Supernatural Visions
Chapter 4
Enmity
Author's Note: I'm never, never, ever going to make promises I can't keep every again. I am sooooo sorry to everyone who expected this to be updated last year. I expected it to be updated last year! I'm glad I had some time to think on a few plot points (yay), but this wait was waaaay too long. I won't promise that it won't happen again, because it probably will. I'll try to be a little consistent, though.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fourth chapter of Visions. I'm changing the title of the story to "Enter Sandman", so those of you who were used to seeing visions and see "Enter Sandman" as a title in the near future will know. I thought that title and the accompanying Metallica song worked better for the theme of this part of the story anyway. Enjoy!
I wasn't the most forthright person in the world. For a good fifty years of my life, from when I was very young, I'd fought on my own. I'd learned that it was better to not rely on anyone but myself to get the job done. This mindset didn't stem from me believing that the people I worked with weren't capable. The danger that I was in was consistently ingrained in my skull and I knew that, with so many people after me, the friends I made would be thrust into danger.
This was before I'd been forced to become a part of a team. In those years, my walls slowly eroded to the point where I began trusting that they wouldn't get hurt; that maybe they could face anything and everything thrown at them. When that worldview was shattered I left that entire life behind and worked as hard as I could to be normal.
Dealing with human problems had been liberating. I was content to continue that life before Sam and Dean came into the picture and shattered the living daydream with a ten pound hammer. Along with my reluctance in joining them on their quest to find their father and stop this elusive yellow-eyed demon from running amuck I'd silently vowed to protect them from anything bigger. I would help them deal with the minor league, but their exposure to the professional league of evil maniacs would be minimal.
Naturally keeping them out of it didn't work. At all.
This would not have been the first time I'd been in hot water with people I worked with. When I worked as a Night Hunter I was frequently in trouble with my aunt, the head huntress, for taking unnecessary risks. When I joined my former team they were frequently mad at me for, again, taking unnecessary risks and keeping them in the dark.
Sam and Dean weren't just fellow hunters. They were my friends and I liked to think that we grew very close in the few weeks we'd known each other. Sam, especially, since he and I seemed to be psychically tuned to each other.
Because they were worth more to me than just coworkers I tried to work harder on reasoning out my abysmal trust issues.
It wasn't even like I hadn't taken their feelings into consideration! I actually did and had thought on it for several hours. The end result with that train of thought was me deciding that not risking having to bury my team members was worth the risk of them getting pissy.
And I told them both this back at the hotel room after telling them what I'd found out on my own.
Come to find out that they had already guessed Caelum ven Geat was baiting me. They also guessed that I was only a small part of the plan, though none of us had guessed precisely why Geat was targeting untrained witches and wizards other than for the purpose of speaking with someone in hell. All we knew was that I was a highly probable component in his plans.
"You two can appreciate why I wanted to keep you guys out of this in the first place, right?" I asked dully from where I sat on my bed.
Sam, I noted, hadn't spoken one word. Dean was the one asking the questions, telling me that I was an idiot, confirming my findings with theirs, making sure that I knew how much of a moron I'd been, and pretty much anything related to the latter. Sam, however, stood by the window that overlooked the parking lot. We were three stories up, so I imagined that he had a pretty good view. Too bad he wasn't paying much attention to it. The tick of his jaw and the rigid way he stood unmoving told me that he was very angry.
"You know," Dean said in reply to my question, "I'd really like to say that we do, but we don't. We went in and fended off daevas, saved you from a Goblin, banished ghosts and wrestled with poltergeists for the past month and a half. We've all been slashed, stabbed, poked, prodded, thrown, burned, and pretty much anything else you can think of! I think you should have established by now that Sam and I can take a heavy beating, so what's the deal?"
Dean seemed more exasperated than afraid and I wanted to keep him that way. We had similar personalities and, well, having been royally pissed off myself before, I preferred not being at the receiving end of anything Dean could come up with. I'd imagine it'd be pretty brutal.
"I think we've specified, by now, that Caelum's on a whole other level," I replied dryly, "You and Sam had the element of surprise on your side. He'll expect you guys to want to launch a counterattack. It's how you work."
"Look, Brianna, I know we're not elves or wizards. Trained wizards at least, but we're not that bad when it comes down to the hunting part of our job. We can help you take him out; you just have to give us something to work with. I think you've proven that you can't take him on your own, so let us help," it wasn't as much of a request as it was an order.
I sighed, "Dean, I really appreciate what you're trying to tell me, but I meant what I said. Caelum is going to take magic to kill. He was an elven hunter. The best of your fighting abilities don't even hold a candle to him. He was OLIMPUS' best hunter and he went rogue. It makes him more powerful and more dangerous. Let me handle him."
"Oh, yeah, because you did so well," Sam finally spoke up.
