xxxxXxxx
Chapter Nine –"Midnight"
"Into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice."
~Dante; Divine Comedy
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The thing at Dean's throat tried to kill him the moment he was through the veil. It was massive, and ugly. A huge dog, a hellhound, it's teeth barred, hackles raised like dry grass along it's back.
Dean was thrown onto his back, onto something that had the yielding power of concrete.
Razor sharp jaws were millimeters away from his jugular, dripping drool down his neck, and in his mouth.
He would have spit in disgust, if he had time from trying to avoid being torn to shreds. He was too tightly pinned to reach the knife clutched in his hand.
"Dean!" Sam was above him, the angel blade came down on the dog's back, going straight down to the hilt.
The dog yowled a dying cry and turned to Sam with feral red eyes, it lunged with the last of its reserves before Sam could dig the knife out of its flesh, slamming him into the wall as it turned.
The dog then backed up a few feet, and made a real lunge, it's bark a thunderstorm.
Dean lopped the dog's head off mid lunge and the creature dropped in a splash of black gore, it's head bouncing once off the surface of the ground and rolled underneath it's body.
They were standing in a narrow hallway made of gray stone, like a medieval castle. Torches burned red in holders along both sides of the wall. Dean pushed his back along the brick, slick with a damp slime. He knelt down and pulled the blade out of the Hellhound caracas, and it came with a squelch of hair and clinging flesh.
Dean held out the blade to Sam. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Sam took the knife from him, panting. He wiped the hellhound blood off the handle on his shirt.
Dean grabbed Sam by the elbow "Come on!" he pushed his brother the rest of the way up and their feet thudded with heavy echoes on the stone.
Sam finally found his footing. But the hallway continued. It widened to the size of a church apse. There began to be an echo, voices rasping and a vibrato of chains.
Barred cells sprung up along each wall, and like a checkerboard in was divided from the cells into empty spaces where people were chained spread eagle by iron manacles on their arms and legs.
These only barely resembled people, skeletons with skin, covered in bright red, or with their viscera hanging out open like the filthy strings of deflated balloons.
"Please Sirs," the voice of a woman shrieked out to them, small, half her face caved in, revealing a withered, bleeding brain matter. Whatever clothing she had had long worn away to gray and filth. "I didn't do it! I was set upon by bandits on my way to the Feast Day!" The way she spoke was not modern. She had been chained here centuries ago. Her mouth was decay and black blood; she rattled in her chains furiously. "They murdered my escorts, not me! Please, you must let me out!"
"That bitch deserved to die," The voice came from a cell adjacent to the woman. A man with the flesh torn to shreds on his bicep emerged from the blackness of his cell. His hands hung out the bars, the nails long and black. A head with wisps of filthy matted hair. "Fucking bitch, I'm glad I strung her up!" He grabbed a hold of Sam's shirt as he passed, throwing him into the bars of his cell. "You hear me, I'm glad!"
Sam pulled out the angel blade and the man recoiled. He let go of Sam and retreated to the back of his cell, a decaying stink emerging from each bare foot fall. His eyes were dark brown, barely visible in the torchlight, but in another moment, they slid to black. "I'll be one of you soon enough boss," He smiled with broken shrapnel pieces of teeth. "You'll let me out of here; tomorrow. I'm ready-"
Sam pulled away as the man continued to chant "I'm ready" in a vibrating monotone.
As the figure became blackness again, Dean felt the ghost grip of a barbed whip in his hand, the echoing cries of the endless souls strung up one after another, after another. He was staring at himself, what he had been on this side.
"Dean," Sam didn't know what had happened exactly, but he sensed it, some kind of shifting in his ribs, right where he had felt the pain after submitting his blood in the cab. It felt like a blackness, a loss of anything but the will for punishment.
"Hey!" Sam grabbed his brother and shook him. "That's not you!" As easily as Sam didn't understand what had happened to his brother a moment ago, he suddenly did. "Dean, look at me!"
Sam was gripping Dean's face, shaking and yelling into it. Dean's eyes looked dull, gleaming, clouding over like a horrendous thunderstorm. Like he wanted to open one of the cages and flay things for the sheer joy of it.
"DEAN!" Sam shouted and it reverberated all along the cells, and the occupants down endless hallway cried out: 'Dean! Dean!' like demented parrots.
"I need you!" Sam shook his older brother's head again. "You promised!"
The cloud slid past Dean's eyes, his hazel eyes came back, dull in the torchlight, but his. "Sammy?!" It wasn't a docile question, it was hostile and protective. "What the fuck?"
