After an interminable pause, Sam slowly began to realise that the knives hadn't moved. They were still hanging in the air, pointing menacingly at the brothers. Dean was beginning to stir and his return to consciousness was blighted by confusion. Struggling to get out from under Sam, he grunted a warning to whoever was holding him down. The confusion merely escalated when Sam's hand landed, none too gently, on his chest, holding him down. As his vision cleared he found Sam's face up close and personal.
"Dude! What the hell?" he spluttered and then groaned, eyes glaring up at Sam.
"Stay down, Dean." Sam nodded towards the hovering enemy, slowly releasing his brother once he was happy Dean had seen the danger. Dean swallowed loudly.
"Sam? What's going on?" Dean was instantly on full alert. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine. But we have a problem. We need to get out of here."
"Well, I'm with you on that one. Any bright ideas?" Dean grunted, cautiously raising a hand to his head, pausing to gently probe the bump that had appeared just above his left ear. It felt sticky and Dean knew, without looking, that his fingers would come away bloody.
"Maybe we could shoot it?" Sam suggested, although he didn't think a gun would work against a gathering of knives. Sure, they might take a couple out of action but the rest would still be there. A shot of rock salt would probably do the trick but he had silver bullets in his gun and he doubted Dean had done anything differently. The shot gun was too conspicuous to have gotten past the cops so they had opted to leave it in the Impala. On reflection, Sam wished they'd brought it with them. It wasn't as if they hadn't done it before. Dean' snort of derision mirrored his thoughts.
"Don't think that'll help, Sammy. We need a distraction so we can get to the door." Keeping his eyes glued to the hovering danger, Dean pushed Sam to one side and raised himself up on one elbow. Pausing to let the room settle down again, he blinked against the headache stirring in the base of his skull. "Hey, maybe we could drown it?" he suggested, catching sight of a bottle of turpentine.
"What?" Sam queried.
"Think about it, Sammy. If Elaine used turpentine to clean her brushes, maybe she used it on the knives too. Maybe it'll cleanse it of whatever's holding them together."
It sounded a pretty farfetched idea to Sam, but he had no alternative to offer. They were effectively pinned where they were and he didn't fancy spending the rest of the day under the table. Dean's eyes had a glassy sheen to them that Sam didn't like the look of. They had nothing to lose by trying. He shrugged and slowly leaned over till the bottle was within his reach.
Just as his fingertips brushed the cool plastic of the bottle, a particularly vicious looking palette knife broke free from the pack and hurtled down towards Sam's arm. It lodged brutally in his forearm and he couldn't help but release a cry of pain. Gritting his teeth, he yanked his arm in to his body, cradling it with his other hand.
"Shit, Sam. Lemme see!" Dean pulled himself to a sitting position, ignoring the remaining weapons that seemed content to wait for their next move. Gently pulling Sam's arm across his chest, Dean swore softly under his breath. The palette knife wasn't deep in his forearm, Sam's jacket and shirt had afforded some protection at least. But it was enough to give cause for concern. Dean quickly assessed the injury, deciding that the knife had to come out, painful as it was going to be. Common sense was screaming at him to leave it be, but he had no choice. Sam was going to be unable to use his arm with a knife sticking out of it and although it was going to hurt like hell when Dean pulled it out, he didn't really see a way round it. He cast his eyes around, looking for a makeshift bandage. Spotting a relatively clean rag within reach, he cautiously reached for it, making sure the floating implements stayed where they were. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to be stopped, Dean grasped the fabric.
"Sorry, dude," he muttered. "This is going to hurt," and he took hold of the knife, pulling sharply, withdrawing the offending object in one fell swoop. Instantly wrapping the cloth around the bleeding wound, Dean quickly tied it off. He smiled apologetically at Sam. "That's it. You did good."
Sam's face was pale and drawn. Although the blood loss could have been a lot worse, the sharp blade had sliced cleanly through fabric, skin and flesh. Sam's arm throbbed in rhythm with his beating heart. With every pulse of his blood, he could feel the makeshift dressing becoming wetter and heavier. He breathed through his nose in an attempt to control the pain and looked at Dean.
"I guess you were onto something," he told Dean, ruefully. "Something doesn't want us getting that turpentine."
"Which means we really need it." Dean moved away from Sam, giving him some space to manoeuvre his arm back onto his chest, holding it so as to immobilise it as best he could. He gingerly flexed his fingers, only to rapidly pull them back into a fist as a sharp, unrelenting pain shot up his tendons. He doubted he could hold on to the bottle, even if he was able to get to it. He shook his head apologetically at his brother.
"I can't do it, Dean."
"Move over then," Dean grunted, as he unceremoniously rolled over his brother, careful to avoid hurting either of them more than they already were. Lifting his upper body over Sam's damaged limb, he shifted onto his elbows, ignoring the pounding headache and the darts of white light encroaching on the edges of his vision. Once in position on the other side of Sam, he sought out the bottle that was the cause of all this grief. He mentally calculated the distance he would have to travel, compared with the distance the knives would have to move, working out how fast he would have to move to avoid the same fate that had befallen Sam. Taking a final look at the floating arsenal in front of them, he took a deep breath and lunged to the side.
Looking back on it, Sam would be hard pressed to say what order things happened in. He felt Dean's presence leave his side, he felt the air pressure drop, he felt the corresponding drop in temperature again and he heard the splash of liquid spilling, the clatter of metal dropping from midair. And he heard his brother curse over and over again. He didn't hear any cries of pain, which he took as a good thing, and when he looked over at Dean, he was relieved to see no more blood. Dean lay on his side, an empty bottle of turpentine in his hand and a triumphant grin on his face.
The floating weaponry was no more. Knives and scalpels lay harmlessly on the floor at their feet. They glistened with moisture and the smell of the turpentine filled the air. One or two had managed to get as far as Dean's torso but the cleanser had done it's job before they had made contact with their target.
"Guess that told 'em who's boss," Dean laughed, feeling the adrenaline leaving his body. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. "I'll tell you what, Sammy. I'm stocking up on turps from now on."
A/N - I know this was a short chapter but it seemed like a good place to stop. Next chapters are longer again.
TBC
