Chapter Ten – For Whom The Bell Tolls
I just want to say first, thank you so so much to everyone who reviewed last chapter, and any of the previous it's good to hear from you all again, and that you're actually enjoying it :P Well, chapter ten introduces Alistair, my favourite demon in the entire series, his voice is just so creepy, it's great. Anyway, I might play around with Anna Milton storyline in the following chapters, as I love any episodes that involve the angels, even though ironically I'm not a gigantic fan of Anna, as she tries to kill Sam, (just plain wrong). Once again, thank you so much for all your reviews, favourites, alerts and I would really appreciate any reviews, comments etc. for this chapter. I will be updating a lot in the coming two weeks, as everyone has gone on holiday that I know, so I will have more time. Hope you all enjoy this chapter and I look forward to hearing what you think of it. ENJOY :D
Kate found herself in a long, dark corridor, shadows creeping along the edges of the walls, confining her into a small square of illuminated space in the centre. A single light bulb hung loosely above her head, the wires frayed where the bulb had been prised from the ceiling, a weak glow emanating from the warm glass due to a few wires which desperately clung to the power supply. The artificial light revealed the bare skeleton of the walls which surrounded her, a colour of deep sea blue and panelled mahogany. She recognised this place, this was Bobby's home. She felt strangely comfortable as she adjusted to her familiar surroundings, even in the dark she felt safe. Before her were two wooden doors, one sealed tightly shut, the other creaking in the harsh wind that tumbled down the isolated corridor. Kate was unsure whether to approach the extraordinary doors or to just turn and walk away. However, as she turned to face the shadows she realised that they towered over her, ready to swallow her whole with menacing jaws. The only way out was the door.
She pulled back the open door, stepping into the inviting warm glow of firelight which welcomed her. She observed the environment, struggling to recognize the room she stood in. Deep red curtains hung lifelessly from the ceiling, blanketing the room in crimson velvet, polished oak boards whining beneath her boots as she continued towards the centre of the room. She swore she had felt the warmth and seen the light that could have only originated from a fire, but she couldn't see a fireplace in the room, only deep red curtains and a singular chair perched in the middle of the room. The chair was facing away from her, concealing a figure shrouded in darkness. She approached the man in the chair, edging closer to the figure quietly; scared she would alert him of her presence. She stepped forwards, her right foot pressing lightly on an overly persistent floorboard, screeching in protest as she passed. The figure turned sharply to face Kate, a familiar spiteful grin praying on his lips. It was Sable.
"The boss wants to see you Kate," he snarled, fixating his cold, menacing eyes on her petrified expression.
Kate shot upright in the back-seat of the Impala, screaming.
"Kate? You okay?" barked Dean from the driver's seat, still recovering from another fight with his brother regarding a frequent topic, Ruby.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm alright," Kate replied shakily, wiping sweat from her forehead with a trembling hand. "Just a dream."
"Another one? What was it about?" asked Sam, eagerly turning his head to face his sister as she woke.
"To be honest, I don't really know," said Kate, staring out of the window. She wondered where Castiel was, and what he was doing. She had so many questions to ask him, but after their last encounter she was unsure to whether she'd ever see him again. She sighed sadly as she admired the passing night, she was still angry over the angel's deception, but if my prolonged resentment means I can't see him anymore then I'll gladly forgive and forget, she thought. "So where are we going?" she asked realising she had no idea where the Impala was hurtling to.
"To find some girl," said Dean half-heartedly, he was tired of fighting.
"Anna Milton?" Kate questioned, thinking that Castiel had visited her brothers with the same information. Maybe I'm not so special after all, she thought.
"You telepathic too now huh?" barked Dean, concern tainting his arrogant tone.
"No! Castiel just told me too," Kate retaliated, folding her arms like a teenager in the back-seat of the car.
"Cas didn't tell us anything," explained Sam, confused at his sister's revelation. Dean turned to his brother with his eyebrow raised, creating a puzzled expression.
"Well who gave you the tip?" Kate cried, secretly smiling to herself as she returned to the window. Castiel had come to see her, and only her. Her twisted heart strangely fluttered at the thought, which her sub-conscious suppressed almost immediately.
"Ruby," Dean spat, his resentment for the demon twisting his words.
"What are you talking to that traitorous bitch for? Even the demons don't want her!" said Kate, scraping her tangled curls into a messy ponytail.
"My point exactly," said Dean.
