Chapter 4 Into the Black
Eugene, Oregon
Dean swore as he looked down the empty street. Behind him, clouds of smoke and dust were still rising lazily into the still air, carrying the pungent scents of shattered brick and decades-old mortar. The demons had been heading straight for him, two from the western side of the closed-off area, the other three from the north. He couldn't see where they'd vanished, just heard the rough slap of their boots stop suddenly and nothing else.
Ambush. The thought was distinct and pervasive. It didn't matter, not really, he thought as he pulled the Colt out, checking the magazine and loading a round into the chamber. No matter how fast they might be, they weren't going to be faster than he could draw and fire and the bullets would hold them, he was sure of that.
Only an archangel can kill an archdemon, Henry had said, when they'd been searching the apothecary of the little spiritualist store for things that might work against Abaddon. So far as he knew the arcs were dead or so far out of reach they might've well have been dead. Cas hadn't know how to retrieve the swords of Gabriel or Raphael when he'd asked him some months later. He didn't know where they were.
'Course, just because that was all Henry knew didn't make it the only way, he reasoned, dropping below the level of the building windows as he moved along the shadowed side of the street. The tablet was the real authority on Hell and happily they had the prophet to check it out.
He looked around the corner of the building as he reached it, keeping below eye-level. The next block looked as lifeless and empty as the one he'd just come along. The open intersection also looked like a trap. Looking up, he couldn't see any signs of anyone on the rooftops and he swallowed the unpalatable truth that anyone could be up there, without him seeing them from this angle.
On three, he decided, looking out into the empty glare of the sun-filled crossroad again. One. Two –
Accelerating to top speed, Dean shot across the road to the next block like an Olympic runner, head down and lungs heaving, half-hunched with the expectation of a bullet between his shoulder-blades with every stride.
"Sonofabitch!" he gasped when he hit the shadow of the next building without being shot.
"You okay?" Sam's voice filled his ear instantly.
"Yeah, still no sign of those bastards," Dean told him, looking back the way he'd come. The back of his neck was prickling.
"Think they were expecting the light-show?"
"Probably."
"Do we still go?"
"Yeah," Dean said reluctantly, looking across and up the street. He could see the diner's faded awnings from here. Even if they'd planned this far ahead, it was still the only game in town. "I'll be at the back in sixty seconds."
"Right."
Sam heard the smash of glass from inside the building and he shoved his way through the front door, gun barrel raised as he met his brother's eyes across the debris-covered and dust-filled room.
Most of the diner's furniture had remained when the owners had been evacuated and the four bound hunters sat a table to one side of the straight, red Formica counter, tied to the chairs they sat in, gagged and sweating in the hot stillness of the room.
"Irv?" Dean crossed the room and pulled the gag from the older man's mouth. "What's the setup?"
"That red-haired bitch is a demon stronger than I've ever seen, Dean," Irv said, rolling his eyes across as Dean walked past him to the heavily-built black man bound beside him.
"Yeah, we know," Sam said shortly, untying Pete's gag and turning to the young, dark-haired girl in the next chair.
"She grabbed Hush, I saw his body," Irv said, looking over his shoulder. "Tortured the names of a dozen hunters out of him, left him for the coyotes out near the highway."
"She's got more here?" Dean pulled the gag from the man in front of him. "What did she want hunters for? What the hell happened to Abe?"
"I don't know, he was here when they brought us in," Irv said, turning his head to look at the unconscious hunter. "He's been out since then, they must've worked him over pretty hard.
Dean looked at the blood, wet and sticky and dark, over Abe's shirt front. "Yeah."
"I don't think she's got others here, but she was looking for intel on you boys, wanted to know where you were, what you'd been doing –"
"Drink," Dean cut him, holding up a silver flask and tipping it into the hunter's mouth. Irv swallowed the water and nodded. Dean watched him for a moment and cut him free.
"Hold his head, I don't want to drown him with this," Dean told him as he tipped the flask over Abe's partly open mouth.
Behind them, Sam lifted his flask and tipped holy water into the girl's mouth, watching her swallow it, then swivelling around to Pete.
"Don't need any stowaways," Pete grunted as he swallowed the water. "Damn, that tasted good."
Dean and Irv cut Abe free as Sam sliced through the ropes holding the girl and Pete.
"Bottom line," Pete said, looking from Sam to Dean. "We're just bait for you boys."
"Sometimes the fish gets free anyway," Dean commented mildly, pouring a little more water over Abe's face. The man's eyelids fluttered and opened.
"Sometimes," Irv agreed doubtfully. "How you want to do this?"
"Abe, you here, man?" Dean leaned closer to him as Abe's eyes widened suddenly.
"I'm Sam Winchester," Sam said to the girl standing beside Peter. "My brother, Dean."
"Good for you," she said snidely, turning away from him.
"Dean … no," Abe breathed out and began to cough, his breath whistling in his throat as the deep shudders shook his frame. "Trap … no …"
"Yeah, well, we're springing it," Dean said sourly, reaching out to grip Abe's shoulder and pull him from the chair.
"No!"
Abe's hand tightened hard around Dean's arm. Looking down at the hunter as he slumped back in the chair, and pulled aside his shirt, he felt his breath freeze in his chest.
Great, clumsy stitches were all that were holding the hunter's abdomen together, Dean thought disbelievingly as he caught sight of the red-coated metal can that had been shoved inside, nestled between Abe's organs.
"Bomb?" He looked at Abe, his face stone-cold. The hunter nodded miserably, his head dropping to his shoulder as his strength began to ebb.
"Everyone out," Irv snapped, grabbing Pete and hustling him toward the door. "NOW!"
"Abe –" Dean hesitated, looking down at the man.
"Go." The command was barely a breath.
Sam hesitated, waiting for Dean, exhaling sharply as his brother turned away and gestured to the door.
They made it across the street before the explosive went off, blowing out the windows and walls and bringing down the roof of the diner, throwing themselves flat to the ground as the air was filled with whining debris and shrapnel. Sam looked up as Traci fell in front of him, her grunt of pain simultaneous with the way her hands clutched at her side. Pete rolled sharply as a piece of metal embedded itself in the back of his thigh, his eyes closing.
Through the smoke, Dean saw the demons striding toward them and swore under his breath, pushing himself to his knees and grabbing Sam's shoulder, going to Pete and dragging him up as Sam lifted Traci upright and pushed her ahead of him.
"Bar," Dean said to Irv tersely, waving a hand to the corner building at the end of the street. "We've got everything we need."
"Good," Irv said, looking behind them. "'Cause we got another three coming from t'other direction!"
"RUN!"
