Here is chapter 12: A Rumor of Angels. I thought it went nicely with the whole idea that Anna can hear what the angels are saying. This one is quite long, too. Thanks to those who left reviews for the last chapter. I got some really great ones. Not much else to say here but enjoy chapter 12:)
The Winchesters found Anna hiding at the church after all. She was cowering behind an old stained-glass window in the room at the top of the tower. The fact that all three of them had their guns raised probably didn't help any.
"Anna?" Sam said as they tucked their guns away. "We're not gonna hurt you. We're here to help. My name is Sam. This is my brother Dean and my sister Allie."
"Sam?" Anna repeated. "Not Sam Winchester?"
The three of them exchanged confused looks. "Uh, yeah," Sam replied.
Anna emerged from behind the glass. "And you're Dean? The Dean?"
"Well, yeah," Dean replied sounding as confused as Allie felt. "The Dean, I guess." Allie looked at him. He had that look that he always got when he saw a hott girl. Of course.
"It's really you," Anna said in amazement. "Oh my God. The angels talk about you. You were in Hell, but Castiel pulled you out and some of them think you can help save us." She turned to Sam. "And some of them don't like you at all." Then she turned to the third Winchester sibling. "And they talk about you, too, Allie, a couple of them especially. They talk about the three of you all the time. I feel like I know you."
Okay, that was kind of creepy. Allie couldn't imagine why the angels would be talking about her. And she could not figure out why Anna could hear what the angels were saying.
"So you talk to angels?" Dean asked.
"No, no. No way," Anna answered. "They probably don't even know I exist. I just kind of overhear them."
"You overhear them?" Sam repeated.
"Yeah, they talk and sometimes I just…hear them in my head."
"Like right now?" Dean asked.
"Not right this second. But a lot. And I can't shut them out. There are so many of them."
"So they lock you up with a case of the crazies when really you were just tuning in to angel radio?"
"Yes," she replied. She was obviously relieved that someone finally believed her and didn't try to tell her that she was crazy. "Thank you."
"Anna, when did the voices start?" Sam asked. "Do you remember?"
"I can tell you exactly. September 18th."
"Day I got outta Hell," Dean stated.
"First words I heard, clear as a bell: 'Dean Winchester is saved.'"
"Wow," Allie said.
"What do you think?" Dean asked.
"This is above my paygrade, man," Sam replied.
Allie just shook her head and shrugged.
"Well at least now we know why the demons want you so bad," Dean said. "They get a hold of you and they can hear everything the other side is cooking. You're 1-900-ANGEL."
Anna smiled at Dean. He was such a charmer. Girls always fell for it. "Hey, do you know-are my parents okay? I-I didn't go home. I was afraid."
Allie felt a lump rise in her throat. How were they going to tell this poor girl who was already terrified that demons had killed her parents to get to her? It was so unfair. To Allie, this was even worse than what had happened to Wes.
Before any of them could give her an answer, however, the door to the room burst open and in walked Ruby. Allie gritted her teeth. Why did Ruby have to get involved? The Winchesters could handle this on their own, sans demonic assistance.
"You got the girl?" Ruby asked hastily. "Good, let's go."
Anna cried out and stumbled backwards at the sight of the demon. "Her face!"
"It's okay, it's okay," said Sam calmly to Anna. "She's here to help."
"Ha!" Allie said.
"Don't be so sure," Dean said.
"We have to hurry," Ruby stated.
"Why?" Dean demanded.
"Because a demon's coming big time, and we can fight later, Dean."
"Well, that's pretty convenient. Showing up right when we find the girl with some big wig on your tail?"
"I didn't bring him here, you did."
"What?"
"He followed you from the girl's house. We gotta go now!"
Allie found it hard to believe her. Sure, she'd been right about Anna…but who was to say that she hadn't tricked them into finding the girl for her so that she could hand deliver her to the demons and get the bounty? Allie could feel it deep down in her gut that Ruby wasn't being completely honest about something. She was a freaking demon, for crying out loud.