"Can we stop talking about Ruby, please! We have a job, remember Dean? The job always comes first with you," Sam snapped, becoming irritated with the conversation topic.
"It's a way of avoiding all your damn questions!" Dean shouted, sensing a change in the discussion topic to one that involved Hell.
"Have you two been fighting again?" Kate asked, tired of her brothers' constant arguing. When she received no reply, she decided to change the subject. "What makes this Anna Milton our problem anyway?"
"Did angel boy not tell you? You two seem to know all the gossip nowadays," said Dean, still yearning for a fight and taking out his anger on his sister.
"Can we not talk about Castiel either, he hasn't got anything to do with this," said Kate quietly, realising that she hadn't called him by his adopted nickname. It didn't matter anyway, he's just another supernatural pain-in-the-ass that I have to talk to a few days a week, she thought. She hated thinking about him so harshly, but it was easier for her tortured mind to blame him, rather than miss him.
"Well every time I see you, he's on your coat tails, what's going on between you two?" barked Dean, forgetting about the state the angel had left her in at the bar, just a few hours before.
"Dean! She's right, he's got nothing to do with anything," said Sam, sensing his sister's discomfort in the back-seat of the car. He turned to face her, and watched a lonely tear slide gently down her cheekbone and into her lap.
"Right, sorry," Dean apologized, realising his sister was upset.
"Anyway, this 'Anna' has a sketchbook," said Sam, filling in the details for the previously absent Kate.
"She's possessed by an evil, haunted sketchbook? Wow, I sound like a Ghostfacer," said Kate, wincing as she remembered her last encounter with Harry Spangler and Ed Zeddmore. They were harmless, but their persistence and supposed 'hunts' usually seemed to get in the Winchesters' way.
"No, she's more like the Apocalyptic Picasso," explained Sam, handing the information he had been examining for the duration of the car trip to his sister.
"She's not a nut," said Dean, puzzled.
"Dean, that's a pistachio," Kate giggled, realising that her brother had no knowledge regarding the world that didn't release metal albums, or have wheels. "You're so ignorant," she choked, unable to control her laughter. Sam began to laugh hysterically at his brother's lack of knowledge on the outside world, easing the tension in the car and lightening the mood.
"Okay, okay, back to the books Warhol," said Dean, smiling. He wished he could forget her desperation and the image of her terrified eyes when he had found her outside the barn, and the sound of her laughter was helping the memory fade away.
"Right, so we know nothing about her apart from the fact that she owns a sketchbook and lives in a mental institute," said Kate, delicately turning the pages with interest, hoping that immersing her mind in the job will relieve her from memories of Castiel.
"Well, when you put it like that, we don't seem to have a lot to go by," Dean barked, the car jerking to a stop as he slammed on the brakes, trying to avoid hitting a passing deer. "Come on!" he groaned as it's mate appeared from the shadows.
"Yay, more needles," said Kate, her voice quivering with despair as she remembered the words, 'it doesn't matter," and the cold, emotionless eyes that had delivered them.
Kate shuffled quietly behind her brothers up the old, dusty, wooden stairs of the church, her gun raised in anticipation. After visiting the mental institute posed as FBI Agents, acquiring a sketchbook filled with sketches of the apocalyptic world the Winchesters faced on a daily basis, and discovering that the elder Miltons' were dead, the Winchesters had traced Anna back to her father's church. Sam reached the top of the staircase first, slowly scanning the church hall before him for Anna, and demons. Dean followed carefully, with an anxious Kate on his heels. Sam stepped into the church hall, edging closer to a huge stained-glass window, patterned with bright, beautiful colours of red, green and blue.
"Dean," Sam whispered to his brother, gesturing towards the towering glass window. They had both noticed the short figure with red hair hiding behind the fluorescent glass. "Anna?" he called softly, concealing his gun behind him, he didn't want to scare her away with a loaded firearm. "We're not gonna hurt you, we're here to help. My name is Sam and this is my brother Dean, and my sister Kate," he continued as they stepped closer to the runaway girl.
"Sam? Not Sam Winchester?" she replied to the siblings' confusion.
"Uh, yeah," Sam stuttered, puzzled to why this strange girl knew his name.
"And you're Dean," said Anna, appearing from behind the barrier of painted glass. The Winchesters simply stared at her, she seemed perfectly ordinary.
"Kate," she continued as she saw a dark-haired girl with ice blue eyes appear from behind Dean's shoulder. "You're 'the' Dean?" she asked, returning her focus on the elder Winchester.
