Before we left, Sam and Dean insisted that Thomas and I put on necklaces that they said were charms to keep the demon from possessing us. I was pretty sure Thomas, at least, didn't need one, but it seemed easier to just wear the things—which, once again, had no detectable magic on them. Their designs included pentacles, at least, so that was a step in the right direction.
This time we took Mouse. He seemed to have gotten over his dislike of Sam, though I noticed he had a tendency to want to stay between Sam and me. Since Dean was trying to stay between Sam and Thomas, it made for some interesting maneuvers.
Mouse and I took the Beetle; Sam and Dean went in Thomas's battleship. I led, with the compass I'd bound the tracking spell into sitting on the passenger seat. It wouldn't last long, but I didn't have to maintain it the way I would if I used my pentacle.
It was a long trip; Chicago sits on some of the flattest real estate in the US, and it sprawls. There's no really good way of putting a range-finder into a spell like the one I'd used, either, so all I could do was drive until the compass needle started swinging quickly. When it did, we were in another pleasant residential neighborhood. It was a nice change from the usual abandoned warehouse kind of thing bad guys tended to go for, I had to admit, but it meant we were going to stand out like a collection of sore thumbs again. At least it was after dark by then.
It took a few minutes of walking to pinpoint the house; unlike the last one, it didn't give me any bad feelings. It looked like just a house. There were lights on.
We split up. Dean and Mouse and I stayed on the back door, while Sam and Thomas went to the front. I could tell Dean wasn't happy about that arrangement, but the demon had seen me and him; the ones it hadn't seen had to do the talking till we could get into the house.
There was a swingset in the back yard. I was bracing myself for what that could mean.
Through the window in the back door we could see a small mudroom and a step up to a kitchen. There wasn't any movement I could spot as Dean bent to pick the lock, which he did with casual ease. As he was finishing, the doorbell rang as planned.
Nothing happened. After a minute, Thomas and Sam rang again. Still nothing. They rang a third time, and suddenly a woman appeared in the slice of kitchen Dean and I could see. She had her back to us, fortunately, and hurried away in the direction of the front door. I glanced at Dean and he nodded and eased the door open. The three of us squeezed into the mudroom, kind of a tight fit. Faintly I could hear the woman—demon, she'd appeared out of thin air—saying that no, there hadn't been any suspicious characters hanging around. Then Sam's voice, reassuring; Thomas was trying to be unobtrusive, since he'd been close to our target a few times, if a while ago. Not that my brother's good at being unobtrusive, but it was the best we had.
Sam was apologizing for interrupting the evening and the demon was cheerfully telling him that was all right. I guess it's sad that I deal with this kind of thing enough that I heard the exact moment she stopped pretending. "Oh, it's fine," she said. "I'd let you talk to my husband too, but I'm afraid he's a little tied up at the moment." At the tone of her voice Dean and I exchanged looks and started moving, Mouse at my heels. There were a couple of thuds.
We burst into the living room to find Sam heaving to his feet where he'd clearly been thrown against a wall and Thomas grappling with the woman. She looked startled and angry and her wide eyes were flat black. Sam coughed and started to speak the exorcism. The demon snarled into Thomas's face and did something that made him curse and jerk and lose his grip. The demon flung a hand out at Sam and he went back into the wall again, hard, and stopped speaking.
"Sam!" Dean snapped, and leveled his shotgun, but he didn't have a chance to fire it before a gray streak passed us both and barreled into the demon. She went over backwards with Mouse planted on her chest. He was growling, almost too deep to hear but I could feel it vibrating in my chest. The sound got a little louder when he opened his mouth, and then my dog set his jaws over the possessed woman's throat.
For a second, no one moved. Mouse did not bite, but I could see the demon pushing at him ineffectually. When that didn't work, she let her head fall back, like the last body had done when the smoke tried to escape, and I tensed. But nothing happened.
Beside me Dean shook himself and moved, pulling a piece of chalk out of his pocket. He crouched next to Mouse and the demon (who looked confused as all get out) and started drawing on the hardwood floor. Thomas caught my eye and said, "I'm going to go look for the rest of the family." I nodded and he departed in the direction of the kitchen again. Sam got to his feet again and leaned on the couch, watching Mouse with fascination.