I bit my tongue to keep myself from snapping at him.
"I was trying to get away without being too conspicuous," I replied primly.
I didn't want to admit that Caelum was, quite possibly, more than I could handle. He couldn't be. I wasn't going to let it happen. I was going to take him out.
"Yeah and that still didn't work. Face it Bri, you need us," Dean said.
"No I don't."
"Why?"
"Because Caelum is too dangerous!" I snapped.
Sam snorted, "How old do you think we are? Five?"
"Come on, Bri, what's the deal? We dealt with daevas, ghosts, and a soul sucking witch. Caelum uses curses. I'll give it to you that he casts them differently than witches and warlocks do, but the principle is the same. Give us the rune book, give us a marker or stylus, and let us help," Dean said.
I stared at him. Did he honestly think that runes were that easy to use?
But they are, reminded a traitorous part of my brain, for them runes would be easier to use because they are descendents of elves. They weren't as human as they first thought they were. Even if magic had skipped Dean and manifested in Sam didn't mean that Dean hadn't inherited at least a few qualities that were distinctly elven. And Sam is smart enough to be able to pick up on the basics of the runic language.
I wanted to curse that small reminder. I hated that part of me disagreed, that part of me actually wanted to put two untrained mortals in harm's way.
But, maybe that disgusting part of me that actually wanted them to come along was right. Maybe I should include them.
Before I could really say anything to that effect Sam decided to open his mouth.
"You know, Dean, I don't think she trusts us," he said coolly.
Dean and I both gaped at him. Sam shrugged.
"Well, why else would she keep things from us? She doesn't trust us to have her back in there. In fact, I don't think she trusts us at all," he said.
That wasn't true. I did trust them. In fact I trusted them more than I trusted anyone else I worked with, but I also knew that they weren't equipped to handle Geat. This wasn't a trust issue, this was a tactical issue. The same small voice in the back of my mind reminded me that the brothers hadn't been trained to think tactically even with Sam's college education at Stanford.
I crossed my arms and fixed him with the most challenging look I could muster. I was daring him to continue digging his own grave.
From the corner of my eye I saw Dean glancing between the two of us. He didn't bother to even try to reply to what Sam said and Sam continued to talk as if he didn't realize just how angry he was making me with every word he said.
"I really don't understand why, we've saved her ass several times by now. She lies to us, makes sure we're out of the way, and then does stuff on her own. Honestly, she's so much like dad that it sickens me!"
And then, with his bitch-face in full throttle, he stormed out of the hotel room.
I tilted my head back and stared up at the ceiling. I counted to ten and then hurried after Sam with Dean calling after me. By then Sam was already halfway down the hallway and a few feet away from the elevators.
There were very few times when I actually employed the use of my inhuman attributes. A part of me always cleaved to a more human-like lifestyle where I pretended that my immortal body didn't exist and that I was born with pointed ears that could hear sounds coming from three miles away, eyes that could see a person running in a neighborhood leagues away and still get a good look at them, strength that rivaled the weakest international weight-lifter, and a body that, while not considered "sexy" by any means, was undeniable attractive. Hiding my pointed ears and unnaturally slanted eyebrows had been a fraction of what I had to do. When I found out that my "beauty" could still be seen and that my basic elven biology still acted like it was born to I realized that it needed to be hidden as well. The beauty I could manage, but the sight, the hearing, and the faster-than-average movements, the natural grace, the strength, had to be carefully controlled. When I entered the human world for good (seemingly) I spent the first year practicing human movements. I watched how humans moved as much as possible whether it was me looking out my window or surfing for internet videos on my old dinosaur computer. I forced my body to forget what it was born with, or at least I thought I had.
When I broke into a run to reach Sam as fast as I possibly could, my natural speed sprung from where it lay dormant in the furthest corner of my mind and I suddenly found myself clearing the distance in one second. I caught him at the elevator and barely slipped inside before the door closed. I hadn't even broken a sweat. My muscles sang; glad to have been allowed this small chance to really work out in five years. I pushed the feelings of exhilaration and relief to the back of my mind and fixed Sam with a pointed stare.
He crossed his arms and glared.
"Really?" he asked.
I rolled my eyes, "Yeah, really, I'm not letting you run off and not give me a chance to explain myself."
He scoffed and looked away from me, scowling. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.
"Sam," I began.
He glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. I opened my mouth, found that what I wanted to say was too difficult to word, and then shut it. How could I word this without bringing up some of the most painful experiences in my life? My team had never faced Caelum head on, but we had fought the people who worked for him. The memories only reinforced my belief that the knight elf was dangerous. I didn't have much time to mentally prepare myself for what I had to tell him. If I was honest with myself, and at that time I was, it wouldn't have surprised me if Sam completely blew me off. He was like his father in that regard.