There was fuck-all cover bar the shadows on the western side of the street as they ran for the building, and Dean was all too-aware when the guns started chattering behind them, dust exploding from the street and the brick walls next to them, that the demons weren't aiming to kill, just to drive them in a certain direction.
Sam swerved into the bar, hitting the door with his shoulder and stumbling into the gloomy interior while Pete shoved Traci through in front of him and followed them in.
"They weren't aiming for us," Irv said, turning to look at Dean.
"No," Dean agreed, pushing the door shut and ramming the bolts at the top and bottom home. He turned and gestured to the bags sitting next to the counter. "Gear up."
"Stay or go?" Sam asked him, pulling a bottle of holy water from the counter and refilling his flask. Dean checked the clip in his gun and replaced it, thinking about that.
"This is Abaddon's party and we're the favours," he said in a low voice to his brother. "She's found them trained soldiers and armed them with assault rifles. We gotta get ahead of her."
"No argument," Sam said, glancing at Irv who was dressing the shrapnel wound on Traci's side. The sharp metal shard lay on the table next to her. "She booby-trapped Abe."
"Yeah, that one I'll take out in trade," Dean said, mostly to himself. "I want you to take these guys upstairs. Get across the roofs as far as you can."
"While you …?"
"We got one bomb, Sammy," Dean said, looking at him. "I'll try and get 'em all to come in but that'll take them out without anyone else getting capped."
Sam looked at him carefully, trying to work out if Dean's plan was recklessly careless of himself or just the best shot they had. An idea occurred to him.
"I gotta better idea," he said, taking his phone out.
"COME AND GET IT, YOU DICKS!"
Dean watched the three demons standing by the front door of the bar from the rooftop four buildings away, eyes narrowed as they barrelled through the doorway together. The flash was brief but eye-searingly bright and there was no further movement from the building.
"Alright," he said, one side of his mouth lifting slightly as he inched his way back from the parapet and ran doubled-over for the access door. Three down, three to go.
"Worked?"
He nodded to Sam and looked at Irv. "Three down. Irv, you and me are on point, Sam you're on rear. Watch the roofs, there was a sniper up there when we came in and he'll probably head high again with their numbers reduced. And watch the fuck out for the hot red-head."
"The hell's the deal with her?" Irv looked at them curiously. "I tried everything on her when she came at me and nothin' worked!"
"She's a Knight of Hell," Dean said, rubbing his hand distractedly over his jaw. "Old-time fallen angel, went into the pit with Lucifer. Nothing we've found so far does much more than keep her in place. Word of advice? You see her, don't fight, just run."
"Got that," the hunter grunted, picking up his shotgun and the small green gear bag.
"How's the side?" Sam asked Traci, looking at the seepage from the dressing Irv had put on.
"Fine," she snapped at him, getting to her feet, the carbine swinging on its strap from her shoulder.
Sam frowned at the acidity of her tone and followed them down. He'd just met the girl; he didn't think he could've done anything to her yet to account for the unconcealed and barely reined-in hostility he could feel coming off her in waves.
When they reached the street level, Dean stopped, looking out from the deep shadows of the doorway's alcove. The street was empty, dust swirling along the road between the buildings and the hard, flat light picking out every detail of the derelict store fronts and apartments.
The back of his neck was prickling like a sonofabitch and it was too damned empty, too damned quiet. He backed up, turning in the hallway and looking past the hunters behind him to the back entrance.
"Sam, take Pete and Traci out the front once you've heard us go out the back," he told his brother, heading for the back. He didn't think that the front would be any safer than the back but he and Irv could both run and shoot at the same time, and he thought they had a slight chance of pulling the attention of whoever was watching the street if they made enough noise going through the alley. He swung the rifle over his shoulder by the strap and unzipped the end of the bag he carried as he strode fast down the hall, finding the grenades by feel and pulling out three. Even super-soldier demons weren't quite so fast without limbs.
It should've worked fine, Sam thought as he heard his brother's grenades explode in the alley and the rattling fusillade of gunfire echoing between the buildings. He shot out of the front door, Pete and Traci tight on his heels and nothing happened, they were almost two blocks down when the demons came from both sides and he made the last-minute decision to dive into the drugstore, his face screwing up as he heard Pete's scream over the thundering hail of bullets that hit the building.
Dean lobbed the first grenade into the mouth of the alley and turned away as it exploded two or three feet from the ground, sending out a lethal circle of engraved iron shrapnel. The demon was caught out in the open and he saw it go down, a look of surprise on its face as it realised it couldn't move, its meatsuit bleeding out from the dozens of ragged and bloody holes torn out of its flesh.
He and Irv came out of the doorway, clinging to the side of the building and reaching the corner.
Dean turned to look at Irv. "You rea–?"
The words died in his throat as he watched the hunter behind him crumple to the ground, the single round black hole in his forehead just beginning to glint red.
He looked up and saw the sniper on the rooftop, and his rifle was in his hands and aimed before he'd fully registered the death of the man at his feet. The gun was on single shot and the first engraved bullet hit the demon just behind and under the ear, a one-in-a-million shot that took out the meatsuit's nervous system at the same time as it trapped the demon inside its skull.
"Nice shooting, Tex."
There was no mistaking the throaty voice behind him and turning and firing was a single fluid motion, nerve, muscle and brain working in perfected harmony. The bullets hit the archdemon in a tight group in the centre of her chest, knocking her backward a little more with each impact. She stopped moving when he stopped firing and pushed her hair back from her face, smiling brightly at him. Then she was on him, the rifle wrenched from his hands, the strap burning a fierce line across the skin of his neck as it tore free and clattered a few yards away on the cracked asphalt.
"Dean, you always used to go for the head-shot!" Abaddon exclaimed girlishly, taking two long strides as he reached for his automatic. "Ah-ah-ah!"
The handgun glowed red-hot in his hand and he dropped it, ducking under her first swing, feeling the breeze of it brush through his hair.
"Alone at last," she said, turning with him, all trace of femininity gone in the hungry, reptilian look she gave him.
Lebanon, Kansas
Kevin let the hammer drop to the floor, the heavily weighted head keeping it upright, watching the creature in front of him gasp and wheeze, blood flowing and pooling on the floor beneath the chair.
Crowley lifted his head slowly. The right cheekbone of the New York publisher had been pulverised, the eye pushed deep and the eyelid draped loosely over the socket. Along the curve of the skull, four fractures were bleeding freely, the loose flaps of skin still holding the thick, dark hair attached. Crowley's hands were broken, fingers flattened out, the nails split and torn off, knuckles gleaming white through the shreds of skin that no longer covered them. The left knee was still swelling, patella splintered and the trousers, expensive Italian silk, were ripped and tattered over the mottled flesh that kept pressing against the holes.