Dean shuffled around the demon and Mouse, drawing on the floor as he went. At first no one spoke, but then Dean moved into the demon's line of sight. "Wait a second," she said, in a tone of surprise and delight that sounded really weird coming from someone pinned to the floor by a hundred fifty pounds of dogasaurus. "You're Dean Winchester, aren't you?" Sam went completely still. Dean paused in his drawing for a second and then glanced at the possessed woman with his expression carefully blank.
"You are," she said, and laughed. "This is great."
"Sam, help me with this," Dean said tightly. Sam nodded and pulled out his own chalk.
"I thought there was something about you, back on the other side," the demon said. Other side? I thought, but then I remembered again. "Oh, Dean, there are such plans for you, you have no idea."
Sam looked up from his careful drawing to glare at the demon and said, "Well, you're not gonna get your plans, so shut the hell up." He sounded venomous, furious, nothing at all like the mild young man I'd been seeing so far.
"Interesting turn of phrase. Dean's gonna love Hell, Sam. Once the boss gets hold of him, the way he's gonna scream, it'll be like—" She choked and stopped talking as Mouse tightened his grip on her throat, and just in time; Sam was staring at her with an expression I recognized. He was about a hair's breadth from murder.
"Sam," Dean said, soft but firm. Sam's gaze snapped from the possessed woman to his brother, who continued, "Let's get this done and we can send this bitch back downstairs."
For a second I wasn't sure it was going to work, but then Sam nodded and looked down at his drawing again. They both chalked the floor in silence until the whole diagram was finished, and then Dean looked up at me. "Think you're gonna have to get your dog to let go," he said. "From the looks of it he's keeping her from getting out." He cast an appreciative glance over Mouse. "You know where we can get one of those? Because that's a handy trick." Sam had backed away from the devil's trap, looking deeply unhappy.
"I ended up with him by accident," I said. "OK, Mouse, let her up." Mouse's whole posture was dubious, but he loosened his grip and sprang out of the circle, landing next to me with his surprising grace. The demon sat up and rubbed at her throat theatrically even as Sam started reciting again.
The woman twitched as Sam spoke, her motions unnatural, but she smirked through what appeared to be pain. "You can't save him, Sam," she gasped. "Wherever you send me, Dean will end up there too, you know that."
"Shut up," Dean growled, and she rolled her eyes to look at him. Sam talked faster. The demon laughed, cruel and desperate. "So scared," she said. "You're so scared, and you should be. You can't imagine what it's like, and it'll be worse for you, Dean, because you're special."
"Shut up." Dean's face was a perfect blank, but he was losing color even as I watched him; winter-pale already, the result made him look half-dead.
"You can't make me," the demon said, trying for a sing-song taunt and missing it by inches. "I can tell you all about Hell, Dean, what it's going to be like, I can—" The possessed woman's voice cut off as Sam rapped out, "Audi nos!" Her head tilted back and her mouth opened and this time the smoke poured out, swirling around her head and then down to the floor.
It wasn't exactly the weirdest thing I've ever seen, but it was maybe in the top ten; the smoke seethed over the wood, appearing to sink in somehow. It left a strange burnt mark that started to fade almost immediately. Meanwhile the possessed woman collapsed, though without the utter bonelessness of the demon's first host.
I was drawing breath to ask what the demon had been talking about when the woman shoved herself up again, blinked, and demanded, "What the hell was that?" And then she burst into tears.
It took a while to get everything under control. The woman's husband and two kids had been in the basement, wrapped in clothesline and duct tape; they were all bruised, but we'd gotten there before anything worse happened. I had a feeling there was going to be some tension in the family for a while, but there was frankly nothing we could do about it, aside from assuring them that this wouldn't be happening again.
Finally we got out of there. Dean and Sam went in Thomas's car again, so I had the whole drive back to think about everything the demon had said, and the more I thought the less I liked it.
There are ways to dedicate yourself to dark powers. None of them end well.
So we arrived at my apartment. The brothers were starting to look dead on their feet again, which was all the excuse I needed to get them inside rather than taking them straight back. (My thoughts skipped over back to what exactly for a second. Why was the damn portal so hard to remember?) I had a quiet word with Thomas and he left for home after extracting a promise that we'd get together to celebrate later.
I'm not any good at subtle, so as I was hanging my duster up I just asked, "OK, what was the demon talking about?" Neither of them answered right away. I turned and found them in the midst of another wordless argument. Finally Sam said, "Just tell him. Maybe he can help."