"We need to find the end of this damn thing," Sam said in answer. He grabbed his brother's arm."Now!"
They moved past the man in the cell, his eyes remained black, watching them.
Torch lights blurred past them like the traffic lights stuck on red they had passed in the taxi cab. It cast its light on the walls like the stones themselves were bleeding.
The hallway kept going, what looked like miles, in a straight parallel. Every cage and rack they passed was a portrait of macabre. Frail things rattling fiercely in chains, both begging them for release and cursing them in equal breath. Others were unrecognizable as human nothing but red splatters and bone, wailing non syllables that reverberated down the hallway.
They had both caught a whiff of the night air of the dry leaves and forest rot when they first had stepped into hell. But, the further down they went from that entrance air became hotter, not burning, but stale, stagnant, blood and fester replacing any indication of the world above.
And also, the further down that endless redness they traveled, colors began to fade. On their clothes, their hair their skin, even their eyes began to gray, like something had pierced their pupils like balloons and the pigment was slowly leaking away.
But then, one of them would nudge the other from a gruesome sight of a serial killer braiding his own entrails, or a woman rocking what looked like a half born fetus slick with afterbirth blood, who hummed a broken little sing song tune. And they would feel each other's contact like an electric jolt, and remembered their breaths, and their hearts that slammed against their ribcage.
This hallway finally turned into a corner that turned sharply right.
The light here was still an eerie red, but it seemed somewhat brighter, the clarity of the slime and the desiccated looking bricks coming into focus.
It was like they had been underwater, and now climbed waterlogged to the shore. However long they had walked down that hallway (neither one of them could really discern the time table) their weapons had not been drawn.
But now, as sure and as quick as blinking the knives came out, their metal glinted like rubies against the crimson light.
"Dean," Sam found himself panting like he had run that entire time.
Dean also found himself mimicking his brother. "Current location aside, what the hell-"
"I don't know man," Sam answered. He looked down the long hallway in front of him. It was almost identical to the one they had just left, but after such a deafening wail of torture and pain, there was not a sound to be heard. And the absence of sound was like a sound in itself.
"It's like I was being drained," Dean's eyes looked left and right, even though he had just passed left, and right was the only option. But his hunters reflexes were in over drive, because this was fucking hell.
"Yeah me too," Sam admitted. "I don't remember that, from before," he broke off because he wasn't exactly talking about his summer vacation away. "You?"
"No," Dean said. He wasn't sarcastic or smart mouthed about it, it was only brutal honesty."But, neither one of us walked through the front door on our last tours."
The sound of footfalls came towards them. There were no gaps in the walls for them to duck behind, so they retreated back around the corner, and flattened themselves against the stone.
The steps drew closer, splashing on the wetness that dripped to the floor from the vault like ceiling above. A bald man suited all in red walked by like a sentry, a barbed iron weapon in his hand.
Dean waited until the man was only a handful of steps from him before he sprang. The demon fought well, like a demon, screaming and throwing the iron weapon at Dean's head. He ducked just in time to avoid decapitation.
In the corner of his eye, he could not see his brother. But it was something he did not have time enough to process before the demon had him pinned down to the ground.
The face above was a human man, but then it shifted into something gray with clotted eyeball. The hand holding its weapon drew fast like a storm.
The head of the weapon was shaped like an axe; Dean managed to head butt the demon with it. The face shifted, and an eyeless falcon head with blood soaked feathers screeched at him, and snapped at his throat with a razor sharp hooked beak.
Dean plunged the sharp end of the weapon into its neck, and it cried again, but a dying cry, before it dropped. He yanked the iron weapon from its neck, and hot black blood sprayed out like a fountain.
The weapon was too big to stow away, so Dean sheathed his knife, and kept it out. "Sam?" Shadows danced ghastly in front of him, coming from somewhere he didn't know, because there was nothing to cast them. But his brother wasn't there.
"Sam?" Dean moved away from the dead demon, and turned back down the corner of the hallway they had just left.
The woman with the still born was reaching through the bars of her cell. The baby sat bundled in a blanket against a shadowed corner.
Sam lay against the bars of her cell, his eyes at half mast, the angel blade, gripped in a lack hand.
A gray arm was across his shoulders."Hush little baby, don't say a word, mama's gonna buy you mocking bird…" Her voice was sing song. Her free hand was bloody and carded desiccated fingers through his hair; and her words died into a broken hum.
