Chapter 11: Poison
This chapter happens kind of concurrently with the one before it, though it does take us further than last chapter. So if you were wondering why some parts of last chapter seemed rushed… uh yeah this is why.
Also I think because I took down my authors note before posting that last chapter, not a lot of people realize I've already updated this fic recently! So yeah, surprise, this is the second chapter that's gone up since my haitus ended! It's good to be back, my lovely nerds.
…
Eblis was a demanding taskmaster, more so than any teacher Sam had ever had in his life.
That included John, even… before.
Eblis brooked no failure and accepted no excuses whatsoever. If Sam had thought that working with the yellow eyed demon in his dreams would prepare him for the real thing, he was wrong.
The first lesson Sam had with the demon was two days after arriving at the mansion.
"Sammy, Sammy Sammy," Eblis said, a satisfied smirk playing across his lips. "I'm quite pleased you could finally join us. I dare say you will improve your abilities by leaps and bounds now that we can work together in person."
The unwavering gaze that the demon set on Sam the second he entered Eblis' office was unnerving, to say the least.
"Okay, so how do we do this?" Sam asked.
Eblis clicked his tongue.
"For now, let's try some practical work. I'll attack, and you defend yourself."
Sam barely had time to ask what the demon meant before he was thrown painfully into a bookcase.
With a groan, he managed to look up just in time to roll away from the lamp that nearly smashed straight into his face.
"What the hell?" Sam shouted, pulling himself to his feet just in time to be violently slammed against the door. He struggled against the demonic hold, but there was nothing doing. He couldn't get out of it.
Eblis tisked.
"That," he announced, swaggering towards the trapped teenager, "was actually pathetic. I expected so very much more from Sam Winchester, the hunter."
"It's not Winchester anymore asswipe," Sam snarled. He caught a glint of metal on the demons desk and pulled with all his might.
And despite his disbelief, the silver letter opener moved, slicing through the air like an arrow, cutting straight through Eblis' shoulder and slamming home into the wall above Sam's hand.
The boy fell to the ground in a heap as Eblis hissed angrily. The demon examined the hole in his shoulder.
"You impertinent brat, do you have any idea how much a tailored suit like this costs?"
"Less than I'm worth, hopefully?" Sam asked, pulling his body up into a standing position. He felt like his entire body was covered in a massive bruise. He fought the urge to gasp in pain.
Eblis looked up to meet the teenagers eyes. And he grinned.
Now that was unsettling.
"That is more like it," Eblis said. "Much better."
Sam gulped.
…
This was fairly typical of their encounters. The second time Sam met with the demon, a week after arriving, Eblis attacked him almost immediately when he entered the demon's study. Sam reacted just in time to kick off the wall and land on his feet this time, but he wasn't ready for the demon to bodily come at him, grabbing his head in a vice like grip.
Immediately, Sam felt pain shoot through his chest, where his anti-possession tattoo was. He looked down to see blood dripping down his shirt and cried out in pain and indignation before he felt another wave of pain and registered that Eblis was actually trying to possess him.
Sam reacted with full-scale alarm.
He could feel the intruding force of the demon in his mind, knew exactly what it felt like from the times he had encountered the demon's presence during his dreams (and didn't that make him feel uncomfortable?), and pushed it away from him.
Eblis went without a fight and Sam regained consciousness to find the demon laughing.
"Congratulations Sammy, with a bit of work, you might not even need that ink to keep a demon out of your noggin."
The demon tapped Sam's forehead and the teenager rolled away, pushing away the hand angrily.
"You bastard!" he yelled.
"Don't worry princess," Eblis rolled his eyes. "I'll show you how to fix it too."
Sam left that meeting shaking from exertion.
…
There were some things Sam had an aptitude for, apparently. Moving things with his mind was one of them. He excelled at being able to keep demons out of his mind – and other psychics, as Eblis informed him, would likely be unable to use any form of mind reading or mind control on him.
However the aptitude Eblis seemed truly interested in fostering was the one that had manifested first.
That was Sam's ability to see into the future.