"All … that … poison … lanced … out … now … Kev?" he asked the prophet, the words coming out a little mushily through the gap of missing teeth in the right side of his mouth.
"Not even close," Kevin said, staring down at him. He felt sick, sick and poisoned and unable to see how he could possibly look at anyone or anything again without seeing this image, this picture of what he'd done floating over everything like a noisome ghost.
Crowley tipped his head back, feeling the detritus in his mouth gather. He turned his head and spat it out, blood and bone and broken tooth fragments, his tongue running around the changed interior of his mouth carefully.
"I want to talk."
"No."
"I'm going to make this simple, Kevin," Crowley said, looking up at him. "You let me go, I'll give you back your mother."
"My mother … is dead," Kevin said quietly. It had taken a long time to admit to that and longer to be able to think it without being consumed by shame and guilt and a rush of rage so deep it would keep him shaking for hours.
Crowley pursed his lips, shaking his head slightly. "When have you ever known me to let anyone off that easy, Kev?" he asked. "Or to give up a card that I might need to play, later on in the day?"
He saw the first tiny flicker of doubt he'd brought into being fanned, just a little and considered how to turn it from a trembling flame into an inferno.
"Do you think that Sam and Dean care about her?" he asked, watching Kevin's face. The twitch at the corner of the boy's eye told him everything he needed to know. Nothing had changed since Dean had held a knife to Linda Tran's throat in an attempt to murder him. "Do you think … they care about you?"
"They have you reading the angel tablet, looking for a way to reverse things in Heaven, reading the demon tablet, trying to get on top of Abaddon … how d'you fancy spending your life here, in the stacks of books and the smell of old paper, reading and translating until they don't need you anymore?"
Kevin's gaze cut away and Crowley sighed. "You're as much a prisoner of the Winchesters as I am, matey."
Eugene, Oregon
The demon facing him was six inches shorter and maybe fifty pounds heavier, Sam thought. It'd hit him when he'd turned back to shut the door behind them, slamming that greater weight and momentum into his ribs and sending him flying back through the metal shelving, his gun pulled from his hand and lying in several pieces over the dust-covered hardwood boards.
Ruby's knife glinted in the mote-laden sunlight that striped the room through the slatted blinds. It was, Sam considered, the only reason the demon hadn't charged him again, that viciously serrated blade with its ancient engravings.
The demon stopped moving, and Sam stopped as well. When it turned and launched itself across the floor toward the girl under the table, he was frozen in shock for a microsecond, it was Traci's rising scream that propelled him across the room after it. The demon had broken her arm and its fingers were digging into her stomach when Sam swung the knife, feeling it punch into muscle and skid off the bone underneath.
Whipping around, it flung him off, the knife wound glowing and roiling red and gold, casting an oily light over the side of the demon's face as it scrambled across the knocked-over furniture Sam was scattering behind him. The demon, unlike the others he'd faced, was trained and much faster, he had time to think before it was there, on top of him, a protruding knuckle spearing into his solar plexus and forcing out every bit of air he'd had in his lungs, hitting the cluster of nerves behind the muscles and shocking his diaphragm into stopping completely.
Paralysed by the accurate blow, Sam watched helplessly as Ruby's knife toppled from his loosened grip, the demon kicking it aside with a wolfish grin.
"Sammy Winchester," it said, dropping to its knees beside him and leaning close to his face. "Haven't seen you for a while. Word was you disappeared, like your brother."
Sam stared past the blunt-featured face to Traci as he struggled to force his frozen muscles to move – lift – do anything – before he suffocated.
"Saviour. Destroyer. Soulless as a demon," the demon continued, its breath hot against the side of his jaw and ear. "Just a few drops of my blood and we could start the whole carnival ride again, couldn't we?"
Fear sparked along his nerves, fear and a loathing so deep it felt hot and thick, filling him up.
NO! He couldn't be turned now. The blood was burned out.
He was fucking NORMAL!
"We've all been dying to know, Sam Winchester … did the trials burn all of Azazel's blood from your veins? Or is there some little, tiny remnant remaining, something that made you choose life over ending all possibility of our rising forever? Abaddon thinks that you didn't purify it all."
The demon pulled a long, slim-bladed knife from its belt, lifting it up and running its tongue along the edge. Sam stared at the blood that welled over its lip, dripping from the cut.
"A few drops, Sam, and we'll know for sure … won't we?"
Pete opened his eyes, a little surprised that he was still alive. He could hear his pulse, erratic and thready one minute, stronger, then weaker and realised slowly that it wouldn't last much longer. The Winchester's gear bag was a few feet from him and he looked at it for several minutes from the corner of his eye as he tested his body. His legs wouldn't work, that'd been apparent straight away, but he still had some control over his arms and he thought he'd last long enough to get to someone who might need him.
The thought flickered in and out of the crushing pain. Someone needed him, him and one of them bottles of oil the boys had brought. He wasn't sure he knew where the thought came from, but he didn't care overly about that. It was something to do.
It took two goes and another minute to roll from his back to his front and he found that his heart steadied a lot once he'd done it. The bag was zipped shut. He reached out an arm and dug his fingers down against the asphalt and pulled himself closer. Sweat beaded across his brow and he hoped that whoever it was who needed him didn't need him in a real hurry.
Abaddon's smile widened as she lifted her close-fitting shirt up and he saw the slugs embedded in the vest beneath.
"Oh yeah, twenty-first century has an answer for everything, even magic bullets!" she laughed at his expression. "Should've tried at least one head shot, sweetheart, I'm fast, but there's always a chance I won't be that fast."
"Well, let's see?" Dean said, burying his feelings and backing up, his peripheral vision acute as he picked up the details of the ground around him, the debris and trips and traps he needed to be aware of. His hand slid under his jacket and closed around the one-handed grip of the sword there, and he pulled it out, spinning it casually through his fingers, feeling the play of muscle and tendon loosen the tension that had gripped him.
She was fast, he knew. Maybe as much as fifteen percent faster than he was. And strong. And … of course, a demon. He overruled the small voice that said that was too many advantages lined up against him, and he thought instead about disadvantages, about sneakiness and an entire lifetime of not playing by the rules.
Too much confidence, too full of herself, not admitting to mistakes made. His first impression was still holding. She'd been defeated not just once but twice now, she could be again, but he had the feeling she hadn't really absorbed the lesson, the last two times.
He swung wide, offering her an opportunity, and she struck, blindingly fast, her hand almost closing around his wrist as he shifted his weight back and to the other side, pulling free and dragging her after him at the same time, the sword dropping smoothly from his right hand to his left and rising sharply under her, the tip scoring over her abdomen and ribcage and punching through her upper arm as she suddenly registered her danger and pulled frantically away and back from him.
