Chapter 9
Don't feel. Don't think. Don't feel. Don't think. Dean watched Benny being hauled over the ground, heard the vampire's snarls and hisses as the surface changed from dirt to rock, and the men around him laughed.
Keep it together, keep it cool, he told himself, turning away and looking back at the man beside him.
"What are they going to do with h – it?" His voice was steady, maybe a little higher than usual, but steady.
"Men need to let off steam when their own are murdered. They usually make them last a couple of days," the Colonel said disinterestedly. "Son, you take yourself down to those women and get them to fix up your clothes, get a bath and … whatever else you might be inclined for … you stink like a week-old jock. I'll see you back here at nightfall."
He turned, heading for the hut and disappearing inside. Dean stood there for a moment, then swung around, walking slowly back the way they'd come. He still needed a diversion and maybe the sirens would be able to provide one.
They looked up as he approached, and the air around them seemed to shimmer for a second, thickening until he could barely see them, as if he were looking at them through old, imperfect glass, then returning to normal. The one sitting on the left had changed from a small brunette to a voluptuous blonde, her clothes straining against full curves as she stood up slowly. The one on the right had changed as well, her face was now oval and smooth-skinned, green eyes smiling at him, long red hair tumbling over creamy shoulders to her waist.
"Cut it out, I want to talk," he said uncomfortably, looking into the shelter behind them. "Anyone likely to interrupt us?"
"Not with the curtain down," the blonde said, glancing at her companion. "You want to talk?"
"Get in there," Dean said tersely, looking back over his shoulder at the compound. No one seemed to be paying him any attention. The women walked into the shelter ahead of him, and he followed, pulling the lashing that held the curtain free and letting it drop behind him. When he turned back to them, they were standing by the crudely made bed.
"How are they holding you?" He looked from one to the other. They glanced at each other, and the redhead lifted her chin slightly, pointing to the collar.
"It's lead. There's a binding spell on it," she said, her expression suspicious. "Why?"
"How many men can you two take down, if you're free?" He ignored the question. He wasn't sure, exactly, of where they'd taken Benny, but he could hear distant shouting. He needed to have everything ready before he could move to get the vampire, and the timing was going to be a bitch.
Again the women exchanged a look. "If we're free, we could take about eight or nine."
"Is that all?" He didn't bother to hide his disappointment. The blonde smiled coldly at him.
"Each."
"Oh." He nodded, that would cover a lot of the men in camp. When the store blew, it would bring them back to camp and if these two were waiting, in the dark … "Good."
"Why?" The redhead folded her arms over her chest and stood hipshot, waiting. "What are you?"
"Oh, I'm human, sweetheart." He smiled at her, the smile not reaching his eyes. "And I'm bringing this place down, but I can't do it all on my lonesome, I need someone – something – to keep attention off me until I'm ready."
"You're bringing it down?" The blonde's tone was derisive. "You know how many have tried that? It might not be much of a life here, but these humans are loyal to that old man."
"Trust me, ladies, I can do it." There was no cockiness in his voice at all, just a sure certainty, and the sirens looked at each other for a long moment.
The redhead looked back at him. "The Colonel send you down to us?"
He nodded, a little nonplussed at the change in subject. "Yeah, why?"
"He likes everyone to be clean and neat," she said dryly, gesturing at his clothes. "So unless you're planning on raising Hades right this minute, you better let us get on with keeping up the semblance of doing what you've been told to do."
He looked down, thinking about it. He still needed the blood of a repentant soul. He didn't think he was going to find one here. He looked up at them. "Yeah, okay. Listen, I need info about this place … and I need it now."
"Well, you've come to the right place," the blonde said with a shrug. "We've been stuck here with these monsters for a long time. What do you need to know?"
She turned away, going to an old-fashioned copper tub in the corner of the room. A pipe jutted out over it, and Dean watched her lift it, water running into the tub as she lowered it again. She'd left her hand in the stream and he felt his brows lift as steam began to waft up from the water filling the tub.
"Didn't know you could do that."
The blonde's mouth twisted into a sour smile. "You humans have no idea of everything we're capable of."
Dean pulled off his jacket, then his shirt, handing them to the redhead. "The guy tied up to the frame on the hill –" he gestured vaguely in that direction, and the women nodded. "– what've they done to him?"