He spent an entire hour in the demons office inhaling various smoking herbs one morning. Another had been spent in intense meditation. Eblis had gone as far as forcing his way into Sam's mind to try and trigger the prophetic dreams himself.
Unfortunately, nothing seemed to stick. The dreams came or they didn't.
"You will come to me immediately should you find yourself suffering from such… visions… again," Eblis growled.
Sam nodded, unwilling to argue.
He hoped he never had another dream of the future again.
…
The morning after Sam watched two of his fellow psychics fight to the death in a horrifying contest engineered by Eblis himself, Sam was given a task of his own.
Sam was sitting on his bed, propped up against his pillows with his feet dangling an inch from the floor, reading a battered old copy of Les Miserables.
It had been a bad choice on his part, to pick such a dark book, but it matched his mood. He wasn't in the mood for happy endings at the moment.
"Heya Sammy," a voice said from the door. Sam looked up, considering the demon standing at his threshold.
"Eblis," he acknowledged, and went back to the book.
"Now, that's no way to show respect," the demon taunted.
Sam turned a page nonchalantly. He could feel shivers running up and down his spine, fear making his stomach curl uncomfortably.
"The way you had Ava show her respect by murdering someone?" he asked casually. He tried to sound like it didn't bother him, but the bite in his voice was clear.
Eblis chuckled. The sound made Sam clutch harder at the book to keep his hands steady.
"I had wondered if a little blood might make our golden boy squeamish," he said. "To be perfectly honest, I was surprised that you waited this long to throw your little tantrum."
Sam pursed his lips.
"So it's a tantrum if I'm upset at the prospect of potentially being next on the list of teenagers you want to put in a fight to the death?"
Eblis was still smiling.
"Sammy, I never asked for your approval," the demon said. "Just your obedience."
Sam threw the book to the side, standing to glare at the demon.
"Yeah well, that's in pretty short supply," he snarled, and before he could act, Eblis had thrown him across the room without so much as a gesture.
Sam hit the opposite wall hard, and was pinned there by the force of the demons power.
"Did you forget boy?" Eblis growled, stepping forward. "We made a deal. You gain access to the power you need to destroy your enemies, and in exchange, I get your obedience. That was the bargain we struck."
Sam gasped out in pain, unable to reply.
"It seems I was right in finding you a task to keep that wonderful brain of yours busy while you acclimate to your reality," Eblis said thoughtfully, running a gentle hand through Sam's hair. Sam jerked his head away, but the demon just wrapped his hand in the strands and yanked it back painfully.
"Now, this show of defiance is so pathetic it's painful," Eblis crowed. "You and I both know that you're not going to turn down the chance to destroy the demon that ruined your life, even if it means selling yourself to me, body and soul."
And he was right, damn him.
Sam was more than a little bothered by the prospect of watching his peers murder each other for Eblis' amusement, but somehow that fell short of his murderous rage towards the demon that had killed his mother and tainted his blood, driving his – driving John and Dean to torture him horrifically.
"Go suck a dick," Sam snarled, but his anger was hollow, knowing that the demon had won. "And let go of me!"
"Did you think it would be all rainbows and sunshine?" Eblis asked him, not letting go at all. "You did make a deal with a demon, after all."
"Okay, okay, I get it, you're in charge, now will you let me the fuck go and put me down!"
Eblis released Sam's hair with a satisfied smile.
"I am," he agreed. Sam's body was allowed to crumple to the floor with a painful thud. "And don't forget it again. You will give me the respect I deserve."
It wasn't a question.
Sam looked up, the fire in his eyes murderous, but his posture defeated. He was practically on his hands and knees and he was nowhere near strong enough to go one on one with the demon in front of him. Well, he wasn't strong enough yet. Sam was pretty sure that if he survived killing Azazel, Eblis was the next demon on his list to kill.
"I get it," he exhaled, letting the fight leave him entirely for now. "What was it you wanted?"
"Nothing much," Eblis replied lightly. "I just thought it would be nice for you to make a new friend."
