** See Part 1 for full story notes and disclaimer.

CONTENT WARNINGS: None. Please remember, I love messing with people's heads. (veg)

PART 20 NOTES: We're entering the last stretch here. Just a few more parts to go. Thank you all for returning for another week. Hugs and Vegemite go to Lynette for her awesome beta skills. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone as I tend to fiddle up until the very last second. Bad habit, that. (vbg) As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.

Part Twenty

THEN …

Stepping back a couple of careful paces at her flipping hand, he felt more than saw Bobby at his side. Sarah rolled her shoulders, the bones shifting strangely beneath her shirt, then raised her right hand as she had earlier at the boundary tree. Her head tilted to one side, eyes sliding closed, face creasing around her mouth and along her forehead just enough for his eyes to make out. Left hand rising to match its mate, they hovered in the air for a long moment. A shiver of sensation skittered down his spine a split second before she shoved her hands forward, skin meeting wood in a blinding flash of white.

NOW …

MARCUS SILAS'S HOUSE, TURKEY HILL, KENTUCKY
Monday, 11:36 pm

His eyelids slammed shut instinctively, bright spots dancing crazily over his vision. "Bobby?" he asked quietly, trying to blink the spots away.

"I'm fine." He didn't sound fine, but Sam would take the response anyway. Dean and Bobby, two birds of a feather.

"I'm fine, too. Thanks for asking." Sarah, however, did sound as if she were the picture of health. The spots gradually dimmed, allowing him to see the demon leaning on the wall beside the door, light shadows under her eyes, lips held tightly together. Whatever she'd done hadn't been as easy as she was trying to make it seem. Pointing up, she pushed away from the wall. "Your turn."

Deciding not to call her on the bluff, he stepped up to the carved doorway, the final vestiges of spots dancing in his vision. Thankfully, the carvings didn't dance with them. "What's behind here?" he asked, taking up stake and hammer once again.

"Marcus's work room."

This time he didn't drop the hammer, though it had little to do with a growing tolerance to the pain and more to do with involuntary muscle reaction. He barely had time to step out of the way as she wrenched the door open, swinging it wide into the hallway, and started down the stairs into the darkness. Bobby and his flashlight led the way for him, the clean white light illuminating yet another set of carvings at the base of the stairs. "A little obsessive, wasn't he? You can't go five feet without running into one of those."

"The house is the spell, remember? Obsessive attention to detail is healthy when dealing with magic above your pay grade." She squeezed herself against the wall as best she could, clearing a space for him.

Sam traded positions with her, his hands already sending tiny spikes of pain up his arms as he raised them to the carvings. Before he sank the iron home, a small flake of paint floated out of the deep indentation and onto the back of his hand. He stared at it, the dark blotch filling his vision. He hadn't seen paint in any of the others along the way, but then again he'd been more focused on the pain of destroying them than the symbols themselves. "What's up with the paint? The spell's already carved into wood. It's not like it's going anywhere."

"It's not paint, Sam. It's blood."

Her voice was strangely soft, as if the demon knew he wouldn't like the answer. Swallowing dryly, he blew gently on the fleck, watching as it fluttered off his skin and down onto the ground. His brain, always ready to helpfully offer up juicy tidbits of knowledge, automatically calculated how much blood would be required to cover every one of the doorways. Too much, he thought, hands tightening on the hammer and stake suspended above his head. Far too much for a human to live after the extraction.

"Sam?" Bobby asked, breaking through his paralyzing thoughts. "We need to hurry."

"Yeah." Swinging the hammer with more strength than aim, he hit the head of the iron spike off center, glancing off his curled fingers and then into the carvings themselves. The pain from the blow was merely a phantom, a shadow hiding behind the sharp tingles. Gritting his teeth, he swung again, sinking the iron properly. He spared a second to wonder if he'd have any feeling at all left in either arm when Silas was gone.

Pushing her way passed his frozen form, Sarah hurried into the small, dirt floored room. Unfinished wooden beams lined the walls and roof. A century and a half of dirt pushing against the joints had allowed small pockets of mud to seep through, dripping down in dark lines. She circled the room once, stopping when she reached the doorway again. "Get Silas," she said, pointing back up the stairs.