"The angel? Nothing yet," the redhead took the rest of his clothes and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling thread and needles from the pockets of her dress, looking down at the clothing as she started to stitch up the tears. "He pulls the black monsters; they can't seem to resist him."
"You know he's an angel?" Dean asked, surprised.
"Of course. He shines." The blonde gestured to him, lifting the pipe again. The tub was full of steaming water.
"You didn't tell them?"
"No one asked us," the redhead said dryly.
"So, uh, he's okay? He hasn't been – hurt?" He lowered himself into the hot water cautiously, and leaned back when it covered him, eyes closing briefly in bliss.
"Well," the blonde hedged, looking over at the redhead, "they did the usual tests on him."
The redhead nodded. "And just about fell on their asses when they cut him and the light came out."
"Since then, though no. They've left him alone."
"Good." He looked up at the blonde. "You got any soap?"
She shook her head at him. "Lie back."
Dean walked down the line of shelters, not fast enough to seem in a hurry, not slowly enough to seem as if he was looking for something, feeling the light bump of the pack on his back. The sirens had filled him in on pretty much everything he'd needed to know, the only gap in their knowledge were the whereabouts of the books Benny'd seen.
The Colonel's hut seemed to be the most likely place. He put the thought aside for a moment. They'd arrived with Army tents but the canvas had deteriorated over the years and the shelters were primitive wattle and daub structures, thin-walled and barely adequate against the little weather Purgatory offered. The men rebuilt them when they collapsed, which was fairly frequently, the redhead had told him.
He stopped outside the last shelter in the row, and looked around casually. Most of the men in the camp were elsewhere, and he blocked out the thought of where. Letting off steam, the Colonel had said, and he shut that thought down as well. He glanced up at the featureless not-sky. The day was drawing to a close, and he wanted to start his show just before darkness fell.
Ahead of him, hidden in a pile of boulders and loose rock, was the hole. The sirens had told him that one of the soldiers had been down there for a long time now, for refusing to obey an order. No one had returned yet with the perimeter guards, and this would be his only chance to talk to the dude. He looked around again and sauntered across to the rocks, dropping below them once he'd reached the higher ones. The hole was, in fact, a hole.
To one side, a chain had been heaped in a pile. Dean lifted his pack off his shoulder, setting it on the ground beside him, and lifted the end carefully, looking at it. A chain ladder. He started to lower the end into the hole. When it touched the bottom, he felt the tremble of a touch on the chain, transmitted to his hands through the links.
"Time to come out," he called down quietly.
The chain rattled against the rock edge and then tautened as weight went onto it from below. The man climbed slowly, and lifted his face to the light when he was a few yards from the top. Dean saw a drawn face, aesthetically thin, the shock of black hair a vivid contrast to the paleness of the skin.
"Come on, haven't got all day," he said gruffly. The man continued to climb and as he got closer, Dean could see the shaking in his hands and arms. He reached down and gripped the man's wrist as it lifted to the lip of the hole, locking around it and pulling him the rest of the way.
"Got a name?"
"Corporal Hudson, sir," Hudson said softly, not noticing that Dean wasn't wearing a uniform.
Dean hauled up the chain ladder as quickly as he could, leaving it in a pile. He picked up his pack and slid the strap over his shoulder. "Let's find someplace to talk, Hudson."
"Sir?"
The shelter was in disrepair, some way from the others. Hudson said it was his. Dean looked around the almost bare room and gestured to the simple canvas and timber frame cot, dropping his pack beside the door.
"You disobeyed an order, Hudson?"
"Yes, sir." Hudson sank down on one end of the cot.
"Don't call me sir. I'm not one of this party," he said, sitting at the other end of the cot.
"Then why'd you pull me out, s –" Hudson looked at him.
"Someone told me you could be of use to me," Dean told him bluntly.
"Of use?"
"Why'd you disobey an order, corporal?"
Hudson looked away, his gaze dropping to the dirt floor. "I didn't want to do it anymore."
"Do what?"
"Maim. Torture," he gestured toward the centre of the compound. "I couldn't – I felt like I was losing myself, what was happening here, what they were doing."
"I thought that was more like recreation?" Dean frowned at him.