…
Eblis lead Sam to another wing in the mansion, through a door guarded by another demon, who let the two of them pass with a respectful bow towards the demon lord.
"You should learn some manners from my staff," Eblis commented lightly.
"You didn't bring me here to be your servant," Sam ground out, walking down a second hallway with the demon. "If I were bowing and scraping all over the place you'd have gotten bored of me months ago."
He didn't have to look at the demons face to know he was smirking.
"So long as you continue to know your place," he allowed. "Here we are."
They had reached another door, this one heavy metal with several industrial locks on it. Eblis disengaged them with a passcode Sam couldn't keep track of, and pushed the door open.
"I'll come back in a bit after your playdate," he said, his voice mocking, and the door swung shut as he left, leaving Sam alone in the room.
Well, not alone, exactly.
The room was fairly nicely furnished, if Spartan in function. There was a desk, a dresser, and a soft light blue carpet. What garnered most of Sam's attention was the bed, which had a girl chained to it.
A metal link surrounded one of her feet, poking out underneath slightly too long pyjama pants with little stromclouds on them. She was wearing a hoodie over the pyjama pants, and looked up through accusing eyes at Sam as he stood awkwardly in the doorway.
I just thought it would be nice if you could make a new friend.
Sam puzzled through that remark before he started putting everything together.
Aw shit.
"Hi," Sam said, to the girl he was sure Eblis wanted Sam to convince to join him. "I'm Sam."
She didn't answer.
"So… come here often?"
The girl looked at him like he'd grown a second head.
"Okay that was stupid."
Yeah duh.
This girl was quite adept at communicating via facial expression, Sam noticed.
"I'm not a demon or anything," he said.
The girl snorted.
"I'm pretty sure I'm mostly human," Sam added, and then winced because that was hardly comforting either. "I'm not really sure how long Eblis plans on leaving me in here, do you mind if I sit?"
The girl shrugged. Sam, not wanting to take her apathy for permission to invade her space any more than it already had been, leaned against the wall behind him and slid down so that he was sitting in a similar position as the girl on the bed, feet in front of him with his knees bent, arms resting on top of them, with his head balanced on his arms.
He exhaled, trying to reign in his anger and desperation. He didn't want to be used like this, but he also knew that this was Eblis' way of proving that he could make Sam do anything. Also, and possibly more critically, it was a way to keep Sam confined and locked away from the rest of the psychics, including Max. He was locked in here with no way to get himself into any trouble or plan any escapes.
The demon really was a genius.
It was starting to piss Sam off a little.
"I don't want to be here either," Sam said quietly. "I watched two of the other psychics fight to the death yesterday. But if I don't learn everything I can about this power, I can't use it to fight the demon that ruined my life."
The girl pursed her lips, glaring at Sam for monologuing.
"Sorry," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "I guess you're psychic too, or you wouldn't be here."
The girl turned her attention away from Sam, staring at the wall above his head.
Sam didn't say anything else, but about an hour later, a demon came to unlock the door to let Sam out for lunch, and his afternoon lessons.
...
The next day, one of Eblis' retinue came to take Sam to the girl again.
"What does he think I can accomplish?" Sam asked the demon. "If she doesn't want to talk to me its not like I can make her."
The demon didn't respond, and Sam was pushed into the room, falling onto his hands and knees on the soft, baby blue carpet.
The girl was laying on the ground this time, eyes concentrated on the ceiling. Sam sat back against the same wall he did before.
"Mind if I just nap?" he asked. "Didn't get much sleep last night, and I don't want to bother you."
The girl looked at Sam incredulously, but he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, letting himself slip asleep.
He woke to a demon shaking him awake angrily.
Sam risked a glance at the girl as he was pulled out of the room. Her lips were pursed together, pulling up at the edges, and the skin around her eyes was slightly creased, as though she were holding back laughter.
…
Two days later, Sam was shown the way to the girl's cell – he'd stopped thinking of it as her room – and shoved in roughly once again. He managed to stay upright, and stepped forward, regaining some of his footing as the door closed behind him.
