"What do we do?" Dean's voice was low and harsh in the too quiet car. Cas still had his arm across Dean's chest and seemed to have no plans toward removing it.
"I think we drive." Cas was staring straight ahead at the faceless creatures. They were not moving. They were all around the car.
Dean slipped on his seatbelt. Cas shuddered a bit at his side. "They are the formless ones. The creatures that were left unfinished during creation."
"What do you mean?" Dean was reluctant to turn away from them, but he wanted to see Cas' face, feel grounded by it's confidence.
Dean glanced at him and did not see confidence. He instead saw fear. "When the old ones dove into Chaos to make all that lives, there were false starts, creative beginnings that never went anywhere. These creatures are the products of those failed attempts at creation. Some of them were visited later by Lucifer, sculpted into very special demons."
"So, these are not our friends." Dean looked steadily out at the one that stood right in front of the car's hood. The flesh stretched taut over what should have been its face began to writhe and reshape.
It spoke. "Come out and play."
"Go, Cas." Cas didn't move. Dean grabbed his arm and squeezed it. "Go, Cas!" It seemed to snap him out of it a little. He slammed on the accelerator, and the car made an angry squeal of tires on road. The engine roared, and they did not move.
The creature had its hands rested on the hood of the car. The writhing mass of skin on its face stretched out as though something inside of it was trying to escape. Cas stopped pressing on the accelerator. The creature seemed to be growing. Dean reached back behind the seat for the duffle bag that he hoped was there. It was. He pulled it to the front and began looking for something that might be an appropriate weapon. Suddenly, the window next to him was populated by another writhing face. Cas' window was also occupied. "It seems as though they can't get in, but they can hold us here." Cas was quiet.
"Well, that's not a good thing. What do they want?" The one at the hood of the car had grown to about 5 and a half feet. It no longer resembled a child. It had the build of a woman. The face morphed and stretched again, and then it became almost human. A mouth split across the bottom and darkness pooled up where eyes should have been. Cas' hand sat on the bench seat between them. Dean reached down to it and squeezed it. He wasn't sure why this seemed reasonable, but he did it anyway. "You okay, Cas?" Cas looked pale and his eyes seemed to be pinched and fearful.
"It is trying to communicate with me. It is unpleasant."
"What is it saying?" Dean squeezed his hand again, keeping him focussed, he hoped on the moment.
"It is trying to draw out my emotions, sorrow in particular." Cas closed his eyes and dropped his head.
Dean reached over and pulled Cas close. "Come on, don't let them get to you. Why make you feel emotions? That doesn't make sense." Dean was really just trying to keep Cas focused.
"An angel governed by emotions is a dangerous thing. They want me to crack. They want me to become unstable. They know that I am already a little broken."
"What do you mean, a little broken. You aren't broken, Cas." Dean felt irritation rising in him over the fact that they were twisting him up. He grabbed his face and made him look at him. "You aren't broken," he said with more force.
"I am, and they are using it." He looked out the front of the car and said, "Oh no."
Dean followed his gaze and saw that the creature at the hood had completely transformed. It was Charlie. "Oh shit, no." Dean let go of Cas and moved to the door. Cas grabbed him.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm going out to her." Dean was moving again to open the door.
"No. It's not her." Cas seemed to be more focused now. He gripped Dean's arm until it hurt.
Dean looked from his arm to Charlie and back to Cas. "Hello, bitches. You here to let me die again?"
Dean turned back to Charlie. Her smirk dark, her hand curled up at her side in a tight fist. "Charlie." Dean's words a near whisper.
"It's not her, Dean," Cas said again.
"It's her." Dean reached out to the dash and leaned toward her.
"It's me, Dean." He could hear her words almost like there was nothing between them, like she was in his head or at least in the car.
"I'm so sorry." Dean leaned closer, hand reaching out to the window.
"Sorry doesn't bring me back. Nothing's gonna bring me back."