"No. It used to be standard orders. The Colonel wanted every man to be ready, for the next phase," Hudson looked over at him. "Tartarus got a man back through, said that the place they'd found was already inhabited. The Colonel started us on capture/torture duties, said we had to be ready to face a new enemy." He shook his head. "Billy came back through … changed, somehow. He wasn't the same man who'd gone into the doorway. The Colonel told me we had to prepare for genocide. Most of us … before he … most of us wouldn't. We couldn't. Wasn't why we joined up, and fighting in … that … had already been too much like that, killing civilians …"
Hudson's voice trailed off and Dean looked at him. "What happened, Hudson?"
"I don't want to …" Hudson looked at him and away again, his eyes shimmering in the dim light of the shelter. "I don't – I don't want to – I can't – talk about that."
Dean nodded quickly, looking away. "Alright."
He looked at the man's bowed head, the tremble in his hands, even clasped together on his lap. The redhead had been right about the guy. Didn't mean he couldn't at least try.
"You know, you were under orders, Hudson," he said, hearing his brother's voice in his head. You were under duress, it wasn't a freely given choice, Dean. It's not on you. "It's not your fault."
Hudson shook his head, his chest hitching slightly as he fought for breath.
"I can't stop the images from coming into my head, sir," he got out eventually. "I can't stop it from going on and on."
Dean felt his gut twist inside of him. For a second, he wasn't sure who he was, himself or the man sitting next to him. He clamped down on the disorientation, shutting his eyes tightly as his face screwed up. I am Dean Winchester. Son of John Winchester. I am a hunter. I am Dean Winchester. I am a hunter. I am a hunter. I am a hunter.
The feelings passed, spiralling down into his own personal darkness again, and he looked at Hudson, licking his lips. It would be a mercy to the man next to him, he told himself. An escape from a prison that he couldn't escape from otherwise. And he knew that prison, knew it intimately, the prison of his own mind, his own thoughts.
"Hudson."
The man looked back at him miserably. "You gonna put me back in the hole, sir?"
He shook his head.
"I can help you," he told him, his voice dropping. "Help you to end the pain."
He didn't know what the man was seeing in his face, in his eyes, as they looked at each other. He wasn't sure of what he was feeling, what might be showing. The silence between them stretched out and he began to wonder if he'd made a mistake, if the man sitting at the other end of the cot wanted life more than peace. Then the pain disappeared from the corporal's face, his expression smoothing out, and his eyes softened.
"You mean you can kill me, don't you?"
"That's all I can do. I can't make it stop any other way," Dean agreed.
I can't teach you how to bury it, deep enough that it won't keep rising in your dreams. Can't teach you how to feel normal, or sane, or as if that torn and bloody hole in the middle of you isn't there. Can't teach you how to deal. He nodded.
"Do you want, uh, forgiveness? If there's a bible in this shithole, I can give you last rites."
Hudson nodded, leaning forward and reaching for the small cupboard beside the bed. "I have a bible. I always keep one with me."
He pulled out the heavy book, handing it to Dean. The cover was torn and almost loose from its binding, the pages showing mould and wrinkled from the humidity. Dean opened it slowly, flipping to the back. They were there, the type font tiny and cramped, but still readable.
Hudson smiled at him suddenly, and he caught a glimpse of a younger man, a boy all fired up with ideas of changing the world. "Do you know what it is to be truly forgiven? To be free? I didn't want to kill myself. Didn't want to spend an eternity in … well, you know." He looked down at the ground significantly, and Dean pulled in a deep breath. He knew.
He stood up, picking up his pack and opening it. The two gallon jug had been from the stores hut. He'd seen it when he'd gone in to set up the charges, and had tucked it into the pack along with weapons, ammunition and a small first aid kit.
"How are you –" Hudson looked at the jug curiously as Dean walked back to him.
"It'll be painless. You won't feel much, like going to sleep," Dean reassured him, dragging the small three-legged stool beside the bed and putting the jug at his feet. "I need your blood, Hudson. I'm not doing this out of the goodness of my heart. I need the blood of a repentant man." He waited. It was a risk to tell him, but he couldn't let him think that he was something other than what he was. "You can change your mind."
"I don't want to. I want to be forgiven. I want peace … and I didn't think you were a saint."