"Hi again," Sam waved awkwardly at the girl.
"Sam, right?"
Sam was so used to the silence that he almost didn't register the words at first, deafening in the general silence of the room.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "That's me."
"The mostly human psychic," the girl said, and Sam smiled ruefully.
"I'm Lily."
Lily. It fit the girl with the dark hair and sad eyes. She was sitting in a chair by the window, and a halo of light surrounded her.
"Wanna tell me what you're in for?" Sam asked.
Lily shuddered, her gaze leaving Sam and turning towards the too-bright world outside. It almost didn't seem real.
With a start, Sam realized that it was winter. Snow was drifting down from dark gray clouds, falling peacefully and silently towards the ground.
He wondered where they were, because last he knew, he'd been in San Francisco, and he'd never seen snow anywhere near there.
It seemed first like the girl wasn't going to answer. Sam settled himself into what he'd begun to think of as his usual spot, ready to spend the next few hours in silence until one of Eblis' servants came to let him out.
He wondered how Max was doing with his escape plan. He was frustrated by the fact that this little "project" was taking up what little of his precious free time he already had, making it impossible to coordinate with the other boy.
Which of course, was probably the point.
When the demon came for him this time, Sam stood before it could grab him, and waved goodbye to Lily before leaving.
This continued for several days. Sometimes they sat in silence together. Sometimes Sam talked – about his books, about his time living with Janelle and the rest of them, about books he'd read, anything he could think of.
Nothing he said would coax more than a few words out of the other girl. He'd learned that her name was Lily, and confirmed that she was the same age as him, eighteen, and that she was indeed psychic. She was reticent on the subject of exactly how her powers had manifested, which told Sam they scared her even more than they'd scared him at first.
It also meant it was likely a heartbreaking story, and Sam refused to pry. Hey, he understood that kind of pain.
However, on another cold snowy day, Lily volunteered the information herself.
"What makes you keep fighting with him?" Sam asked one day. "Yeah, he's a demon and an asshole, but surely it would be better to be free than chained up. Plus one day, you might be powerful enough to beat him."
"I can't."
The words, ground out through clenched teeth, were almost painful. The regret and grief that chased each other across Lily's expression were potent.
"Why not?"
"I touch things, and they die," Lily said. Her voice was rough. "Just a touch, and their heart stops."
Ah. That explained Eblis' immense desire to gain the girl's loyalty.
"That's awful."
"That's not even the half of it," Lily said quietly. "I woke up one morning, and I touched my girlfriend."
Sam heard in those words a world full of grief that he knew intimately.
"I'm sorry for your loss," he said quietly. "You must have loved her a lot."
Lily nodded helplessly, tears falling down her cheeks silently.
"We were gonna run away and get married," she whispered.
"Do you want to tell me about her?" Sam asked.
Lily shook her head minutely.
"Hey, that's okay," Sam said. "I get it. You feel like the sadness is so strong it might swallow you up, like nothing can ever be okay again. That kind of power is as terrifying as it is awful. I can't imagine how you feel right now, but I do know what it feels like to hurt so much you don't know how you can possibly keep going."
"How did you manage it?" Lily asked.
"Badly," Sam answered. "I'm here, aren't I?"
After several long moments of silence, Lily spoke again.
"I killed her," she said in a horrified voice. "How can I possibly learn to use the powers that murdered the woman I love?"
And that, Sam thought, was a very valid question.
It was in that second that Sam committed himself to breaking Lily out of here. Max had gone missing, and Sam had no idea what had happened to him, but he was going to make sure that Lily regained her freedom if he could manage it.
This time, it was Eblis who came to pick up Sam, and he was pissed.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Sam was slammed up against the wall in the hallway, invisible hands coming up around his throat to choke him. He gasped for breath, trying to rip phantom appendages away from his windpipe, but it was a useless endeavor.
"Let me be as clear as possible," Eblis said. His tone was clipped with rage. "You make progress, or I kill her. If she cannot be rehabilitated, she is of no further use to me."
Sam's expression was flat, but he felt fear racing at his heart.