Score, he thought, half-surprised at the success of the move. Light had poured out of her wounds which were already sealing slowly, the blood steaming as they appeared to cauterise themselves from the inside. He'd had a fraction of a second's glimpse of her eyes when the angel sword had touched her and he'd seen the fear in them then, seen that she hadn't even thought of him being able to touch her, let alone get her off balance, unprepared, and do some damage.
"Lucky," Abaddon said, flexing her shoulder and closing her fist as she tested the arm he'd hit.
"In my experience, there's no such thing as luck," Dean said, hiding the delight that fizzed in him from finally being able to use the friggin' line in the right – and this was so right – context.
"Really? I thought that luck was the main reason you're still alive?"
He ignored the sally, seeing her jawline tense, and waited for the attack, moving backwards lightly across the street, checking off the objects that lay around them, the positions of which he'd noted when he's scanned the street on seeing her.
She came as expected, straight for him and he drifted to one side, the sword point lifting and dragging her gaze with it. She stumbled as her foot landed on the rolling curves of the broken bottles that she hadn't noticed lying in the street. He lunged in, watching her hips for direction as she struggled to find a way back with her weight already over her back foot and no place to go, anticipating the only other move available, sideways and to her dominant hand as well. Left. The sword sliced through the tight black pants and the muscle underneath easily, lighting his face in white and gold and she threw back her head and screamed at him. He'd expected her to try and stay upright but she gave it up, falling backwards and dragging the sword blade, trapped in the tense muscle of her thigh, and him with her, her uninjured leg scything low and hard and hitting him in the side of the head with the edge of her boot.
Holding onto the sword risked breaking a wrist and Dean let go, rolling fast to the side, hearing the dull clang of the angel weapon on the dirt-covered asphalt behind him, thinking he was going to get clear, but he wasn't quite fast enough. Her grip closed around his wrist and he was yanked back as Abaddon twisted his arm back and high, wrist and elbow locking, the shoulder straining to stay in its socket, tendons stretching and stretching, agonisingly close to snapping. The deep grunt he gave made her laugh as she jerked him onto his knees on the fulcrum of his twisted arm, kneeling behind him and pushing the ball of the joint to the very edge of the cup of bone.
"You really have improved," she said, leaning close enough that he could feel the hard vest adding pressure to the wall of misery that had been his shoulder joint. "I have to say, even after the efforts you made to save poor old Henry, I didn't really expect you to come, you know. A bunch of humans you hardly know?"
"What do you want?" Dean ground out.
"I want Crowley," she said, easing the pressure slightly on the shoulder as she looked down at him in surprise. "A simple exchange."
"Exchange," Dean repeated. "And I get?"
"To die quickly," Abaddon told him bluntly. "Quick, clean, you won't feel a thing."
"And if I tell you to get bent?"
"Oh … well," she said, looking at him consideringly, the tip of her tongue slipping along her full lower lip. "I understand that you've been something of an exception in your circle. The only one who's never been possessed."
"Clean living," Dean said through his teeth as she increased the pressure on his arm and he couldn't help but tilt toward the shoulder, trying to find some relief from the excruciating agony that was clouding the edges of his vision, sucking him toward unconsciousness.
Abaddon smiled, the wide, cat-green eyes darkening slightly as she leaned closer to him. "Let me explain this to you simply, Dean, in small words, so you'll understand the first time." Her right hand stroked down his cheek and along his neck, curling around to close tightly in his hair. She pulled his head back, forcing him to look up at her.
"You give me Crowley, or I'll peel off this no-demons-allowed tattoo and I'll take you on 'The Exorcist' tour and make you watch – and feel – everything," she paused, watching him closely. "It'll be you and me, and you think what you did in Hell was bad? Up here, it's so much worse … up here … there are innocents, Dean. You've got a good imagination, I'm sure you can figure out where we'll go and what we'll do and how long it'll take before you want to die so badly that you'll do anything for it."
He stared up at her, forcing himself to keep the fear that was hammering at him tightly held down, not letting it show in his face or his eyes. He knew what she would do. And he knew what it would do to him.
Sam's blood was normal, the angel thought, but his mind was not and the demon's blood could still undo all that the man had suffered through if he didn't understand that the danger had indeed gone.
The choice was simple and he wrapped himself around the soul he was tending, shutting out the senses and everything in the vessel that was uniquely Sam.
He could no longer reach out to touch Heaven. The only soul he could touch was the one in his care and it was limited in its power, by the flesh and blood of the vessel that contained it. Nonetheless, Ezekiel drew on the power he had. The soul had a connection of its own, and that connection was infinite and inextinguishable, both a power sink and a beacon. Light filled the cells of the vessel as he thrust the demon aside, getting to his feet and filling the room with a silent symphony, drawn from and played through Sam's soul. The demon vanished as the light seared into it, burning away first the vessel then the charred black smoke it contained, the shadows of broken and burned wings stretched out along the wall behind the unconscious girl.
Pete looked up and sighed very softly. That was who he needed to help. The red-haired demon's back was to him, and even at this distance he could read the agony in the oldest Winchester's twisted body. The bottle he'd dragged with him suddenly felt light and he worried that he'd broken it somehow, lost the heavy contents on the way. It sloshed reassuringly as he lifted it closer and he dug a hand into his pocket, fingers pulling out the handkerchief he carried.
Molotovs were easiest, he thought, breaking the seal on the bottle and prising the stopper free. A bottle of something flammable, a fuse, a light and a good arm and aim and it was all done and dusted.
The cloth fed into the neck of the bottle and he pulled a little out again when he felt the oil sliding against his fingers. One good lob. The old Zippo he carried had been faithful on a million salt'n'burns and had never let him down. He felt certain it wouldn't today either.
The oil-soaked cotton lit immediately, the flame straight as the breeze died. Turning his head stiffly, Pete calculated the distance and trajectory and lifted the bottle, feeling the weight. Couldn't use anything other than the one arm. It would have to be right. Dean needed him.
He gripped the bottle by the base and threw.
Abaddon's nails drove into his skin, encircling the tattoo. Dean felt her breath brush over his mouth as she leaned closer, kissing distance, the threat in her smile implicit.
"Well, Dean, what'll it be?"
He saw the bottle arc up gently against the faded sky behind the demon and fall toward them and the explosive crash of the ceramic container hitting the road next to Abaddon was simultaneous with the blinding blast of light from a storefront on the opposite side of the road a half-block down.