"Dean," Sam said, pointing to a statue of the Virgin Mary in the corner. Red tears were staining its cheeks as they spilled from her closed eyes. Allie's memory flashed to Pamela's face after her eyes had been burned out of her head, blood streaking her cheeks, and she shuddered. It was sometimes easy for her to forget that Castiel had done that.
"It's too late," Ruby stated quietly. "He's here."
"Come with me," Sam said to Anna, and he led her to a closet in the back corner of the room.
Allie and Dean watched as blood continued spilling from the closed eyes of the statue. Sam rejoined them and pulled out his flask of holy water.
"No, Sam," Ruby protested. "You've gotta pull him right away."
"Like Hell he does!" Allie exclaimed. "He's not using his powers."
"Now's not the time to belly ache about Sam going dark side," Ruby shot at her. "He does his thing, he exorcises that demon, or we die."
Allie looked to Dean waiting for him to back her up, but he didn't. She clenched her fists, rage bubbling in the pit of her stomach, as Sam put the flask back into his breast pocket. They all turned to the door. It burst open, and in walked an older man in his late fifties. As he came closer, Sam raised his hand, palm out. The demon's eyes turned completely white, reminding Allie of Lilith, and he rubbed his throat. He coughed lightly as his eyes returned to the normal color of his meat suit. Sam's powers wouldn't work; this demon was too damn strong. In short, they were screwed.
"That tickles," the demon joked. "You don't have the juice to take me on, Sam." With a wave of his hand, Sam was dragged forward as if by an invisible rope, straight through the railing and down the stairs.
"Sam!" Allie cried. Before she could even think of moving, the demon gave another flick of his wrist, and Allie flew backwards, hitting the wall. She blacked out for a couple of seconds, but when she came to, Ruby was gone, and the new demon had Dean pinned against the wall.
"We were so close," the demon said to Dean between punches. "In Hell."
"Alistair," Dean stated in recognition.
The demon chuckled and landed another punch to Dean's face.
Allie struggled to her feet as Sam reappeared and stabbed the demon in the chest with Ruby's knife.
"You're gonna have to try a lot harder than that, son," the demon, Alistair, said. He punched Sam hard in the face, and then pulled the knife from his own chest, reminding Allie of Castiel that night in the barn.
Allie made it over to her brothers. Alistair was between them and the door. They knew they weren't getting out that way. So instead, they turned toward the only other way out: the big window on the opposite side of the room. Great, Allie thought to herself, as they made a running start. They crashed through the glass and fell quickly through the air, toward the hard unyielding Earth.
Allie was sore from head to toe. Between being thrown into a wall and then jumping out of a window, she was covered with bumps and bruises, but she was sure that nothing was broken. She had a pretty good cut on her right side and was trying to stop the bleeding. She'd had worse in the past. And her brothers had worse right now. Sam had a large gash on his left bicep, which he was stitching on his own. Dean's left shoulder was dislocated and he cradled his arm gingerly to his side.
"You almost done?" Dean asked breathlessly after spitting a mouthful of blood into the sink.
Sam moaned in pain. "Going as fast as I can," he replied.
"Good, 'cause you know I got a dislocated shoulder over here."
"Yeah. I'll pop it back in when I'm finished."
"Can we not talk?" Allie asked, leaning back against the couch, her shirt pulled up, holding a towel to her wound. She pulled it away. The bleeding had mostly stopped. It wasn't nearly as deep as Sam's, so she didn't really need to stitch it shut. She used a gauze pad to clean it up a little better then dabbed it with antibiotic ointment before taping a bandage over it. Her head was pounding. It was probably just a minor concussion, but it still hurt.
Dean took a large swig out of a bottle of alcohol. Sam finished his stitches. "Give me that," he said gesturing to the bottle in Dean's hand. He dumped some of the contents onto the wound to cleanse it.
"So you lost the magic knife, huh?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, saving your ass," Sam replied. "Who the Hell was that demon?" Great question, Allie thought. He and Dean had obviously met before.