Dean repressed the urge to smile. "Lie down, put your head over the edge, here."
The corporal stretched out along the cot, his neck just over the edge, and closed his eyes. Dean looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the bible. He had no oil, let alone sanctified oil and he skipped over that part, pulling his knife from the sheath on his belt.
"I call upon the great archangel Raphael, Master of Air, to open the way for this to be done. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit now descend that this being might be awakened to the world beyond and the life of Earth, and infused with the power of the Holy Spirit."
Well, he thought, Raphael was dead, but he guessed that another angel had been appointed in his place to carry out this kind of thing. They'd really fucked up things in Heaven, him and Sam and Cas, over the last few years.
The knife point was sharp and it slid easily through the skin of Hudson's neck, piercing the carotid artery. The blood sprayed out, and Dean shifted the neck of the jug quickly, catching most of it, blinking against the droplets that had spattered over his face. Forgot about the damned blood pressure.
"O Lord, Jesus Christ, most merciful, Lord of Earth, we ask that you receive this child into your arms, that he might pass in safety from this crisis, as thou has told us with infinite compassion –"
"Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my father's house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you …"
The blood flow slowed and he lowered the jug slightly, reading the words automatically, barely taking them in. Hudson's face was empty and slack, his skin white, the bones and blood vessels visible under it, his hands slightly curled on the cot beside him.
Dean watched the pulse at the base of the man's throat slowing as the jug filled. He put the jug down, and leaned forward.
"And thus do I commend thee into the arms of our Lord of Earth, our Lord, Jesus Christ, preserver of all mercy and reality, and the Father Creator. We give him glory as we give you into his arms in everlasting peace, to be prepared to return into the denser reality of God the Father Creator of all. Amen."
The small movement had stopped and the blood was dripping slowly into the neck of the jug. Dean remained still, watching the man's face. Was he at peace now? Would he go into God's arms and find peace? He didn't know. Nothing in Heaven had been what he'd thought it was supposed to be, not that he'd had much to do with religion other than the rituals that only the bible had held. The angels had been a fucking disappointment.
He wasn't a priest. At one time, he'd been a Servant of God. He hoped that would be enough to send this man's soul where it needed to go. He stood up, lifting the jug and screwing the lid on tightly, wiping his knife clean on the inside lining of his jacket.
Blood of a repentant soul. Bone of the First beast. Just the amber and he was set.
He'd grabbed the bone as soon as he'd left the siren's hut. And Cas had seen him.
"Dean!"
He'd looked up, shoving the bone through his belt, wiping his hands on his jeans. The angel had been looking down at him, hope on his face. Dean had shaken his head, glancing back up the path to the main part of the compound.
"Cas, keep it down," he'd called quietly. He wasn't sure if Cas had been unable to hear him, or if the angel hadn't been quite all there.
"Don't leave me here!" Castiel's eyes had widened as he watched the man climb out of the ditch, turn away.
"Cas, I'm coming back for you, but you have to be quiet for a bit longer." He'd looked up, seen the panic and sworn softly. "Cas, I am coming back for you. Please, man, just shut up for now."
"Dean, don't … don't walk away. Don't leave me!"
But he had. Fast up the hill, away from the angel's pleading. He couldn't risk freeing Cas right now. He needed to get everything else first.
He pushed the memory aside and stopped in the shadow of the shelter closest to the Colonel's hut. He hadn't been able to find the amber in the store hut. Along with the books, and maybe some of the more esoteric ingredients the spells required, he was willing to bet he'd find it in the man's private quarters. The Colonel had come off as rational, most of the time, but it had still felt like talking to a reptile, not a human, the blue gaze losing focus occasionally, looking inward or just switching off. It had made him uneasy at the time. After hearing Hudson's account of what had gone on here, he thought that the Army leader had probably scattered his marbles irretrievably around the time he'd ordered the executions of half his men.
Not your problem, he thought, pulling himself back to the job. It wouldn't be long until dark. He'd laid enough fuse through the munitions to give him about fifteen minutes lead time. It was time to go visit with the Colonel.
He set the pack down at the corner of the hut, and knocked on the door. The Colonel opened it, his eyes narrowing suddenly.