Abaddon shrieked as holy fire spattered over her and the light pierced her at the same time. He felt her grip loosen as she twisted away from both, vanishing in the glare, and he turned his head away, eyes screwed shut. A moment later, the light had gone, but the flickering of the burning oil remained and he looked at it, then down the street, seeing Pete's body lying on the road.
Gone. For a moment, as he replayed the last few seconds in his memory, he wondered at the timing, then shut his thoughts away, the white fire in his shoulder demanding that he do something about it before he lost the slight grip on consciousness he still had.
Getting to his feet carefully, the displaced joint still teetering on the edge of the socket, he staggered to the doorway of the closest building, jaw muscle twitching at the thought of what he needed to do next. The door's architrave protruded from the edge of the brick wall three inches. More than enough to tip the anterior displacement back into place, he thought with a resigned inward sigh.
He swung his shoulder into the doorway and the joint popped back into the socket. The sharp cry stayed mostly in his throat and he swallowed hard against it, leaning against the doorway as the tendons were released from the fiery pain of being stretched out too long, muscle sagging in relief at being allowed to contract again. He turned, letting himself slump against the wall and dragged in a deep breath, the pain receding, leaving only a memory of agony in the torn muscle fibres.
The light blast had come from the drugstore, he thought tiredly, and there was only one angel he could think of who would be there and blasting demons. Opening and closing his hand a couple of times, he pushed himself off the door frame, walking unsteadily down the street until he came to Pete.
The older hunter was lying on his side and from the waist down, soaked in blood. Dropping to one knee, Dean touched his fingers to the man's carotid, not surprised that he couldn't feel a pulse. Had Pete thrown the Molotov? He had to have, he thought, his gaze lifting and searching along the street in both direction. He could make out the blood trail the hunter had left, a twisting red smear that led down the block. Could see the holes that patterned Pete's clothes. How the hell had he managed to drag himself all the way here –? It wasn't a question that he was going to get an answer for and he pushed the thought aside, leaning over and closing Pete's eyes. Getting back on his feet, he started for the drugstore, accelerating as he crossed the street. He shoved at the door, stepping around it as swung from one hinge.
The drugstore was filled with broken tables and chairs and Dean noted the two meatsuits lying on the floor. Sam was standing by the counter. Ezekiel was standing by the counter, Dean corrected himself, seeing the un-Sam expression on his brother's face.
"What happened?" he asked the angel, his gaze dropping uncomfortably to the floor as eyes that were … but weren't … his brother's turned to him.
"The demon was attempting to get your brother to drink its blood," Ezekiel replied, his voice almost expressionless.
"What?" Dean stared at him. "But – that – that's over, isn't it? It can't work now?"
"Physically, biologically, no, it cannot," Ezekiel agreed, inclining his head. "Sam's fear, however, meant it could have distorted his mind. He is unsure yet that he was cleansed."
"Chri – fuck, what a mess," Dean snapped, turning away and seeing the girl lying under the table on the other side of the room. "She dead?"
"Injured," the angel told him.
Muttering under his breath, Dean crossed to her in a few long, harried strides and knocked the table from over her, brows drawing together as he looked down at the long cut on the side of her face, the wrong bend in her arm and the sticky red mess over her abdomen. He lifted her out and turned back to Ezekiel.
"Can you do something about it?"
"Yes." Ezekiel walked to him, closing his eyes and setting Sam's hand over her forehead. "Her will to live is very strong."
Real healing would be too hard to explain, Dean suddenly realised, his fingers closing around his brother's arm. "Not all the way, just to the point where she won't die from it."
Ezekiel nodded.
Light outlined his brother's fingers, pulsing and settling into the skin of the young woman. The cut on her face pulled closer together but didn't disappear. Dean slid his arms around her, picking her up and carrying her to a still-standing table. He set her down and pulled aside the lower half of her shirt, seeing the puncture wounds across her skin stop bleeding but holes remained open. Her arm straightened, the discolouration of the bruising remaining.
"You can't touch Heaven," he said, looking at Sam.
"No."
"How – how're you doing this?" He gestured wildly around the room. "How'd you do this?"
"Sam's soul has sufficient power for many things, provided they are not of a long duration or great requirement." The angel looked down at the girl's face.
"You're pulling power from Sam's soul?" Dean asked in astonishment. "Doesn't that – won't that slow down his healing?"
"No, the soul's power is renewed constantly," Ezekiel said, looking back at him. "As you can get up each morning and do what you must do, it too is replenished."
"Great, okay, fine."
"That power is all that is available to me, Dean," the angel said, sensing the man's ambivalence about it. "I thought it was best I protect your brother, that is what you requested of me."
"Yeah," Dean said, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Yeah, that's what I want you to do."
He looked back at the angel. "What's going on with Sam now?"
"He is … unaware," the angel told him. "He remembers nothing."
"Great." Turning away, Dean thought about what the hell he was going to say about this. "We need to burn these bodies."
"I agree."
Traci looked mutinously at Dean as she knelt beside Sam. "I think he's coming to."
Looking around, he ignored the expression on her face and nodded. "Good."
He gestured at the two bags sitting on the counter. "Chuck those in the car, we'll be right behind you."
She got up and picked up the first bag without a word, going out of the drugstore to where Dean had parked the car. He'd dressed the cut and the holes in her abdomen, had taped her arm and rigged a sling for it. She'd winced at the pain when she'd woken, and he'd told her she'd been lucky, handing her a couple of painkillers to dry-swallow. Whatever she'd remembered of the attack, she didn't seem to be questioning anything.
"What the hell happened?" Sam pushed himself back against the wall and rolled to his knees as Dean reached out and caught his wrist.
"Got me," Dean said, his fingers tightening around his brother's arm for a second then letting him go. "Came in and there's two dead meatsuits, Traci out for the count under a table and you lying up against that wall. I just finished the pyre for Pete and Irv, been humping dead bodies for the last two hours – on my own."
Sam's questions died in his throat as he looked at his brother. "Pete was gunned down out the front as we got in, but Irv bought it too?"
"Abaddon's sniper," Dean said shortly. "You alright?"
"Yeah, uh," Sam said uncertainly, feeling the lump on the back of his head. "I must have gotten knocked out, somehow."
"Well, you knifed the demons first, so I'm gonna forgive you that one." Dean shrugged and waved his hand at the door as he picked up the second gear bag from the counter. "Let's go."
"Is Traci alright?" Sam asked, following him slowly. "The demon was trying to gut her …"
"Couldn't have gotten too deep," Dean said over his shoulder. "She's gonna have some new scars, that's about it."
The image in Sam's mind, the demon's hand disappearing into her stomach, became fuzzy and faded and he shook his head a little, wondering how hard he'd hit it as he pulled the door closed behind him. Sitting in the backseat of the black car, Traci looked the other way as he got into the passenger front.
