4 – In My Way
Sylvia slammed the brakes and twisted the wheel, making the car slew around so violently that Sam half expected the car to roll. He braced himself against the ceiling and the dashboard, just in case.
But while the car rocked dangerously, it stayed on its wheels, and they just avoided crossing into the green fire. He couldn't open his door, though, or it would cross the line.
"What in motherfucking hell is that?" Sylvia exclaimed. She seemed more angry than anything else.
"The spectral fire I was telling you about."
"I didn't think you meant actual fire," she said, opening her car door and getting out. Her side was clear.
Sam didn't even know how to respond to that. "What other kind of fire is there?" He slid across to the driver's side and got out her door.
The fire cut the road in half, but left no mark on the pavement. It didn't even cast a shadow. "So Bobby said your brother fell into one of these things? And you're sure he didn't vaporize on contact?"
"Yes. I know the difference between vaporization and disappearance," he said, hoping he did. He was pretty sure.
There was a distant "boom", and the ground trembled, although they were far enough away from it that they barely felt it. Sylvia looked around, and after a moment, asked, "What happens if we follow this line?"
Sam shrugged. "Don't know. Might as well. But keep your distance."
"Don't worry about that, Sparky," she replied, following the line of flame off the road, and into the trees. "I'm staying as far as fuck away from that shit until I know what it is."
"Might want to keep an eye out for falling trees too," he added, following her warily.
Sam hadn't really wanted to go back into the forest with no additional knowledge, but someone had to keep an eye on her. And maybe Bobby would figure out what the hell this was all about before they got grabbed by one of the lines and joined Dean wherever he was.
They ran inside the motel room, and Dee slammed the door while Dean automatically grabbed the closest, heaviest piece of furniture – a dresser – and dragged it in front of the door.
Sam got up from the table, where she was working on her laptop. "What's going on?"
"Demons," Dee said, tossing Dean a canister of salt. She grabbed one for herself, and they both salted the windows and in front of the door. "Big ass cloud of them, coming this way."
"What? Holy shit, why?" Sam grabbed her own canister of salt, and went to salt the window in the bathroom.
"We don't know, we were just on the roof and saw it coming," Dee said. She discarded the salt canister and pulled out Ryu's knife, prepared to stab the first thing that came through the door.
In their current form, the salt probably wouldn't do any good, but you had to try everything. The arsenal against demons was limited, but that short list got shorter when you were talking about them in their smoke form. You'd think they could do less damage in that form too, and you were right, but only in a hand to hand combat way. Otherwise, they remained deadly. It was one of those unfair things that seemed to crop up so often when you dealt with demons.
Dean hastily drew a devil's trap in front of the door, as it would capture them in smoke form, but what they'd do with them then was up for grabs. Burn that bridge when they crossed it. Sam had her salt and silver shotgun ready to go, and Dean pulled out his own knife.
The windows exploded, sending shards of glass flying through the room, and Dean was sure he got tagged with some. The door took a hit, the dresser jumped, but that was it. They were all tensed, waiting, but it was eerily quiet, save for car alarms going off in the parking lot.
After a moment, Dee asked, "What are they waiting for?"
"Maybe they know they can't get in here," Sam said. After a pause, she added, "Maybe they're getting vessels."
"Shit," Dee cursed, and shouldered the dresser aside before opening the door and heading out. Sam and Dean followed.
The motel was not full, which was great, but there were enough people that this was going to be a mess.
The first two people to attack were a scantily clad woman and a middle aged man with a pot belly that Dean automatically assumed were a hooker and her john. The woman attacked Dee with a knife, and the guy went for Dean, throwing wild punches. He ducked the first and stabbed the guy in his prodigious gut. It killed the demon, and odds were the guy would live, because gut wounds generally took a long time to kill you.
Dee had already disarmed the hooker – her knife was one of those cheapo flick knives anyway – and stabbed her in the chest, avoiding everything vital. Sam shot the desk clerk, who had been coming towards them, but no one else attacked immediately, and looking around to see why was not comforting.
There were seven people standing across the lot from them, just watching with demon black eyes. Mostly men, but two women, and one child, a boy around seven. (That made Dean's stomach clench. Goddamn it with demons taking kids.) "What are you waiting for?" Dee snapped.
Dean actually didn't want to know the answer, because there was no way in hell it was good, but a van pulled into the parking lot right then, and the side door slid open. Inside was Bishop, still shirtless, with black smoke leaking from his mouth and eyes. "Good, you bitches are still here. I had some friends I wanted you to meet."
A blonde woman and man jumped out of the van, and looked so squeaky clean they could have been Mormon missionaries. Two other men jumped out after them, but looked slightly more disreputable. One looked like he'd come straight from hobo camp, and the other looked liked he'd just finished a shift cleaning out a slaughterhouse. "I just want your souls," Bishop said. "They want the rest."
They moved so fast they were in front of them in a blink, and when he took the first punch, Dean realized Bishop had brought ghouls to the party. Motherfucker.
Mormon chick hit like a wrecking ball, and Dean slammed into the room door and fell inside, the ghoul riding him down and immediately trying to take a chomp out of his throat. He got a hand up on her forehead, shoving her away, and punched her in the face, hoping to discourage her. Where the hell did he drop his knife?
Sam pressed her shotgun to the ghoul's head and fired, splattering her brains everywhere. A mild spray of it got on Dean's face.
He kicked off the corpse, just in time for Sam to get tackled by the Mormon dude. She was able to keep a hold of her shotgun, but landed on her face, which wasn't a great fighting position. Dean jumped up and saw where he'd dropped Ruby's knife, grabbed it, and stabbed Mormon boy right in the head.