"Well, yeah, 'the' Dean, I guess," said Dean, smiling to himself.
"It's really you," exclaimed Anna, approaching the bewildered Winchesters. "Oh my God, the angels talk about you, you were in hell but Castiel pulled you out and some of them think you can help save us," she said, showering a confused Dean with praise and revelations, without pausing to breathe. Kate's stomach twisted as Anna spoke his name, she wasn't ready to talk about him yet, and everything she used to escape her mind seemed to loop back to the angel. "And some of them don't like you at all," she continued, turning to Sam. "And you..."
"Me?" asked Kate, feeling Anna's doe-like eyes examining her.
"You're important, to many of them," said Anna, smiling widely at Kate.
"Well, that clears things up," she replied sarcastically, tired of the obscurity when it came to her role on the battlefield.
"They talk about you all the time lately, I feel like I know you," said Anna, smiling at the puzzled Winchesters.
"So you talk to angels?" asked Dean, astounded.
"No, no way, they probably don't know I exist, I just overhear them," answered Anna nervously.
"You overhear them?" Sam questioned the ecstatic red-head.
"Yeah, they talk and sometimes I just hear them...in my head," explained Anna.
"So you know what they're thinking?" cried Kate, desperately wanting to know more about Castiel, even though her mind enforced the idea that her eagerness was wrong. Sam and Dean looked down at their pleading sister, instantly knowing her ulterior motives.
"If they want to share it with the others, then yeah," said Anna, oblivious towards Kate's conflicts with a certain angel.
"Can you hear them...now?" asked Dean, wanting to know more about the girl's ability.
"Not right this second, but a lot, and I can't shut them out, there's so many of them," Anna continued. Kate felt a rush of conflicting emotions overflow her mind, here was a chance to discover what the angel really thought about her, she just had to coax the girl into helping her first.
"So...they locked you up with a case of the crazies, when really you're just tuning into angel radio?" said Dean, smirking at the pretty, red-haired girl.
"Yes, thank you," she cried with relief, grateful that someone was finally beginning to understand her.
"Anna, when did the voices start? Do you remember?" asked Sam. Kate wasn't a fan of interrogating, and usually left her brothers to the questioning, and simply stared at the soft, lilac light which secreted from another stained-glass window.
"I can tell you exactly, September eighteenth," said Anna eagerly.
"Day I got outta hell," Dean mumbled, still pained by the memories.
"First words I heard, clear as a bell, 'Dean Winchester is saved'," she answered.
"What do you think?" an overwhelmed Dean asked his equally confused siblings.
"Looks like you're the local celebrity of the angel community Dean," said Kate.
"It's above my pay grade, man," Sam replied, angry that he couldn't offer his brother more information and reassurance.
"Well, at least we know why the demons want you so bad, they get a hold of you, they can hear everything the other side's cooking," explained Dean to Anna's widened eyes. "You're 1-900 angel," he said, smiling enthusiastically at Anna, who returned the gesture. Kate could sense the reason for Dean's eagerness and constant grinning, he thought she was cute.
"Dean, Ruby's coming," Kate mumbled, feeling waves of energy overcome her veins and muscles.
"How did you?..." Sam stuttered, as the wooden door behind them swung open, a frantic Ruby rushing desperately towards the Winchesters.
"There's something else...something much stronger," Kate continued, grasping the energy with her mind as she closed her eyes in concentration.
"Kate? You alright?" asked Dean, concerned for his sister as he struggled to understand what she was feeling.
"You got the girl? Good, let's go," cried Ruby as she recognised Anna, interrupting Dean's discussion with Kate to his disgusted expression.
"Her face!" screamed Anna, back-peddling towards the window as she saw the demon.
"No! It's okay, she's here to help," said Sam reassuringly.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Dean muttered under his breath.
"We have to hurry!" said Ruby fearfully, ignoring Dean's comment.
"It's...she's right," Kate retaliated, watching the door with anxious eyes. She felt something grip her, something stronger than she'd ever felt before within her, whatever was coming for them was powerful.
"Why?" asked Dean sternly, still not ready to trust a demon.
"Because a demon's coming, big time, and we can fight later Dean," snapped Ruby in a frenzy.
"Well that's pretty convenient, showing up right when we find the girl, with some big-wig on your tail," said Dean suspiciously.