"No one's allowed to help, Sam," Dean said.
"The rules are different here," Sam replied with the air of someone who's just produced a trump card. Dean's jaw set stubbornly and Sam said, "Come on. Just ask. If reading a book doesn't count, neither does asking."
"I don't think this is a good idea," Dean said stubbornly, and Sam clearly decided to pull out the bug guns; his expression went pleading and he said simply, "Please, Dean."
For a second I thought it hadn't worked, but then Dean's shoulders slumped minutely. "Fine, OK, but I need a beer for this."
"That I can do," I said, and went to the icebox to pull out three bottles. (That is not a figure of speech. My icebox uses actual ice.) Mac would be appalled if he knew what I do to his beer, but I'm enough of a philistine to prefer it cold.
When we were all seated and our bottles opened, Mouse contented on the floor near me, Dean drew a deep breath. "OK. Do you know about crossroads deals?"
It took a second to track down the bell that phrase rang in my memory. "You mean like deals with the Devil?" The brothers both nodded. "There was a guy, Robert Johnson, who was supposed to have sold his soul at a crossroads in exchange for becoming a great guitarist."
"Yeah," Dean said. "We're pretty sure he actually did that. You take a box and put, well, some stuff in it, and bury it at a crossroads, and the crossroads demon shows up. The demon gives you what you want, and you get ten years to enjoy it. And then the hellhounds show up and drag your soul to Hell."
Now, I have never claimed to be the smartest guy in the room, but Dean's expression was carefully blank, Sam's was full of concern and fear, and I had to clear my throat to ask, "How long do you have?"
"Four months," Dean said flatly, and I stared at him appalled. He couldn't be more than thirty; ten years ago he'd have been... "You were just a kid," I blurted.
He came up with a tight smile that didn't get anywhere near his eyes. "It's not that bad," he said. "My demon only gave me a year. Us Winchesters, we caused them a lot of trouble, so when I came beggin' she got her kicks cutting down my time. I was all grown up."
"What the he—what was worth that?"
"Nothing," Sam said, at the same moment Dean said, "Sam." They both stopped and glared at each other for a second, and then Dean continued, "Sam was dead. There was nothing else I could do."
I sat back, my beer bottle dangling from my hand. "You made a deal with the Devil to bring Sam back from the dead," I said carefully.
"I made a deal with a devil," Dean said, with an attempt at levity that fell completely flat. "A demon, anyway. She was a crappy kisser, too."
I looked at Sam. He sure didn't look like he'd been dead at any point. He was watching Dean with terrible intensity, like he was trying to memorize him. Dean either didn't notice or was used to it.
"OK," I said. "I think I need to talk to my assistant about this." I set my bottle on the table and headed for the trapdoor that leads to my lab. "You keep your assistant in your basement?" Dean asked behind me as I started down the ladder.
"Bob, wake up," I said. On the only uncluttered shelf, orange light sprang to life in the eye sockets of a human skull. "Yeah, Boss," said Bob.
My lab assistant is a spirit of intellect. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about magic, which as you might imagine is pretty handy in my line of work. I just have to keep him happy. Mostly that means providing him with cheap romance novels and the occasional Playboy.
"Those guys who helped me with the black-eyed thing have a problem and I think it's out of my league."
"You say that like it's a surprise," Bob said cheerfully.
"Don't get smart," I growled as I reached for his skull.
"I can't help it," Bob shot back. Then, as I grabbed the skull, "Hey, you mean you want me to talk to them? You sure that's a good idea?"
"They aren't from around here," I said.
"OK," Bob said, sounding extremely dubious.
Back in my living room I took the few steps to reach the coffee table and set the skull on it. "Dean, Sam, meet my assistant Bob," I said. Neither of them spoke until finally Bob said, "So…hi."
Both brothers jumped a little, and then Dean sighed. "Your assistant is a talking skull? You take this wizard thing way too seriously, dude."
"He's a spirit of intellect, just bound to the skull."
"He's also sitting right here," Bob put in. "So I hear you guys have a problem. How can my immense intellect help you today?" He managed to convey the impression of clapping his hands together and rubbing them in anticipation, a hell of a trick for a guy who doesn't even have eyebrows.
"I sold my soul to a crossroads demon to save Sam's life," Dean said, with the air of a man who has decided to embrace the weird. Sam was just staring at Bob in clear fascination.
