What I do is completely necessary, and I know that. I remind myself of it every night, usually right before I go to sleep, and I get reminded of it every time that I bring it up to Charlie or Garth. So you'd think that I would've learned by now. And I have. On an intellectual level, I understand that what I'm doing here is the best possible way for us to learn. To get the upper hand. To do what we're supposed to do, and save lives, and make the world a safer place.
But emotionally, I hate doing this. Interviewing them and observing them is okay, but experimenting on them, trying to figure out what hurts them. I don't like that. It's useful, of course. I mean, I'm the one who stumbled upon the thing that harpies have with avocados, and that's been really useful. But I hate the noises they make. I hate looking at their wounds and knowing that I'm the one that inflicted them. And I really hate cutting them open after I've killed them.
A lot of them come to me with a rap sheet. The hunters that catch them tell me exactly how many people they've eaten and children they've orphaned and women they've widowed. So, I should enjoy hurting them and making them pay for what they've done, probably. But I don't. Maybe I'm just too soft to do this. It'll probably drive me completely crazy in a few more years.
- Personal journal of Sam Winchester
After scrubbing his face until the skin was pink and felt raw to the touch, Sam put the boots by the door on and walked out to the shed. It was feeding time, which meant more blood, but at least it wouldn't end up on his face this time. He hoped.
He propped open the lid of the chest freezer and fished through it, taking out two Tupperware containers. One held blood and the other a brain and all its accompanying fluid, both from a pig - he had a deal with a perplexed butcher in the nearest town. He carried both in, dumped them into pots on the stove with a little bit of water to melt on low heat on the stove, and cleaned the containers out. The stink of blood and organs had already started to waft through the cabin when he put them away dry. A healthy amount of mentholatum, taken from a rapidly-diminishing jar and smeared under his nose, kept him from tossing his cookies all over the kitchen. He'd done this at least once a day for months now, and worse things before it. He'd never gotten used to the smell.
On his way to open the windows, Sam put his foot in a crust of dried mud. He looked down to see Gordon's dirty bootprints from yesterday, a trail of them leading from the front door to the demon's cell, and so he scrubbed those away while the blood and the brain melted. He was a little surprised that he hadn't taken care of the mess already, with everything else he'd cleaned up this morning to put off talking to the demon.
The contents of the pots on the stove were ready by the time that he was done with the floor: completely melted, and nearly warm enough to suggest that they were fresh from a living body. The blood went into a plastic squeeze bottle of the type athletes used for water and sports drinks when they were working out, and the brain and spinal fluid went into a large bowl. He turned the oven off and put the pots in the sink before carrying the bowl into the cell directly next to the demon's.
The door was locked and bolted, but Sam hadn't taken many other precautions, since the resident wasn't immaterial and couldn't escape from a locked room. He opened the door with one hand and balanced the bowl with the other, and as he stepped in, he announced, "Vaughn. Dinner."
The cell was a pretty sparse room, like all the others. The only furniture had, originally, been a cot. Now there was a TV tray acting as a nightstand, a bright lamp that Sam hadn't bothered to secure, and a collage of comic book covers and pages on one of the bare walls. Books that hadn't yet been dismembered were stacked neatly beneath the cot, which was covered by decent sheets, a thick comforter, and a whole pile of pillows and cushions.
There was a boy lounging on said cot. Well, a teenager. Sam estimated that, physically, he was about fifteen, but chronologically, he had no clue - the lifecycle of Vaughn's kind was radically different from that of humans.
Vaughn glanced up from the comic book that he was reading at the sound of his name, then swung his bare feet off of the cot and stood up. He didn't move until the door was closed again and Sam was in the middle of the room. Then he stepped forward to take the bowl from him.
"I smelled it when you were warming it up," he commented. "But you usually feed us later on odd days. Like...actually dinnertime."
Sam smiled, and was sure that it looked more than a little weak. "Yeah, usually. Guess I'm just a little distracted today." Breakfast on even days, dinner on odd ones. But he was only a couple of hours off, and he didn't have many clocks in the house. "Are you complaining?"
Vaughn shook his head, then lowered it to the bowl, closing his eyes and taking a deep sniff. He recoiled slightly and declared, "Pig."
"Yeah, just like the last hundred times," Sam agreed with a smirk. "I could start mixing it up a little. Cow. Goat. Sheep."
Vaughn shook his head again with a long-suffering sigh. "No. Pig's definitely closest to...y'know." He shrugged, lifting the bowl to his mouth and sipping at the clear liquid. The brain bobbed in it and Sam couldn't keep himself from making a face. "Unless you can get me some monkey brains." He licked his lips.