"She's not real, Dean. It's not Charlie." Cas squeezed his arm again and Dean looked back at him for a moment before turning again to Charlie.
"I killed them, all of them for what they did to you." His voice was a low husky thing. Her mouth curled up with the words.
"You killed all of the men responsible for my death?" She lowered her hands again to the hood and uncurled her fingers, long and clawlike out onto the dark metal. She looked up through a dip of her head, past her dark eyelashes, her red hair nearly obscuring her face. "All of them?"
"All of them," Dean answered.
"Not all of them," she said with a tip of her head.
"Dean, don't listen to her. Focus on me, on my voice. But even Cas seemed to be struggling with something. His eyes squinted and a tear seemed to be forming at the edge. Dean was focused on that for a moment, the tear on the precipice of falling.
"You let some of them live." Charlie's voice pooled in his mind and he turned back to her.
"I didn't. I even killed a child. It was wrong, and I did it." Dean's eyes felt wet, his cheeks too.
"Yet you didn't kill your brother or the angel. And they certainly had a hand in this. You certainly did not end your own life. And I would be alive now if you hadn't done the monumentally stupid things that you did. How much would the world benefit from all of you just ending?" She dragged her nails back and forth across the hood. He could almost hear the scratch, and his skin perked up in goosebumps.
"I'm so sorry." He felt his body shaking.
Cas clutched at his chin and forced Dean to look at him. "Push her out of your head, Dean. You are not responsible for her death."
Cas was shaking too. Dean tried to focus on him. He could feel something course through him, like warm water pouring over his mind. "Hmm, Dean." Charlie's voice again. "You let the angel pluck out bits of you. Why'd you let him do that?" Her words felt like razors slicing him open. "There's holes in here."
"Focus on me, Dean." Cas' voice was a calm stream, warm and inviting. He could feel the warmth moving through him. He could feel the holes though too. Charlie was probing at them, he thought. He felt his mind reeling from the intensity of their presence within it. He was shaking. The spaces were being filled by something, Charlie? The spaces felt like gravel in glass. The gravel jarring in its presence, seemed like it wanted to break him. Then Cas spoke again, just one word. "Dean." He could feel some of the emptiness filling, not with something so sharp, but instead with something familiar. All of that was contained in Cas' one word. He had spoken Dean's name countless times before, but this time was different. This time, there was something like magic in the speaking of it.
"You are not Charlie." He said the words aloud, hoping that it would be enough. He repeated them again, this time with more force. "You are not Charlie." He faced her, and she leaned more fully into the space in front of the car. Her torso swooped down almost parallel to the hood, her elbows jutted out at her sides like wings. There was a noise, like screaming that surrounded the car. A bright array of lights came down on them in streaks. Cas let go of Dean, and Dean felt the warm traces of Cas retreating from his mind as well. He assumed that it was Cas, the warmth, as it had been familiar. Something else was in his head now too, something like a memory that was lingering just beyond a foggy bay. He could almost make sense of it, but now was not a time for deep thinking.
The light came down from the sky in sharp blasts. They pierced the creatures that surrounded them. The screaming continued, only now it was more than the bird-like screech, and now it was more agonizing, almost human. The creatures were creating an unholy noise with each blast of light that passed through them. The space around the car was growing brighter and brighter. The light began swirling around the car now in a tornado of wind and howling force.
"I think you should try to drive." Dean shook Cas out of his reverie and gestured wildly ahead.
Cas slammed on the accelerator and the car actually moved forward. The creatures moved aside. Some just fell to the ground. Once it felt like they had driven over something, but Dean did not dwell too much on that. The light stayed with them for a time, swirling around them faster and faster. Cas accelerated more. Dean gripped the seat beneath him. "Claire." Cas said the name without preamble.
"What about her?" Dean was splitting his attention between the road ahead and Cas.