"You don't trust us, do you?" He spat.
John Winchester, I considered, hadn't exactly given Sam a good opinion of people who kept things from their friends, relatives, and co-workers for their own good. I had to remember that for most of his life Sam had never been given a good reason to trust people who only tried to protect him. He had never been protected from anything, not in the things that mattered. His father either expected Dean to do it or made Sam learn how to protect himself. I made myself remember that tidbit because I needed that reminder.
Not having that reminder would have made me much, much angrier than Sam was at me.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
"I do, actually. It's just hard to get into," I replied.
"That's bullshit and you know it!"
Impulsively I shut the elevator off. The lights dimmed and we stopped moving.
"What is it with you and thinking that you always know what's best for you? You never think for a moment that some of us, aka me, might know something you don't! Why don't you trust me? I do know, Sam! I don't know if you've realized this, but I'm almost a century older than you!" I was trying not to yell, but the undertone was there.
Sam looked like he was about to respond, but I continued talking (almost yelling) before he could really get into it.
"What do you know about me? I left OLIMPUS for a reason. People die because they're not prepared! Knight elves are powerful, worse than demons and witches! They're nothing you've ever encountered before and, yes, I do think I can take him alone. Caelum's after me anyway, so he wouldn't expect it!" I insisted.
"Maybe we are, but it's no excuse for you to go anywhere without backup. Brianna. We. Are. A. Team. We do this together or not at all," Sam said.
I shook my head and crossed my arms. If anyone who knew me was paying attention, they'd know that I was trying to distance myself from him and everything he had to say. Sam, much to my growing horror, was making sense. I hated it. I hated the idea that I could have been so incredibly wrong about everything.
My voice, soft, and held an underlining emotion that I hadn't quite meant to let escape, broke the momentary silence, "I don't want either of you to get hurt."
I almost winced at how I sounded. My tone, not just what I said, conveyed more of my feelings about the situation than I wanted to.
Then I saw the look on his face and my heart sank.
Sam knew. He stared at me and I could see comprehension slowly, but surely, dawn. It broke across his face like the first rays of sunshine and continued to rise. Then his expression took a slight turn. His eyes glazed over and it seemed like he was looking at the wall above me for a moment. It took me a moment to realize what was going on and when I did I wanted to kick myself.
He was seeing everything that was in the forefront of my mind.
My heart pounded against my chest and I wanted to bolt then and there. I didn't want him to see any of it!
'Sam, get out of my head, please!' I thought desperately.
But there was no helping it. He was going to see everything I didn't want him to whether I wanted it or not. It wasn't his fault. He couldn't control it no matter how hard he'd been trying the human way. If anything it was my fault for not learning how to block him out.
That fact still didn't keep me from almost crying.
When he came back to the substantial world I saw the shock, the pity, and the horror in his eyes. I wasn't surprised. Those memories had been playing over and over in my mind for the past twenty-four hours.
I closed my eyes and took another breath in an attempt to calm my racing heart. I opened them when he started to speak.
"Bri, I…," he looked lost trying to find the words to say.
He shook his head, "No, Bri, listen, I get it. Trust me I watched my girlfriend die on my ceiling right above me! Alright? I get it! And I never got to say goodbye! At least you could!"
He grabbed my shoulders. I kept my head turned away from him no matter how much I wanted to look at him.
"Look at me, please, Bri, look at me!"
He was begging. He was scared. What exactly he was afraid of I didn't know, but I could feel his hands shaking and a semblance of the same connection we shared earlier. I looked at him.
Sam's eyes were green. They were a beautiful and wonderful green. It occurred to me just how much I didn't want the fire, the life, the steady calm portrayed in those eyes to ever fade.
My eyes stung and I blinked again.
"Bri, trust us to do the right thing. Dean was right; we can learn to fight your way as well. If I'm a wizard then I'll be a wizard and Dean will learn anything you can teach him. We need to be a team, Bri. I don't know why, but I know we do. This - you, Dean, and I together hunting monsters – this feels right even if everything else doesn't and I can't guarantee everything's going to be fine. Just… just trust us to be there to help. You have to trust us not to die," he said.
I sniffed and breathed deeply again. My vision blurred despite my best efforts. I could see Sam's features blur and swim in front of me.
Finally, I looked down at his chest so I couldn't see his eyes. The sincerity in them scared me and made me want to do the one thing I hadn't dared to do since I had left OLIMPUS: trust.
"But they always do," I whispered and then slid out of his grasp.
I hit the button and turned the elevator back on. A few seconds later, it came to a stop on the ground floor. Once the doors slid open I strode out as fast as I could without raising too much suspicion in the hotel lobby.
"Bri!" He called.