It wasn't a killing blow, but it stunned him, and he dragged him off Sam as Sam rolled up to her feet, pulled out a .45, and shot him in exactly the same spot where she'd shot his sister (or whatever). Dean yanked his knife out of what was left of the ghoul's skull, and tossed him aside. "Thanks," Sam said, with a nod.
"I owed you one."
Dee had a machete, which she must have been hiding really well, because Dean never saw it, and had already chopped the head off the slaughterhouse janitor. But there weren't just four in the van – there were now two more: one that looked like some frat boy douchebag, and another who looked like a gym rat. The demons had now joined the fight too, trying to overwhelm them with numbers.
He and Sam joined the fight as a demon and a ghoul were attempting to pin Dee's arms to the wall, while another demon punched her in the face. To her credit, she never stopped fighting. Dee nailed the demon in the crotch with her steel toed boots, and he went down screaming – vessel or not, ruptured testicles fucking hurt. Dean pulled out his own .45 and shot the ghoul that had her right arm, putting a neat hole in his skull. Dee, who still had Ryu's dagger, stabbed the demon who was still holding on to her in the stomach. Dean stabbed the demon that was still whimpering on the pavement, and considered it a mercy killing.
"Think fast," Dee said, picking up her fallen machete and lobbing it to Sam, who caught it easily and swung it as a blur of motion closed in on her. Sam managed to slice the head right off the frat boy ghoul without even taking a good look at him. But his head had barely hit the ground before she was tackled by a demon.
Dean meant to help, but he had to stab another demon, and while he was doing that, gym rat ghoul grabbed him and sunk his teeth into his shoulder. He screamed in pain even as he jerked his head back hard and broke the ghoul's nose with the back of his skull. That just made the ghoul dig his teeth in even harder.
Dean rammed the ghoul back into the motel wall hard, and while pain made little black dots explode in front of his eyes, he figured he was just going to have to chop blindly at the ghoul's head until he landed a stunning brain injury. The demon possessed desk clerk stood in front of him, smiling, holding a butcher's knife. "Don't know who you are, pretty boy, but you're hanging with some bad company."
Before dean could tell the demon to go fuck himself, white light exploded out of his mouth and eyes, and he crumpled to the ground, smoke still coming from every orifice. Standing behind him, hand raised, was the female Cass. Dean barely had time to register this before she swung her arm up, and in a flash of silver, stabbed the ghoul straight through the forehead with her angel blade. She twisted it for good measure before yanking it out, and Dean stepped aside as the corpse hit the ground. "Nice timing, Cass." It was kind of funny to think that Cass was still saving his bacon in this universe too.
Cass just gave him a nod of acknowledgement before grabbing the demon Sam was wrestling with and smiting it with just a touch. Now the van screamed out of the lot, and Dean knew why. This attack wasn't going to work with an angel around.
The monsters were all vanquished, save for the possessed boy, whom Cass had grabbed before he ran away. "If I kill the demon in him I may kill him as well," Cass explained, as the demon kid squirmed violently. It was still too weak to break an angel's embrace.
Sam began reciting the exorcism spell, and Cass held him while he thrashed and cursed and told them he was going to kill them as soon as he came back from Hell. Nobody was particularly scared. Finally the demon left in a plume of black smoke that disappeared into the night, and the kid slumped unconscious in Cass's arms. Dean wondered who he was and why he was here, but figured that was a little hypocritical on his part. How much of his childhood had he spent in cheap motels?
A quick glance around showed everybody but Cass was bleeding, but Dean had the worst of it with the ghoul bite. Dee had a bloody nose, and a right eye that was just starting to swell and blacken, and Sam had some scrapes and deep scratches on her cheek and arms, but otherwise, they'd done remarkably well.
Cass blinked out with the kid, and was back a nanosecond later without him. Presumably she put him in his bed, and he'd wake up thinking he had a hell of a nightmare. "How are you?" Dee asked.
Cass touched Dee's forehead, and her injuries were gone. "I'm fine. I sensed that Bishop attempted to channel demons through him."
"And he apparently succeeded," Sam said.
"But it was stupid and reckless," Cass said, now moving to Dean and putting a hand on his hurt shoulder. He looked Cass in her dark eyes, and would swear that Cass recognized him. Like this wasn't their Cass but his Cass, which was impossible … right? Or maybe all Cass's were one Cass … oh no, metaphysical shit. He could feel his head start to hurt, even as the pain in his arm disappeared. "And that might be how we kill him."
She moved on to Sam, as Dee asked, "How so?"
Cass healed Sam with a touch, and explained, "He's too weak. He still hadn't completed the final ritual that will allow him to open Hell in this dimension. If he keeps releasing demons, he will critically weaken what's left of his vessel."
"And then we can gank him," Dean said, nodding as he followed Cass's logic.
"So we have to get him to keep trying to channel demons before he's ready," Dee said. "How do we do that?"
"Full frontal assault," Sam said. "We throw everything we have at him, and force him to call on backup."
Dee scoffed. "We've already done that, and we didn't make a dent."
"Right. We need to bring more with us this time. Bishop has enemies beyond us, right?"
Sam and Dee exchanged an intense look, and Dean knew there was something not being said. Just as Dean looked to Cass for help explaining this, Dee said, "Oh no. Are you fucking crazy? She's just gonna kill us as soon as we show up."
Sam shrugged one shoulder. "She'll try. I don't think she's unreasonable. We just have to convince her it's in her best interest to see Bishop taken off the board. I don't think that'll be so difficult, not after what he did."
Dee rolled her eyes. "I still don't get how you can be so trusting after everything we've been through."
Dean raised his hand. "Um, what are we talking about?"
Not surprisingly, it was Cass who answered. "The Vampire Queen."
Dean just stared at her. The what now?