Chapter 6

The demon looked taken aback, and Cal realized belatedly that he must have cut her off mid-sentence. He hadn't really been listening, but evidently he'd interrupted abruptly enough that even she couldn't totally hide her surprise.

She recovered quickly, though, and said coolly, "Evidently we'll need to go over some rules about interruptions, but since you have something good to say I'll let it slide this time." She smiled, this time almost genuinely, and it seemed impossible that something so obviously evil could have such a beautiful smile. "So. You've just decided to let me have my way, for no apparent reason, and I'm supposed to believe that you're doing it purely out of the goodness of your heart?"

Cal snorted. "What goodness?" he asked, actually sincere for the first time. "I can assure you I'm doing this for completely selfish reasons. And how can helping you out be considered good anyways?"

"So…" the demon said, sitting down on a pile of rock and stretching leather-clad legs, her arms behind her head. "Enlighten me." When Cal raised an eyebrow at her, she rolled her eyes and said, "Humor me. We can't do anything until your head stops spinning, anyways, and I'm bored. I mean, I can start taking some slices out of your hide if you like, but I thought maybe you'd rather talk. Call me crazy."

"Actually," Cal said, already envisioning Niko's rather unenthusiastic reaction to his next words, "if it comes down to a choice between talking about my feelings or getting cut on for awhile, I'm pretty sure I'd choose the second one."

He felt a wash of surprise mixed with a shot of irritation when she laughed out loud, slapping her knee in evident delight. "You're one twisted kid, you know that? I almost wish we didn't have this torturer-victim kind of relationship going on. Otherwise I might get to like you."

"One of my life's goals."

"Well, since you're not gonna answer that question—lame, by the way—how about you tell me how long you think it'll take for you to be able to open my gate?"

"I look like a doctor to you?"

"Well, more than I do. Humans tend not to die from their injuries once I've gotten into them, so I don't really know what's fatal to them or how long things take to heal. Then again…"

"…I'm not exactly human. Yeah, yeah, like I haven't heard that before…" At the demon's deafening silence, Cal sighed. "Okay, fine, if you have to know—don't have a clue, lady. You didn't do too much damage, but…"

"Please, I barely touched you. If you're not badly hurt it's because I didn't want you to be, since I, y'know, need you and all. I have more control over you and your health than you can possibly imagine. And that reminds me—" The demon hadn't moved at all in this entire conversation, but now she leaned forward until her face was very close to his. "That think you asked me earlier, about why I wasn't worried about you getting back home?"

"Well, that's not exactly what I asked…"

She plowed on without even seeming to notice the interruption. "If you honestly think I can't stop you from whatever method of escape you take into your head, you're stupider than I thought—and I never gave you much credit in the first place. And if, by some miracle, you did get out for a few minutes, I'm more than capable of making you and everyone you've ever met wish I'd just killed you. You wouldn't last long, kid. Better to just go along with me on this, 'kay?"

Cal blinked up at her, honestly baffled. He had seen a lot of weird shit in his life, but this crazy demon chick with her mood swings and her calm confidence that she was in complete control of any situation—it was…odd, in a different way than anything Cal had encountered before. She seemed insane, but insane in an almost human way as opposed to the homicidal, decidedly inhuman madness of a creature such as Abaggor and Cerberus.

"Um…okay, sure, fine. I'll remember that," Cal said absently, because even though he'd figured as much and had, as such, had no intention of making an escape—not right yet, anyway—it seemed easier to just agree with the resident psycho.

"Make sure you do. And—"

This time the demon interrupted herself, falling abruptly silent and standing stock-still in an unmistakable "listening" pose.

Into the ensuing silence came a sound that made Cal, for the first time since the demon's appearance in his room, well and truly frightened.

"Little cooousin…"

XXX

"The problem is, they could literally be anywhere," Sam said, gazing down at a map of the city. "There's not even any reason to believe they're still in the country, let alone the state. If they really do want Cal to open a portal, they can probably do it from anywhere."

Dean had been looking thoughtfully down into his soda can, and now he looked up and asked abruptly, "How long does it take for Cal to open one of those things, anyway?"

"Seconds," Niko replied instantly. "If he wants to, he can build them in seconds. But I've seen him hold one for half an hour. I'm not sure if he can do it longer than that."

"But basically, if he'd given in, he could have opened his gate by now."

"I suppose."

"Hmm…"

"What're you thinking?" Sam asked, taking in his brother's thoughtful expression.

Dean shook his head a little and reached to the nightstand for his phone.

"Who're you calling?"

"Ash," Dean replied, and a look of comprehension dawned on Sam's face.

