New chapter is up! Thank you for reading this far, I hope you're enjoying the story.
A/N at the bottom!
Words: 3100
Warnings: None
CHAPTER 9
Dean sighed heavily. "Well there's nothing in here; this one's a beat." he exclaimed, throwing down a large, heavy book on Witchcraft down onto the table.
Sam rubbed his eyes, then looked up at his brother. It had been over two hours since they'd brought the FBI agents inside and patched up the bullet wound, but still they couldn't find anything useful on how to stop Abaddon's spell. Both Winchesters were growing tired and frustrated as the clock ticked by; Cas had been gone for over 24 hours now, and there was no telling what Abaddon would do to him.
"So explain this to me again," Dean eventually spoke, pushing aside the literature to listen to his brother. "This spell, how exactly does it work?"
"It's really complicated," Sam replied, "She's been working on this for a lot longer than we thought – maybe even months. The spell's so complex it's split into 5 different sections, and the last section is in 3 parts. The first was all that stuff in the woods; the blood and sacrifices and stuff. The second is the blood of a fallen Angel, ground Manticore horn and a few other bits. The grand finale is more of Abaddon's blood."
"Wait, Abaddon's blood?" Dean interrupted.
Sam nodded. "She has to give her blood after doing certain things in each of the stages. For the grand finale she has to give her blood after she's er..." Sam's voice trailed off as his face contorted into an expression of shock and disgust.
He looked up from the book as Dean asked, "What?"
"After she's consumed the heart of a virgin, the heart of child of Eve, and the heart of her enemy."
Dean winced too as Sam spoke. "That's disgusting!" he proclaimed, then added, "So, a virgin – that's probably the girl who went missing, right? And a child of Eve? An Alpha? I wouldn't really put it past Abaddon to find one of those."
"Question is, who's her enemy?" Sam asked.
"Crowley." Dean replied simply, his face dropping. "I mean she hates the guy with every fibre of her being! And I doubt he's exactly hard to find, seeing as he hasn't got much demon mojo left after the trials!"
Sam nodded slowly. "Yeah... that makes sense. But if Crowley's the one she's looking for, she won't take long to finish what she started. We're running out of time, Dean!"
Dean got up from the table and headed towards the kitchen. "I need coffee." he mumbled. "Lots and lots of coffee..."
Another hour passed, and still, neither brother could find much that was useful. The spell-book that Sam had found the spell in contained no answers about a solution, and the more he read, the more horrified he became. There was no turning back; once this spell was completed, it couldn't be undone. Their only hope of avoiding this Armageddon was to stop it before she was finished, but time was running short and still they couldn't find any answers.
When Dean emerged from the kitchen, he handed Sam a second cup of coffee as he started downing his fourth.
"Dean, I got nothing." Sam said, "We're running out of time!"
"I know, but where else are we supposed to look?!" Dean replied haughtily.
"Well... three eyes are better than two." Sam answered, looking up at his brother hesitantly. Dean's brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed, but he didn't interrupt, so Sam continued, "The agent, the woman, downstairs..."
"Yeah, about that," Dean suddenly spoke, cutting Sam off, "What happened back there? Who is she?"
"When she was interviewing me, back at the station, she told me she believed me."
Dean rolled his eyes. "And you fell for that?"
"No, Dean, I think she actually knows about this stuff!" then he reached into his pocket and pulled out Prentiss' charm bracelet. "She gave me this." he added, showing it to Dean.
As he looked at the bracelet, a Men of Letters charm dangling from the chain, Dean's eyebrows shot up.
Sam continued, "Look, I know it's a risk, but I think she's on our side. Even if she's not totally convinced, she still might be able to help. We're not getting anywhere right now, and we need help."
Dean was hesitant, but what choice did they have? An extra pair of eyes was better than nothing, and if they didn't come up with something soon, they weren't going to live to regret their mistake.
The older brother nodded. "Okay then."