I heard the quick patter of his shoes as he came after me and I continued to walk and pretend that I didn't hear him call my name. I didn't want to hear him. He'd keep telling me everything was okay when it wasn't. That was always how it was. They'd assure me that everything was fine and then they'd leave me because one of the psychopath's after me thought they got in the way… or they'd save me from the same psychopaths and die.
No more.
I reached the front doors and shoved them open. I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard Sam a follow after me. By then I'd already broken into a jog to get away from the building. I crossed the parking lot easily and a small garden of trees, flowers and tailored bushes on the far side. It surrounded one of the nicer restaurants in the district.
That was when someone grabbed me from behind.
I struggled for a moment. Trying to escape, but this person's grip was vice-like. They whirled me around and shoved me into a bush. I met the blood red irises of my attacker and froze.
Caelum.
That was my last thought before I felt a sharp pain in my neck. My vision blurred and I vainly fought against the fatigue and weakness.
"Let her go!"
The last thing I heard was Sam's panicked voice before I blacked out.
There is no good way to describe what caused the following after I blacked out. I could only list what happened. The experience was surreal enough. Trying to make sense of it was impossible.
I was floating in a sea of black. I was aware of the sensation. There was no air, no movement, no anything, just my awareness that something was wrong.
My ears picked up a susurration of voices, but I couldn't determine who they belonged to. I tried to move but my body didn't respond. I couldn't speak and I couldn't respond. I wanted to. I wanted to call out to them, I wanted to be saved but nothing I could do helped. I was helpless.
'Dean, I don't know where they went, Caelum disappeared after he took her!'
Was that Sam?
'You could use your mojo, you know, get into her head, right?'
Dean... how was I- oh. Of course! Our mental connection or whatever it was.
The darkness faded into a scene and I started. I saw Dean staring at me with his mouth tilted into a grim frown.
"Sam, she's gotta have a book lying around somewhere. The woman thrives off of books!"
Sam's agitation hit me in waves. The sensation was strange, like they weren't my emotions, but I was feeling them as if they were mine.
"Dean, I don't know where to start!"
"You're the one who gets inside her head!"
"I don't do it on purpose!"
It felt like I was the one yelling, but it was Sam's voice coming out of my mouth. He sounded… like he was about to cry. My own emotions surged against his and I felt light… er… lighter than I did at that moment.
What was going on? I'd read a lot about the magic of the mental realm, but never anything about this. Granted I admittedly hadn't read much about mental magic. Few people could master the art the literature behind it was rather lacking.
"Sam," Dean stepped forward and put a hand on my – Sam's – shoulder, "pull yourself together, man! We need to help her and we can't do that if you're acting like the world's ending."
Sam seemed to have gotten himself under control, because he switched to hunter-mode after a few moments.
"Okay, so, I don't know how to use magic, you can't use magic, but we both have elven ancestry so there's one thing we can use: runes."
"Okay, but that involves memorizing them," Dean pointed out.
"Not if we draw them on ourselves before we go after her. We might even be able to use them for some sort of spell work," Sam said.
I rolled my eyes. Runes were an alchemist creation! They were compiled of systematic mathematical equations. The ones that only took a single mark had been constructed by years upon years of study and alchemical physics. But, I mentally amended, Sam was about to figure that out.
There would have been more, but as I focused back in on the conversation at hand everything in front of more faded away and the last thing I heard was Dean saying, "Right, well, we've got three hours…"
What did that mean?
I groaned as the strange vision I had from Sam's point of view faded away. My head felt numb, confused and disoriented to the world around it. Even my vision blurred. I tried to rub my eyes, but found that my hands refused to move.
A jolt of fear surged through my body and my breath caught in my throat. The moments leading up to my blacking out flooded back to me and I leaned my head sharply back. It hit a wall, a wall that felt unsteady. Saw dust covered my head and shook my head to get rid of the ridiculous air particles.
My vision cleared. I was in an old, run-down house and I wasn't alone. Adrenaline rushed through my veins. I straightened up in my chair and gaped at the blue-tinged skin, orange-red hair and blood-red eyes of Caelum ven Geat. My lips parted, but the most I could manage was a dry grunt. He looked up at me from where he was flipping through a thick, emerald green, book and smiled at me. His teeth were stark white, like pearls. Just like all elves. It was the one thing that hadn't changed.
If I hadn't been an elf, or anything else not mortal, I supposed that he could have been considered handsome. When I last saw him, he was beautiful. Now he was a shadow of his former glory, a petty imitation of the glory that was the elven race. He was decaying from the inside out. All use of magic was lost to him to be replaced by the poison that was sorcery.
The sight of him almost made me want to cry as I realized that this was someone I had known. Once, he had been great, now he was scum, evil. I hated it.
"You are awake," he said.
It was the same, rich, tenor voice. That tenor voice seemed to be more amplified to sound alluring.
