Thanks everyone for the reviews! Once again I'm sorry about the wait for this chapter, but here it is!
"How many of them are you? A hundred? More?" Dean asked what had just moments ago been Castiel, but was now really a vessel holding in a bunch of leviathan.
Jimmy Novak's body was dripping black goo everywhere, like his body was falling apart still. It probably was. The black liquid was pouring down his face and his neck, starting to pool in little puddles on the ground.
"You're vessel's going to explode isn't it?" Dean observed. "I wouldn't do anything to strenuous, you might as well just call it a day and head on home."
There was a smug grin on Dean's face as silence filled the room.
"We'll be back for you," the thing said, now sounding as if it spoke in multiple voices at once, black liquid dripping from its right eye and down its cheek.
It glanced at me as it shuffled out of the room, taking tiny steps. I shrank away, avoiding the black liquid. The sound of shuffling feet echoed down the hallway outside of the room.
"You guys alright?" I asked after I was sure it had left.
Bobby stood up slowly, there was a cut on his cheek that was bleeding a little and Dean seemed a little banged up, but no one appeared seriously injured.
"I think we're alright," Bobby answered me, glancing over at Dean to make sure he was in fact alright.
"Let's go find Sam, he's been gone way too long," Dean said with a worried look on his face.
He didn't waste a second and was already rushing out of the room and down the hallway, Bobby and I practically chasing after him to keep up. Sam had been gone for quite awhile now, I didn't know what to expect when we found him. And that worried me.
"Sam!" Dean shouted up ahead as he spotted his brother.
Bobby and I weren't far behind as Dean began shaking his brother. Sam was staring off into a direction just over Dean's shoulder, his eyes fixated on the spot. He was shaking and his breathing was too fast to be normal. The sight was unnerving and I had a strange feeling in my gut that told me I knew what was going on. I shivered and shook the thought away.
"Sam!"
Finally Sam jumped and his eyes turned on his brother, a startled look on his face. Slowly he glanced over at me and then Bobby beside me.
"Look at me!" Dean ordered his brother.
Hesitantly he turned back to Dean as if he were afraid we were going to disappear before his eyes. His breathing was slowing to a normal pace and his muscles began to lose their previous tension.
Dean shot his brother a look that said this was definitely going to be brought up later before he grabbed Sam by the arm and told us all to hurry up and get out of here. Bobby lead the way immediately, clearly not needing to be told twice, and Dean followed right after. Sam was following directly behind me but I heard him pause and I glanced over my shoulder to see him stopped in the threshold of the room, his back to me. He quickly ran a hand through his hair before taking both of his hands and rubbing his face. Biting my lip I gently placed a hand on his shoulder, causing him to shoot his head up instantly as if he was afraid someone else had touched him.
I gave him a reassuring smile before taking his hand and leading him down the hallway where Bobby and Dean had just disappeared. His hand seemed cold and a little sweaty I noticed.
"What is it?" I asked when Sam and I saw Bobby and Dean just staring out towards a body of water not far from the building's exit.
That's when I noticed Cas, or what had been Cas minutes before, wading into the water. He didn't stop or try to swim, he just kept on walking until the water was past his chin. And then he disappeared below the surface.
Dean was the first one to race towards the water's edge with the rest of us tailing him. Nothing happened for a moment, and then right where Cas had went under, tendrils of black began covering the water until the entire surface was covered. It didn't last long though before the water was the same as before, as if nothing had just happened.
"Ah hell," Bobby uttered out beside me.
That was when I noticed the sign next to us. "Public Water Supply" was the very first line I read.
"Those…whatever you call them," Bobby spoke up after a moment.
"Leviathan," I supplied absently.
"Right…" Bobby said with a nod, "if they're in the city's water supply, they've got themselves a highway to anywhere."
"Peachy," I commented sourly.
"What's that?" Sam asked, pointing towards something floating in the water.
Dean reached down and pulled up Castiel's trench coat. It was soaked and splotches of red decorated it in places. Dean looked like he was having a hard time processing what just happened.
"So he's gone," he said, his eyes on the coat.
"Rest in peace, if that's still possible," Bobby said solemnly, and we all knew what he meant by that.
Dean's face screwed up in sadness, something that was extremely rare, as he folded up the coat in his hands. Some of the blood from it began to stain his hands.
"Dumb son of a bitch," he muttered under his breath as he fought back tears.
"He was friends with us. Can't get much dumber than that," Bobby said as he tried to lighten the situation. "Come on, let's get out of here before those things come up for air."