"No one good. We gotta find Anna."
"Ruby's got her. I'm sure she's okay."
Allie could think of a million and one choice things to say to that, but every part of her body hurt. She didn't even want to move enough muscles to speak.
"All right," Sam continued, pushing himself off the bed. "Come on." He moved around to Dean's left side, placing a hand on either side of Dean's affected shoulder. "On three. One." With a loud cracking sound, he popped Dean's shoulder back. Dean yelled in pain, making Allie jump.
Dean raised his arm over his head as he walked back to the sink. "Ah," he groaned. "You sure about Ruby? I think it's just as likely she used us to find radio girl and brought that demon in to kill us."
"No, she took Anna to keep her safe," Sam stated confidently.
"Yeah, sure," Allie replied. "You better be right, Sam. If anything happens to Anna, it's on you."
"Why hasn't she called to tell us where she is?" Dean asked as he held an ice pack to his injured shoulder.
"Because that demon is probably watching us right now. Waiting to follow us right back to Anna. That's probably why he let us go."
Dean laughed sarcastically. "You call this letting us go?"
"Yeah, I do. Look, killing us would have been no problem for that thing. That's why for now, we just gotta lay low and wait for Ruby to contact us."
"Yeah, and how's she gonna do that?" Dean turned to face Sam. "Why do you trust her so much?"
"I told you."
"You've gotta do better than that." He paused before continuing. "I'm not trying to pick a fight here. I really wanna understand. But I need to know more. I deserve to know more. Allie really deserves to know more, since you left her behind to hunt demons with Ruby."
"'Cause," Sam replied evenly. "She saved my life."
Allie listened quietly as Sam told them about how he had started drinking heavily when he realized that he couldn't get any demons to make a deal to trade Dean for him. And then one night, Ruby showed up at his hotel room with another demon. She was supposed to kill Sam for Lilith, to make up for helping the Winchesters, but instead killed the other demon. He'd sent her away, told her to let her meat suit go. That was when she had found the dark-haired girl she was riding now, a Jane Doe just taken off life support and dead. She'd tracked him down again and told him that she could help him get Lilith…as long as he started using his powers. It had take him awhile, but he finally got the hang of using them.
What came next made bile rise in Allie's throat. He had slept with her. And he'd gone into way too much detail about how it had happened. Allie felt the need to scratch her own eyes out, but she was sure that she would still see the image of her brother screwing the Hell bitch.
"Sam?" Dean said interrupting Sam's story.
"Yeah?" Sam answered.
"Too much information," Dean said disgustedly.
"Hey, I told you I was coming clean."
"Yeah, but now I feel dirty."
"I feel sick," Allie said. Sam gave her a dirty look.
"Okay," Dean said. "Well, uh, brain-stabbing imagery aside, so far all you've told us about is a manipulative bitch who screwed you, played mind games with you, and did everything in the book to get you to go bad."
"Yeah, well there's more to the story."
"Oh, great," Allie groaned. "We get to hear more about Sam having hot, steamy sex with a demon."
"Allie," Dean said trying to calm her down. "Skip the nudity, please."
Sam continued recounting his story. "Pretty soon after...that, uh, I put together some omens."
"Saying what?" Dean asked.
"Lilith was in town, and I wanted to strike her first." He went on, about how Ruby had begged him not to go after Lilith yet because she knew he wasn't ready. He didn't listen and went anyway, but it had been a trap. A couple of Lilith's stunt demons had kidnapped a little girl to trick Sam into thinking Lilith was in town. If Ruby hadn't showed up when she did, Sam would have been killed, the little girl too, most likely. She had saved his life. Of course it wasn't the first time, so Allie wasn't quite sure why this time it made such a big impact on her brother. And Allie couldn't bring herself to feel grateful. She just couldn't shake the feeling that Ruby had other reasons for helping Sam. "Ruby came back for me," Sam said. "Whatever you have to say, she saved me. More than that, she got through to me. What she said to me, it's what you would have said. If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here."