"She's afraid. The creatures are around her home. She wants to know what to do." He looked to Dean then as they kept moving forward. The light was slowing in its fight. Cas slowed too. The light stopped and everything was still. Around the car there was nothing alarming, no creatures, no Charlie, no whatever was tormenting Cas. There was just light coming from somewhere. Dean leaned into the dash and peered up to the sky. There were birds there, like the ones that he had seen in the last town. They were circling the sky above the Impala as though they were predators circling the body of their next meal. Cas leaned forward and looked up too. Cas closed his eyes a moment and gripped the steering wheel.
"Are you okay?" Dean reached out to him, pressing his hand to his shoulder.
"I'm fine. I'm sending feelings to Claire. She needs to be brave. I can at least give her that." He straightened in his seat. Then he said, "We can go now." Dean removed his hand from Cas' shoulder and watched him move the car onward, the light following them on their path toward Muncie.
They ran through the house that had already been roused as if they all felt the change simultaneously. "Did you see them?" Alex asked as she came to Claire's side.
"I did. They don't have faces." Claire felt the brush of Alex's arm against hers. It was cold. She grabbed a jacket from the coat rack by the front door and tossed it to Alex.
"Don't need this. It's too bulky for fighting in." Alex was about to toss it back.
Jody stepped over to them with Donna and Sam at her side. "Put the coat on Alex. It's cold." Jody didn't give her a chance to argue. Instead, she stalked off out the door.
Linda came into the room and turned to Kevin. "What's happening?"
"There are creepy, faceless creatures surrounding the house," Kevin answered quickly as they each moved out to the porch with the others.
"Weapons?" Kevin seemed to understand what she was asking without any further explanation.
"They seem too solid for poltergeists, too inhuman to be ghouls, and too similar to each other to be much of anything that we have experience with, so I'd take iron or an angel blade. Angel blade seems like the smart move." He rattled it all off quickly. Linda went to the hall closet where she had apparently stowed some of her gear. She pull out an angel blade like the one she had seen Castiel carrying. She tossed it to Kevin and pulled out a second one for herself.
Claire had grabbed her duffle bag on the way down the stairs and was pulling out the angel sword. Sam walked up to her. "You're not seriously thinking of fighting them?" It was almost more of a statement than a question.
"Why not, Sam? It worked with the bird straps. I think that it'll work on them." The house was still bathed in light; although, it was not as strong as it had been before. There was a creature standing a little to the front of the others. It's not face was stretching and moving in a sickening fashion. Alex stepped toward it.
"No." She said the one word and everyone turned to her.
"Alex. What's going on?" Jody had her mom voice. She moved to Alex's side and put her hand on her shoulder.
"It's my mom. She's calling me. She wants me to come to her. Don't you hear her? They have her out there." Alex looked at Jody like her whole world was agony. Her eyes darted back to the creature that was now taller than the others. Claire noticed the one next to it had become smaller. The hair on its head shrinking back into the scalp, the color lightening as it did.
"It's not real," Jody said, but even she was starting to shake as she looked at the small creature.
Claire could not hear what was being said to Alex, but the small one developed a mouth, a wide gaping maw of darkness. It opened up wide and from out of it came the word, "Mommy."
Jody shook and crumbled to the ground beside Alex. Her hands flew to her mouth as she stared wide-eyed at the creature. "No, no, no, no." She was rocking back on her heels a bit, clutching her mouth as she stared straight ahead.
"Mommy, it's dark." The mouth spilled out words again. The creature was beginning to look more human. Jody stood and made a move toward the creature. Two unsure hands stretched out ahead of her. Donna was immediately in front of her.
"Don't you even think about going there, Jody Mills. Don't you even." She grabbed Jody's arms and gave her a shake. "I don't know what that thing is saying to you, but you look at me. You don't go there. Not one step, you hear me?" Jody did not look like she was hearing her, but she nodded eventually.
"Are you hearing anything from them, Claire," Sam asked.
"No, you?" She replied.