-o- -o- -o-
In the dungeon, Prentiss was the first to look up when the familiar click came from the other side of the room. Her head turned sharply as the doors creaked and swung open.
Sam stood there, glancing around the room until his eyes found Emily. As her gaze caught his, she stared, and the two other agents glanced at one another, bemused. There was something going on, something unspoken between Sam and Prentiss, and suddenly Reid found himself wondering what happened in the interrogation room when she was sent in.
Eventually, the thick silence was broken when Sam simply said, "Come with me."
Prentiss moved towards the door, but Morgan caught her arm, bewildered and concerned. "Prentiss... what are you doing?" then he turned to the Winchester. "She's not going anywhere."
"Morgan, it's okay." Prentiss assured him, as she turned to face her colleagues. Then, in a lower tone, she added. "I told him I believed him. I think this is it – this is our shot. If they trust me, I might be able to get us out."
Morgan was still hesitant to watch her go, but she was right – they couldn't stay in this dungeon forever. And they had handled Reid well enough.
When the doors closed once again, and Emily was gone from sight, Morgan felt his heart drop in his chest. Reid too shifted nervously, reaching out for one of the bottles of water. The helplessness they were forced into was frustrating, and it was making them both very nervous.
On the other side of the dungeon walls, Sam smiled softly at Prentiss as he reached into his pocket and dug out her charm bracelet.
"I think this belongs to you." he said quietly, handing it over to her.
She smiled as she took it from him, and a "Thank you," left her lips. Then she looked up at him, and added, "Really."
Sam nodded, and lead her up the stairs and out into the library again.
There was no point lying to her, about anything, so he got on with it. "We er... we need your help, Emily."
Prentiss nodded, looking around. This was all a little hard to take in.
As she walked into the room, approaching Dean, she ran her fingers along a row of books, gazing up at all the shelves which lined the great room. "This is all er... this is all real!" she finally said, taking a deep breath, "Everything my grandfather talked about; all those silly stories..."
Dean nodded. "Yeah. I know it's a bit much, but right now we really need you to concentrate, because we need your help. Are you in?"
There was a seconds hesitation, before Prentiss nodded.
"It's complicated," Sam began.
"But the short version goes like this," Dean interjected, "There's a demon called Abaddon. At the moment, she's sitting at the top, in charge of hell, and she's stirring up a whole cauldron of crazy."
"She's been working on a spell," Sam explained, "That's why all these people have disappeared and bodies have been turning up... mutilated. It's all part of this thing she's working on. She's in the final stages of it now. We don't have a lot of time left."
"And then?" Prentiss asked, swallowing hard, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.
"Then every human for miles and miles gets converted into a demon. No more FBI, no more civilians, no more nothing. Just hell on earth, as far as the eye can see." Dean finished.
Prentiss took a deep breath. "So that's what this has all been about? You, trying to stop this 'Abaddon'?"
Sam nodded. "She's taken our friend, Cas. And she'll be finished soon, so we need to find some way to stop this, and fast."
"How did you find out what she was doing?" she asked.
"In that old spellbook," Dean replied, pointing to a particularly large and ancient book lying on the table.
"Well surely there's got to be some answer in there," she replied, but Sam shook his head.
"Nothing. And we've been searching for hours. We've scoured every spell book from the shelves and still nothing!"
Prentiss fell silent for a moment, thinking. Then she looked up and tried, "Well this whole spell is about demons, right? Have you tried looking in any of the books on demons? I mean, this library's huge, there's got to be something somewhere!"
Dean opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again and looked up at Sam. "Right!" he said, jumping up and heading towards a shelf behind him. "Demons. Of course..."
Sam smiled, blinking slowly and marvelling at his own stupidity.
As they each pulled a book from the shelf and headed back to the table, Prentiss spoke again. "You brought me up here because you needed a new pair of eyes, right?"
Sam nodded.