"What happened to Abaddon?" he asked Dean as the engine rumbled to life.
"Disappeared when Pete threw a holy oil Molotov at her," Dean told him, driving slowly down the street and turning at the end.
"Pete was dead, Dean," Sam said, frowning. "He got caught in the crossfire between the two demons who came after us."
"Couldn't've been all the way dead, Sammy," Dean contradicted him. "Drag marks from the drugstore to where I was and one of our own bottles."
"Huh."
"Yeah." Dean hoped he wasn't going to think that one over too much. He couldn't work out how the hunter had managed it either. Luck, Abaddon had said. Or help. He wasn't sure which he preferred to believe in.
"Where are we going?" Traci asked from the backseat.
"Missoula." He looked into the rearview mirror at her. "Friends there who can look after you while you heal up and teach you something about hunting."
"I know about hunting," she said frigidly to the back of his head.
"Not enough," he said, his tone suggesting that the argument was over. "You keep hunting alone and you'll be dead before you get to twenty-one."
She turned her head and Sam saw her stare out the window, her mouth compressed to a tight, thin line. He looked back at his brother, seeing the faint tension in the fingers that held the wheel, in the line from Dean's shoulder to jaw. Another fun trip, he thought tiredly.
I-90 E, Washington
I'm goin' to Rosedale,
Take my rider by side
The music poured softly from the speakers, the beat in time with the engine, with the noise of the tyres as the car sped along the road. Dean looked through the windshield, his thumbs tapping lightly against the wheel, his world reduced to the long reach of the headlights and the lines they travelled between.
Anybody argue with me man,
I'll keep them satisfied
Sam was in the back, mostly stretched out, although the seat wasn't quite long enough for his brother. Leaning into the corner between the door and the end of the front seat, Traci sat beside him, asleep as well, he thought.
Well, see my baby, tell her,
Tell her the shape I'm in
Ain't had no lovin', Lord,
Since you know when
"My family was killed six years ago. Demon attack."
He started a little, flicking a fast sideways glance at Traci. She wasn't looking at him, her gaze fixed to the road unrolling ahead of them. He had the feeling that asking questions would only derail whatever it was she needed to get out, and he looked back at the road, waiting.
She's a good rider
She's my kind-hearted lady
"My dad was a hunter," she added, a few minutes later. "At the time, we didn't know what was happening. It wasn't until I met Irv and a couple of other hunters that I found out that it happened because the devil got out of his cage."
Feeling his heart sink, Dean slid another look at her. She couldn't've been more than nineteen, twenty at the most, he thought. Thirteen or fourteen maybe, back then.
"There were four demons."
She's gotta mortgage on my body, got a lien on my soul
He heard her breath rasp in her throat.
"The house wasn't protected," she continued after another minute of silence. "He kept meaning to do it. He talked to Bobby Singer about the traps and the wards. You know him?"
Turning her head, she looked at him and he could feel her gaze on the side of his face, like a brand. The song ended and the silence in the car was deafening. He nodded.
"I met a couple of hunters in Missouri," she said, her mouth curling up derisively. "Roy Milton, and Walt Tennant. You know them?"
He looked at her. "Yeah, we know them."
"Told me Sam Winchester let the devil loose," she said, her voice hardening slightly as the steely riff of the next song began. "They said the gates were being opened because of that."
Bright light almost blinding, black night still there shining,
I can't stop, keep on climbing, looking for what I knew.
Dean sucked in a breath as he heard his brother shift in the backseat behind him. "You know, for the record, Sam's not the only guy in the world who thought he was doing the right thing, and watched it all turn to crap."
"Irv told me he put the devil back in the cage," she said. "That true?"
"Yeah, it is."
"How'd he get out?"
"That's a long story," Dean hedged, glancing at her again. "How'd you survive?"
"That's a long story," she said, her tone matching his.
"You've been hunting these last six years?"
"More or less," she admitted.
Met a man on the roadside crying, without a friend, there's no denying,
You're incomplete, they'll be no finding looking for what you knew.
"Then you should know that shit happens, to good people, and there's no way of knowing beforehand what's coming at you," he said. "People, even hunters, get caught in things so big they don't know what the hell's going on and there's no blueprint or game plan to tell you that a choice you make is going to turn into something that you'll regret the rest of your life."
"You were there?"
"Yeah."
"Were you a part of it?"
He heard the curiosity in her voice, underlaid by something else, something powerful and needing, and he closed his eyes briefly.
"Everyone was a part of it," he said slowly. "There were two, at least, probably more archangels changing things around – changing peoples' whole lives – to make sure that Lucifer got out."
So anytime somebody needs you, don't let them down, although it grieves you,
Some day you'll need someone like they do, looking for what you knew.
He blinked as the lyrics filled the space in the conversation, uncertain if that message was aimed at him or if it was just a random coincidence (no such thing as coincidence in this life).
"This is what we do, what you have to do, if you're a hunter," he said. "You risk everything you wanted or you lose everything you wanted because that's the job. It's not about revenge, Traci, you'll never kill enough to make up for what happened. It's not finding someone or something to blame for what happened to you. It's about making a decision to do something about it – so it doesn't happen to anyone else – or giving up and living like everyone else. You're gunna burn out if you only rely on your anger."
Behind him, Sam shifted again, and he wondered briefly how long it would take his brother to raise that with him, when they were back on their own.
Mmm, I'm telling you now, The greatest thing you ever can do now,
Is trade a smile with someone who's blue now, It's very easy just...
The songs played on as she turned away, leaning against the glass of the passenger window.
Missoula, Montana
Bumping over the rutted gravel road, Dean saw the house emerge from behind a long screen of trees and let out his breath in unconscious relief that they were there, that he could hand off the broken girl to someone else. Her will to live is very strong, the angel had said. It might keep her going, he thought uneasily, but until she got what'd happened to her family straight in her head, she'd still die young, doing what she was doing.
The white-painted frame farmhouse was nestled in a flattish hollow, outbuildings to one side and fields on the other, and he pulled up in front of the porch, the silence of the place filling the car when he turned off the engine.
They got out, stretching after the long drive, three doors squeaking and clunking in unison and Dean saw Sam's smile as he looked up to the front door, turning and seeing Hannah's sister walking down the steps toward them. Like Hannah, Alyssa's mother's genes had dominated and glossy black hair, long and loose, smooth olive-toned skin and a generously curved figure were the outstanding features of both sisters.
"I was wondering if you'd make it," she said, reaching up to hug Sam as he went to meet her. Dean saw Traci's expression change at the obvious warmth in the greeting, the girl watching for a long moment then looking away.