"Well, you smell better at least. What happened?" He gestured to Dean's face. Dean remembered the arterial spray belatedly and swore at himself for not cleaning it off.
"Went to see what they were doing to the vampire, must've gotten too close," he said, trying to keep his tone casual. He wiped at the dried blood.
"Well, in the future, I prefer my men to keep clean, Winchester. Doesn't do morale any good to be reminded of this cesspit any more than we need to be."
Dean bit back the response that rose immediately and nodded noncommittally. "You wanted to see me?"
"Come in," the Colonel said, stepping to one side of the door. Dean edged past, looking at the tallow candles that lit up the space in a surreal glow of golden light. One wall held shelving, filled with books, small boxes and jars and bags stacked neatly alongside them. On the other side of the single room, a military cot stood next to the wall, a carefully built maple desk next to it. On the wall above the bed, a framed photograph of a woman looked into the room, her eyes a soft grey, her hair a warm dark brown.
The Colonel followed his gaze. "My wife. She passed the year before I took over the project."
"Sorry to hear that," Dean murmured. Everyone had a trigger, he thought. Everyone had a reason, good, bad or mediocre, for doing what they did.
"We're going to open another portal tomorrow night," the Colonel said abruptly, gesturing to the map that covered the wall of the hut by the doorframe. "We'll need a couple of things so I'm sending you out with a small party to get them."
"What kind of things?"
"Monster bits and pieces, mostly." He turned back to Dean. "Every portal has a specific key, like a flavour, almost. This one leads to a universe where we've already got a team, and the key is the werewolves. I need their claws, their hearts, their fur and teeth."
"Where'd you learn about this stuff, anyway?" Dean glanced over his shoulder at the books. The Colonel followed the look with a cool smile.
"From those, yes," he said, turning to look at them. "Hitler collected most of them. We bagged them when we got into his bunker." He shrugged. "I say we, but it was a little before my time."
Dean raised a disbelievingly brow at the statement. "Hitler?"
The Colonel looked at him, amusement creasing his face. "The man was a nut. Forever looking for an edge." He looked back at the books, his face becoming hard. "Of course, he had something here."
He glanced at Dean, and his expression changed, becoming sly, knowing. "You know that vamp, that the men are torturing, don't you?"
The question came out of the blue and Dean stared at him. "No. Never seen him."
The older man smiled. "You'll have to work a bit harder to fool me, son. I saw him look at you. He knew you."
He shrugged. "Maybe he'd been tracking me."
"No." The Colonel crossed to the desk, leaning over it. "No, whatever you are, kid, wherever you're from, you're not like anyone else I've met. And I'm a good judge of people." He turned around, and Dean looked into the barrel of the S&W revolver unhappily.
"I told you the truth. I don't know how I got here," he said, lifting his hands slightly. What had triggered the old man's suspicions? He sighed inwardly. Could have been any one of a dozen things, he thought resignedly. After months here, he'd been out of practice with lying anyway.
"Yeah, that's what you said." The gun barrel flicked to one side, the gesture unmistakable. Dean walked slowly to the cot, watching the man as he backed away, out of reach. "Now, why don't I believe you?"
"Why did you order the execution of more than half the enlisted men sent to serve here with you?"
He hadn't planned on asking that, hadn't been thinking of it at all, but it came out of him and hit the man holding the gun like a sledgehammer.
The Colonel's face sagged and the barrel of the revolver dipped, the man's eyes vaguing out again. Dean was on his feet, his knife in his hand, as the blue eyes slowly regained their focus and the finger on the trigger jerked it back. The boom of the gun was enormous in the small space, and Dean hesitated fractionally, uncertain if he'd been hit or not. He couldn't feel anything and he closed the distance between them, the edge of his hand, with the weighted knife hilt in it, striking the Colonel's nose and shattering it, the thud of the gun falling to the floor overlaid by the sound of his elbow driving into the man's sternum, a thin, high whistle as the air was expelled from his lungs.
Dean grabbed a handful of the Colonel's shirt as the soldier sagged against him, wheezing painfully, blood pouring from his nose.
"I'll tell you one thing, Colonel. You're as crazy as they come, and I've seen a lot of crazy," he said softly into the man's face. "What I am gonna do is make sure that this fucking project is wiped off the damned map, starting with you."
