Laoich, ch. 10

xxxx

I may I know where he is.

"Where?" Sam demanded, hope rising. "Where is he?"

Deaton sighed. "I think he may be at the nemeton." He hesitated. "But I'm not sure where that nemeton actually is."

Sam didn't bother to suppress his frustrated snarl.

"A nemeton?" Stiles looked from Sam to Deaton. "What's a nemeton?"

"It's a sacred place, usually tied to an ancient tree. It's used by druids for rituals."

"Like sacrifices?" Sam spat.

Deaton regarded Sam seriously. "True druids do not offer these types of sacrifices. But a dark druid, a darach, might."

"Fine." Sam waved away the distinction. "But you're a druid, aren't you? You were emissary to a wolf pack in this town, weren't you?" He glared at the vet. "How can you not know where the local sacred druid place is?"

Uneasily, Scott and Stiles eyed the vet.

Deaton actually seemed to squirm where he stood, uncomfortable with the questions and the eyes on him.

"How do you not know?" Sam asked again, emphasizing each individual word.

There was a long pause before the vet finally responded. "I did know," he admitted. "But I don't anymore."

"Why not?"

The vet replied slowly and with apparent reluctance. "The knowledge was taken from me by Talia Hale."

"Derek's mom?" Scott asked.

"Why?" Stiles asked.

"How?" asked Sam.

The three questions were spoken all at once, and the vet didn't answer for a minute, then he said, "I don't know why. As alpha, Talia was able to extract memories from the members of her pack, though I don't know how exactly. But she took that knowledge from all of us. From the whole pack."

"And that includes you?" Sam was frowning. "You're a druid, not a wolf."

"I was the emissary. I was part of the pack."

"Still," Sam said. "You're a druid, and you let her take your sacred place away from you." Sam knew the slight contempt he was feeling for the man bled into his voice.

"I didn't let her," the man said, and there was a timbre to his voice that spoke clearly—fury and a certain amount of betrayal.

"She forced you?" Scott asked incredulously, appalled.

"I didn't realize what she was doing until it was too late," the vet said. Absently, he ghosted a hand over the back of his neck.

"And she never told you why," Sam reiterated.

"No. When I realized what she'd done, I asked, but she refused to tell me."

"And no one else knows where the nemeton was?" Stiles asked.

"No. This particular nemeton had actually been cut down; its power was gone. It was no longer used for druidic rituals, but the space under the tree that had been dug out for meetings and storage was known. The younger wolves in the pack – the Hale children, Derek, Laura, Peter – had been using it as a meeting place, a clubhouse of sorts, I guess."

Stiles's eyebrows went up. "A clubhouse?" he repeated. He looked at Scott. "I'm trying to imagine Derek and Peter having a club."

"That didn't bother you?" Sam asked. "Your sacred space being used by kids?"

Deaton shrugged. "I was young myself and didn't give it much thought, honestly."

"Until it was gone."

The man regarded Sam gravely. "Until it was gone," he acknowledged.

Sam snorted lightly. There was a part of that he could appreciate.

"OK. So how do we find it?"

xxxx

Behind his back, Dean twisted his wrists sharply in the ropes that bound his hands together. He liked to think there was more give in the rough hemp than there had been when he'd started, but he wasn't sure. He was sure that the skin under the ropes was bleeding enough that there was some lubrication, helping his wrists slide more easily. Some of that blood was from the scrape of the ropes against his skin, some from the rough wood he was tied to as he slid the ropes up and down the post, hoping to break through the bindings, knuckles and palms catching splinters in his desperation.

Jennifer hadn't returned since she'd left him alone in the dark, and Dean was trying to take advantage of the time. He wanted to hope that Sam would, in fact, come after him, but he couldn't trust that. And even if he did trust it, frankly, he couldn't just wait for rescue. For either of their sakes.

Dean took a second to catch his breath. His skull still ached fiercely, and the cut across his throat burned dully. He rotated his head around carefully hoping to loosen stiff muscles in his neck and shoulders. He took several deep breaths trying to calm the panicked rush of his blood before starting back in on the ropes.

He gave up on trying to slip his hands free for the moment and concentrated on sawing the ropes up and down the post as hard and fast as he could. It was an awkward angle to reach the somewhat sharp corner of the rough-hewn four by four supporting the ceiling, so he wasn't able to exert as much pressure on the bindings as he'd like, but it was something.