"Long friggin' drive from Oregon," Dean said acerbically. "Traci, this is Alyssa."
"Ma'am," the young woman said, nodding to her from the other side of the car.
"Ma'am?!" Alyssa glanced from the girl to Dean, brows rising in mock horror. "What am I? Sixty now?" She stepped toward the girl and held out her hands to her. "You're Jonah's girl, aren't you, Traci? I was very sorry to hear of your loss."
Traci looked up in surprise, her face younger and prettier without the habitual mistrust in it, Dean noted, and she let the woman take her hands and hold them. "Yeah."
Alyssa smiled at the girl's unspoken question. "Oh, we know most people in the life, one way or another. I always thought your mother was one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. You look very much like her"
Dean watched the girl duck her head suddenly, wondering if it was the compliment or that someone else knew her family that had brought the shine to her eyes.
"Come on in, Andreas will be back in a couple of hours. You'll stay long enough to eat, of course," Alyssa said briskly, wrapping an arm around Traci and turning to look at the brothers. "Sashi brought in another load of holy oil last week, if you need any replacements. We've had fourteen confirmed reports of angel sightings, from the border down to Texas so far, but Colin is trying to get in touch with his family in Dublin to see if they can find out the situation in Europe as well."
Dean followed them as Alyssa and Traci went back up the porch steps, stopping and looking back as he realised that Sam wasn't behind him.
"What?"
"Just this," Sam said, turning slowly on his heel as he looked around the yard, flowers blooming haphazardly in the garden beds, a neat line of different vehicles parked in the shadows of the biggest shed on the other side of the driveway. "I mean, look at it, Dean."
Fifteen hours of driving straight through had left him feeling disconnected from almost everything, but he caught Sam's meaning after a moment. "They're not hunters, Sam."
"They may as well be, and Andreas was," Sam countered, walking past him up the steps.
Lebanon, Kansas
The locking rings thunked heavily as the tenons withdrew and Dean pushed open the door of the bunker, one arm wrapped around a bucket of fried chicken, the other rubbing tiredly over his eyes.
"I'm just sayin', from home-cooked, fresh-grown food, you had to go to this?" Sam said from behind him, closing the door and looking over his shoulder as the locks re-engaged.
"It's fast, it's food and I'm tired," Dean said, turning for the staircase. "Kevin? We got dinner here."
"If we'd left the key with him, he could've re-supplied himself," Sam muttered.
"We've got one key and it stays with us," Dean countered shortly, looking around the situation as he hit the bottom of the stairs. "Kevin?"
The library was empty, the entire place … felt … empty. Dean turned to look at Sam, the same thought in both their minds.
Dropping the bucket and bag on the table, Dean shot through the library and down the hall at the rear, taking the stairs three and four at a time as he descended to the file storage level. He could hear Sam's footfalls behind him.
No. No … no … no–no-no-no!
He saw the lights on in the room and slammed into the mostly-closed door with his shoulder, his chest compressing when he realised the shelving that formed the door to the dungeon was open as well.
FUCK IT, NO!
In the centre of the room, Crowley lifted his head, looking at them from slitted eyes, one of them hidden within the mass of swollen flesh surrounding it. Dean's gaze skittered over him, registering the injuries, automatically recognising how they were inflicted, his eyes flicking to the open cupboard on the side of the room and seeing the dark stains on the iron head of the small sledge.
"Who worked you over?" he asked the demon tersely.
"Martin Hayward," Crowley said indistinctly. "And Brandon Favours."
Dean's brows rose fractionally as he looked at his brother. Sam's forehead wrinkled up. "They did this to you?"
Crowley rolled his eyes, an effect lost since his eyes could hardly be seen. "No. They're demons," he clarified sardonically, making an effort to speak more clearly. "You asked for names, I'm giving you names."
"Wow," Dean said, shaking his head as he looked at the demon. "You break easy."
"Please." Crowley gave him a pained look. "Your little plan to have me stew in my own … delicious … juices … Pathetic." He drew in a breath. "You want intel. Well, I want things too."
Dean looked at him consideringly. How much more would Crowley give if he found out that Abaddon had made hunting him down and killing him the top of her To Do list? Something for another day, he thought, feeling Sam's gaze flicker over to him, knowing his brother was thinking the same thing.
Crowley exhaled. "Maybe we could come to some kind of … arrangement? Quid pro quo, gentleman."
"So these names, they're what? Freebies?"
"Not at all," Crowley said. "Tokens of my goodwill and willingess to play fair."
"You don't give anything away, Crowley," Sam said, eyes narrowing as he studied the demon.
Crowley looked down, smiling. "Ah, Moose you know me too well."
"Where's Kevin?" Dean asked abruptly.
The demon's smile widened. "Kevin, yes, I do believe he's my new favourite toy."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Dean stared at him.
"Wind him up, watch him go."
Sonofabitch. Chained to a fucking chair in the middle of a fucking dungeon and Crowley could still wreak misery. His mouth thinning, Dean glanced at Sam.
"Check the names, I'll find the kid."
Sam nodded, looking at Crowley.
Crowley looked back at him. There was something a little bit different about Moose, the demon thought as he watched him turn away and walk out of the room. Was Sam finally coming into alignment with his brother's steel core of morality? Or was it something else … something invasive in Sam's eyes.
Dean climbed the stairs back to the library, slowing as he saw Kevin coming down the hall toward him, his backpack over one shoulder.
"Where d'you think you're going?" he asked him gruffly, hiding the relief that Kevin hadn't made it out of the building at least.
Kevin looked at the floor and veered past him, increasing his speed as he hit the library.
"Hey, hey, whoa," Dean said, lengthening his stride and reaching for the handle of Kevin's backpack, jerking the kid to a halt before he hit the stairs. "You lost the ability to speak?"
"You locked me in here!" Kevin burst out, staring back at him. "I'm leaving!"
"Like hell." Dean glowered at him. "We told you not to talk to Crowley! Man, he messes with your head."
"My mom's alive," Kevin said, his teeth set together as he looked up at the taller man. "He said if I let him go, he'd give her back to me."
Dean nodded, his anger vanishing. "And you believed him?"
"He's still in there, isn't he?" Kevin snapped.
Dean bit back the first response that popped into his head, seeing the boy's fear and doubt. "You know Crowley's lying?"
"And if he's not?"
Looking away, Dean sucked in a breath. At Kevin's age, on this question, he'd've been a helluva lot more trouble, he thought tiredly.
"Even if she's still alive, she's – she's dead, Kevin," he said quietly. "In every way that matters. I'm sorry."
He watched Kevin struggle with that, look down and swallow back his hope, try to put it away, put it out, bury it.