She raised dull gray eyes up when she heard Dean approach, the arm across Sam's shoulders drew him tighter. Her eyes became manic: "Shhh, he's sleeping-"
Dean yanked the blade from Sam's hand and cut through the woman's wrists, slicing her hand off. First one, then the other.
She wailed and shrank into her cell, screaming at the raised stumps where her hands had been.
Her hands were still attached to Sam's body, Dean had to pry them off. They dropped to the ground, fingers curling like wilted flower petals.
"Sam!" Dean slapped Sam's face. He jerked from the contact, but didn't rouse.
"God will punish you!" The woman raised her head up, her long brown hair in disarray, hanging wildly around her face. She beat the iron bars of her cell with handless stumps. "God will punish you boy!"
Dean grabbed the blade and lifted Sam's limp form over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.
The woman's cries turned into warbled sobs. She shrank back into her cell and picked up the dead baby bundled in blankets. She starts to rock the bundle again, repeating a litany of "it's okay, it's okay." to the tiny thing.
Dean brought Sam back around the corner. He propped him up against the stone wall. "Sam-" he slapped at his brother's face again.
This time Sam jerked, eyes wide, and tried to struggle away.
"Whoa, whoa, Sammy it's me!" Dean backed up some to give Sam air, but did not let go of him, because he wasn't sure of how stable Sam's balance was.
One of Sam's hands stopped struggling and landed hard on Dean's jacket; his eyes retracted and he shook himself out of his stupor. "Dean-"
"Dude you've got stop doing that!" Dean's voice isn't irritated, it's scared. He moved his hand up to Sam's collar bone and gripped it tightly. "You with me now?"
"Yeah," Sam breathes out "Back there-" He turned his head towards the hallway where the faint strands of the woman's lullaby can still be heard. "-I'm okay." He turned back to Dean, gulping mouthfuls of hot air.
Dean still gripped Sam's collarbone. He felt what he gave above, that pinprick lost in Charon's cab. But he felt Sam breathing under his hand, and it was stronger. "I ganked that mother at your feet and I don't like how quiet the alarm bells have been since we got here. We've got to move-"
"Too late."
A decidedly British accent in the bowels of Hell would not normally seem as a terrifying thing; neither would a tailored Armani suit.
But the combination of both standing at the visual middle of the hallway – it was in a different league.
"Hate to interrupt your little lover's tête-à-tête," Crowley made no move towards them, but his voice reached their ears like he stood in front of them. He stared at the body of the dead demon in front of him. "But I consider it bad form to break into my home and kill my dog and its walker without so much as a how do you do beforehand."
Crowley waved his arm and Dean was sent flying back from Sam and into the opposite wall. He hit the stone hard, the breath being knocked out of him.
Sam made a move towards a weapon in his jacket. But he bowie knife was sent clattering to the floor as he was slammed hard against the wall behind him. He was raised a good three feet into the air.
Dean met the same fate beside him.
Crowley craned his head to something coming down the other hallway. A hint of a smile ghosted the face of the literary agent he had refused to give up possessing. "Perfect timing darling. Please frisk the Winchesters for weapons before we retire to my office."
The sound of heavy boots came from behind Sam and Dean. The slim blonde woman with the dead eyes stepped around to stand in front of them.
Baal eyed them like game that had escaped her grasp. "My pleasure."
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Sam was shoved into Dean by an invisible force through an dark stained doorway.
The room they emerged into was a study in brown leather and floor to ceiling bookshelves. A fireplace 5 feet tall, and longer in width, burned hotly from orange flame. Even though they were in hell, the room was climate controlled, almost like someone had set an air conditioner.
Crowley stood behind a massive desk that sat in front of this fire place. "Gentlemen," his voice was almost like a hospitable host. "Take a seat," he gestured to two black leather chairs in front of his desk.
Neither Sam nor Dean made a move to sit in the chairs. Both were scanning the room, surveying, cataloging.
"This room is sealed," Crowley said, seeming to read their minds. "No one leaves unless I let them. Please." he held out his hand and the two round back chairs slid over the floor and knocked them both backwards into their cushions.
Once in the chairs, Sam and Dean found themselves unable to move out of them, like a seat belt had been padlocked around their waists.
A gruesome carving of a hellhound in black wood sat on a huge desk of mahogany. Several high ball glasses sat cluttered on a silver tray beside the figure. Crowley picked up one of the cups and held it over the statue's open mouth.
"Fancy a drink?" The heady smell of a dark liquor poured out. "My private stock. Been curing down here since the Spanish Inquisition-"
"How about you just cut the crap?" Dean snapped. "We're not in the mood for shitty parlor games."
