Disclaimer: I don't own SPN.
It's an annoying fine line between deciding which info is important and should be kept and which info I can assume that everybody already knows and dump as irrelevant to the chapter because nothing changes despite Louise being there – hence why I try and summarise when I can.
Thanks to masterjediratgrl31 for your reviews :)
Chapter 10. The Great Escape
"This is going brilliantly," Louise muttered. After revealing that he'd been tracking the demon through the omens that heralded its arrival – temperature fluctuations, freak storms, cattle mutilations – and that these signs had been present in Lawrence a week before Mary and Cathy's deaths, John told Sam and Louise that the next place he'd tracked these signs to was Salvation, Iowa.
On the way to Salvation, Louise had been devastated to hear that Pastor Jim Murphy, who had been a dear friend of theirs, had been found in his church with his throat slit and with traces of sulfur around. What were the demons doing and why had they gone after Pastor Jim?
Pastor Jim's death had just made John all the more determined to take down the demon and in Salvation, after procuring a list of all the babies who would be six months old in the next week, Sam had a vision of the mother of one of them burning on the ceiling, just like Mary had. This allowed them to easily scratch off everyone else on the list, though John hadn't been happy to learn that he was the only one who didn't know about Sam's visions, as evident by the argument he and Sam were currently having.
Just when Louise was contemplating whether she should snap or not, Sam's phone rang. He quickly answered it, looking relieved.
"Hello?" he said. "Who is this?" He paused for a moment, his face tightening. "Meg." Louise and John looked up sharply and Louise felt boiling hot anger begin to simmer inside her at the thought of one of the demons who had kidnapped her older brother.
"Yeah, I remember. Where's Dean? I said, where is he?" Sam listened for a moment, an ugly look on his face, and he looked at John. "I don't know where Dad is." He hesitated for a moment and then gave the phone to John.
"John speaking." John looked down, his face twisting. "Yeah, I'm still here." He blinked. "Caleb?" Sam and Louise's heads whipped around in shock. "He doesn't have anything to do with this! Let him go!"
"No!" Louise murmured, letting her face fall into her hands. Caleb was cool – he didn't deserve to die!
"I don't know what you're talking about." Even from a distance, Louise could hear the man on the other end choking on his own blood and, despite her best efforts, a few tears slipped down her cheeks.
"Caleb! Caleb!" John looked close to tears of his own. "I'm gonna kill you!" He fell silent for a moment, listening. "Okay. Alright, I'll bring the Colt! But you better give Dean back or so help me – no, it's gonna take me a day's drive to get there. That's impossible! I can't get there in time and I'll be damned if airport security will let me get on a plane with a gun!"
The phone was hung up a moment later and John sank down onto one of the beds.
"She wants me to bring the Colt to her or she'll kill anyone who ever even talked to me," John murmured. "I can't do that to them. Especially to…" He murmured a name that sounded vaguely like 'Adam', which ignited Louise's curiosity. Who was Adam? She'd never heard of any of her dad's friends by that name…
"And Dean?" Sam said urgently. "What about Dean?"
"She promised to give Dean back if I hand over the Colt," John said hoarsely. "I don't trust her about as far as I can throw her but – it's Dean's only chance. I have to go to Lincoln."
Sam and Louise started to protest – what about the woman that the demon was coming for that night? – but John overrode their concerns and said that he was going to take a fake gun to give to Meg while they took the real one to kill Yellow-Eyes. They were concerned about what would happen to John when Meg found out that it was a fake but he brushed off their concerns.
"But Dad, you can't go alone!" Louise said. "It's clearly a trap and you don't know how Dean is! What if you can't get out of there with him?"
"Taking down this demon is important, Louise," John said firmly. "I'll be fine. You and Sammy have to –"
"Let me come with you!" Sam burst out. John and Louise stared at him in shock. "Like Louise said, Dean won't be fine! They've had him for months! Let me come and help you get him out of there."
"I'm not letting Lou take on that demon alone," John said.
"I can handle it, Dad!" Louise insisted. "Really! I'll sense it when he arrives, so he won't get the drop on me! And besides, he's interested in Sammy, right? Don't you want to keep Sam away from him?"
John was still staring at her.
"Please, Dad! I can do this!" Louise said. Finally, John looked away and sighed.