"I know you want to bolt," he said, gesturing vaguely toward the door. "I get it. But out there, it's demons and it's angels, and they would all love to get their hands on a prophet, on the prophet." He looked down for a moment. "Even with Crowley here, this is still the safest place for you. It just is. And we need you, man."
Kevin lifted his gaze, his mouth twisting down. "Because I'm useful."
Dean saw the way Crowley had gone, and he shook his head. "No. Because you're a part of this now. A part of us. What we do, we can't do it without you, and you can't do it without us." He looked around the library, wondering how to explain to Kevin what he'd slowly been coming to realise for a while now. In this room, the ghosts of the scholars who'd lived and worked seemed to float just out of view, centuries of them.
"My, uh, grandfather, said that this place, this order, was first created for the people who knew what was out there. So that they could fight it but not on their own. They could fight with a – a family of members who all knew what was at stake, knew what they were facing."
He looked back at the young man in front of him. "Like us. Out there, no one knows what this is like, Kevin. There's no one you can trust, no one you can put your back against when you need it. But in here …," he hesitated, ducking his head. "In here, you can trust us. Me and Sam … we got your back."
Kevin looked away. "Crowley got me, on that boat."
"I know," Dean said, unconsciously straightening up as he felt the reverberative guilt of that moment. He'd stood here, in the library, watching Kevin's video on his brother's laptop and knowing that he'd failed, failed someone else and that they were paying for his mistake with their life. "That was on me, Kevin. I thought you were going to be safer away from us – fuck, it doesn't matter what I thought – I was wrong. And I can't take that back or make that right, but I don't want to make that mistake again."
The thud of the bag hitting the floor was muted, lost in the muffling effects of the stacks of books, in the height of the ceiling.
"You, uh, said you had food?" Kevin looked around the room, clearing his throat against the thickness that had unaccountably filled it.
"Yeah, fried chicken."
"You're kidding." Kevin looked at him flatly.
"What?!" Dean said, defences rising again. "It's food."
Four hours later.
"Alright, pantry's full again," Dean said, walking into the library and straight to the sideboard, his neck cracking loudly as he tilted his head from one side to the other. "Kevin's back in his room, out like a light, and I deserve this," he added, mostly to himself as he poured generous doubles into two glasses, the crystal chiming gently in the otherwise silent room. Picking the glasses up, he turned around and walked to the table, putting one drink in front of his brother and taking a deep mouthful of the other as he sat down.
Sam looked at the glass and nodded. He'd spent the last two hours writing out the files and adding the information they'd gained into the existing reports.
Seeing the remote look in his brother's eyes, Dean asked, "What's up?"
Sam lifted his head, his gaze brushing over Dean and cutting away. He shrugged. "What Traci said, on the way back. She wasn't wrong."
"Maybe not, but she only had half the story, Sam," he said, looking at his brother until Sam's eyes met his.
"You seemed pretty clear on what you think about it now," Sam said diffidently, not quite sure he was ready to follow the topic just yet. He picked up his glass, sipping the whiskey and looking at Dean over the rim.
Dean leaned back in the chair, eyes half-hooded as he thought about that. When he'd been saying it to the girl, it'd come out without thought, really, without a conscious awareness of what his thoughts had been. He was a hunter. There was nothing else he could do, not and remain himself.
"Comes and goes," he finally said, lifting the glass and swallowing a mouthful when Sam smiled at non-answer.
"So, you ready for it?"
"Hmmm."
"Fallen angels. A deranged angel in Heaven keeping everyone else out," Sam said quietly, looking at the files in front of him. "Archdemon topside and on the loose, looking to take over Hell, looking for Crowley who's in our basement, trying to play Let's Make A Deal and we don't know how much of the purification really took with him. No angels on our side, Cas is practically human."
"Yeah, all the hits, all night long," Dean snorted into his glass. "What about you? How's the engine running?"
Sam put the glass down slowly. "Honestly … I feel better than I have in –" He looked up at his brother, his mouth curling up a little derisively. "– in a long time. Since I was at Stanford, I think."
He shook his head at Dean's sharply questioning look. "I mean, I realise it's crazy out there and I know we got trouble coming for us from every possible direction … but …"
"We have a home. Finally." He gestured around the quiet room, lit to an even, gentle glow by the lamps and sconces on the walls. "We have … friends again, around us. I still got my family," he added, smiling a little self-consciously as he looked to see how Dean would take that. His brother's face was intent, listening but he didn't react.
"The blood is gone and I'm … normal, and – uh – happy, I guess," Sam continued, uncertain of all the elements that had combined to create the feeling he was trying to describe to his brother. "Kind of hard to remember what that feels like but I think it's right."
"Huh."
"Yeah," Sam said, ducking his head. "I know you don't believe it, Dean, but this – this place, the order, you know we were talking about if it was meant, somehow?"
Dean nodded noncommittally. He remembered the conversation after they'd buried Henry. He remembered his unease at the thought of further manipulation by powers that didn't seem to care what happened to them so long as the plans – whatever the hell they were – were furthered.
"This feels like we're supposed to be here."
Dean dropped his gaze to the whiskey in his glass. Supposed to be here, the thought twisting savagely in his gut. Had Sam been supposed to die? Had he? He'd let an angel possess his brother. Let that angel take over and run his brother. He couldn't think of what had been supposed to happen. His whole life he'd escaped or dodged what had been supposed to happen. And none of it had ever worked out right.
He could lie like a snake-oil salesman to anyone but the people he cared about. He couldn't lie for shit to his brother and his best hope had always been to make sure the subject was never raised. Sam getting dewy-eyed with hope for the future, feeling secure in the love and trust of his family … not knowing what had really happened, not knowing he was –
He'd put his trust in an angel. Wasn't the first time. The times before, that trust had been shattered and stomped over and then shattered again. Heaven had been manipulating his family since long before he'd been born and still he hadn't learned.
The whiskey burned pleasantly along his tongue and down his throat as he tossed the rest down, and he got up, unable to sit next to Sam, who was relaxed and … happy, unable to remain still with the guilt he could feel agitating inside.
"Just gonna clean the guns," he said, by way of excuse when Sam looked up at him.
"Sure."
That excuse would always be easily accepted, which is why he'd used it. Dean turned away and headed for the collections rooms, picking up the gear bags from the hall on the way. He wasn't sure how long he could keep doing this. As long as you have to, he reminded himself with a lash of anger. As long as it takes for the angel to fix Sam permanently and get the hell out of Dodge. And if it feels like someone's running razors over you every time you have to change the subject, or make up something to explain the inexplicable, every time you have to look into his eyes and lie straight to him, then that's something you're just going to have to suck up.