Crowley looked over at him like he had committed a faus paux on decorum. "Suit yourself," he took a heavy drink from his glass. "I was trying to start us off as gentlemen," He another glass under the ebony hellhound decanter. This time the drink that came out was dark crimson red.
Crowley held that glass out and Baal walked towards him. "But since you've opted to your normal low brow ghetto, let's just get on with it then shall we?" He handed Baal the glass.
Baal took the glass of blood and lifted an arm from behind her back. She was holding all of Sam and Dean's weapons in one hand like they were nothing but a handful of toothpicks. She dropped them all down on Crowley's desk with an ear splitting clatter.
Crowley surveyed the cluttered armory, his eyes on Baal. "You did a thorough strip search?"
"Very through Sir," Baal's shorn blonde hair flipped as she swung her head towards the chairs. "Twice for that one," She eyed Sam with a slow pulled smile and drank a long hit from her glass.
Crowley picked up the curved ax headed iron weapon that Dean had gotten off the demon he gutted. It had a handle like an axe blade; leather straps studded with iron spikes hung off it. "Someone like it rough I see. My money's on Sam; he looks like a bit of a dominant." Crowley slapped the flat of the blade in his hand and walked around to the front of his desk. "Though I question, why the gate crash? I would've carved your invitations into your viscera and brought you to the party myself." He leant on the edge of his desk.
"You mean you didn't get the memo?" Dean's voice was cocky, even tied to a chair, facing the King of Hell. "Wow, you really are just a figure head aren't you?"
There was a blur of movement so fast it would have to be slowed down into over a hundred increments to see it in its entirety. At the end of it Baal had the demon weapon pinned, chest level, at Dean.
"I don't recall him asking you, " Baal's voice was the deep, scratched tone; her true voice. She traced the blade across the fabric of his shirt. "You're just a pathetic little boy-"
"And you're a dirty scank," Sam countered. "So how about we put away the fingers?"
Baal had no pupils, but her eyes shifted downward in pure rage when her head whipped to him. She raised the blade level with Dean's heart.
"Ladies," Crowley cut in before Baal could execute her maneuver. "Let's untwist our knickers and get back to the million dollar question- What are the Winchesters doing in my house?" Crowley stood up from the edge of the desk and stood in front of Baal with a pointed finger. "No lap dances, I need him alive to answer my question."
Baal turned her black eyes towards Crowley. Even with her lack of pupils or eyes, rage pulled there. She pulled off Dean like a lover she had been straddling: "I am days younger then Lucifer, Crowley. I helped him build Hell. I am not your bitch. You may call yourself king; but the ameba is right, you'll never be our true master."
"Yes, well unfortunately your true master is locked away in the sub basement." Crowley took a drink of his whiskey. "This is my hell love. You don't like it, you can join him."
Baal's eyes slammed shut in rage. A crack erupted from the dark stained wooden floor and traveled up the wall like a climbing snake. Leather bound copies of Dante's Inferno, the Communist Manifesto and a hard cover of Breaking Dawn were sent falling to the floor. An obsidian crystal chandelier with gargoyle bulb heads tilted on its chain above Crowley's head, then crashed onto his desk, spraying the room with crystal dust.
Baal opened her eyes; she stepped over a crack in the floor, which glowed dark red with hellfire, and wafted up an echoing of screaming.
She stood inches away from Crowley. "This isn't over-" She gave a mock courtly bow. "Your Majesty." The body she rode evaporated into thick black smoke and it billowed down through the crack in the floor.
"Someone obviously forgot their Midol this morning," Crowley snapped his fingers and his office repaired itself to how it was before, no cracks, no broken light fixtures. Just a completely intact nightmare. He picked up his glass, and threw out a broken glass shard that had fallen inside it before he finished his drink.
"Now that it's just the boys, how about you tell me what you're doing here before I slit your throats and bare them in front of my dogs."
"How about you go screw yourself first," Sam barked out.
"I love it when you get angry Sam, it makes my trousers damp." Crowley set down his glass and walked in front of Sam. "Suffice it to say, you Winchesters are a stoic lot. That's why I prepared an incentive; your little Prophet, the nerdy little Asian, and that mop top google eyed stick –one of them is down here tucked away – the one who can read the scribbles. The other – is all over his boat. And I heard he was a screamer."
"You son-of-a-bitch," Dean growled.
"You're lying-" Sam's voice chased his brother's.