Sam exchanged a look with Bobby, one full of bitten back anger and anxiety. His friend nodded, face tightening slightly as his eyebrows lifted in a silent question. "I can get him. Try not to kill each other while I'm gone." The trip back to the entrance was much shorter than their way down without the numerous pauses to break the spell forms. Silas was trussed up on the floor exactly where Sam had left him, a thin trickle of blood oozing from his left nostril. He swallowed hard then quickly checked the knotted ropes. Had Sarah done this? Or had Sam himself as he sank iron into wood? Pushing the distracting thought aside, he lifted the witch, forearms shaking with the strain. Between the agony of the spell and carting Dean's not-inconsiderable body weight around, he doubted he'd be able to hold so much as a pen for a week.

Returning to the underground room, he laid his brother's body down on the floor as Sarah directed, straightening out his legs, then moved away at her impatient shooing gesture. After a glance around the room, she tugged Silas's shoulders half a foot to the right then realigned the rest of his body. He and Bobby stood shoulder to shoulder at the entrance, arms brushing. Sam took the tiniest bit of comfort from the contact.

Sarah ignored them, focused wholly on things Sam couldn't see. She laid a finger on the dirt at different spots around Silas, frowning each time. Finally, she smiled, kneeling on the witch's left side. Her knife whipped out and before Sam's shout had cleared his throat, before his foot had even lifted from the ground, she'd cut open the white shirt. "Oh, relax. He's fine," she said, not looking up as she set the knife on the dirt at her feet. She laid her right hand on the circular mark on Silas's chest, the brand Dean had been so pissed off about a lifetime ago, and plunged her left hand wrist deep into the ground at the spot she'd chosen.

For a long minute he watched silently, wondering if something should be happening. It started as a faint irritation, uneasiness creeping up his spine. "Bobby?"

"I feel it. I don't know what it is, but I feel it too."

An instant before the fist of power slammed into his chest, an instant too late to react, Sarah looked up, her eyes pure black. He doubled over, sinking to one knee. "You could have warned us."

Bobby wasn't as nice as he spoke from his knees as well. "Son of a bitch. What the hell was that?"

"I know exactly what we need to do." The smile on her face was exultant as she pulled her hand free of the ground, dark brown clumps sticking to the skin. "Sam, find the twelve remaining spell forms and break them. Bobby, get over here and help me." The words tripped over themselves she spoke so quickly.

Sam hauled himself back to his feet, chest aching slightly more than the lingering pain in his hands. Despite the unpleasant sensations, he couldn't stop the bubble of hope from filling his gut. Sarah was positively glowing, her black eyes spitting energy and her face filled with confidence. He didn't question the order. Hell, he didn't speak at all before grabbing the back pack and digging out the second flashlight. As Bobby started across the small room to Sarah's side, he was sprinting up the stairs, long legs eating the distance easily.

Twelve pricks of pain were all that stood between him and evicting Marcus Silas from his brother's body. He refused to think about Sarah's assurance that Dean was gone. She was, after all, a demon and demons lied. Even if she hadn't been lying about the house and the protective spells placed around it and Silas's abilities and the spell itself and... And just about every word out of her mouth. A weight settled on his shoulders, trying to shove down the hope. Once Silas was gone he'd worry about the rest of it.

By the time he stood before the final set of carvings on the second floor, his arms were numb to the shoulders, only the explosive agony shooting up from the iron penetrating the haze. He worked by muscle memory only, trusting to the familiarity of his own body to know how much force he needed to exert. Drawing a deep breath, he held it deep in his lungs and swung the hammer.

He'd been prepared for the pain, for the shock of lightning to zing through every muscle. He hadn't been prepared to get picked up and thrown across the wide hall.

The house shrieked around him as he lay in a crumpled heap, the wall at his back, the sound a physical presence pressing him into the floorboards. Covering his ears, he curled into a ball, instinctively trying to make himself as small as possible. Sam lost all sense of time as it went on and on, wetness dripping from his nose and onto his sleeve.

Then as suddenly as it started, the wailing stopped.