"Not yet, but I think that they are concentrating on just them." Sam pulled out a gun and leveled it at the female creature. It was now much more human in its appearance. He aimed and pulled the trigger. The noise that blasted out was too loud in the quiet dark. Alex fell to the ground as the noise rocketed out. Claire moved to her side and braced her up in her arms.
"Alex?" She leaned into her ear a little. "Come on, be okay." Alex began convulsing. Her eyes rolled up in her head. Sam aimed at the other creature, the child sized one. He fired. When the bullet struck the creature, Jody fell too. Donna had her though.
"Jody?" She pulled her close to her chest and then turned to Sam. "I don't think that you should be shooting them anymore. They're hurting Jody and Alex." She sounded calm, and Claire just wanted to yell. She instead sent out a prayer. Cas, I'm scared. There are creatures. They are hurting Jody and Alex. They don't have faces. Tell me what to do. There was likely nothing that he could do, but she needed something. She settled Alex down to the earth and stood with the sword.
"We need to fight them." Sam was at her side. "They are getting into the light, and into their heads. We're next."
Sam nodded, "I agree. Any suggestions?"
"Go down swinging." She raised the sword and moved toward them. Sam fell into step at her side. She looked past him and noticed that Linda stood at his side with her angel blade. Kevin moved to her left and Claire could feel the coldness radiating from him as he raised his angel blade in front of him.
"You don't mind company, right?" Linda's mouth curled up into a grim look of happy determination.
"The more the merrier," Sam said. "Careful out there. Try to fight from inside the light. Don't listen to them, and don't let it pull you in." They reached the edge of the light and the two creatures that Sam had shot down were laying in the dirt, no blood surrounding them. They had also reverted back to their original forms, faceless.
Another one stepped toward them, its face contorting in the way that the others had before it. "We need to take it down before it changes. This is when it is reading us. I can feel it." Claire raised her sword and brought it down on the creature. The sword cut through the creature like it was made of soft clay. It fell to the ground in a wet sounding flop.
It did not move. Another stepped forward. "That seemed too easy," Kevin said. He stabbed the creature in its head. It fell to the ground. More began coming to them. They each began slashing at them, and although it was easy to defeat them, there seemed to be no end in sight for this particular onslaught. The four of them formed a tight knot with their backs to each other. They moved out from each other just slightly to maximize their fighting stances. They slashed out with their weapons. Sam just shot them until he ran out of bullets. He then began stabbing at the creatures with a rather small blade, containing intricate patterns.
Claire noticed that his moves were graceful and skilled. He balanced himself in a way that seemed like he could leap out in an instant. He held out one arm almost like a shield and the other moved up, out, and through the onslaught of creatures. The crowd of them around their little cluster was growing. They slashed away. Claire managed to take down two at once with a wide curving slice. Kevin and Linda were quick with their moves, almost identical.
Claire was drawn out of her single-minded fighting. She did not know how long it had lasted. Then, a voice called out to her. "Claire!" She turned toward it. It was then that she noticed just how far they had gotten from the light. Alex, Jody, and Donna were standing at the edge of the light, some thirty feet away. "They're leading you away. Come back." The others seemed to notice at the same time. The creatures weren't easy; they were just expendable. They seemed to be trying to draw them into the dark.
As if they all just understood the need to return, they began fighting their way back to the house. The swarm of creatures increased in numbers on the side nearest the house. There were almost no creatures on the other side. They pushed on but made no progress. Claire could see Alex just past the slashing motions of her sword. Alex had gotten a hold of an impressive scimitar "Damn it Alex. You aren't going." Jody tried to grab her arm, but Alex shrugged her off. Donna ran back to the house and came out with two swords that had been leaning on the back wall of the hall closet. Claire had seen them there before, and had even tested them out. Alex was already slashing away at the creatures nearest the light. She was making her way to the cluster.
"Alex, wait for us!" Jody shouted at her. Alex, to her credit, did slow up a little. Claire smiled a little since she knew just was an accomplishment that was for her.