It had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to kill him.
"Traitor!" I spat.
He snorted, "Of what? A failing system where the heir does everything in her power to avoid her station in life? To deny the crown? I am going to reform the system, it will be better, not worse."
I felt my heart skip a beat. What did he know about the heir? I kept my face as neutral as I possibly could while my mind raced through every fearful scenario it could think of.
"And, Bri, you are going to help me achieve this. The Great One demands that, should any of us find you, we bring you with us to him. He wants you, but we must be patient. He needs a certain powerful ally, which is where I come in," he explained.
I relaxed slightly. He didn't know anything. I was safe.
"Who is he trying to get?" I asked.
When I looked in Caelum's eyes I realized that he thought I'd go along with whatever he was planning the moment he told me. I'd get some information out of him.
"Samyaza," Caelum replied smugly.
Oh shit. If he needed to release Samyaza then that would mean he'd need…
By the Triune! He'd need the blood of an adult untrained wizard. He didn't need me for anything other than bait and only one would come for me. Sam.
But how did he know Sam was a wizard? Artemis had redacted his clearance to the OLIMPUS database, so he couldn't have found him that way. He'd left the organization before Sam was born. Even if he had looked into the family he would have known that the gift skipped Dean. He wouldn't have known Sam was even born.
It meant that the only way he would have known about Sam was if he had been following us for a while and would have listened in long enough to hear me tell Sam that I thought he was a wizard. If he was listening in on us when we first arrived, then he would have heard me explain Sam's lineage.
Coldness clenched my gut like icy fingers slowly curing around my stomach. I stared at him, well, not at him but in his direction while my mind finished processing what he'd said.
He had been following Sam and Dean.
That coldness was quickly driven away by hot, fiery, anger. The bastard had been planning this for months and I hadn't noticed! I glared daggers at Caelum. Death was too good for him. I wanted to seal him inside the seventh gate of Hell. Let him commune with the worst of the worse. Let him be tortured for years and years by Abaddon, Samyaza, and whoever else my ancestors had sealed in there.
And this whole thing was a trap for Sam.
This was the reason why I always preferred to work alone.
"You're threatening my boys," I said, "you're insane if you think I'm actually going to cooperate with you."
He smirked, "Huntress Davis, you may fight now, but you and I both know that Lord Ba'al is our true ruler. He was born for greatness and I have confidence in his ability to succeed."
What could I say to that? The man was delusional and I wondered how he his thinking had evolved to this point. After all, no elf in OLIMPUS had any sort of love for Ba'al. Most of them had seen his savagery firsthand at one point or another. If they didn't see it, they had read about it and would see it very soon. This fascination with the Raiphahim confused me and I sat there thinking about Caelum for a few moments.
How did he, an OLIMPUS hunter, ever conclude that Ba'al's way was the right way? Years of training, years of seeing what Ba'al had done to the very people who devotedly served him, years of observing the slaughter of innocent children for the sake of ritualistic power; all of it had been done away with for some strange reason I couldn't comprehend.
I did have power. In fact, the potential for the power I had inherited would make me far more powerful than Ba'al. One would think I would have felt this lust for control over the masses, the ability to conquer and rule with an iron fist because I knew that I could if I ever bothered to push my current limits to their full potential, but I didn't. I had spent the first thirty years of my life living in a forced amnesiac fog and then the next eighty years of my life I was a Huntress for OLIMPUS. I didn't know I had magic for forty years of that career and had learned to fight on my own. I'd struggled against Ba'al's minions and won more than lost. Admittedly, that was probably why Ba'al wanted me so much. Even seemingly powerless I'd managed to stop him.
It was all I'd ever done, I'd realized. I went through life, one day at a time, stopping bad guys in an attempt to make the world a safer place for all of the people in it. Even when I lived as a human that had always been my goal: the protector, the avenger, the consultant, and the hunter. Despite how I felt about the previous life I'd led, despite how much I wanted to deny it, I was good at this sort of thing. I was good at protecting people.
But this is what I didn't understand. Caelum had been good at protecting people too. He fought for the same things I did and bled for them even more, far longer than I'd been alive. Maybe that was the problem? Maybe he saw how good he was, how powerful he was, and began to ask the selfish questions of why? And he, quite possibly, hadn't liked the answer. After all, from the cold mind of the universe, from the eyes of the law, mortals were disgusting creatures filled with hatred and malice. All of the good they attempted to do in the entire world would never redeem them. They were lost specks of dust in the sands of time. This sort of thinking normally did lead to people leaving OLIMPUS, but they usually didn't turn to the Knight Elves and the Fallen for answers.
"Why?" I asked, "Why did you turn to Ba'al if you thought the system was corrupt? Why not stay and reform the system?"
