The Fallen. by DeansBabyBird

It's a bit of a short one but Mikey insisted on coming out to play for a while and who am I to refuse him? As always Kripke's boys are a joy to play with.

Chapter 4 Team Raguel

Raguel drew in his breath and paused a moment to gather his thoughts. He had been many years travelling this tormented road, always one pace behind the daemon, and he knew he had to present his long experience in a succinct and coherent manner, or it would be difficult: no make that impossible, for Sam and Jo to accept.

Jo watched the older man as he prepared himself to continue his story. Beside her she could feel Sam fidget with anxiety and impatience and she placed her hand on her own leg to stop the nervous tapping that was threatening to start.

Her mind strayed to Dean as she waited for Raguel to speak, and she found herself wondering, if wherever he was, was he cold? How badly was he hurting?

She remembered how tired he had looked when he had left her to get the Impala, how his stride had been less powerful than she was used to and how his deep green eyes had been hooded by long sleepy lashes.

She knew his clothes must have been wet through from lying in the snow, and he had the beginnings of a fever, she had felt it in the heat of his skin when she had rested her hand on his bruised ribs, and that was hours ago now. Since then this bastard of a daemon had beaten him into unconsciousness and God knows what else!

She felt hot stinging tears coming to her wide eyes and she brushed angrily at them. They would do Dean no good! What they needed was to find him, get him away from this creature and look after him, let him get well and strong again.

Jo's anxiety peaked, and when she spoke her voice was harsher than she intended.

'Please Raguel! Why? Why has it taken Dean and how do we get him back?'

Raguel started a little as Jo's voice cannoned into his thoughts, but he recognised her shortness for the fear she was feeling and it spurred him to his grim task, and he set about explaining the situation for Sam and Jo.

'The creature controlling Michael is a high ranking daemon but many years ago it fell from favour with its Master. It desperately desires to regain its position and has over the years striven to please its Master in the hope that he will elevate it to its former status.'

Sam interrupted softly, his voice quietened in his distress.

'His Master?'

Raguel looked at the young man before him and grieved for what he must next say.

'Lucifer, Sam. Lucifer is his Master.'

Sam swallowed his mouth suddenly dry and the question he had been forming for Raguel left him as panic gripped.

Jo reached across to Raguel and grasped his arm, dragging his attention from Sam and forcing him to look at her.

'Lucifer? The embodiment of evil and enemy of God? Otherwise known as Satan? That Lucifer?'

Raguel nodded slowly to Jo, watching her breath quicken and her incredulous face pale, seeing her try to push away the meaning in his words.

Sam's hand quietly came to rest on Jo's and she looked into soft brown eyes wracked with pain, and to her horror, she saw the sure knowledge that he knew this to be reality.

Raguel hated the despair his words were perpetrating on the young couple before him, but knew that no amount of wanting to change the situation would achieve it. Were that the case Raguel's desire to save Michael would have ended this battle years ago. The older man drew in a sighing breath and continued.

'Lucifer is a harsh Lord and nothing the daemon has done over those long years had appeased him. He remains outcast, searching for the prize that his master will hold dear enough to return his fold. I, with my loyal colleagues, have followed the daemon's trail of destruction and know the misery it has perpetrated on humanity in that time.'

Raguel paused, his eyes briefly closing against the horrors he memory showed to him, and a shudder ran through his tall frame. He continued, returning his sorrowful eyes to Jo and Sam.

'Recently, the daemon's focus has become You Sam, because it knows that Lucifer would reward it beyond measure were it to deliver you to his House. However, before it delivers you it understands that you must have accepted your role, that for you to be a prize to its master, you must be a willing...no enthusiastic, follower.'

Sam shuddered. He was repulsed, and terror shortened his breath till he was gasping.

Raguel reached into this coat pocket and pulled out a small silver bottle and un-corking it, offered it to Sam.

'Holy water?'

Jo asked, taking the proffered flask and helping Sam tip it to his lips.

'Bourbon!'

The older man replied as Sam choked on the fiery liquid, patting him sharply on his heaving back.

'I find it more helpful in circumstances such as these!'

666

Sam was tired, exhausted really, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down and go to sleep for about a month. He closed his eyes feeling the bourbon burn down into his churning stomach, and bit down on the bile that rose in his dry throat. Jo touched his shoulder and he looked beneath strands of trailing hair into her worried brown eyes.

'Gonna puke?'

Sam shook his head carefully, as the confidence he had in that statement was minimal and he swallowed a few more times.

Raguel watched the young hunters struggle with concern, but also with admiration as he saw in Sam a colossal strength of character.

Sam tilted back his head, and rolling his shoulders bent his head quickly from one side to the other, making his neck crack, before looking back steadily to meet Raguel's understanding smile

Jo started at the gesture, for it was pure 'Dean', and for a moment she saw how alike the brothers were. It stopped her breath and images of Dean smiling, laughing, calling her name; his lively green eyes sparkling, filed her mind. She fought again with the tears that were so close to falling and, in an effort to halt their inevitable flow, forced herself to concentrate on Sam, as he started to speak with Raguel again.