"Whoa," Bob said. "That actually works where you come from?" Dean nodded. "OK, first tell me how you get in touch with the demon."
For the next half an hour, Sam and Dean talked. They gave Bob the details of the summoning ritual (I refused to call it a spell, since once again there was no evidence that any power at all was raised; it was just a matter of getting the right items and performing the right actions) and the details of the deal itself. Bob coaxed a surprisingly detailed account of the actual conversation with the demon out of Dean—or perhaps it wasn't surprising. I think I'd remember selling my soul for what remained of my life, too.
I asked a few questions, but didn't bother taking notes. Bob would be able to quote me chapter and verse on request. Finally, Bob said, "OK, I think this is about all we can get this way. From here, a little direct observation is required."
"Uh, OK," Dean said, spreading his hands out a bit. "I'm here, observe me."
"No," Bob said in his I'm-surrounded-by-idiot tone. It was sort of gratifying to hear it aimed at someone other than me. "We need to look at your soul."
Dean said warily, "Yeah. OK. How are you gonna do that?"
"I'm not. He is," Bob replied. Dean and Sam looked at me. I sighed.
"It's a wizard thing," I explained. "If I hold eye contact with someone for too long, it happens. It's called a soulgaze." I shrugged. "It's pretty much exactly what it says on the label: we see each other's souls."
Dean and Sam exchanged doubtful glances. I agreed with them. "Bob, are you sure this is necessary?"
"It'll give us more to work with, Boss," Bob said. "As it is I'm not sure what to try except throwing curse-breakers at him to see what sticks, and if one did it'd probably count as weaseling."
"Which would kill Sam," Dean said. He looked resigned, but not surprised; Sam just looked crushed.
"This soulgaze thing, does it hurt?" Dean asked after a second. When I looked at him, startled, he was watching Sam, who was staring at his own hands.
"No," I said slowly. "But it's souls. It's kind of…intimate." I know I made a little bit of a face—I am, after all, a guy—and Dean caught it and grinned at me. "Don't worry, I'm good at not calling after," he said, and Sam snorted.
I was pretty sure I didn't want the story there.
"Fine, OK, let's do this," I said. "Just get comfortable, and don't look away." I gave him a second to get settled, and then I looked him straight in the eyes. They were mossy green, a little apprehensive, and that was all I registered before I fell into them.
At first, I only saw fire. The roar of it drowned all other sounds. Smoke filled my nose and mouth, choking and bitter, the terrible miasma of a house-fire instead of friendly woodsmoke. I blinked and shook my head and suddenly there was a little boy in front of me. He was four, perhaps five at the most—Dean. A man shoved a bundle of blankets into his small arms and snapped, "Take your brother outside as fast as you can—don't look back!" The little boy just stood there, in a clear agony of indecision, and the man's voice slid into desperation. "Now, Dean! Go!" Dean turned. In the wavering firelight I could see tears tracking down his cheeks. The bundle he carried wailed as he ran.
As he went he wavered, shifted, and the world around him changed too; without ever being able to pinpoint a moment of change I found myself looking at Dean as I knew him now, a young man in his prime. He still wore his leather jacket, though it looked more like armor than it had in real life. The little bronze pendant on his necklace shone slightly. He had a shotgun in one hand and a bowie knife in the other, and he stood a few steps from the ancient black car we'd gone to the motel in. Sleeping peacefully in the back seat was a boy, maybe eight or nine, who I was sure had to be Sam. And on the edge of the sourceless pool of light that centered on the car, monsters prowled. Dean watched them warily but with no fear. He looked like he was prepared to stand there forever, if that was what it took.
But around one wrist there was an iron shackle, digging cruelly tight into the flesh. Sigils twisted on it sickeningly, throbbing a dull red that reminded me of infected wounds and old blood. As I watched, Dean rubbed at it with his other hand, though he didn't turn his vigilance away from the immediate threats. I studied the sigils as closely as I could. Like everything else about Sam and Dean, they were familiar but a little skewed and I found myself cataloguing them by their differences from symbols I knew.
They said debt and pain and deadline, and other things I didn't want to consider too much, but I made myself remember.
I could feel the grip of the soulgaze easing and committed new sigils to memory as fast as I could. Dean started to fade, and right before I lost the connection completely I heard him ask softly, "Who's gonna look out for Sammy when I die?"