"Guys! It's here!" Kate shouted, her hands shaking violently. Her body seemed unstable under the tremendous power it was consuming, she wasn't ready this time. She needed him. Without the support of Castiel, she felt nervous, unsteady, she needed the angel to tell her that she was ready, that she could face this.
"Dean," said Sam, gesturing towards a smooth, marble statue of the Virgin Mary, blood pouring from her stone, tranquil eyes. "Come with me," he continued, ushering a petrified Anna into a closet in a dark corner of the church. "Okay, stay in there, don't move."
"You gotta pull him right away," said Ruby, as Sam retrieved a silver flask from his pocket.
"Whoa, hold on a sec," Dean growled, furious that the demon was pushing Sam into using his powers again.
"Now is not the time to bellyache about Sam going dark side, he does his thing, he exorcises that demon, or we die," Ruby retaliated.
"Dean, we can't let him do this, the angels..." said Kate, pleading to her brother as she remembered the angels opinions on Sam's 'powers', nothing good was going to come of it in the long run. When she received no reply, she prepared herself mentally, ready to fight whatever came crashing through the door before them. Sam pushed the flask back into his jacket pocket and stepped nervously towards the door, a tense, anxious expression on his face.
The door burst open with the sound of a strong, gale-force wind building to a climax. A tall, heavily built man emerged from the shadows, his neatly combed white hair suggesting an age of over fifty. Kate felt a surge of energy stampede through her muscles and organs, whoever this demon was, he was stronger than anything she had encountered, other than the angels. He delicately stroked the wooden banister with his fingers as he entered the hall, wiping his hands together to remove the dust he had gathered from the wood.
Sam didn't waste any time when preparing to fight the intruder, and already had his hand outstretched to meet the demon as he moved towards the Winchesters. The demons eyes turned an empty, marble white as he grasped the collar of his blue shirt and coughed.
"That tickles," the demon smirked to Sam's disappointment and fear. His eyes sank as he watched the demon easily overcome his strength, he was much stronger than any demon they'd fought before. "You don't have the juice to take me on Sam," he continued arrogantly, pinching his fingers together and flinging Sam's towering figure down the staircase he had appeared from. Dean retaliated, unsheathing the knife they had acquired from Ruby and turning to face the demon angrily as his brother toppled down the stairs. He lunged at the man, but he was caught mid-swing by the demon's left arm. "Hello again Dean," he growled, pinning his body against a wooden support. Kate watched as Ruby ran towards the closet that held Anna, she was obviously terrified of the demon that was tormenting her brother. "Don't you recognize me? Oh sorry, I'm wearing a paediatrician," he continued maliciously, repeatedly punching Dean as blood flowed from his nose. "We were so close in hell."
"Alistair," Dean spat from behind bruised eyes, his lips broken and encased in blood.
"Oh, no you don't," cried Kate, swinging for Alistair. She knocked the demon to the floor with her newly found strength. She leapt on top of him as he tried to recover, following up her heavy strike with repeated blows to his face. The demon shoved her tiny frame onto the floor as he overcame the strength which matched his own, lifting her against a pillar by her throat as he rose from the ground.
"Aren't you a feisty one," he growled, constricting her throat with his hand as Kate's body thrashed, struggling to break free from his tight grip. "Always wanted to meet you Kate, you're quite the celebrity, now you've been...revamped," said Alistair, grinning spitefully. Kate twisted her torso, kicking the unaware demon in the chest, pushing him away from her and releasing his grip from around her neck.
"Save me the sermon," she choked as she breathed in the relief of oxygen. She watched Sam appear behind the demon as his back was turned, the knife raised and ready to strike. He spun Alistair around to face him, watching his pained expression as he plunged blade into his chest.
"You're gonna have to try a lot harder than that, son," Alistair spat, driving Sam towards a wall as he tried to retrieve the knife from his chest. Sam ran towards a beaten and overwhelmed Dean, grabbing Kate's arm with his free hand. He gestured towards the window as Alistair continued to struggle with the metal wedged in his ribcage. The demon breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he yanked the blade free from the confines of his ribcage, turning to face the Winchesters. He strided towards them, his conceited expression twisting to one of disappointment as he watched them dive through the large church window, glass scattering along the hall floor. He approached the empty wooden frame, scanning the area for the siblings. They were gone. His brow furrowed in anger, until he remembered that the knife which aided them was still tightly clasped in his hand, drenched in his own blood.