"Am I?" Crowley returned in a calm voice. "You two came down here on a romantic pact to walk through the fire together; but they didn't. There aren't many associates of the Winchesters left with a pulse. But trust me my lads will find them all, and I will add them to my Green Mile if you don't tell me what it is I need to know."
Crowley's jaw tightened when neither Sam nor Dean talked. "Stubborn little pricks."
A slow smile crept on the King of Hell's mouth, much in the same way a rattle snake would uncoil itself when it was about to strike. "We're not topside mate. I am at full power here. Annoying little fact that allows me to better exploit the little maggots with big mouths that end up with me. But it's been a while since I've had trophies such as yourselves, I might be a bit rusty-"
Sam suddenly lurched backwards in his chair and cried out, the veins in his neck taught, his eyes slammed shut. It felt like something was clawing into his skull.
"Sorry did I say rusty?" Crowley's face was on Dean who was wide eyed and angry. "I meant over-zealous."
Sam jerked so hard the chair scooted back an inch. The veins on his arms and neck were like ropes.
["We signed up to close the Gates!-" ]
The pain was insurmountable. It felt like something was poking a finger into each of the wrinkles of his brain, trying to work things out of the crevices with a hooked fingernail. Sam banged his head against the back of the chair. Blood spurted out of his nose.
"Sam! Let him go you son-of-a-bitch!" Dean tried to force himself out of the chair, tried so hard he felt his shoulder almost slide out of its socket.
[…she hid the key in the deepest part of hell, where no one would be able to find it, and live to use it."
"The key, it's inside Lucifer's Cage-"]
The pain suddenly stopped like a faucet being cut off. Sam's head banged one last time against the chair back then his head flopped forward, and it didn't' raise up.
"Sammy-" Dean stopped caring that Crowley stood there, able to get off on this pain, or kill them. He just saw his brother: "Hey! Damnit answer me!"
Every nerve in Sam's body felt raw and exposed; but forced his head to raise. Blood painted a thick trail down from his nose to his chin.
"Left out a few juicy dets Moose?" Crowley's face swam in front of him. "You plan to close the Gates of Hell – even made yourself a fancy tribute to do it?The things you kids do to get your kicks these days-"
" ." Sam spat. His voice was strained, but his eyes were level with the demon's.
"Not right now darling, you look a little spent." Crowley stood back. "Well this presents a problem-" He walked in front of both chairs like he was addressing a group of constituents.
Dean eyed Sam critically. The blood had begun to drip onto his lap. His eyes were pained, almost glazed over. But despite that they weren't wavering. Dean felt a wave of pride at his little brother.
"I'm rather attached to the free range access we have to your little world," Crowley snapped his fingers and the high ball glass vanished from his hand, and returned to the silver tray, clean. "But I'm also a realist like Jean Francis Millet – who as an aside, was my first Cross Roads deal when I was a wee demon lad. Little shit couldn't paint clouds before he made out with me-"
"Is there a point to all this?" Sam spat, literally this time, a dollop of red blood that had pooled into his mouth landed on the Persian rug depicting a woven scene of hell from Dante'sInferno
"Like to plow right in there don't you Sam? No mystery why Dean's so bowlegged." Crowley said. The demon looked almost disappointed when Sam didn't take the bait. He snapped his fingers again and the invisible binding that held Sam to his chair fell away.
After having been restrained in the chair for so long, and after the beating his mind had taken, the sudden release made Sam take a head dive towards the floor.
"Here's your chance to go find the keys to the front door," Crowley watched Sam stumble to his feet in amusement. "Don't worry you stupid giraffe," Crowley said to the look on Sam's face. "I haven't grown a heart. The key is in the Cage with Lucifer; your BDSM mate for 180 years. Getting it out won't be a quickie. He'll enjoy it, your reunion, right before he kills you. But if you need further proof that I haven't grown a dickless pair of angel wings, I'm keeping your misses here. Even if you managed to get that little trinket away from Satan's lock box, you won't leave without him; then I'll get to perform a little BDSM of my own-"
"Shut up!" Dean's voice was fierce, and echoed almost as loudly as Baal's. He glanced over at Sam. "Sam, go-"
"Dean-" Sam looked from Dean to Crowley he had ripped his arm off and had asked him to leave it behind.
"Listen to big brother Moose," Crowley returned like it was casual Sunday dinner time conversation. "It's time for your class reunion." He snapped his fingers and Sam vanished from where he was standing.
Dean stared at the spot his brother had just stood at, like he would reappear.
"Sam!"