One eye blinked open, the other following carefully as he let his body unfurl. His ears rang, a high pitched squeal doing its best to dig into his brain. The flashlight shone happily up at him from the floor where he'd set it before all hell had broken loose, completely unharmed by the violence of the house's reaction. He blotted his nose with the already bloody sleeve and sat up. "Silas, you're lucky you're already bound for hell." His voice was trashed, rough and thick with pain. He crawled to the pack, scooping up the hammer on the way. The flashlight was weightless in his numb hand, the beam of light bobbing unsteadily as he stumbled, legs protesting Sam's insistence on walking. The stairs were a lesson in futility and he ended up sliding down them on his butt after his thighs simply gave out on the first one. Only the growing urgency filling his chest got him back on his feet and headed for the underground room. The second set of stairs proved easier than the first and he made it into the room in roughly the same way he'd left it.

Sarah didn't look up from her place at Silas's side at his entrance, but Bobby did, expression instantly morphing from blank to worried. "What the hell did you do to yourself?"

"I only did what I was told," he said, dropping the back pack at the other man's feet. "She couldn't be bothered

to warn me there might be a minor aggressive reaction at some point."

Still not taking her eyes from the bound witch, the demon shrugged. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

Before he made it a second step toward her, Bobby's hand on his arm stopped him. "You're bleeding, Sam."

"Yeah, I know." He swiped at his upper lip again, encouraged to see the flow had slowed considerably already. He wouldn't bleed to death, at least not from that small wound. "What happened down here while I was getting tossed around the second floor hallway?"

Bobby winced, drawing him a few feet back toward the entry and away from Sarah and Silas. "She could tell when you busted each of the spell forms. When you got to the last one, she told me to go stand in a corner. She put one hand on Silas's chest, the other on his head. And then Silas went berserk. He screamed. Even through the gag it was-" He stopped and shook his head as if the words to describe it had yet to be created. Sam was pretty sure he'd gotten his own taste of it upstairs and nodded for the other man to continue. "After he shut up, she untied his hands, took off his shoes and socks and then you showed up."

"Why'd she do that?" he asked, eyes focusing on the witch on the ground. Brown eyes filled with rage returned the look, loathing and fear and desperation communicating itself clearly. "He's awake. Bobby, why is he awake?"

Shrugging with his entire upper body, he turned as well. "I don't know. She said he's practically powerless now, but I'm not really in a trusting mood at the moment."

"Marcus has been neutered, haven't you?" Sam couldn't have melted butter on the demon's tongue, but he could have seared it in the head of Silas gaze. "Backlash is a bitch, isn't it? Having one of your spells taken apart right in front of you, helpless to do anything about it? It sounds agonizing to me."

There was a world of back story to her pointed comments. Both repulsed and strangely curious, Sam forced the questions burbling into his brain aside. "So what's next?"

"Next we recreate the spell using Marcus himself as the main ingredient."

The witch shouted incoherently through his cloth and rope gag, crimson staining a length of rope leading away from his mouth, joining with the line from his nose. His hands flailed uselessly at the wrists, arms still bound to his torso.

"Oh, don't worry, Marcus." Her lips curved upward, eyes actually sparkling in the glow of Bobby and Sam's joined flashlights. "It's almost over. My master is looking forward to having a nice long chat with you." Ignoring the witch's continued efforts to free himself, she drew a slender knife from Silas's waist, her own far more substantial one remaining on the ground at Silas's side.

Instinct had Sam moving forward before his brain caught up with reality. There was no way he could stand back and do nothing when a demon pulled a blade on his brother. He stopped himself short, nearly tripping over his own feet. Damn it. "Bobby, did you see his knife earlier?" The other man's head shake let him feel the slightest bit better, but did little to drown out the voice screaming at him to stop the demon. That's Dean, you stupid son of a bitch! He planted his feet on the ground and crossed his arms. This was the whole reason they'd made the deal with Sarah in the first place. It was too late to cry about it now.

Sarah stood, knife held comfortably in her left hand. Moving to a position at Silas's feet, she started to speak, the language both foreign and familiar at the same time. Sam listened intently, eyebrows furrowing. It was almost Latin, as if it was an offshoot or daughter tongue, like Spanish and French were related. Except the words that were slightly familiar made no sense when he translated them in his head. Sarah's chant continued, unceasing over Silas's muffled attempts to stop her. Sam's own throat had dried out listening to her before she paused, kneeling at Silas's exposed feet.

With two slashes, each faster than his eye could track, she sliced three inch cuts into his flesh. Silas screamed and Sam was moving again before he could think about it.

"Don't worry," Sarah said, the fierce glare stopping him in his tracks. "They're shallow and will barely even bleed. He's just being a baby about losing." She turned the glare on the witch, blade flashing, then began speaking the Latin that wasn't Latin again.

