise and pearl handled knife. She grimaced at the blood still oozing steadily from the bandaged wounds, and disappeared into the back of the house. In the expensive lighting of her home, Sam's skin had a waxy quality and he was shockingly gray. The threads of black leeching towards his heart, up his neck and down his arm stood out in alarming contrast. Dean wiped a hand over his mouth, sickened by the sight.

Dean was morosely grateful that a hard tremor rocked him a beat after his head was padded by pillows. His eyes were open, but sunken and dull like scuffed marbles. Sam was somewhat aware of it all. "Hang on just a little more, Sammy. You'll feel better soon."

He'd assumed the ever-worsening trembling was due to blood loss. He clearly saw now that it was something far worse. The quivers were uncoordinated jerks of the muscles, like they were protesting the violent treatment of his body. They were all-encompassing, too, Dean could see them everywhere, like disjointed satellites of misery, even cheeks and eyelids and toes flicked sporadically.

Dean placed a hand on Sam's chest and was reassured when he sought him out. "S-sucks," Sam gritted out, "to be pink."

"Preachin' to the choir, bitch." Dean said. "Here, Sammy, drink this. It helps." He swept up Sam's sweaty head so he could drink the brew. He choked a little, most of the liquid dribbled down his chin. Sam was still fighting; Dean was grateful.

But also impatient. "Sam's not gettin' any less dead, you know!" He hollered into the kitchen where Violet was tinkering in the walk-in pantry.

Violet said nothing, but promptly returned to Sam's side with some battered canisters and what looked like a large wooden salad bowl that held some a sluggishly steaming liquid that smelled bright like menthol and earthy like dirt. She dipped her fingertips in the water, lips moving without sound.

She rubbed a stripe of the liquid on Sam's forehead before folding her hand over it, palm-side down. A doctor, she clearly wasn't. Dean locked his jaw out of sheer desperation but raged inwardly because Sammy needed far more than a rub down. She snipped and pulled away the bloody bandages and dipped her fingertips into the water again, pacing it over the three wounds in his chest and shoulder. Sam groaned, writhing a little beneath her touch, and Dean didn't know if that was mojo or just plain ole pain. Violet sighed, her washed healing hand covering Sam's heart. "He's a good person," she announced.

"The best one I know," Dean said simply.

The fingers of her dry hand stroked his spasming cheek—a small gesture of comfort that contrasted the chilly treatment Dean had received.

She gazed at him with a heaviness to her eyes. "The poison is vicious. This," she gestured to Sam's jumping limbs, "is neurological. It's attacking is nervous system on top of everything else," she said, wiping the blood from her hand. "His muscles are breaking down. He'll probably suffocate before he bleeds to death," Violet said nonchalantly. She barely glanced at Dean, solely focused on Sam. "I'm going to try to fix that first, and then work on the hemorrhaging."

Dean had expected something far more dramatic, the grinding of chicken bones and the speaking in tongues, maybe some lightning. This seemed like some poorly staged hoax with the canisters and the magic water and not much else. It was that wretched feeling of not being able to help that kept him still and quiet instead of following his instincts and bundling Sammy back into the Impala and flooring it to the nearest hospital.

Violet "purified" her hands again and laid hands on his brother. However, the more he paid attention, the more he could see something was happening. There was tension in Violet's face, cording in her arms and shoulders. Her breathing came in short shudders, and the hair on his arms stood erect, reacting to the kinetic energy in the air. Abruptly she snatched her hands off Sam's head with a yelp, like she'd been burned. The poison had kept Sam from retaining any kind of heat, so he knew it couldn't have been that. That wicked feeling of being completely screwed returned, laying waste to the meager wisps of hope.

Sammy writhed between him, suffering still. Violet stared traitorously at her hands. "This is...I can't believe this. I c-can't do it."

She wasn't the only one without a gun.

It apparently took Dean's Mach 3 level rage and his pearl-handled Taurus to get a decidedly human reaction from the healer. "Dean, calm down. Y-You don't understand what's happening here."

"Lady, it's been a long two days. I've watched my brother lose his mind, bleed out agonizingly slowly and relive some of the worst moments of his life. I can't take much more, especially being screwed over by some hustler."

"I'm not a hustler, Dean. I may be unscrupulous, but I have the gift but..."

Dean tapped the barrel of the gun against his forehead. "You're a psychic healer, right?"

"Fourth generation," she said with cautious pride.

Dean grabbed her arm, so she could read him. "Then you know who I am and what I'm capable of," he menaced. "Heal him right, not dollar store style, or no doctor, healer, angel or demon will be able to save you."

Violet looked stricken and nodded. "Since you threatened to nicely, I'll try again."

She repeated the process her face creased with intent, brow beading with sweat, and it ended just the same with Sam no better off and Violet flinched away like she'd been shocked.

She eyed Dean with the fear a desperate man wielding a gun commanded. "I can't heal him. Can I tell you why without you shooting me?"

Dean kept his eyes dead, flat. "Probably not."

She scrambled for the words. "You didn't tell me Sam was psychic."

So maybe she wasn't all snakeoil. "Sammy had 'The Shining' but that was years ago," Dean said. "It's over."

"A gift like that never just disappears, trust me. Sam has," she groped for the words, "t-turned it inward. He's using it to lock down his spirit. I've pulled people back even after they've died. But this is impossible, like 'Rocky battling a Transformer' impossible." Upon looking at Dean's thunderous face, she rushed to continue. "I need to connect with him, break through on a spiritual level before I can heal his body, but your brother is blocking me. Completely. I've seen a partial block on people with certain gifts, but never like this. He's powerful," Violet said, the awe was audible.

Dean's head spun. He looked at all the canisters and herbs, and his brother laboring to breathe. The gun in his hand felt like solution one way or another. "I'm not losing him. Stop splashing around in water and playing with grandma's tea tins AND FIX MY BROTHER."

His yell even made an otherwise delirious Sam flinch away from the thread of violence in Dean's tone. Violet carded her fingers through Sam's hair and staring at him reverently. "If he doesn't want it, Dean, I can't force it." She fished the Impala's keys out of her pocket, returning them. "Sam's made his choice."