FREE SPIRIT
Chapter 9
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Dean and Leylaani peered hesitantly into the musty void behind the surprisingly heavy metal door. Their flashlights cut through the impenetrable blackness, enabling them to just make out a confined, square space, no more than six feet along each side; it could have been a large closet or a small room. Dean scanned the bare brick walls; dusty with neglect and stained with patches of velvety mould; their cobweb-coated surfaces were pockmarked with scratches and screw-holes, reinforcing Dean's original belief that this small, unwelcoming cubby-hole once contained some kind of machinery.
But all it seemed to contain now was a small table.
Leylaani stepped over the threshold into the tiny room, halting abruptly as she felt Dean's hand grip her arm.
"Don't," he muttered, motioning to pull her back; "let me …"
She gently shook her arm free of his grip; "Dean," she scolded softly; "my hunt!"
Dean huffed in exasperation and grudgingly allowed her to step forward. He stooped deeply to ease himself through the little door only a breath behind her. Maybe she didn't want him going all mama bear on her, but too bad; she was getting his back-up whether she wanted it or not.
They both stood inside the doorway and stared in silence down at the table. It was a cheap, metal-framed, laminated table, of the kind often found in schools and other large institutions. Its chipped, grey surface was bare apart from a single object.
That object was a large glass jar. It reminded Dean of one of those big jars that old fashioned sweets used to be sold by the quarter-pound from, but there were definitely no liquorice allsorts in this one.
They both stepped in cautious unison toward the table; their unblinking gaze fixed on the jar. It appeared to be empty except … they both leaned in, brows furrowed, staring intently through the flashlight beam into the jar's transparent depths.
They could see a faintly glowing wisp of vapour. It rippled and coiled within the cramped space that confined it, swirling and ebbing like a warm breath on a winter's morning. It was barely there, and yet at the same time, profoundly beautiful.
Dean turned to Leylaani who was still staring transfixed at the hypnotic motion of the ghostly, undulating haze.
"What the hell?" he muttered.
"It's beautiful," Leylaani whispered; "so beautiful."
"It's a sylph."
They both flinched, glancing up at a cold, reedy voice that came from a slight figure silhouetted in the doorway.
It was Brake.
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Dean bristled, reaching behind him for the weapon tucked into his belt and stepped toward the interloper, but immediately stumbled to a stop. He reluctantly raised his hands mirroring Leylaani's own conciliatory gesture as Brake coolly pointed a handgun in their direction.
"Funny place for so-called health and safety inspectors to be snooping around," Brake observed drily, not expecting an answer and not getting one.
"Put your gun on the ground big guy," he hissed, gesturing toward Dean, but training his own gun on Leylaani. Dean scowled, never taking his eyes from Brake's threatening silhouette as he reached behind him to withdraw his gun and drop it on the ground at his feet, silently vowing to have his satisfaction when the moment was right.
"How'd you get in here?" Dean growled, as a cold fear that Brake had hurt Sam suddenly gripped him.
"You don't think that doorway out there that you left King Kong standing at is the only doorway into this room, do you?" Brake sneered in response, his silhouette shifting slightly as he leaned further into the room.
Dean's lip curled as he instinctively stepped in front of Leylaani, momentarily satisfied that Sam was unharmed.
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Sam flexed his toes as he stood uneasily at the doorway and looked at his watch. Brake hadn't returned yet, but Sam didn't think for one moment that was a good sign. He didn't like the man; he couldn't put his finger on it but there was something unwholesome, something sinister about him. Something about Brake was wrong on so many levels.
He peered both ways along the deserted corridor. "C'mon Bobby," he prompted under his breath, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet. He had decided to call the older man in from the Impala to join them; he didn't know why, but somehow he got the impression that an extra pair of hands and eyes would be useful, particularly when those eyes had just spent the last few days reading up on faerie lore.
As soon as Bobby turned up, Sam would head after Dean and Leylaani. He hoped that sinking feeling in his gut was down to nothing more threatening than Bobby's cooking, but somehow he knew he could never be that lucky.
He looked at his watch and scanned the corridor once again.
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"You've got it trapped in here," Dean snarled, glancing between Brake and the sylph's glass prison.
"Yup," Brake replied casually.
"This must be torture for it," Leylaani's plaintive voice sounded as she stepped out from behind Dean; "it's a free spirited creature of sky and sunlight, a child of the west wind, and you've got it trapped alone in that stupid little jar with no room to move and no light, in a tiny room that no-one knows about."
"Yup," Brake repeated, without a hint of remorse.
"Those dead dudes," Dean snapped; "let me guess, you're controlling it in some way." He fumbled in his back pocket for his phone in the hope he could somehow sneak a text to Sam.
"Yup again," Brake replied, frowning as he caught a glimpse of the tiny glowing rectangle of Dean's phone screen; "an' don't bother texting your buddy out there, you won't get a signal in here."
Dean and Leylaani stood, staring helplessly down the gunbarrel pointed in their direction and Dean's mind whirled. He could barely feel the lingering ache from his various injuries, but if he could still feel them; that meant he wasn't at the top of his physical game. Would they slow him down? If Leylaani wasn't here, he'd take his chance; if he got shot, well, he got shot. It was no big deal. This creep was half his size, if he got a good start, he could take him down easily, but could he do that without putting Leylaani at risk?