Caelum looked up from whatever he was doing, I couldn't quite catch what it was, and smirked, "Because the system was ordained by the Tyrant and I will not bend to the will of the Tyrant."
Ah. That made sense. "The Tyrant" was what they normally called the Triune. Another thing I would never understand. I would rather the all powerful, all knowing, creator of the universe dictate my fate than a rebellious angel who thought he could be exactly like the person who created him. However flawed his logic was I knew why Caelum went dark. He wanted to be like a god. It was why most elves went dark.
I smirked. Really? Didn't they ever learn from history? People who attempted to fly too close to godhood tended to get burned and people like me were the people lighting them on fire.
I stopped thinking about it after that final thought entered my head and focused on escaping. The ropes binding my hands together were flammable and all I had to do was...
The world around me spun and I slumped against the wall I had been set against. When the spell ran its course, the world came back into focus and I saw, briefly, Caelum's smirking face.
"Wormwood. Just a bit of it enhanced by demon blood stunts your power," he explained.
I wanted to kill him then and there. It didn't help that Caelum had the presence of mind to actually search for and remove my weapons. I thought through the list of hidden weaponry on my person hoping to at least find one that he had left. There wasn't any.
I really wanted to kill him. Every fiber of my being called for his blood and I my muscles tensed in response to my anger. I couldn't feel the elements and the more my mind caught up with the fact the more empty I felt.
I saw red while my eyes followed his movements as he worked the empty room in front of me. Where were we? Someplace abandoned, had to be, because there was no way he'd be able to hide something like this from human police officials for as long as he did.
I glared at him. He was wise to tie me up. Elements or no, I was lethal and given the chance I would have killed him.
Sam, I thought fervently, stay away! Don't come for me! Stay away!
That became my mantra for the next hour and a half.
While I tried to get through to Sam and increasingly despaired at being able to reach him with each failed moment my secondary thought processes considered the new information at hand. Caelum wanted to raise Samyaza from his prison. He needed the blood of an untrained wizard, but that was all I knew. Apparently there were some specific components I hadn't known about, but I didn't know what they were.
I watched while Caelum worked. The largest component of raising or trapping anyone in Hell was the careful application of runes. The only difference was that sealing runes were of the ancient elven language and raising runes were of the dark magic of the Knight Elves. Each had a mathematical component as a way to distort and manipulate the world around them. The only difference was that one form of magic held an evil that sent cold flashes through my body. I hated that feeling. I hated Caelum.
"Why Samyaza?" I asked because I wanted to break the silence.
And I was bored. That didn't help either.
Caelum looked up from where he was painting the ground with a delicate brush and raised a red tinted eye brow.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
I sighed, "Like, Ba'al's father is Abaddon, so why would he want Samyaza when his father would be of more help?"
He smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, but I got the impression from the tone of his reply that he had meant it to be. Maybe I was just that prejudiced against Knight Elves? Not that it was a bad thing.
"The task of raising Abaddon wasn't given to me. Samyaza is mine," he said.
It was all he was going to say on the subject. He went back to his work and I continued to watch him.
At every hour, he stopped to force more of the Wormwood down my throat. I fought him every time. It was pointless to, I knew that, but I was too stubborn. I didn't want to show him that I gave in, that I was resigned; because I was anything but.
When he was finished setting up the ritual I had just received my fourth dose of that terrible stuff. By that point I was starting to feel weak, tired, and hungry. I leaned against the wall he'd placed me against and took a deep breath. Well, I tried to. It was getting harder to breath.
"The time limit is up. By the fifth dose you will slip into a coma that only my master can relieve you of. The sixth will kill you, but I do not intend to go quite that far," Caelum said as he donned an ornate black robe.
The sleeves were long and wide. All of the edges were hemmed with what looked to me like knight elven hair of different shades of red. I shuddered and took in a longer breath.
As Caelum finished braiding the top strands of his hair and lifted his inky hood the door to the room opened and Sam walked through. He was alone.
"Sam!" I choked out and tried to move forward.
I succeeded in falling face first to the moldy carpet. Really? He had to pick the room with the moldy carpet? Wouldn't the kitchen have been preferable?
But that thought was fleeting and was replaced quickly by my fear for Sam's life.
"What did you do to her?" Sam growled.
From where I lay I could see Caelum spread his arms. The sleeves were so long that they pooled at the floor.
"I have kept the promise I made to you, young wizard. I have given her a dose of Wormwood with each hour you tarried in your little inn. The next dose would have placed her into a coma that only my master could have wakened her from," he said silkily.
If the situation had been different I would have made some snide comment about his use of Elizabethan English in modern day. As it was, the situation wasn't different and I was more worried about the fact that Sam was there and I couldn't do anything to protect him than making snide comments about a villain's choice of vernacular.