Allie let out a long slow breath to keep from saying what was on her mind. None of this proved anything. Just because she'd said the words Dean would have had he been around, that didn't make her trustworthy. It just meant that she was a manipulative little slut who knew exactly how to get to Sam and make him do what she wanted.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock on the door.
"Housekeeping," came a woman's voice. Allie was annoyed. She knew the "do not disturb" sign was out; she had hung it herself when they got to the hotel. But apparently, this woman didn't know how to read.
"Not now," Dean replied.
"Sir, I've got clean towels."
Dean got up and opened the door. "Couldn't you just leave 'em at the door?" he asked, glaring at the woman.
Without answering, the very round African American maid shoved a stack of towels at Dean and moved into the room. She pulled the curtain closed and moved over to stand in front of Sam.
"I'm at this address," she told him as she handed him a piece of paper. Allie raised her eyebrows and looked at Dean.
"I'm sorry, what?" Sam asked with a bemused expression.
"Go now," she instructed. "Go through the bathroom window. Don't stop, don't take your car. Don't pass go. There are demons in the hallway and in the parking lot."
Allie gritted her teeth as she realized what was going on. But she didn't say anything. They needed to get to Anna fast before any other demons did.
"Ruby?" Sam exclaimed.
"Okay, yeah. So I'm possessing this maid for a hot minute. So sue me."
"What about-"
"Coma girl? Slowly rotting on the floor back at the cabin with Anna, so I gotta go. See you when you get there. Go!" She turned and walked back out of the room.
"Have I mentioned how much this sucks?" Allie said as she got to her feet.
"Glad you could make it," Ruby said as she opened the door for the Winchesters, letting them into the cabin.
Allie was relieved to see Anna sitting on the couch, completely unharmed.
"Yeah, thanks," Sam replied. "Anna, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so," Anna replied. "Ruby's not like other demons. She saved my life." She smiled at Ruby.
Allie was really getting tired of hearing that Ruby was saving everyone's lives.
"Yeah, I hear she does that," Dean said. He turned to the demon. "I guess I, uh, ya know."
"What?" Ruby asked crossing her arms.
"I guess I owe ya...for Sam. And I just wanted...ya know."
"Don't strain yourself."
"Okay then. Is the moment over? Good 'cause that was awkward."
Allie let out a short sarcastic laugh. Ruby looked at her like she was expecting a thank you from Allie as well. The bitch could keep dreaming.
"Hey, Sam?" Anna said. "Do you think it'd be safe to make a quick call? Just to tell my parents I'm okay? They must be freaked."
"Anna," Allie said sadly.
"What?"
Sam sat down next to her on the couch. "Anna...your parents..."
"What about them?" Allie could tell by the change in her voice that Anna could sense what was coming next deep down, but she didn't want to admit it.
"I'm sorry."
"No, they're not-"
"Anna, I'm sorry."
She sobbed and doubled over. Allie took her other side and pulled Anna into her chest to comfort her.
"Why is this happening to me?" Anna cried. She put her head in her hands. Then suddenly she gasped, sitting up straight again. "They're coming."
The lights started flickering, and they all jumped into action.
"Back room," Dean said to Sam.
Sam led Anna into the other room. Ruby locked one of the doors, though Allie wasn't sure why. A lock wasn't going to stop a demon from getting inside the cabin. Dean grabbed the sawed-offs from his duffel bag, handing one to Sam and to Allie, before going over to lock the other door. Ruby started digging through the duffle bag.
"Where's the knife?" she asked.
"Uh, about that," Dean replied sheepishly.
"You're kidding?" Ruby exclaimed.
"Don't look at me."
"Thanks a lot," Sam said in annoyance.
"Great," said Ruby. "Just peachy. Impeccable timing, guys, really."
"I really don't think now is the time to be fighting over the knife," Allie stated as the door started to rattle.
The three Winchesters raised their guns as the door burst open, breaking the lock. Allie's heart thudded wildly as she waited for Alistair to walk into the room. A heavy gust of wind blew through the door, followed by a tall figure.