His runaway train of thought was interrupted by Brake's nasal tones again.
"I went through hell at this damn place when I was a kid; five years of misery," he moaned. "I was bullied mercilessly by the other kids, even the teachers had no time for me, thought I was nuts; didn't want to waste their time on me."
Leylaani's eyes widened as she glanced up at Dean and then back to Brake; "bullies?" she repeated softly; "those men that died, you're taking out the ones that bullied you?"
"Got it in one pretty lady," Brake sneered; "and I haven't finished yet."
Dean's eyes narrowed; he was just beginning to make out the sullen frown which played across Brake's sour features as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he reflected on how good a fist, his fist particularly, would look planted into the middle of that face.
"Do you know why they bullied me?" Brake asked.
"Oh, we've done our homework," hissed Dean, sidling across the floor, subtly trying to put himself between Leylaani and the barrel of the gun again; "you were abducted by faeries - apparently."
"No apparently about it," Brake spat; "those freaky sonsofbitches took me. Three years they held me in their world; three goddamn years," his voice rose into a petulant whine.
"Why?" Dean snorted, "why the hell would they want to saddle themselves with a freakin' grudge-bearin' twisted sack of shit like you?"
The insult bounced off Brake like a raindrop. "They take humans for all sorts of reasons," he hissed; "sometimes for breeding, or for slavery or revenge. Sometimes they take human children for their own entertainment - to keep like pets; then they discard them back in our world when they start to grow and become too disruptive."
A brief silence hung dangerously in the air.
"That's what they did to me," Brake finally explained; "'cept when I got back, it was like I'd never been away, I hadn't grown or aged a day. I got back only a second after I'd left and no-one even knew I'd gone anywhere. When I spoke about it, everyone thought I was just a goddamn fruitloop."
His frown deepened; "if I thought my nightmare had ended when they brought me back, I was wrong, so wrong. It was only just beginning."
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"Mr Brake," Leylaani spoke up gently from behind the solid wall of Dean's shoulders; "I am terribly sorry that you were bullied, really I am. That's something cruel and horrible that should never have to happen to anyone. But this …" she gestured to the jar and the rippling air currents within it; "… and the murders; doesn't that make you worse than those awful children that hurt you?"
Brake shrugged; "don't care," he grunted contemptuously; "revenge feels good." He continued, smiling mirthlessly; "they say it's a dish best served cold, and this is cold, so cold; oh man, how I've waited for this. See, the one good thing to come out of my abduction was that in the three years these freaks had me, I learned a fair bit about them, their ways and their magic."
Dean and Leylaani made no move to interrupt, so he continued.
"Since I came back, I've worked tirelessly to one aim: to have revenge on those bullies, and the bastard faeries who caused the whole problem in the first place." He licked dry lips, clenching his fingers around the doorframe to try to still the trembling in them. "So I took this job at the school all those years ago so I could get access to the archives – full of records of the kids who were in my sights; what they were going to do when they left school, where to find them ... it was a great ruse, no-one suspected anything; it was like letting a wasp loose in a candy store."
He pointed to the filing cabinet that Dean had earlier shifted to allow himself and Leylaani access to this door; "I picked out all the records I would need in the future, you know; when the time was right."
"But your psyche reports said you took the job because you weren't confident to go somewhere unfamiliar," Leylaani questioned cautiously.
"Yup," Brake nodded with an air of arrogant triumph; "those therapists will believe anything if you're convincing enough."
Dean and Leylaani exchanged apprehensive glances.
"So I've just been biding my time," Brake drawled; "pooling what I found out about the faeries in their world with what I could find out this side of the veil. It's taken me years and years but a while back, I finally found a way to capture and control one of the bastards." His shadowed face stretched into a righteous smirk; "I've got the damn thing on a tight leash, I can pull it's strings and make it dance." His eyes flickered toward the glass jar; "when I had my little weapon of mass destruction trapped right here where I wanted it, I used the information I'd collected to organise a reunion with as many of the guys I could still locate, and that night I got the lowdown on them all, even the ones who had moved on because they had all kept in touch with each other."
"But not with me," he added sourly.
"My god, that's what I call a well-balanced personality," Dean snorted contemptuously; "a chip on both shoulders."
"Dean," hissed Leylaani, nudging him sharply in the back.
"Tell me," Dean pointed to the jar on the table; "was it one of these sylph things that abducted you?"
"No," Brake answered with a lazy shrug.
"So why does it deserve to be treated like this?" Dean asked, gesturing sharply to the jar behind him.
Brake smiled horribly; "because it's happy," he stated simply; "it's so damn floaty and airy-fairy, and gentle and goddamn perfect. I said I wanted revenge on faeries for ruining my life. I don't care what type of faerie freak I hurt."
He waved the gun menacingly as he stared over Dean's shoulder toward the glass jar.
"Do you know what it does to these sylphs when you take one and force it to kill? To end life? To stare into the eyes of a dying man?"
The silence in response to his statement gave him his answer; "it crushes them," he finally stated with immense satisfaction; "it breaks their heart."
"You're sick, Leylaani yelled, tears welling in her eyes as Dean pulled her in close beside him.
"Maybe so," Brake grinned, pausing briefly; "but not as sick as you're both going to be very soon."
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tbc