"Then let her go. You have me now, so just leave her alone and I'll do whatever you want," Sam's voice cracked.
I craned my neck to look at him; to plead with him not to do this.
"Sam, no, don't!" I slurred.
I couldn't see. I could barely move. My hands and feet were tied and I wanted Sam to run away and leave me behind.
My body trembled. I wasn't sure if it was from the drug or because I was afraid. Every dark memory I'd endured for the past century came back to me. The blood, the screams, the terror in a child's eyes as his life drained away in my arms because I was too slow, the whispered confession of a dying teammate who saved me from becoming a pawn, and then the deep bass voice of a man who muttered something I couldn't even decipher before his final breath streamed passed my shoulder. They'd all died because of me and it was going to happen again.
There was pressure on my shoulder. It was so sudden that I almost jumped and cried out, but whoever was behind me had the presence of mind of cover my mouth. This newcomer gently turned me over to face the wall.
Some things in life were strange and funny. This was one of those things.
Dean Winchester was there and between the time I was captured and now he had gained a surprising ability to walk through walls. Of course, it would have been surprising if I hadn't known that there was a rune that could make solid objects insubstantial for a time.
I raised an eyebrow and barely motioned my head over my shoulder.
Dean nodded and grabbed my shoulders. I assumed he was going to try and pull me out of the room. I gave the smallest bit of resistance to try and show that it was a bad idea. That Caelum would hear. He seemed to get the message because he moved his hands from my shoulder and reached behind his back and pulled out his gun.
He was going to shoot Caelum.
It was such a simple plan that I could barely believe they'd thought it up. Sam was the distraction. It was a good distraction because neither man was supposed to be trained in magic.
Dean aimed.
I supposed, when Caelum turned around at the most inopportune time, that the entire ruse could have been up. His eyes contracted into small pinpoints at the sight of Dean leaning over me with half of his body protruding through the wall and his gun aimed at Caelum's head. He might have been able to dodge it too if it weren't for Sam who moved at the last minute by grabbing a candlestick and shoving the fiery tip into Caelum's backside.
Caelum snarled and turned around and backhanded Sam. He flew to the other end of the room, hit the wall, and slid limply to the ground.
I tried to move then and managed to prop myself onto one shoulder. I felt my lips mouth Sam's name.
Dean fired as Caelum turned around. The bullet entered through his left eye socket and threw Caelum's body back slightly. A second bullet tore through his neck and a third entered his heart. He crumbled to the ground in a growing pool of blood.
I blinked for a few moments before the strength I managed to exert left me and I slumped back to the floor.
"Bri!" I couldn't tell if it was Dean or Sam or both who'd called my name.
My vision had blurred and I blacked out.
What seemed like minutes later I felt something cold and wet resting limply on my head. I tried to open my eyes, but they didn't seem to want to work properly. I tried to move my arms and found that they were numb and heavy. My entire body was like lead laying like a dead weight sack of wheat against a semi-comfortable mattress. I twitched my toes and felt a bit of satisfaction that I could.
After a few more minutes of gently working the nerves of my body into motion I was able to open my eyes and glance around. Most of what I could see was the ceiling.
While I was trying decide whether or not I could move my neck Dean spoke to me.
"You know, I don't think I've ever seen you sleep that heavily before. I mean, really Davis, you were snoring!"
I moved my neck in the direction of his voice and sent a glare his way, "I don't snore."
He snorted, "You do when you actually sleep."
"I sleep all the time!" my voice sounded scratchy and the sound got worse the higher the pitch was.
"You doze for eight hours and then wake up. You don't actually dream," he chided.
"I dream! How else would Sam and I share them?" I said pointedly.
Dean shrugged, "No idea! I'm not some mind mojo expert."
I groaned at his use of the phrase "mind mojo expert" and slumped back against my pillow. Why Dean didn't just label magic as magic was beyond me.
"So, Sam's getting' good ol' Chinese food," Dean said.
I smiled, "He likes Chinese."
"Yeah, especially sushi. He's really looking forward to eating a huge tray of sushi from this local sushi restaurant. It's an all you can eat buffet that you can pile a huge take-out tray full of food. Sam's getting a lot of seafood stuff just for you," he said.
I smiled, "That's nice of him."
"Yeah, it is," there was a bit of an edge of Dean's voice that almost made me cringe.
I was honestly too tired to really do much of anything. I just laid there in my hotel bed and stared up at the ceiling waiting for Dean to unleash whatever he felt he needed to say to me. I could guess most of it off the top of my head.
"I know," I finally said after fifteen minutes of silence.
"Do you? Because I don't."
I raised an eyebrow. Dean sighed and shook his head. He muttered something under his breath that I knew I should have heard, but my mind was just as exhausted as my body and didn't seem to want to process much. Low range sounds were one of them, apparently.