He thrust the knife into the man's chest, just under the lowest ribs, angling it upward and seeing the Colonel's eyes widen suddenly as it penetrated the chambers of his heart. He twisted it and let go, stepping back as the man dropped in front of him. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The saying or quotation or line ran through his mind as he looked down at the body on the floor. He had no idea where he'd heard it, but he knew he'd remember this, this moment, if he heard it again.
Philosophise later, he thought, stepping over the Colonel, and reaching for the first pile of boxes on the shelves. You're running out of time. He opened box after box, throwing them over his shoulder as he searched through them. It had to be there, somewhere. Outside, the light was fading from the sky, and he needed to get going, needed to set off his diversions and get Benny and Cas and get out.
The amber was there, in a soft cloth bag in between two books. He drew it out of the bag, looking at the entombed insect inside of it, and pushed it back into the bag. It would melt at two hundred degrees, if he remembered that bit correctly. Any fire would do that without difficulty. He looked at the titles of the books. Half were in languages he didn't know. Wherever the spell was for Benny's soul ride, he didn't have time to find it now.
He was halfway up the shallow incline behind the camp, following the sounds of shouts and laughter when the store hut went up. The warm, expanding air hit him in the back, knocking him to the ground as it passed over him and he twisted around, looking back down the hill, seeing the inferno where the hut used to be, flames licking and devouring the log building and the Colonel's hut as well, every shelter in the compound knocked flat to the ground with the force of the blast wave.
Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch? He snorted at the memory of the scene, shaking his head slightly. Live and learn, right?
He rolled onto his feet, crouching in the darkness as the shouting grew louder, and the men who'd been up the hill with the vampire began to run down the hillside to the camp. The sirens would be out, the collars that had bound them lying behind their hut, the lead easy enough to cut through. They'd be prowling through the light and shadow of the fires, ready to take them on. He hoped he'd get enough time to get the vampire away before whoever was next in command got their heads wrapped around what had happened.
When the last of them had passed by him, he straightened, climbing quickly over the rough ground. He stopped when he heard the voices ahead of him.
"The question is … does a vampire actually bleed out, or do they heal up again if they drink fresh blood?"
A laugh from another. "Cut your wrist, Ray, and find out!"
"Come on, you guys, we should get down to the camp, Colonel'll have us in the hole if he finds out we stayed up here when everyone was on deck."
"Mixing up your armed forces there a bit, Clay. Where the hell you say you was from?"
A low, defeated snarl echoed off the rocky walls and Dean felt his chest tighten.
"I don't think he's going to last much longer."
"He'll be fine in the morning, like they all are so long as we don't take their heads off with iron." The man sniffed. "Ready to go through it all again."
Dean straightened up abruptly, the Colonel's revolver in his hand as he came around the shelf of rock into the naturally formed amphitheatre, lit brightly by the fires around the edges. He saw the vampire and the world – this world, every world – simply vanished.
The first bullet went into the knee of the man standing closest, the next into the thigh of the man standing next to the strung-up vampire. He turned unhurriedly and put two shots into the other man's legs, watching the three of them drop to the ground, screaming in pain.
He looked at Benny. The vampire was held above the ground, the chain still around his chest and arms, suspended upside down by his ankles. Dean couldn't see a single part of him that wasn't cut or torn apart, his face unrecognisable, broken and bleeding and swollen, the ground under him a deep red, churned by the liquid and the men's bootprints into a thick, viscous quagmire.
He wasn't aware of feeling or of thought. He wasn't there, in the most stringent sense of the word. Some part of him still lived in the brain that controlled the nerves and muscles, the tendons and skeleton, but that part was a machine, observing, calculating, emotionless and unmoved and indifferent to the things that lay on the ground, to the creature that hung from the wall.
"You just don't get deep enough, up here, boys," he said absently, looking down at them, flicking the safety on and tucking the gun at the small of his back, through the belt. He pulled the knife from its sheath and walked to the man lying to the right of the vampire. The two shots had gone through the legs just above the knees, shattering the femurs just where the bone started to narrow above the knee joint. From the expression on the man's face, it was agonising.