A sudden, if slight, loosening of the ropes took Dean by surprise, but it was only a moment of startled stillness before he started back in again with renewed energy, this time also wrenching his wrists as forcefully as he could in the hopes the ropes would finally break.

When they did snap, Dean was scrambling for the stairs before the ropes hit the ground. His attempt to get to vertical was unsuccessful, but that didn't stop his forward movement, hands on the dirt floor, feet shuffling under him as quickly as he could get them to go. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Dean paused for a beat, eyeing the door at the top cautiously. There was no light seeping through the cracks that Dean could see, but then, his vision probably wasn't as sharp as it usually was. He squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again hoping for a little more clarity. No such luck. Well, that couldn't stop him. Dean sighed and began to move carefully up, step by step.

The door was flush with the ceiling of what he had realized was probably an old root cellar, two sturdy panels that opened outward. When he got to the top of the stairs, Dean pressed his ear against the rough planks of the door. He could hear nothing. He tried to push the door open, but, unsurprisingly, it didn't oblige. Though it did move outward an inch or so. Dean put his shoulder against the wood and shoved. The added force may have resulted in more give, but it didn't open the door.

Dean slumped down onto one of the steps, panting lightly. His whole body felt bruised, and he felt a weakness he usually associated with the combination of blow to the head and blood loss. He put a tentative hand to the crown of his head where Jennifer had bashed him, laying it against the knot there. His hair was crunchy with dried blood, but when he withdrew his palm and looked at it, there was no tell-tale smear of red. OK, that was good. His neck, on the other hand. The depth of the cut, coupled with its placement meant it hadn't stopped bleeding, and though the flow was pretty sluggish, Dean knew he was losing fluid he couldn't afford to.

Hurriedly, Dean used his right hand to rip the left sleeve off his over-shirt. Folding it somewhat haphazardly, he wrapped the make-shift bandage around his throat over the wound there, pulling as tight as he could without strangling himself before tying it off clumsily. It would have to do, though Sam, if he did more than raise an eyebrow in disinterested curiosity, would likely mock him for the "scarf."

Triage completed, Dean straightened again, this time putting his eye to the crack between the two panels where the door would open, pushing to widen the gap, looking for the latch. When he found it, he pulled back, studying the panels, looking this time for the bolts that might indicate the type of hardware he was dealing with. He was hoping for a simple drop latch bar that he might be able to manipulate through the narrow opening between the door panels. Nothing he could see, though, told him anything for sure.

Dean turned and made his way back down the stairs, pushing himself to go faster than he truly felt comfortable with—vision graying worryingly at one point—but desperate to get out before the damned darach got back. There had to be something among the clutter in the cellar he could use.

He saw it before he even got to the bottom of the stairs – an old yardstick propped against the wall. In spite of himself, Dean smiled as he hurried toward it. The first (and only) time Bobby had ever spanked him, the man had used one of the long narrow slats with the inches and their smaller units marked down its length. The spanking itself hadn't hurt so much—though the sting of the slap against the back Dean's thighs had certainly smarted—but it had made Bobby's point. And maybe more significantly for Dean, it had solidified his realization that he no more wanted to disappoint Bobby than he did his dad. Dean swallowed back the unwelcome surge of grief for both men lost and snatched up the yardstick.

Back at the top of the stairs, Dean slid the thin piece of wood through the crack in the doors, just under the latch. He shifted slightly to get some leverage and levered the yardstick up. It caught the metal bar and flipped it over and out of sight. Dean blinked. He pushed on the left panel of the door, and it moved up smoothly.

Dean froze, holding his breath. He waited, sure that Jennifer would suddenly jump out at him, springing some sort of weird trap. It had been too easy.

But there was nothing, and Dean cautiously opened the door the rest of the way. It was still dark out, so he hadn't been gone that long, though judging by the sky it was getting close to morning. Dean climbed out of his former prison and eased the door shut, dropping the latch back into place. If the ease of his escape wasn't a trap, it probably spoke to the arrogance of the darach, and Dean wondered vaguely how that might be used against her. For the moment however, he put that to the side, casting his eyes up to find the North Star through the canopy of trees above him. If he was in the same forest where the deer had been, and he'd found Scott and Stiles, he knew the direction he needed to go or at least aim for.

xxxx

"I don't know what else to say," Derek growled at Deaton. "My mother didn't tell me any more than she told you."