"I don't think there's anybody butchering monkeys around here," Sam replied. "You're just gonna have to be satisfied with pigs."
"It might be easier if you fed me more often," Vaughn said, widening his eyes innocently as he slurped from the bowl again. Sam leaned against the door with a snort.
"I should be feeding you once a week," he pointed out. "Or less. Most wraiths don't eat nearly as regularly as you do." He folded his arms across his chest. "I'm probably spoiling you. A brain a day."
Vaughn rolled his eyes. They were a bright, intelligent blue, providing a stark contrast to the fiery red hair that he wore long and the freckles scattered across his milk-white skin. He had a lot more than the demon did.
"You could at least put it back in the container when it's warm," Vaughn said. "Like a plastic skull. I really love punching the hole, sucking it out through that."
"Have you ever done that before?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow.
Vaughn scowled. "No."
"Well, I'd rather not have you put holes in all my containers," Sam said. He shrugged, then continued. "But maybe we can do that once or twice. I kinda wanna see how you use your spike - especially because you don't have any experience with it."
"You are so creepy sometimes, Sam," Vaughn complained, going back to his brain juice. He spoke between sips. "I think you're cool, and then the weird monster researcher comes out."
"I'm creepy?" Sam asked with a laugh. "I'm not the one talking about how much I love sucking brains out through holes that I drill in people's heads." He pushed off the door, turned around, and opened it. "You know the drill. Leftovers in the bowl, bowl by the door. I'll come get it when I'm done with Nadia."
"How's your leg?" Vaughn asked before he could leave. Sam hesitated, then shrugged.
"It hurts," he admitted. "I was stupid with it yesterday."
"Really?" Vaughn grinned. "I can't see you being stupid with anything."
Sam smiled a little despite himself. "Thanks, Vaughn."
Once the door was locked again, he grabbed the plastic bottle on the counter and headed for the cell next to Vaughn's. There were eyes on him. He was sure that there had been eyes on him every single time he'd been in the demon's line of sight, but he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging that by looking at him. He'd already allowed himself to be scared and spit on by the thing. That was more than enough power over him.
He pulled the keys out of his pocket, picked out the one that he needed, and lifted it to the lock on the door of this new cell. He hesitated, though, and then sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. He'd caught a sweet and familiar scent. One that set off more alarm bells in his brain than messages of pleasure - but only because he'd had practice fighting off its effect.
"Get away from the door, Nadia," he said firmly. "On the cot or against the back wall. Those are the rules." And she knew them, having been with him for almost six months.
There was a rich, feminine chuckle from the other side of the door, and then there was the scuff of shoes. Sam used the key and pushed the door open, stepping into the room with the bottle of blood in his hand, and he narrowed his eyes at Nadia as he became very aware of the silver knife in his belt. She smiled warmly back.
Sam didn't know her last name (he wasn't even sure that she had one), but her dark, almond-shaped eyes and cappuccino-colored skin spoke very obviously of Middle Eastern ancestry. Her hair was woven back into a loose braid. Sam had given her a few generic outfits, shapeless sweaters and comfortable pants and tennis shoes, and she was wearing one of those right now, but the flawless shape of her body could still be seen underneath it.
The intricate tribal tattoos that could be seen creeping onto her hands, wrapping around her neck, and framing her lovely heart-shaped face marked her as inhuman, and the deep red tint to them displayed exactly which subspecies of djinn she belonged to.
She stayed where she was as Sam closed the door, set the bottle on the ground, and stepped back, but he kept a wary eye on her anyway. She sighed (which did interesting things to her chest; an effect that Sam was sure she knew about) as she picked up the bottle.
"I bet you aren't this careful with the wraith," she said. She'd been born in the United States, so there was no trace of an accent. Just a pout.
"He doesn't have venom that he can get into my bloodstream just by touching me," Sam replied, staying flat against the door as Nadia inspected the bottle. She smiled again.
"You'd enjoy it," she said. Sam snorted. She wrapped full, plum-colored lips around the bottle's nozzle and took a long pull from it, eyes on him the whole time, then continued when she took it out of her mouth. "You'll need to test exactly what that venom does to humans, you know. You'll need to see it for yourself if you want to write an accurate article. Your fantasy...the pleasure."
"Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out how to do that," Sam said. "Without you sucking me dry while I'm out."
Nadia took the bottle into her mouth again instead of answering, smiling around it. Sam gave her a few minutes, knowing that it was fine for her to feed once a day just so long as she got all of it, then asked, "Done?" She nodded and lobbed the bottle to him, underhanded. "Okay. Down on the cot."