What he needed was to get Lily out of here, but that would be exponentially easier if they managed to convince Eblis that nothing was wrong.
Sam needed the demon if he was going to build the skills necessary to kill Azazel, no matter how much he hated the demons brutality. Sometimes he wondered if Eblis was any better than Azazel. But if Sam had to turn himself into a monster to destroy the demon that destroyed his family…
Well, then.
He'd do whatever he had to.
But that didn't mean he wanted his friends to stay in danger.
So the next time Eblis guided him to the room where Lily was being held prisoner, Sam put on his most convincing pair of puppy dog eyes, and set about trying to convince the girl to change her mind.
"It won't work," she told him, her voice hollow, staring off into space.
"Why?" Sam demanded, breaking all pretense. "Why are you so determined to let him kill you? Because that is what is going to happen if you don't at least pretend like this is changing your mind!"
A muscle in Lily's jaw twitched.
"Please, Lily, tell me what's going on!" Sam pleaded. "I don't want to watch you die."
The silence between them stretched on, like it had the very first time they had met.
Sam was certain he would have to leave before Lily said anything at all, but then the girl opened her mouth.
"He's feeding us demon blood," Lily said.
Sam's blood went cold.
He had to have misheard.
"What?" he demanded.
Lily looked him straight into the eye.
"You heard me."
"Why?"
Lily shrugged.
"Hell if I know," she said. "I think it's because the blood amplifies our powers. It makes us stronger, and it makes us dependent on him. He wants an army that's completely, unerringly loyal to him, doesn't he?"
Sam was stunned.
The fights to the death, those were bad enough. Lily's imprisonment and Max going missing, both were even worse. This? This was proof he'd made a serious fucking mistake.
"How do you know?" he asked desperately, clutching at straws.
"I snuck into the kitchen one night, I wanted to grab something to drink," Lily answered. "I got caught, and its how I ended up here. If you want proof, I suggest you check in around two or three in the morning, see what they do to the food down there. Go look for yourself."
Sam had goose bumps when he left the room.
He missed the fact that as he did so, Eblis slid smoothly into the room.
"Now, what did you go and tell my protégé this time around?" he asked pleasantly. "He was rather upset when he left."
Lily glared back at the demon.
"Go to hell," she said. "I told him the truth – that you're using all of us for your own damn army. That this has nothing to do with the cause he wants to fight for and should get out while he still can."
Eblis wore a mocking smile as he shook his head, feigning sadness.
"I think you've outlived your usefulness," he said. "And you were promising, too. It will be such a shame."
Lily jerked involuntarily against the restraints that held her to her bed.
She'd protect the information she gave Sam at any cost.
She wanted to get him out of here.
It wasn't as though she was particularly committed to surviving very long anyway. She'd never wanted to outlive the woman she loved, especially not when said woman had died at her hands.
…
Sam made his move in the early hours of the morning. He'd stayed up reading, which wasn't at all unusual for the Winchester boy. He had a reputation for being a loner and a bit of a nerd, which made him a pariah in most social groups of adolescents, and was even true in this particularly exceptional grouping.
When the grandfather clock in the library chimed two, Sam got up and stretched, putting the book he was reading away as though he was getting ready to go to sleep.
Blearily, he wandered down towards the kitchen. He'd never quite resolved whether or not Eblis used security cameras to monitor them (honestly, he wasn't sure that he would be able to, given how demon's electromagnetic fields disrupted electronics so thoroughly) but in case anyone was watching, his behavior would look thoroughly normal.
There were three demons in the kitchen when he got there. They weren't talking, but he could see them wheeling a giant cart around the kitchen. He couldn't get a look at the containers that were being carted around on it, but he had a horrible feeling that what he was about to discover would only confirm the terrifying, sickening truth of what Lily had told him that afternoon.
"Boss wants a word," A fourth demon appeared in the opposite doorway, and all three demons looked up.
"What for?" one of them asked.
"Heck if I know," the new arrival said. "But lets not keep him waiting."