Derek hadn't been particularly happy about being called in the middle of the night, but he'd come when Scott had asked. He'd brought Peter with him, but left Cora asleep at the loft. She'd been too young to know about the nemeton at all before their mother had erased the pack's memories.

"Did you ever even try to remember where it was?" Stiles asked.

"No," Derek said shortly.

"Why not?" Stiles persisted. "Weren't you mad to lose your clubhouse?" The kid was smirking, and Derek resisted the urge to bare his fangs at him.

"No," Derek repeated.

"Derek had a bad experience at the nemeton the last time he was there."

Peter.

"It doesn't matter," Derek said with a glare at his uncle. Don't…

"What kind of bad experience?" Deaton asked. "If we know, that may help us understand…."

"I'm not talking about that with you," Derek said.

"He lost his first love, there," Peter said, voice dripping with false sympathy. He gave Derek a sad-face, lips pouting, then opened his mouth to say more.

Derek didn't make a sound before he moved, picking his uncle up and slamming him against the wall in the vet's surgery, hand at the older man's throat. Claws extending, Derek felt his eyes burn red as he dug his nails into Peter's neck. His voice lowered into its alpha rumble, deep and resonant.

"I said we're not talking about that," he snarled, nose to nose with his uncle.

Peter's eyes glowed blue in response, dropping in reluctant obedience to his alpha's voice. As a beta, Peter was unable to resist the order. "Fine," he mumbled.

Up until this point, Winchester hadn't said anything. He'd practically vibrated with frustration, but he'd remained silent while Deaton and the boys talked to Derek. Now he shoved off the wall he'd been leaning against across the small room from where Derek currently had Peter pinned to the bare bricks.

"OK," the hunter said. "If you won't – or can't," he amended when Derek turned to narrow his eyes at him, "tell us the exact location, what can you tell us?"

Derek eased his grip on Peter and ignored his uncle's annoyed huff of air when the man slid out of Derek's grasp and scuttled out of reach.

"I told you," Derek started again.

"I get that you don't know exactly where it is," Sam snapped, "but can you get us closer than we are now?" He looked at the vet. "Any direction at all is better than the nothing we have now."

Deaton nodded his agreement. "That's a good idea." He looked at Derek and then Peter. "When you think about the nemeton, where does your memory place you?"

Derek frowned. He'd deliberately avoided thinking about the nemeton and what had happened with Paige for almost ten years. He looked over at his uncle, who just shrugged, face impassive.

"I don't get anywhere," Peter said.

Sam had been looking at Peter, too, and now he eyed the older man with distrust, but didn't comment. He turned to Derek.

"How about you?"

Derek shook his head.

"Derek," Scott said quietly. "If we can get closer, we might be able to save Dean. We can't let Jennifer…."

And Derek sighed. Jennifer. Of course, she was the darach. Of course. Because evidently Derek Hale was biologically predisposed to fall for sociopathic women with murderous agendas.

"I'm not saying I won't do it," Derek answered. "I'm just…." He deliberately didn't look at Peter, didn't want to see the mockery there or even acknowledge that his uncle knew the pain this was causing him. He closed his eyes. "Give me a second."

Derek forced himself to relax, and ignore the five pairs of eyes he could feel on him. In his mind, he put himself back at the old house, imagined it whole again, filled with people – his family, his pack. He stood on the front porch, his older sister beside him. Laura's grin flashed briefly, taunting, challenging, "Race you!"

She tore down the stairs, and Derek flew after her, straight out from the house and into the woods. The path was familiar, if long buried in Derek's memory, faint on the floor of the forest, untraceable to any but the initiated. Laura was ahead of him, older by a few years, legs still longer, always faster; she turned as she ran, face alight with the chase, with him, her faithful, adoring shadow. "Come on, Derek, you can…." And then she was gone.

Derek drew in a shaky breath, taken aback, staggered momentarily by the searing pain in his heart, in his chest at the loss of his sister. Again. But he kept his eyes closed, re-focused himself on the memory, on where they'd been when she'd disappeared. He tried to reconnect with that memory, tried to force himself further down the trail, but it was no use; the path gone. He could get no further.

He opened his eyes.

"Are you OK?" Scott's face was creased with worry. "You look…."

"I'm fine," Derek said roughly. Cleared his throat. "I can get us to a spot about a half a mile from our old house, but that was a far as I could take it."