With a long-suffering sigh, Nadia sat. Her cot, much like Vaughn's, had been furnished with upscale bedding to keep her comfortable and warm, but the rest of her cell was empty except for a battery-operated light screwed to the ceiling. She hadn't asked for anything, so maybe she didn't get bored. Sam sometimes wondered if she could use her venom on herself.
"So." Once Nadia was sitting on her cot, she leaned forward, interest sparkling in her dark eyes. "Who's the new guy?"
"What're you talking about?" Sam asked, opening the door. With the position that Nadia was in right now, it would take her just a few seconds longer to get up and lunge at him.
"Don't play dumb. The prince," Nadia replied, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "The demon prince. Black power incarnate."
"He's a Knight. Not a prince." Sam stepped out, eager to be gone. Nadia was pretty high up on his list of people he did not want to discuss Gordon's Knight with.
"You won't be able to keep him contained," Nadia called as he closed and then locked the door. "Not with strength like his. I can feel it."
Bottle in hand, Sam shook off the brief conversation and retrieved the bowl from Vaughn's room (he was too absorbed by the book he was reading, this time, to even acknowledge him) and carried both to the sink. A small, dried-out husk of brain, dark and shriveled from having all of its moisture sucked out, was rattling around in the bottom of the bowl. It got pitched into the trash pile out back. Everything else he scrubbed with bleach: the bowl, the bottle, the counters, the stove, the sink. It got rid of the smell. It was the only thing he'd found that did.
When he was finished with all of that, his leg was on the verge of declaring mutiny, so he slumped into a kitchen chair with a sigh. Tipping his head back, closing his eyes, and very firmly ignoring the demon's ever-present stare, Sam allowed himself fifteen minutes of rest. Then he was hauling his body up, needing to get back into it. He'd transferred all of his notes, laid out everything he had so far, caught the book up with his knowledge. There was nothing else to do on that front now. Which meant that he needed to pay a visit to the banshee.
Banshees were fae creatures. Spirits that had never been human and had ties to the Unseelie Court (a nasty bunch in general, as far as Sam and his research were concerned). So that meant that iron hurt them, and holy water, and a few other, more volatile things that Sam didn't really have access to. Grabbing a small plastic grocery bag from a pile in one of the cabinets, Sam tossed in a few iron weights, a canister of rock salt, and one of the small flasks of holy water that he kept handy in the kitchen. He heard a slight noise behind him, and turned with his figurative hackles rising.
The demon had shifted slightly in his chair. Very slightly. If Sam hadn't been so intent on ignoring him that he couldn't help but memorize his position, he probably wouldn't even have noticed it. His face was still impassive, but his gaze hd shifted - his eyes were now aimed at the bag in Sam's hand rather than Sam himself. He must've assumed that all that stuff was for him.
"Not today," Sam muttered under his breath, turning to his bedroom. No way was he going into the demon cell again so soon.
He only took one thing from his bedroom: a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. They were several grades above the ones cops used on shooting ranges. They didn't just muffle sounds; they stopped them entirely. Sam wouldn't be bothered by a rocket taking off while he had these things on. And, more importantly, the scream of a banshee couldn't get through them. With the headphones in place and his bag in his hand, he headed for the cell with the best soundproofing, which was separated from Nadia's by an empty one.
Most of the monsters that ended up in his cells were caught by hunters and delivered to him for the advancement of the greater good. The banshee, however, had been donated. One Angus McCloud had been exceedingly interested in getting rid of her, with a newborn child in his house, and the people he had gone to directed him to see Sam. She had followed the McClouds since before the dawn of written history in the British Isles. They were a Scottish-Irish family, very old, and from what Angus had told Sam, the banshee wasn't the only strange thing about them. Their women had a long history of suspected witchcraft, and a more recent ancestor had apparently sold his soul to the Devil (though Angus had no idea what he'd gotten in return). Sam had written all of that down, just in case it was relevant.
He opened the door and stepped into the room, closing it behind him. He adjusted the headphones, making sure they weren't loose. Whoever heard the cry of a banshee would die within a matter of days. It was unclear if they were the cause or just the warning of the death, and there was a lot of lore that said that only blood relatives of the families they followed could hear their shrieks, but Sam really preferred to err on the side of caution.
The room was dominated by a perfect circle of smooth, weather-worn stones, each one roughly the size of a grapefruit, that Sam had had brought over from Ireland. A young woman knelt in the center, her back to Sam and the door. She had a small, slender build, hair so pale it was almost white in a loose braid that crossed her shoulder, and and skin that made Sam think of white tissue paper. She was dressed in a simple grey gown that looked like it was made of wool. Her head was bowed, and she didn't react to Sam's entrance.