She continued tentatively, "There's a lot of text here, it could take us hours before we find something..."
"What are you saying?" Dean asked, squinting at her.
"Five people is better than three. I know you can't trust them, but you trust me, right?" she replied, then, as Sam and Dean's expressions began to object, she hurriedly added, "Reid has an eidetic memory and he can read over 20,000 words in a minute. And Morgan's no dunce either – they can help. Besides, Reid's got a bullet wound in his leg and Morgan was beaten up pretty badly – they're not going anywhere."
Sam's eyes widened. "Twenty thousand?" he mumbled, then he turned to Dean and added, "He could get through all of these books in minutes."
"No!" Dean replied, "Absolutely not!"
"She's right, Dean. We're running out of time, and we've been looking in the wrong place for hours! Who knows how long it would take us to get through all this?! We don't know how long Cas is gonna last..."
Dean's face hardened at the mention of their angel, and after a few seconds of thick silence, he eventually caved. "Alright. But you tell them if they try anything I'm gonna shoot them straight in the face!" he added, looking straight at Emily.
She nodded, then departed abruptly with Sam, and rushed downstairs to the dungeon.
When the entrance to the cold, dim dungeon opened once again, Prentiss walked in first. Morgan and Reid both breathed a huge sigh of relief upon seeing her, but she didn't leave time for pleasantries.
"What's going on?" Reid asked as she approached.
"They need your help." she said quietly. They looked at her quizzically, both opening their mouths to say something, so she quickly added in a lower tone, "They really do believe all this stuff about demons and monsters... They need help finding a spell."
"And they think we're going to help them? Emily, we're not going to fuel their delusion and help them murder more innocent people!" Morgan replied.
"No, but we don't have to," she replied, turning to quickly glance back at Sam. "Reid, you said yourself our best option was to gain their trust. Well how better to do it than show we're on their side? It's better than being locked up down here." she reasoned.
Reid nodded slowly, "She's right, if we can see more of this place, we can profile them better. We can interact with them-"
"And if they're with us, then we know they're not out hurting anybody else." Prentiss interrupted. "So, are you coming?"
Morgan nodded slowly, and putting his arm around Reid, helped him out of the dungeon and upstairs into the library. As they limped up, on step at a time, Prentiss looked back at Sam and nodded slightly. He gave a trusting half-smile in return.
-o- -o- -o-
When JJ's phone erupted, she looked down and as her eyes caught the caller ID, her brow furrowed in confusion. She pressed the answer button so fast it nearly slipped from her hands.
"Garcia?" she asked worriedly as she put the phone to her ear.
"JJ! Oh thank god!" the answer came almost instantly, sounding frantic and frightened.
"Garcia what's wrong? Where are you? We've been so worried, where have you been?"
"JJ I don't have time! I... I know where they are. I'm there now, outside."
JJ's heartbeat doubled. "Just... tell me where you are. I'm coming right now."
As the call ended, Garcia lowered her hand and pocketed the phone, and a wide smirk began to creep across her face.
-o- -o- -o-
In the library, Reid was busy inspecting the shelves and their contents, even more hypnotised by them than Prentiss had been. There had to be dozens of sections and sub-sections here, each lined with countless books and ancient texts. Some of them had to be at least several hundred years old, if not older.
"Reid, you okay?" Morgan asked in a lowered tone as he stood over the limping agent.
"Morgan there's something more going on here. This is far bigger than we ever anticipated!" he replied, turning to look up at his fellow agent. "Look at this place! This building is decades old; the technology from that room over there pre-dates the second world war! And this library is the most comprehensive thing I've ever seen on religion, occult and superstitious literature! This must have taken years to collate! There's no way this is something the Winchester's could have done alone. There's something more going on..."
Morgan's brow furrowed as a darkness passed over his face. "Do you think we're dealing with a ring of organised killers? There are other people in on this?"