Don't know what agony is, not yet, he thought, kneeling in the dirt beside him. He drove the tip of the blade into the abdomen, in the cradle of the pelvis and dragged it upward, the keen edge slicing through skin and muscle and organs in a straight line up the centre of the body, pulling it out at the peak of the arch of the ribs, just before the cartilage that held the two sides together.
He didn't hear the man's desperate shriek, or feel the blood that flowed over the hilt of the knife and his hand, his head tilted slightly as he made a second incision perpendicular to the first, from one side of the chest to the other, excising the flesh back from the cavity in an asymmetrical four pointed flower.
In another place, another time, he'd have had the tools to do a proper job on the ribs and the skin, but not here. He rolled back onto his feet and stood up, moving to the man on the other side of the vampire, unaware of Benny's eyes, barely visible in the swollen flesh, following him.
Blood was pumping out fast from the second man's leg wound, the bullet had punched a hole through the large femoral artery. He would bleed out before much longer, Dean thought, the idea of this one escaping so easily mildly vexatious.
Dropping to one knee, he gripped the man's arm, tearing the sleeve from the faded Army jacket in a vicious yank. He wrapped the sleeve around the leg, above the wound and pulled it tight, knotting it when he saw the flow slow to a trickle.
"T-t-thank you," the man looked down the length of his body, feeling the pain disappear gradually under a spreading numbness. Dean didn't hear him, moving to his head. He gripped the man's hair and slid the tip of the knife under the skin at the point of the jaw, feeling the slight catches as the blade edge, no longer quite as keen, sliced the skin from the underlying muscle. The man's hands flashed up to grip his hand and he stopped for a moment, staring at them. He released the hair and drove the knife through the clusters of nerves under each shoulder, a single thrust to either side. The man's arms dropped to the ground, and Dean frowned slightly, returning the blade to the delicate task of removing the face.
"D-D-D-De-ee-ee-n," Benny's voice croaked behind him, barely louder than an indrawn breath. He heard it, distantly, over the bubbling noises that were coming out of the man under his knife, but he still had work to do and he didn't like to leave things unfinished. The demon didn't like it. He'd spent a lot of time making sure he did what he could to keep the demon happy.
It wasn't as neat a job as he could have done with the right tools, but he left the face draped over the scalp and shrugged. It would have to do.
"One more, Benny, then I'll get you down," he said softly, walking to the last man. The bullet, a .357 magnum, had destroyed the patella completely and the man was lying in a growing pool of blood, eyes tightly shut, hyperventilating with shock. Dean stood over him, his eyes dark, his face thoughtful as he considered what was needed here.
Blood eagle. That had always been a favourite.
Kneeling beside the man, he inserted the blade above the solar plexus, angling it to make a shallow incision up the breastbone. He couldn't hear anything. Had somehow learned to shut down hearing when he had work to do like this, it was too distracting. He could see the chest vibrating, watched the Adam's apple working furiously in the throat. Screaming, most likely. The thought drifted in and out of his mind as he carefully excoriated the thin layer of muscle back from the bones.
No cutters. He looked at the bones and pulled the stone axe from his belt. The single blow split the rib cage and the screaming stopped abruptly. He pulled the two sides apart and lifted the lungs out, setting them on the spread-apart ribs like wings. With them out of the way, he could see the heart, beating fast and arrhythmically.
Probably die before anything else could find him up here, but he couldn't have everything. He stood up, slipping the axe handle back through his belt and wiping the blood from the knife on the outside of his leg.
He turned to the vampire, walking toward him and looking up at the chains that held him suspended. His senses were returning, very slowly. He could hear the rasp of Benny's breath through his battered throat and between the torn lips. The machine was still there, but another part came back, looking around cautiously.
In Hell, that part had hidden for much of the time, deep inside, eyes closed tight and disconnected from what his body did, what the machine did. I carved you into a new animal, the demon had told him, but it hadn't been true. The machine had done the job, the rest of him had just … withdrawn. Into a room without doors. A place between. He'd felt everything. Seen everything. But he'd emerged … still intact, the connections between pain and pleasure had not been permanently laid down, in his mind, in his nervous system. He could still tell the difference between the two.
"Let's get you down, bro," he said softly, gripping the free end of the chain and pulling it out of the notch that held it in place.
He lowered Benny slowly, taking his weight on one shoulder as he released the chain.