Peter's eyebrows had gone up. "That's pretty good. I could never get off the front porch." He narrowed his eyes consideringly at his nephew. "How'd you do it?"

"How should I know?" Derek asked.

"Well, if we can figure out the way you did it, maybe we can get our memories back. Or at least get closer to them."

"I didn't do anything in particular," Derek shrugged. "I just imagined that I was at the house and Laura and I were racing to the nemeton. We were just running and then … then she was gone. I couldn't get beyond that point."

"You've never tried to remember before this?" Deaton asked.

"No." Derek wished they would all shut up about this.

But Deaton turned to Peter. "Did you try to remember after Talia took the information from you?"

Peter nodded.

"So did I," said Deaton. "I spent hours trying to recreate the memory." He studied Derek for a long moment. "I wonder if that has anything to do with it – like our pushing back or worrying at the gap somehow solidified it. And your not fighting it left a bit of an opening."

"What difference does it make? I still can't get us to the tree," Derek reminded him. The speculation wasn't helping them get anywhere.

"But we're closer than we were," Winchester said. "Where's your house?"

xxxx

When they got to the Hales' place, Derek led the way, Sam, Scott, Stiles, Deaton and Peter following. Sam was torn between being frustrated by the inability they would have to sneak up on whatever this nemeton was given there were six of them tramping through the woods, never mind Peter Hale's snide, running commentary, and thankfulness for the numbers that would make searching for Dean easier.

For some reason, Sam had thought he'd be searching for Dean on his own once he had the information Derek had been able to provide. He wasn't sure why he'd thought that – everyone here was invested in this hunt.

"This is as far as I got," Derek said abruptly. The young alpha was a brooder, Sam thought. The wolf's face had gotten progressively darker, even as the sky had started to lighten around them. And the boys were concerned. Both Scott and Stiles kept sending worried, curious looks the man's way. Now he stood, arms folded over his chest, scowling.

"Which way were you headed?" Sam asked.

Derek pointed. "We were running flat out in that direction."

Sam nodded. "OK. Let's spread out, but in pairs. Derek, you're with me. Scott and Stiles. Deaton, that leaves you with Peter."

Somewhat to Sam's surprise, no one seemed to question his assumption of leadership, though he noticed Deaton gave Peter a dirty eyeball when Sam put them together.

"Stay in sight of your partner, but the spread out from the other teams. Let's stay in earshot if we can, but we can stay in contact by phone if we need to."

There were nods from the others, and they all took off.

xxxx

Dean was no longer sure he was headed in the right direction. Not that he really had any idea what the "right" direction was. He'd run – or staggered – vaguely west from the cellar, thinking that he would run into the road at some point. But so far, he'd come across nothing that gave him cause to hope that he was getting any closer to civilization.

The woods around him were getting lighter by the minute and while it made it easier for him to see, it also made it easier for him to be seen. Dean leaned against a tree and considered his options. He was getting nowhere fast; maybe he should go to ground for a while. He slid down to the forest floor, looking around for a likely hiding place.

The sound of movement in the underbrush had Dean freezing where he crouched, cursing himself for not making sure he had cover before he'd stopped. He shifted around the tree trunk, hoping to get it between him and whoever was approaching. Maybe if he stayed still….

"So what do you think happened to Derek at this nemeton?"

The low voice sounded young and remarkably like….

"I don't have any idea, but it must've been bad to…."

Dean peered around the tree. "Scott?"

Both Scott and Stiles jumped at the sound of Dean's voice.

"Dean!"

Scott ran toward him as Stiles turned and bellowed, "Sam! We found him!"

Dean cringed at the sound. He almost chastised the kid for the noise, but didn't. It was too late anyway.

Scott skidded toward him, dropping to his knees beside Dean. "Are you OK?" The kid's eyes were wide in the early morning light.

There was more crashing through the underbrush, and Sam rushed into view, noticing Stiles first, then Dean when the kid pointed.

"Dean," Sam panted, and Dean may have been imagining it, but his brother sounded relieved.

Sam folded himself down next to Scott, eyes raking Dean clinically, taking in the blood in Dean's hair, the bruises on his face. When he got to Dean's neck, he reached out and gently tugged at the edge of the bandage around Dean's throat so he could inspect the damage there. He winced at what he saw, face hardening in a way that surprised Dean.

But when Sam's eyes came up to Dean's, there was a quirk in his smile. "Nice scarf, dude," he said.

xxxx