His own feet stinging in phantom response, Sam watched as the demon repeated the quick movements at Silas's hands, one swipe at each palm. Deep, dark red instantly filled the cuts, but as if to corroborate Sarah's claim, they barely dripped off of the skin. Sam focused on the witch's face, reveling in every wince and tightening of brow. The pattern of Sarah's words shifted, repeating, if his ears weren't lying to him. She moved back to her original place at Silas's left side, knife held between both hands.

"Mr. Singer," she said, the unexpected call startling a tiny jump out of Sam. He caught Bobby's bitten off grin out of the corner of his eye and felt his own lips twitch upward despite the situation. Dean would have been laughing his ass off.

"Yeah?"

"I need eighteen drops of your blood, if you please."

Bobby was rolling up his sleeve even as the words left Sam's mouth. "What? I'll do it. Dean is my brother. Bobby, put your arm away."

"No!"

Sam froze, the demon's shout both immediate and unexpected. "Why not? Is there something wrong with my blood?"

"No." The repetition was far calmer than the first, but Sam had a hard time buying the easy expression. "Because Dean's your brother you shouldn't be the one."

"Like back at the boundary," Bobby said, continuing to raise his sleeve.

Sarah smiled and, unless he was completely losing his ability to read people, even ones possessed by demons, Sam would have sworn she was actually relieved by the other man's explanation. Why that could be he had no answer, but it was hiding there nonetheless. "Exactly. Why take the chance, right?"

"Right," he said, the little voice he usually tried hard not to ignore niggling at him insistently. But Bobby was already at the demon's side, arm exposed. He bit back the argument and watched silently as Sarah held out the knife for the other man, handle first.

Bobby took the blade, hand not shaking in the slightest. Sam couldn't say the same and it wasn't even his flesh on the chopping block. "Where do you need it?"

Pointing at the spot where she'd dug her hand deep into the ground, Sarah's teeth flashed in a parody of a smile. "Right there. Exactly eighteen. So don't slice yourself up too much."

Without an argument worthy of the name, he could only stand back and watch as his friend carefully laid the knife into his arm. Bobby's mouth moved in time with Sarah's as they silently counted. Sam found himself leaning forward, watching as each drop splattered into the dirt. As the final drop was forming, the demon held out a small piece of cloth she'd unearthed from who knew where. Bobby took it and stepped away from the tiny puddle, holding the makeshift bandage to his arm.

Silas's back arched without warning, bound legs scrambling for purchase over the dirt. There weren't words muffled and broken by the gag this time. It was a scream of pain. His face contorted, blood smearing over his cheek from the cuts at the corners of his mouth.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked, stepping closer.

"Nothing. In fact, everything's exactly right." She didn't even look up to answer him as she took the knife back from Bobby. "Say goodbye, Marcus."

The witch's cry never faltered, a solid wall of sound that cut into Sam's chest with each passing second. Sarah knelt once again, speaking another line of the almost recognizable words. She raised the knife over Silas's heart and only the strong grip on his arm kept him in place. But instead of plunging the blade down deep into flesh as Sam feared, she made one long cut over the healed brand, bisecting it almost perfectly. "I'll see you in hell, Marcus."

The horrible noise coming from Silas's throat stopped a split second before the room exploded around them.

It happened so fast Sam never felt the power which lifted him off his feet, but he did feel the wall as it stopped his flight. He had just enough time to wonder if he should ask the house for frequent flier miles before he was blinded by the light coming from Silas's body. Throwing his hands up for what meager protection they could provide, Sam saw the outline of his fingers through his closed eyelids. It was too bright, the light a pure white burning into his retinas. His throat ached, scraped raw in a scream he couldn't hear and didn't even remember voicing. He couldn't tell if Bobby was beside him or on the other side of the room and it was suddenly very important to know.

"Bobby," he called, throat choked off and arguing every syllable. The other man either didn't answer or couldn't. All Sam knew was that his own eyes were going to burn out of their sockets if the light didn't stop. There wasn't a physical heat, but it stabbed all the way through his head, straight through his hands.