'So I understand that Lucifer...'

Sam felt a shiver run through his body as he spoke the name,

'That Lucifer wants me and that the daemon who controls Michael wants to deliver me to him.'

Sam paused, his eyes seeking the older man's for affirmation of his statement. Raguel nodded.

'But I still don't see why he took Dean? Why not just take me? Why...'

Sam was interrupted by an impatient tapping at the door, and he and Jo rose as one, Sam clearing the Glock as he moved. Raguel rose with them, his movements purposeful but placatory, as he strode before them to the door.

'Don't be alarmed!'

The older man deliberately kept his tone measured, not wanting to increase the panic he saw on Sam and Jo's faces. He raised his large hand in a gesture of calm and was relieved to see Sam's posture relax a notch though he did not lower the gun.

'They are my friends! They come to help!'

Raguel turned to the door and opened it, as Sam and Jo glanced briefly to each other before turning back to the new arrivals.

'Sam, Jo'

Raguel's voice was warm with affection.

'Meet my brothers, Raphe and Uri!'

666

Dean was glad that the chair Mikey has deposited him in, after releasing him from his rib breaking embrace, had arms on it because he was so dizzy that he was having trouble staying at true vertical, and the arms were all that was stopping him falling untidily to the polished floor. He felt appallingly nauseous, and when he tried to focus on the daemon, he could see, to his disgust, multiple images of its obscenely smiling face.

Mikey stood a few feet in front of his charge and observed the tremble of Dean's taught upper body, the increasing pallor of his skin and the sheen of sweat on his handsome face. He smiled, his thin lips parting slightly, as his small pink tongue darted out to slowly moisten their surface. He stepped forward towards Dean and was rewarded by seeing the injured man push nervously back from him, his shallow pain-filled breathes hitching in his battered chest as he moved.

Mikey placed his hands on the arms of Dean's chair and swayed forward, his weight on his right leg, his face coming to a halt only inches only from his captive's.

'So Dean, let me see if I can help you to understand why you are going to help me convince Sam that he wants to work with My Master.'

'Sam...'

Dean was breathless, the pain in his chest forbidding him from breathing deeply enough to power his voice.

'Makes...his own...choices...'

Mikey laugh noisily, and let go of the chair with his right hand, but with his left, he dragged Dean around so the hunter was drawn up to the large pale wood table.

'Of course he does Dean!'

Mikey had stepped away from the hunter, his disbelief hanging in the air, to the chrome and glass display case that dominated the room. He perused its shelves slowly and with purpose, as Dean watched him from his seat, with mounting trepidation.

Having made his selection, Mikey turned back to the table and gentle laid an object on the clean surface, some distance away from Dean but well within the hunter's somewhat blurry sight.

The dagger was beautiful. Its white metal blade was thin, sleek and shinning with a high gloss finish. Its handle was also highly polished but fashioned from some stone that was as black as its owner's dark eyes. It was inlaid with a crisscross grip of fine silver wires and threads.

Dean raised his eyes from the blade to find Mikey's equally black eyes waiting for him and he had to work hard to keep any hint of his mounting fear from invading the suffering pale jade.

'Put your hands on the table'

Mikey's voice was quiet, so quiet that Dean had to strain to hear him over the backdrop of his racing heart. He made no move to comply and Mikey slammed his hand down with staggering force on the surface of the table just in front of the hunter. The dagger skittered across the table scoring a thin groove in the wood as it travelled and Dean started in his seat at the unexpected violence of the gesture.

'Put your fucking hands on the table now!'

Mikey screamed, grasping Dean's matted hair with his right hand and smashing his face down to brutally contact the table's unforgiving surface.

Blood ran freely from the wide tear below Dean's left eye, as the daemon again used his short hair to pull his head back up and Dean hesitantly, reluctantly lifted his right hand to place it palm down on the table. He looked up at the daemon where he loomed above him as blood flowed down his cheek to further stain his grubby T-shirt.

'Are you deaf?'

Mikey's voice was icy cold, and Dean's breathing hitched nervously.

'I said hands!'

Mikey's gaze flickered to Dean's ruined left shoulder and arm where it hung at an unnaturally canted angle from the blown joint. Dean's eyes followed Mikey's and to look at the senseless limb and then stared defiantly back into the daemon's bottomless voids.

'I ...can't...move...it'

Dean stuttered

'Can't ...feel...it!'

Mikey smiled, and want and corrupt desire oozed from him.

'Then let me help you.'

And before Dean could move to stop him the daemon grasped his shattered limb and wrenched it upwards, grinding the harsh joint surfaces on each other, to slam it palm down on the tabletop. In the same fluid movement the daemon reached for the ornate dagger with his other hand, and plunging it from on high, speared it brutally through Dean's hand, pinning it to the wood below.

Chapter ends

All reviews happily and gratefully received!