"Can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered. "Fine. You sure you got this?"
"Positive," Louise nodded frantically. "Sam'll be safer with you and I won't miss!"
John fixed Louise with a piercing look before digging around in his duffle bag and fishing out the Colt.
"You better not," he said, handing it to her.
-LW-
"Four bullets," Louise murmured, sitting in the Impala and watching the house across the street. "One chance. I can do this. I know I can. I can't miss."
Louise desperately wanted to get the targeted family out of the house then and there but she knew that it would ruin the trap and tip off the demon, so she forced herself to remain in her seat and calmed herself by toying with the Colt. How were Sam and John doing? Were they alive? If she was honest with herself, Louise would have felt better with Sam as backup. But Dean's life was on the line, so John needed backup more than she did! And so what if she messed this up and died? Dean was more valuable anyway! He was the one who always looked out for her and Sam and got them out of any situation!
'This is gonna be a long night,' Louise thought.
-LW-
"Remember," John said to Sam outside the building. "Stay back and out of sight. They're expecting me to come alone. If anything goes wrong, grab Dean and run. Don't worry about me."
"But Dad –" Sam began before shaking his head. "Okay. Just…don't take any risks, okay? Give them the gun, get Dean and go."
John put a hand on Sam's shoulder.
"I'm proud of you, Sammy," he said. "We've had our differences but you turned out fine."
Sam nodded, swallowing heavily.
"Now, come on. Let's go get your brother back."
Sam and John stuck together as they entered the building, until they reached the main area. At John's signal, Sam sank into the shadows and watched his father enter the place.
"You made it," Meg commented. "Too bad, really. I was hoping to kill more of your friends."
While Meg was occupied, Sam slipped through the door. His eyes widened when he saw Meg, with Dean kneeling at her feet, and his stomach churned unpleasantly when he saw that his bruised, bloody brother's head was bowed. What the hell had they done to him?
"You want to skip the small talk?" Meg crossed her arms. "Fine. Hand over the gun."
"If I give you the gun then how am I supposed to get out of here, especially with Dean like that?" John said.
"If you're as good as they say you are, I'm sure you'll figure something out," Meg smirked.
"Maybe I'll just shoot you."
"You wanna shoot me? Go ahead. There's more where I came from."
A hand clamped around Sam's mouth and he let out a surprised, muffled exclamation. An arm snaked around his throat and he was hauled out into the open next to Meg, in clear view of John. His father's eyes immediately snapped to him and Tom removed the vice grip over his mouth to pin his arms to his side.
"Sorry, Dad," he wheezed.
"You shoot me and Sammy gets his little neck snapped," Meg said cheerfully. "You shoot Tom and Dean will be dead before you can even scream."
Sam cursed mentally. Meg's brother! Why didn't he think that Tom would be here?
"Hand over the gun," Tom said, tightening his arm around Sam's throat. Sam cried out in pain. "Come on, John. What've you got to lose?"
-LW-
The first sign Louise had that something was wrong was static started to blare through the radio. She stiffened and bolted upright in her seat as the lights inside the house also started to flicker. And then she felt it. The foulest, most evil presence that she had felt by far oozed into her senses and Louise had to actually throw the Impala door open and lean out of the car, retching and heaving, until she had it under control.
'There he is!' she thought. Fighting back her nausea, Louise slid out of the car and rushed towards the house, where she used a bobby pin she'd found in her pocket to work the lock open. She crept inside but the husband decided to greet her with a nice baseball bat to the face, though he missed, and a wrestling match ensued.
"Get the hell out of my house!" the man yelled. "Monica!"
"Listen to me! You're in danger!" Louise said desperately.
"Yeah, from psychos like you!"
"Is everything okay, Charlie?" a woman called downstairs. Louise took advantage of Charlie's distraction to wrest the bat away and slam his head against the wall, knocking him out.
"Stay away from the nursery!" Louise cried. But she knew that the woman – Monica, she presumed – wouldn't listen, so she hastened to drag Charlie outside and then raced up the stairs, where she stopped dead in her tracks in the doorway. A terrified, screaming Monica was stuck to the ceiling and a dark figure was standing over the baby's crib. It turned to face Louise and her stomach twisted when she saw a pair sickly yellow eyes. Being this close to the demon also made her feel even sicker and Louise tried not to lean against the door frame and show any sign of weakness in front of this son of a bitch.