Vaguely, he could hear Sarah's voice rising in an almost hypnotic lilt, the cadence similar to the frustrating not-quite-Latin she'd used for recreating the spell. He wanted to ask what she was doing, wanted to learn all he could for the inevitable moment when the smallest piece of information would save a life. His brain couldn't form the necessary thoughts. His body curled in on itself without direction, elbows tucking around his knees and holding tight. It was one huge pain, a blur of indistinguishable sensations.

With one final, hard percussive slap, the light vanished.

It could have been over for seconds or minutes before he actually realized it had stopped.

Unwinding his body, he blinked rapidly around the blinding white filling his eyes. "Bobby?" A rough cough was the only answer. "Sarah?"

"I'm fine. Thanks."

He'd laugh later, he promised himself. "Not my question, but sure." Her glare warmed the side of his face. "Is that it? Is that everything?"

"Should be. I was just about to check."

The center of his vision stubbornly remained a blob of white as movement in his peripheral caught his attention. His gaze automatically swiveled to see, but nothing penetrated the haze. Sighing, he looked back toward the center of the room, allowing the edge of his vision to take over. Bobby was swaying on his knees, hand rubbing over his eyes. Other than appearing as disoriented as Sam felt, the other man seemed to have come out of the explosion in one piece. "Bobby, you in there?" he asked again.

"Yeah. I think so." His eyes opened, staring blindly around the room. "We really need to work on your ability to give warnings when something's about to throw the humans across the room."

"And again, I think you'll live." It seemed to be her answer for everything. Sam turned his head to the side once more to see Sarah cutting the rope from Silas's arms. She moved quickly, with little care as to where the blade might cut into skin.

Sam stood, wobbling drunkenly as his eyes and ears sent mixed messages to his brain. "Watch it. He has enough scars already."

"Relax." She wiped her knife on Silas's shirt, the one which had started the night a nice, pretty white but was now mottled with dirt and blood. "The spell's destroyed."

His chest gave one hard thump and his breath froze in his lungs. He blinked again, brain struggling to process the demon's words. "You mean Silas is gone. It really worked?"

Sliding the blade into the sheath at her side, she pushed to her feet, face once again wearing its mask of superior condescension. "Of course it worked." She walked passed him, stride easy and loose. Apparently the spell's explosion hadn't affected her at all.

"Wait," he said, grabbing her arm. His gaze, finally clearing enough to see dark spots instead of merely solid white, lingered on the form lying motionless on the ground. One of Silas's hands lay limply on his stomach where it had fallen, the other had slid off his side and rested in the dirt. Something about its position drew Sam's slowly returning vision to it. The utter lack of movement heralded thoughts he didn't want to acknowledge. "What about Dean?"

"I told you he was gone when we started this." She looked back to his brother's body and the corners of her lips twisted up. "I got what I wanted. The rest is yours." Her gaze turned predatory when she met his eyes, not an ounce of concern showing in the black depths. "Our contract is complete. I'll see you boys in seventy-two hours." She broke his hold as if it was tissue paper and headed up the stairs without a backwards glance.

He moved immediately to his brother's side, not bothering to waste time on the demon's intentions. He had more important things to worry about at the moment. One hand went to Dean's chest, almost desperate to feel proof that he was still alive. Sarah hadn't seemed too concerned about the concept as she'd worked to break the binding keeping Silas safe from hell. The steady thumping of his brother's heart was a welcome sensation, even though it was far too light and slow to be truly comforting. His hand moved up and down with the gentle respirations and he breathed in sync automatically. Once he'd established life, he reached upward, needing confirmation with his own two eyes, despite Sarah's assertion. With careful fingers, Sam lifted his brother's eyelids one at a time. Each view of the familiar hazel irises loosened the tightness in his chest a little more. Breathing, heart beating and eyes the correct color. Life was looking up with every new bit of information.

"How is he?" Bobby asked, appearing on Dean's other side.

"I don't know. He's alive." At least his body was. He couldn't force the words out of his mouth, but they hung in the air between them like thick smoke, full-bodied and heavy in its own right. "Any ideas?"

"Nope. She seemed pretty sure Silas was gone, though. I think we can trust her as far as that goes."

Sam looked up to meet the other man's steady gaze. "What about the rest? About Dean being gone?" His fingers curled into the chest below his hand, digging into the muscles with a rhythmic movement as if he could hold Dean there by will alone.

Looking away, down toward the motionless man, even Bobby's stoic face couldn't hide his fear from Sam. "I don't know, Sam. I just don't know."

cont.