"Look, I get it, alright? Sam and I aren't humans, but neither were anything we've killed. I know our level is way below yours, I get that, but Bri, I don't know if you know this, but you haven't been out in the fighting field lately. This Caelum guy, he'd been killing and fighting and doing whatever the hell he was doing while you were trying to be human. I'm not saying you couldn't have handled him in an outright fight, but I think he pulled one or two things over on you that prove you got too overconfident and rusty. The fact of the matter is that you can't protect Sam and me, not from your world or the supernatural. So, maybe, you just need to trust that we can actually take care of ourselves and adapt to your fighting style enough to be your back-up; to be your partners," he paused to let everything he'd said sink in.
It did. I closed my eyes and pursed my lips feeling waves of self-loathing and shame rise inside of me. I didn't have anything to say in response, so I remained silent and gazed at the wall in front of me.
"Don't do this to us again," with that Dean left for some beer he could drink with his food.
I was alone and dreading the moment when Sam would walk through that door to tell me how he really felt.
I have proved to myself time and time again over the past century that I have the capacity to overthink things. There were several different versions of the argument I just knew Sam was going to give me flickering through my head in disjointed soundwaves. Everything I could think of, everything I knew about him told me that he was beyond pissed. I knew he had been scared and I knew that he most likely partly blamed himself for me getting captured (or I surmised he did), and thousands of ways he would phrase his fear and worry drove through my mind. I'd been in his head after Caelum kidnapped me, so I knew what he had gone through… some of it at least.
I think it's safe to say that I was terrified of Sam's displeasure (to put it lightly) for reasons that we're yet entirely clear to me.
As it was, Mr. tall dark, and brooding walked through the door the minute I woke up from my fitful nap.
It was a little unsettling how he seemed to have synced himself with my recuperation schedule. Sam, it seemed, had learned how to slip into my mind as quickly as he could the moment Caelum had kidnapped me. At least, that's what I'd figured had happened. I wasn't quite up-to-date on all of the details.
He started when he saw that I was awake. I glanced at the pack slung over shoulders and the huge bag in his hands and realized that he had been taking care of the crime scene. Sam must have felt where my thoughts were going, because he smiled and heaved the huge bar cloth bag onto his and Dean's bed.
"Artemis wanted the evidence gathered. She's sending a hunter our way to pick up the evidence. Dean's talking with the coroner and the chief of police. They're coming up with a convincing story to tell the public. The families'll be informed about what really happened by an elven social agent. I left the food in the car," he explained.
I smiled, "So, I guess I haven't missed much, then?"
He shook his head and smiled, "Not really. Just the healer who came to give you the antidote to that… poison Caelum fed you."
"Oh," I said in a small voice.
Sam cocked his head to one side, "What's wrong?"
I gave him a look and the smile left his face. He glanced at the ground.
"Right, well, from what Dean's told me I think he's already given you an earful. In any case, I've already said what I needed to earlier," he said.
The reference to our earlier argument brought it back to me. I closed my eyes, horrified. What I'd said still haunted me, not because I thought that it wasn't true, but because of how personal it became for me. Sam knew now what had happened in my past and I didn't know how to reconcile that.
"I haven't told Dean, if that's what you're wondering. I figured you should tell him when you're ready," Sam said.
I started from my despair and stared at him dumbly. He shuffled and smiled uneasily.
"I… I'm just glad you're alive. We… we were worried there for a moment," he explained with a laugh.
He looked really uneasy, worried even, like he didn't quite know what to say after all of this. I sighed and held a hand out for him to take. Sam stared at it for a moment, like he wasn't sure what to make of it, before grinning nervously again and accepting the offered hand.
"Sam," I began and waited until his eyes met mine, "you're both right and I'm sorry. I don't trust you. I don't trust you to stay alive. I've lost friends twice before now and I don't want to go through that again."
He sat beside me and held my hand with both of his. He squeezed.
"Bri, Dean and I can't make any promises, you know that right?" he asked.
I nodded albeit reluctantly, "I know, but I can't make any promises either, Sam. If I can protect you two then I will. There's no getting around that."
"I - we feel the same way," he said gently.
There should be a limit to how many times a person can sigh through a conversation. I seemed to have been doing that every since I first woke - sighing and sighing because none of us could quite move on our points of views.
"Let's agree, for now, to protect each other and tell each other vital parts of any mission we decide to take. Personal stuff will take time," I compromised.
This time his smile was more gentle than nervous, "Alright, I can handle that for the time being."
He leaned over and kissed my forehead. I was too startled by that show of affection to really do or say anything in response. When he pulled back he stood from the bed and shifted towards the door.
"Chinese awaits!" he said cheerfully.
I smiled and waved him away, "Go get it, then! I'm hungry!"