"Interesting," the demon said in a surprisingly normal male's voice. Louise blinked, having expected a deep, evil voice for some reason. "Didn't think they'd send you. And all alone."
"Doesn't mean that I can't ice you," Louise spat, forcing herself to ignore her rolling stomach and the ugly black smoke curling inside the man's body. "I can see your ugly ass and I'm looking forward to ganking it."
Yellow-Eyes, as Louise decided to call him, actually looked surprised and frowned at her. This split second was all Louise needed to raise the gun and fire. However, she hadn't caught Yellow-Eyes completely off-guard and he moved so that the bullet struck him in the shoulder rather than the heart. Cursing to herself, Louise went to fire the gun again but Yellow-Eyes disappeared in a puff of smoke, his sickening presence also vanishing. Monica was released from the ceiling and landed hard on the floor, gasping.
"Oh, come on! Where the hell did it go?" Louise shouted angrily.
"Rosie!" Monica shrieked. She tried to run to the cot but Louise grabbed her.
"Wait!"
"MY BABY!"
"Go, Monica! I've got the baby!" Louise ran to grab little Rosie, and not a moment too soon – the crib burst into flames as soon as Louise lifted the baby out of it. Louise's eyed widened and she grabbed Monica's wrist and tugged her with new strength, guiding her downstairs and out of the house with little Rosie cradled in her other arm. The nursery exploded at that moment and smoke started to fill the house but, thankfully, Louise and Monica had made it out with Rosie.
"Get away from my family, you bitch!" Charlie growled, pushing himself to his feet.
"No! She saved us, Charlie!" Monica said. Louise offered Rosie to her and she snatched her daughter gratefully, tears starting to stream down her face. "She saved us!" Charlie put his arms around his wife and Rosie and Monica turned to Louise and thanked her profusely.
"I missed," Louise mumbled, feeling the adrenaline drain out of her. "I can't believe I missed…"
She stiffened when she felt the demon's nauseating presence return and she slowly turned to see the outline of a figure standing in the burning nursery, unaffected by the flames. Louise was rooted to the spot as those yellow eyes seemed to stare into her very soul, until a roof beam collapsed and the figure and its presence disappeared.
"I hope Dad and Sammy did better," Louise mumbled to herself, bidding a hasty farewell to Monica and her family.
-LW-
'This is going well,' Sam thought, still struggling against Tom's arms.
"I'm so not in the mood for this!" Meg growled. "I've just been shot!"
"Get over it, Meg," Tom sighed.
"I guess you're lucky the gun wasn't real," John commented dryly. A sudden sound distracted the demons and John and Sam both took their chance; Sam head-butted Tom in the face, wriggling free of his grip, and he and John grabbed Dean and made a run for it. Dean seemed to be drained of all his strength, so Sam held his older brother upright and hauled him along while John hacked at his bonds with his knife and severed them in a heartbeat.
"Come on, Sammy!" John ordered, dropping down through a trapdoor into a hallway. Sam handed Dean to him and then slid down himself and John quickly activated the water pressure, sending streams of holy water raining everywhere and blocking Meg and Tom's paths. This allowed Sam and John enough time to get outside with Dean and when the demons caught up, Sam shouted out the beginning of the exorcism he'd memorised to temporarily disable them.
"Into the car!" John held the latch for the back of the truck open so that Sam could bundle Dean into the back and jump up after him. John then slid into the cab of the truck, starting the ignition and tearing away just as Meg and Tom recovered. Sam could hear Meg's scream of rage even as they got further away from the demons and he held his semi-conscious brother closer to him, feeling weak with relief that they finally had Dean back.
Once they were on the main road, John leaned out of the window.
"Call Lou!" he bellowed at Sam to be heard over the wind. "Tell her to meet us at Bobby's! And test Dean, will you? I don't trust those sons of bitches!"
Sam nodded and pulled a flask of holy water out of his pocket to pour over Dean, who just groaned something under his breath. Once satisfied that Dean was not possessed, Sam took his phone out, dialled Louise's number and held it to his ear while clutching his big brother close to him.