He slowly and carefully lowered himself into a sitting position on the concrete, with a grunt that he could feel, but not hear. Two small notepads and two sharpened pencils had been set in the corner. He picked up one of each and lobbed them into the circle. The woman turned slightly when they landed next to her, giving Sam a glimpse of her upturned nose and pink lips. Her hair hid everything else. He scribbled a message on his own pad, then showed it to her: Ready to get started, Elspeth?
She turned completely around, reading what he had written. Her bangs obscured her eyes. Slowly, she got to her feet, and Sam sighed, putting the notepad down. He knew what was coming even before she started to change.
Her feet rose from the floor, dangling limply in the air. Her dress withered, becoming bloodstained silver rags. Her hair tore itself free from the braid and whipped in a spastic cloud around her head, losing what little color it had had to begin with. It also revealed her eyes, or, rather, lack of them - she had raw, empty sockets. Her face became gaunt, her skin gray, and her toothless mouth dropped open as an eerie glow that reminded Sam of pictures he'd seen of swamp gas surrounded her. She began to wail, thin, flat chest heaving with the effort of it, but, of course, Sam didn't hear a thing.
His heartbeat pounded slowly in his ears as he reached for the notepad again. He wrote out a message, one that he'd jotted down several times before in other sessions: I can't hear you. Nobody can hear you. This isn't doing you any good.
If the banshee read it (and Sam knew she could, despite her lack of eyes), she paid no attention to it. She just kept screaming in vain, fingers curled into claws, tipped by long, jagged yellow fingernails that he knew she'd take to his eyes if he crossed the circle. He let out another sigh, and tried one last time.
You know what will happen if you don't cooperate.
The banshee didn't close her mouth. In fact, she hurled herself against the invisible barrier that kept her from Sam, biting and clawing at it as she screamed, even though she had to know that it was useless. Sam felt his lips automatically thin out into a narrow line as he reached for the bag that he'd brought with him. He drew out one of the iron weights, a heavy, cow bell-shaped thing that rested neatly in the palm of his hand.
"Guess we're gonna do this the hard way, huh, Elspeth?" he asked, though he didn't hear himself speak.
You could not, as Sam had so recently learned, win over a banshee in the same way as you could a wraith or a djinn. As spirits, they didn't need to eat, and they couldn't be provided with any creature comforts that might soften them up, such as a comfortable bed or entertainment. Sam had tried civility, respect. Familiarity, too, by calling the banshee Elspeth, which was a fairly traditional Scottish name (according to the internet). None of it had worked.
That left him with only one option. He was exhausted when he left her cell two hours later, and his leg might as well have been a pipe cleaner, for all the strength that it seemed to have. He'd gotten a lot of information, almost ten pages' worth of notes, but watching the banshee flinch and shy away from the iron, salt, and holy water that he tossed into her circle wasn't his idea of a good time. And it definitely had made her like him any more. She'd been prostrate on the ground, moaning, while he was using various household tools to get what he could out of the circle, after he was finished for the day.
He needed to eat. He didn't have much of an appetite right now, but he knew that he needed food after the kind of day that he'd had, so he dumped two cans of condensed chicken noodle soup into a pot and set it to heating up on the stove. As the smell of it filled the room, he dragged his leg around to lose all the windows that he'd opened earlier. It got cold once the sun went down. Hence the space heater and multiple blankets in his bedroom.
The soup wasn't done yet, so Sam collapsed onto his desk chair. His noise-cancelling headphones, he realized, were still on - weird how he got used to the complete silence after a while. He pulled them off, grimacing at the sudden influx of little noises, and replaced them with a different set of headphones. Ones that played music.
He dug through the drawers of his desk, which were cluttered by necessity because they were so full. He found his Walkman, and grabbed a CD case at random, loading its contents as he plugged the headphones in. All of his music had been downloaded onto his laptop a long time ago, but it was in his room, and he didn't feel like walking that far right now. He hit play, and Bach flooded his ears.
Sam didn't know how long he listened, slumping low in his chair and tilting his head back and focusing on nothing more than his breathing. These headphones didn't block out background noise, so he took them off when he heard the soup start loudly bubbling. Turning the Walkman off and setting it aside, he happened to glance at the demon cell, and wasn't surprised to see its occupant looking at him.
Something had changed, though. His head was tilted to the side again, as if he were confused, and he blinked at him as he got up to get his soup off of the stove. His eyes were green, and they didn't change.