Once he was sure they were gone, Sam edged around the corner to peer at the large, clear containers.
They were full of a dark red, viscous liquid.
Blood.
Son of a bitch.
Son of a fucking BITCH.
Sam felt his stomach turn, nauseous and pained. The weight of his mistake came crashing down on him all at once, regret and fury twisting around inside until he could barely think, barely breathe –
He had to get out of here.
Panic was chocking at this throat, cutting off rational thought.
He needed to leave, to run – Sam was most of the way towards the front door before he managed to reel himself back in.
He was only going to have one shot to break out of here. And if he was as obvious as Max had been, he was going to go missing just like the other boy. That or Eblis would send his troops after Sam.
He'd been willing to put up with Eblis' horrifying brutality, but this was completely different.
There was a line. Sam was willing to turn himself into a monster to destroy Azazel, but this?
This wasn't worth it.
He'd kill the demon his own way or die trying but he wasn't going to prove John's dark predictions of his future.
He had to escape.
And he had to be smart about it.
His mind was racing, a deafening cacophony of self-castigation and denial, but he put it all away, shoving aside the part of his mind that was panicking.
He let his pulse slow, and sat down on his own floor. He pushed away the panic. He pushed away the fear.
Dean, in the before, always used to compliment Sam for being smart, for having some big geeky brain he could turn to any kind of information or skill. And he wasn't wrong – book learning, languages, exorcisms, all of them came easy to the younger brother. Dean's skills had been kinesthetic in nature – wiring cars and computers, working with his hands, another kind of genius entirely. But Sam was clever, and he turned every single bit of cleverness and intelligence he had towards the problem facing him now.
When John Winchester had decided to settle himself and his progeny in Denver for a year long stretch, Sam had attended a reasonably well-funded charter school. They had had a fully equipped lab and everything.
Anyway, Sam remembered that about halfway through the year, his class had done an experiment to test out the effectiveness of different antacids. And one of the things he'd taken note of was the fact when acids and bases are combined, they'll produce salt.
So he needed acids and bases.
This was going to take a while – at least a few days.
The thought made Sam ache with anger and frustration, and he felt an impotent rage build up in his stomach.
He wanted out – he wanted to run and run until there was a world of distance between him and this awful mistake, the gamble he'd thought would be worth it, but turned out to be the worst fucking decision he'd ever made in his entire life.
Acids, he could find. And there was a box of strong antacids in the medicine cabinet, which were really just bases.
Sam's hands clenched into fists. His mind was racing at a hundred miles per hour and was finding it difficult to move past the knowledge that he'd been played so well and so thoroughly he hadn't even suspected anything.
Right now, that anger wasn't productive. He needed to push past it, keep thinking logically. He needed an acid.
Vinegar. Vinegar was a pretty strong acid. He could mix vinegar and antacids.
Or… Anything with a hydroxide, really. Drain-o was highly basic, and it was straight up sodium hydroxide, which was present in very small quantities in antacids.
Ideally, Sam would want an acid and a base of equal strength and molarity so he'd get nothing but salt water when he mixed them, but the two compounds might produce enough salt to get the helhounds off his trail.
He'd have to sneak into the kitchen at some point in the morning.
It was imperative that he avoid meals until he escaped though, because he had no idea what they were dosing the psychic kids in.
A sudden image appeared to Sam.
Max, shaking, eyes fever-bright, jittery, anxious, acting irrational.
He was acting like a junkie coming down off a fix.
He wondered if Max had known the truth, or if detoxing had just been a side effect from the boy's near constant research and drive to stay as far from the other psychics as he could.
Either way, Sam knew he had to leave soon, or he was going to be facing the same handicap – potentially as soon as tomorrow evening. He didn't know how long he could go without a dose. For all he knew, having only been ingesting small amounts in food for the last few weeks, he might not have as hard as fall as Max did, after almost a year of being dosed.
At any rate, it was too unpredictable a variable to plan for, so he'd just have to work fast.
He was going to blow a hole straight through Eblis' defenses and make a run for it.
Sam was officially done playing for this team.