Feeling a weight in my gut I followed the guys back to the car. Dean was still holding onto Castiel's trench coat.
I caught Dean in Bobby's living room with Sam, who was now awake after having slept the last twelve hours straight. I frowned knowing Dean had to have woken him up. If he had been sleeping peacefully, which it appeared as much, he should have left him alone. I had been arguing with him about that ever since we'd gotten back to Bobby's and Dean and Bobby had carried Sam in and placed his sleeping form on the couch.
Sam was shooting strange glances to the left of Dean every so often which piqued my curiosity enough to have me join in on the conversation.
Dean was peeling off the bandage on Sam's hand to check the stitches of his palm. Sam's jaw clenched tightly shut in pain as his brother did so.
"Eh, you'll live," Dean said rather detachedly before getting up out of the chair he'd dragged over to the couch.
I didn't hide the frown on my face when Dean glanced over his shoulder at me before he quickly stepped into Bobby's study. He grabbed a bottle of alcohol off the desk and walked back over to us before pouring it onto Sam's wounded hand. Sam let out a hissing sound between his teeth as the alcohol burned and he pressed the towel that Dean had given him against his hand. He glanced over at me with a sleepy grin on his face after the pain had subsided before he moved his feet off the couch and made space for me to sit.
"I'm impatient," Sam said as Bobby took a seat in the chair Dean had just been in, "any leads?"
"They seem pretty eager to stretch their legs," Bobby told him, meaning the leviathan, as he began to unravel some clean bandages for Sam's hand.
"And we won't know what they're up to until they're a big problem," Dean added as he took a seat on another chair he'd dragged over. He sat down and then shot his brother a stern and to the point look. "How're you doing?" His eyes narrowed at Sam as his brother opened his mouth. "And do not say 'okay'."
Sam didn't even hesitate as Bobby finished wrapping up his hand. "I'm not okay," he admitted.
"You think?" Dean shot.
"Hey now, go easy on him," I said in a warning tone.
Dean's eyes rolled over to me and I knew we were on the verge of an argument.
"Go easy on him?" Dean shot at me now. "There is nothing easy about it. We acted like he was okay, like he had everything under control."
So Dean was actually really mad at himself I noted. I was about to respond when Sam cut me off.
"Look I'm sorry," Sam said a little sheepishly. "I didn't exactly want to crack up, you know?"
The weight of Dean's gruff and surly gaze shifted back to Sam, who was fidgeting with the bandage on his hand now.
"What the hell happened back there?" Dean demanded.
It looked like Sam was struggling for words for a minute.
"It's not just flashbacks," he began, pausing for a moment to glance up at his brother before looking away again. "It's more like…I'm seeing through the cracks."
Dean and Bobby had no idea what he meant by that, but I did. I tried to keep this secret knowledge hidden from my face. God only knows what Dean would do to me if he knew that I had been aware of Sam's hallucinations all this time and hadn't told him.
"It means I'm having a difficult time figuring out what's real," Sam admitted.
I noticed just then that Sam's eyes were red and a little watery as if he was about to start crying. Sam was a big softy, but just like his brother, he didn't cry very often.
"Hallucinations?" Dean asked, not relenting on his brother.
"For starters," Sam answered back honestly.
"Well for starters if you're tripping hell's bells why would you hide that?" Dean growled.
I was getting ready to jump in, thinking that Sam could definitely use a more delicate approach to the subject, but Bobby noticed and quickly and discretely shook his head at me. Reluctantly I remained silent, though I placed a hand on Sam's knee.
"I wasn't hiding it Dean, I just wasn't talking about it. You seemed like you had enough going on as it was," Sam told him. "I just figured I could ride it out and everything would be alright. But it's getting more specific now."
"Specific like what?" Dean asked, his eyes narrowed once again.
So Sam went on to tell us how Lucifer kept appearing to him, telling him how he was still in Hell and that everything was fake, that all of us were fake, and that it was just another form of torture. The looks on Bobby and Dean's faces were that of utter disbelief.
"Wait, are you seeing him right now?" Dean asked, a drink he'd made while Sam had been explaining things now in his hand.
Sam's eyes shot to his left before he looked back at his brother. I already knew the answer, I'd come to recognize when Sam was hallucinating. He nodded his head slowly, not meeting Dean's eyes.
Dean leaned forward towards his brother with a very serious look on his face.
"You know that he's not real, right?" Dean asked in all seriousness.
Sam glanced to his left again, seeing something that none of us could. His jaw was clenching and unclenching.
"He says the same thing about you," Sam said in a quiet voice.