"Ash is a…well, I don't know what he'd be called, actually, but we could just call him an analyst, I guess. If Cal's opened a gate already, Ash would be the one who would know."

Niko simply nodded at Sam's explanation—questions such as "how" being inconsequential for the most part—and kept his eyes on Dean, who was already relaying their request to Ash by the time Sam finished talking.

"Yeah, sure, whatever, just…hurry. If whatever took the kid pulls this off…I know, I know, I'm sorry, I just…really? Nothing? Anywhere? Okay, jeez, no need to—yeah, thanks anyway. Yes, we'll pay you, I swear, next time we're in town. Uh-huh. Cool. Thanks. Bye."

"Nothing?" Niko said as Dean hung up.

"Uh…no. That kid must have some guts," Dean replied, looking unsure whether to be sorry or not.

Yes, he does, and they're going to get him killed, Niko thought, jaw tightening.

"Here's what I don't get," Sam spoke up. "If Cal can just open a gate and poof anywhere he wants to go, why isn't he here yet? Or why hasn't he at least gone to a safe place and called? I mean, couldn't he just…?"

"C'mon, Sam, you know as well as I do that whatever demon has Cal could most likely keep him from going anywhere it doesn't want him going. And maybe he hasn't even been able to try. He could be unconscious or—"

Sam shook his head a little with a sharp look to the side at Niko, and Dean fell abruptly silent.

But then, Niko had never exactly had any trouble filling in blanks.

Dean's phone rang again before he could say anything. The tiny screen said "Ash," and before he'd thought about it Niko was reaching for the thing and flipping it open.

"Uh…yeah, sure, you can use my phone," Dean snapped, irritated.

"Thank you," Niko replied absently. "Hello?"

"Uh…you're not Dean," said the voice on the other end, sounding…rather uninterested, actually.

"No, I'm not. It's my brother we're trying to find."

"…Okay. Well, I guess you could maybe explain to me why there are about five of those gate things you mentioned opening under your Brooklyn Bridge?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, I don't know if it's exactly what you're looking for, but there's something happening there, and that's as good an explanation as any. But here I was thinking you were only expecting one."

"We were," Niko said hollowly. "Thank you for your help." With numb fingers he closed the phone and handed it back to Dean, who took it, looking puzzled.

Not this. Not now. Please…

XXX

An expression of fear looks the same on a possessed human and a non-possessed one, it turns out. Cal filed that knowledge away for future information as the demon stared in the direction of the call, her terror written plainly on her face.

Cal knew exactly how she felt.

But then she whipped around to face him, and abruptly the fear was replaced with sheer rage.

"You called them?" she shrieked, so loudly that it echoed, and Cal had the insane urge to clap a hand over her mouth to shut her up even though of course there was no way the Auphe would be fooled by that.

The idea that he'd willingly called the Auphe—well, that was just funny, and he would have to remember to have a good laugh over it.

But later, because the demon evidently took his silence as assent, and all thoughts disappeared as she leapt on him—except for one: when this demon had been…um…"torturing" him earlier, she really hadn't meant to hurt him at all. Or much, at least. But apparently she intended to do so now, because it felt like she was literally ripping him apart. And evidently she'd forgotten about his head, because one of the first things she did was to deal him such a blow there that for a few moments all he could see was gray.

It took maybe thirty seconds for her to back off, but the fact that she'd evidently grown extra hands and feet with which to hit him made the time seem longer.

But then, she would let her rip his head from his body if it would keep the Auphe away.

"Little cooousin…we're heeere…"

The first one appeared around the corner, as lethally quick and chillingly focused as Cal remembered. Without even thinking about the pain it would cause, he pushed himself up enough to scramble back into the wall, reaching automatically for a gun that wasn't there.

As it happened, though, he didn't need a gun right yet, because the Auphe weren't coming for him. Or if they were, they had something else on the agenda, too.

They hit the demon with all the force of a hurricane, first the one in the lead and then the four following it, and began ripping, tearing, and—God—chewing, without so much as a look in Cal's direction. The demon screamed…for awhile. But eventually the screams died away, leaving only the kinds of sounds Cal had never heard and never wanted to hear again.

He tuned them out, though, in his frantic attempts to still the whirling in his head long enough to gate…anywhere, up to and including a very small tank completely filled with starved sharks. But the more he tried the further it seemed to slip from him, until he couldn't even capture the visceral feeling that told him there was the potential for a gate.