"Back to back. Pair off. Mom, back to Sam." Kevin ordered and they complied.
"Keep making yourselves move toward the house. They don't want us there, so we need to be there." Sam slashed out at a small creature, or maybe it just looked small next to Sam's tall frame.
Alex swung out her scimitar in sweeping arcs on either side. Jody had managed to get close to her, but she kept a little distance in order to keep out of Alex's range. Donna was at Jody's back. Her fighting style was more brute force stabbing. She was quick, but there was something about how she looked when she fought. Claire thought for a moment, that she was putting a whole lot of anger into each swipe. On the battlefield, Donna apparently let her inner demons out. Her mouth was a tight line, and her eyes looked like they were calculating out five steps into the future. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail that whipped out from side to side with each fluid motion that she made.
Alex reached them. Her face beaming out with the joy of an accomplished mission. "You all looked like you were having all of the fun without me." She smirked as she swung out her scimitar at a creature that loomed out next to Claire. It seemed like the creatures were becoming more vicious. Another one of them swooped toward Claire, its face a taut stretching mass, writhing evermore toward her. Alex swung at it at the same time that Claire did.
"Keep moving back toward the house." Kevin leaned back into her as he spoke.
"I'm moving as much as I can. I think they are getting worse. It's like that cartoon with the brooms." Claire stopped talking and slashed back at two creatures that were reaching for her.
Alex yelled, "Yeah, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice." Alex slashed out with her scimitar and she did not see the creature at her back. Clair lunged forward, pushing her aside as the creature grabbed her. It held Claire's face and pushed its own facelessness to her. The stretch of its skin on her felt sick and wet.
"Everyone you love will die, because of you. It's how it has always been. You know it is true." She felt like she couldn't move. The creature's hands moved up her face, cupping her cheeks.
"Claire!" She felt like she was losing consciousness. A light suddenly blazed out bright and fiery overhead. She felt her body slipping to the ground.
A deep voice called out from overhead. "Close your eyes!" She closed her eyes and felt the warmth, nearly too hot all across her skin. The creature was no longer holding her. It must have been keeping her a little upright, because now she fell the rest of the way to the ground. The light was so bright that she could almost see it past her lids. There was screaming now, an inhuman wail that surrounded them all. Next was a wind, howling around them. The light seemed to be moving with the wind. She felt hands on her, not like before, but they were gentle, and stroked back her hair from her face.
"You can open your eyes, Claire." The voice said, close to her ear.
Claire couldn't move. She felt like a weight was sitting on her chest. Stronger arms pressed beneath her, and she felt her body heave up into the air. "I got her." Sam's voice was low and reassuring.
"She's gonna be alright?" It was more a question than a statement. Alex sounded worried. "She was trying to save me from that thing. I should have been paying attention. Shit, shit, shit. Why didn't I pay attention?"
Jody spoke then, "She'll be okay. We just need to get her inside, check her for injuries." She felt a hand on her arm. "She's a good fighter. Gotta wonder where she got her skills. Brave too. When I was her age, I wouldn't have been able to handle that sort of thing."
Donna spoke then, "Jody, we need to look at you too. Looks like your whole side is cut open."
"It's nothing." Jody's hand squeezed her. "Check on Claire first."
They were apparently mounting the steps and going into the house. She could hear the screen door closing with a slam. She felt her body being lowered to the hard floor. They were pulling off her jacket and probing at her sides and arms. Her mind felt like it was swimming with images and light. She could hardly concentrate. She wanted to open her eyes, tell them all that she was fine, but instead she let go, and let her mind fall into a more complete darkness.
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AN: Thank you all for reading this far. I'm sorry about taking so long between chapters. The DCBB is really eating up my time. I hope to finish this fic and that one soon so that I can get on with the final installment of the Cas the King of Karaoke fic. So much to write, so little time. Thank you to all of you that have left comments and faves. I appreciate it. 'Til next time.