But before Reid could reply, Dean appeared behind them, asking them to join him at the table. Keeping a close eye on one another and the brothers, Reid and Morgan obliged and made their way to the table and sat down.
"Long story short," said Dean as Sam dumped a large pile of books onto the table in front of them, "We're looking for a counter-spell or something to undo a demonic-conversion. Apparently you can read pretty fast, so we'd appreciate your help. The more eyes we have on this thing the better."
"These are all the major books we have on demonology and hell, so if we're going to find something, it'll almost certainly be in here." Sam added, before seating himself and taking a book from the pile.
Morgan raised an eyebrow, and noticing their hesitancy, Dean interjected, "Look, I know you don't believe in any of this stuff, but t's either this or you go and sit in the dungeon for however many days it takes us to wade through all of this crap. So get to it."
Once the agents began reading, the Winchesters too diverted their watchful gaze and engrossed themselves in the old books, searching for an answer. With so many of them reading through the books, it wasn't long until they found what they needed.
"Hey! Wait, wait, I got something!" Dean exclaimed, scanning the page with his finger as he read, "Whosoever wishes to halt the spell must give of his own blood... then there's some latin text... and burn the wickedness away with Hellfire." he finished triumphantly.
Sam nodded, listening intently, then stopped. "Wait... hellfire? As in actual fire from hell?"
Dean sighed heavily. "Well where the fuck are we supposed to find that?"
It was at this point that Reid surprisingly entered the conversation. "Hell in the Bible is described as a lake of fire and Brimstone; Brimstone being the chemical element we now call Sulphur."
Sam and Dean looked at Reid, surprised.
"Well I guess that explains a lot..." Dean mumbled absent mindedly.
"So, what... we just have to say the spell, bleed into it and throw some burning sulphur in it?" Sam asked.
Prentiss shrugged. "It looks that way."
Dean frowned. "Where are we supposed to get that? D'you think there'll be some in the store room?"
"I duuno." Sam shrugged, "You'll have to check."
Nodding, Dean departed, but before he'd even reached the door, Sam's phone started buzzing.
"Hello?"
"Sam?!" a frantic voice he would recognise anywhere came through the speaker as he held it to his ear.
"Penelope? Woah, woah slow down, Penny... wait... what?!"
All the agents in the room perked up, gripped at the mention of Garcia's name, desperately trying to work out what was going on from the one-sided conversation they were hearing.
"It's okay, Penny, it's gonna be fine. I'll let you in."
When he hung up the phone, everyone exchanged puzzled glances, but Sam didn't say much. "Penelope's outside..."
Morgan instantly made to follow Sam as he walked towards the war-room, but Dean objected, "Hey, woah, sit down! You're not going anywhere!"
"My friend is out there. I'm not gonna let you do anything-" he began, but Prentiss interrupted.
"It's okay, Morgan; I'll go."
Without waiting for approval, she quickly followed after Sam, not saying anything as they made their way towards the entrance. There wasn't an awful lot to say. Curiosity and worry pulled them towards the large metal door that stood at the end of the corridor, but nothing could have prepared them for the sight that met them when it swung open after a strong tug of Sam's arm.
The door swung round to reveal Garcia and JJ standing there. Although, JJ wasn't so much standing, as stumbling, struggling against the tight grip that Garcia held on her with a hand clawing at her chest.
Prentiss gasped, but after the momentary shock passed, fear and guilt seized Sam and he felt his heart stop in his chest.
"Sam!" Garcia exclaimed gleefully. "Won't you let me in?"
Then, as her face dropped, her eyes turned black and she bawled her hand into a fist. JJ cried out in pain, doubling over as blood began to drip from her gaping mouth.
With eyes black as night, and her lips spread in an uncharacteristically sadistic smile, Garcia hissed, "Now!" practically daring Sam to say no.
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A/N → Thank you for getting this far and sticking with me! Please leave a review to let me know what you think of this chapter!
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