The Auphe who'd led the charge finally back away from the body, and Cal saw with dull horror that it was still moving, twitching weakly. The horror turned to fear again when the creature spoke to the demon in its icy, sibilant voice. "Ours," it said clearly. "You cannot use him. He is not for you. He…is…ours."

It licked almost delicately at the blood on its nail and turned to Cal.

"Hello, little cousin," it said, its voice quiet but carrying. "Yes, try to hide. We see you."

Only then did Cal realize that he'd been attempting to burrow into the rock wall behind him, adding scraped and gouged knuckles to his list of injuries. This was just what the Auphe turned him into—a gibbering idiot from a seriously badass (unless you asked Niko) genetic mutant and monster killer.

I wish Niko was here.

Cal only realized he'd spoken aloud when the lead Auphe grinned, baring yellowed fangs, and said, "No big brother this time, little cousin. No brother, no gates, no hope. All alone, and now it's time to come home."

Only in Cal's world could the word "home" bring such a wave of sheer mind-numbing terror, and he found himself clawing even more frantically at a wall he knew wouldn't offer any protection, out of pure desperation more than any expectation that things would have changed.

And finally—finally—he felt the gate begin to open behind him.

XXX

"We have to go."

"Uh…go?" Sam asked. "Go…where, exactly?"

"To our apartment. I need more weapons than I have now."

"Hey, you wanna fill us in here, dude/ What'd Ash say?" Dean asked impatiently.

"That we—or I, at least—have to go to Brooklyn Bridge. Now."

"Niko what the hell is going on?" Sam asked, sounding confused and a little irritated.

"Look, if you'd like to come I'll tell you on the way, but I should have been gone already," Niko said firmly, ending the conversation by the simple expedient of walking out the door in the middle of Sam's next sentence.

He clung tenaciously to the hope that he would not find Cal under the Brooklyn Bridge, that his brother would stay lost for just a little longer. But it was a frail hope, and under it was the terrible feeling that maybe, just maybe, after all this, he was already too late.

XXX

Cal came out on the living room floor of his and Niko's apartment, once again breaking the furniture into pieces. This time, though, instead of jumping up to call Niko, he simply lay there in the wreckage, unmoving. He felt the gate dissipate behind him and realized that by some miracle none of the Auphe had followed him through. He would have cried with relief if a) he had the ability to cry and b) he was sure that crying wouldn't tear something vital inside him as thoroughly as he'd trashed the living room. But as it was he just lay there, doing his best to keep perfectly still, because he knew that if he moved nothing good could possibly come from it.

But Niko was out there somewhere, probably mightily pissed off and not a little worried, probably ready to do something stupid, with Auphe running loose around the city…

The last thought was enough to spur him into action. He shifted slowly, hearing wood splinter further around him, and cautiously began to sit up. He'd made it almost halfway into a sitting position before his head—his entire body, actually—exploded, pulling a gray film back down over his eyes—which he was getting far too used to—and then going on to paint that gray film black—which was something new.

The next few minutes were hazy, at best. There was mostly pain, especially of the explosive headache variety, but also accompanied by muscle seizure and the sharpness of broken bones. Distantly he heard his own choked gasps, although at least he didn't actually yell out loud and send his manly pride packing. Then, over those sounds, he eventually began to pick up others—voices, and keys rattling in the door. It took a few moments, what with the word going all tilted and misty again when he tried to turn his head, but soon he'd managed to pick up the scent he'd been searching for.

He'd closed his eyes in order to steady both his head and his stomach, but he didn't need to see to know what was going on. Niko would have gotten inside first, and his impossibly deft mind would have put the whole scene together in no more than a second or two. Cal listened as those familiar steps quickly crossed the room to his side, followed by two others—who they belonged to, Cal wasn't quite sure, but Niko had brought them, so it must be okay.

"Cal?" came the soft question, followed by the barely-there brush of a hand on his shoulder that he'd known was coming. Then came the equally expected fingers pressed against his neck to check his pulse, and if Niko didn't quite sigh when he felt the beat, Cal knew the relief was there all the same.

Then came the part he'd been dreading. Niko began running a quick hand over his body, checking for injuries. His touch was gentle as only Niko's could be, and as such only caused moderate pain—until he came up to check Cal's head. At that point Cal's eyes shot open, the world turned entirely upside down, and he proceeded to disgrace himself forever and always by first vomiting on his brother's shoes and then passing out completely right in front of him.


Author's Note: I'm not sure I really like the way this chapter flows—especially the end, which seems just plain choppy and lame—but I wanted to get a new chapter out to y'all before I get my wisdom teeth out Thursday, just in case that keeps me out of commission for longer than I'm planning for it to. Hope you like it anyways!