Season's Greetings, all! Hope your Holidays were epic. Got two weeks off from work and three days off from mom duties, so this new chapter is fresh off the grid. Warning: it's not very...festive.
- Tyler
The factory was about as cheery as Crowley's previous haunt – although anything was cosier than the frosty drive the three brothers had shared en route. Even Dean's ever-present wisecracks had been absent, the eldest Winchester as deep in thought as Sam – who had blown a few traffic lights unintentionally (or so he would have Dean believe. The dark furrow of his eyes and the firm grit of his jaw had hinted otherwise) as they drove beneath them.
Dean squinted at the hostile building, noting several burly men looming about various points of entry. He didn't need to see the black flash in their eyes to conclude that they were demons – powerful demons, at that.
Some celestial back-up wouldn't have gone down sideways just then.
Dean winced internally, the jab at the open wound of Castiel's absence throwing off his focus. He cleared his throat, swallowed back the pain, and turned to face his brothers.
"Demons at every doorway. Guess Crowley's not taking any chances this time around."
Sam looked ready to go full-on Rambo on said demons, "We can take them."
"Yeah could I…get a gun or something? I'm not really feeling the whole blind charge at death thing today." Adam's face remained deadpan but his tone suggested he was nervous.
"Dean, I can do it." Sam dipped his head a few centimetres to treat with his brother. His tone was not arrogant or brash – merely decisive, "You know it's the fastest way in."
"Sam, no." Dean could be decisive too, when the situation warranted it.
Sam clamped his mouth shut and glared insolently at his sibling. Dean's eyes became rock hard emerlalds.
Adam coughed awkwardly, "Okay, just so we're clear – what's this 'it' we're talking about? Sam still rocking the Satan-socks, by any chance?"
"Shut up, Adam!" Dean barked, and to his annoyance, Adam did exactly the opposite.
"If Sam thinks he has a quick way in, then we should take it. I mean, we're three guys against a building full of demons!"
"Sam wants to drink demon blood and nuke the joint!" Dean's hand indicated at said brother while his eyes remained trained angrily on Adam, "Now I know you ain't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to all things evil, but does that sound like a bright idea?"
Adam shot Dean a belligerent look but wisely made no further comment.
The sun crept in cold shadows across the Impala's glossy hood – a chilling reminder of the time portal still wreaking havoc with the world.
Shockingly enough, it was Adam who came up with the compromise.
"We're burning daylight, and judging by the looks of those lines, this place has no power." The youngest Winchester gave the factory a determined once-over, "Now I know the idea of creeping around a dark, demon-infested sock factory probably just tickles you guys, but me, not so much. So here's what we're gonna do…"
Dean had rolled his eyes more than once during Adam's monologue, but even he was impressed enough by the suggested course of action to swallow his gripes and get with the crowd.
A formidable, 200-pound engineer lumbered across the length of the factory's backdoor balcony. His eyes flashed black as he tripped on a loose grate and let out a curse.
"Hey!" A second demon called, eyes dark as coals in his thin, pale face, "Watch yourself! Boss don't like'em clumsy!"
"Who you calling 'clumsy', dipshit?" The burly demon huffed as he closed the space between them in a few short strides, boots clanging against the metal flooring, "You know, I bet you'd be a lot less cocky if I ripped the tongue off your meatsuit!"
The second demon laughed over his shoulder, directing his amusement at his three companions who had ambled over in anticipation of a fight.
"Bring it, fatty! Maybe after I finish grinding you to a pulp, we can find a nice sheep for you to ride…"
He got no further when a heavy electrical cable, weighted at the end with several rusty wrenches, swung directly at his head, sending him flying.
"What the…"
One, two, three times the cable swung, each time knocking a demon from the balcony. Their motionless bodies thudded against the pillow of soil surrounding the factory. The whole attack had been relatively silent and was over as quickly as it had begun.
Dean watched his brother closely as Sam extended his palm further, wrapping the wire around an ancient hatch on the fire escape door. Fingers clenching in a fist, Sam pulled, eyes wincing shut at the strain as he did so. The rusty metal door swung open with a creak, a billow of dusty air rushing from its mouth.
Sam slumped against Dean's side at precisely the moment that his brother's arm guided him there. He blinked back a spectacular migraine and swiped at the warm liquid trickling from his nose.
"You okay?" Dean was using a gravelly tone that let Sam know he was choosing to play nice even though he was far from pleased with the situation.
"I'm fine." Sam assured his brother, annoyed at what he deemed to be highly inappropriately-timed semantics. He straightened up and did a body count, pleased to see they had taken out the infantry, "Let's do this."
Adam was already stomping purposefully towards the factory, shotgun in hand. Dean's displeasure left his tone and hardened in his face as he glared after Adam. Sam half-smiled, half-scoffed.
"Kid's got spunk."
"No, kid's got stupid." Dean cocked his .44 and checked the rafters for any surviving demons, "Runs in the family, apparently."
Sam ground out a long-suffering sigh at the less-than-subtle rebuke, "Dean, I told you…"
"Yeah I get it – you're fine." Dean muttered sarcastically, heading swiftly after Adam, "Let's just get this over with."
Sensing a trap, Sam demanded they split up, with Dean and Adam scouring the upper floor while Sam took the basement.
Despite insisting he 'didn't need a goddamn babysitter', Adam was vastly relieved to have Dean by his side after they encountered several more demons en route to the staircase. Watching Dean dispose of them with the kind of precision that only came from practice (and a great many broken bones) had left Adam with the dismal realization that he had a rough and rugged road ahead of him.
They passed rows of filthy containers full of decrepid-looking socks, guns at the ready and boots moving silently – in Dean's case, that is. Adam poked his head around a corner and came upon the unfortunate sight of two of Crowley's infected humans masticating the innards of a third.
Too many memories, still fresh and raw, sprung to Adam's mind and he froze, stock-still as a strangled warble left his throat. The Croatoan carriers whirled at the noise, hissing with mouths full of entrails, though no sooner had one made a move towards Adam when Dean's handgun blew the pair of them away.
"You okay?"
"Yeah." Adam forced himself to sound as much, finding himself in the shoes Sam been wearing earlier and disliking it intensely. The feeling only worsened as his eldest brother's calloused hand smacked him sharply upside the head.
"Ow!"
"Pay attention!" Dean snapped, before turning to survey the fallen bodies at their feet, "Looks like someone left the safety gate open. How come Crowley didn't break up the fight?"
Adam felt the blood drain from his face and hastily moved on from the scene, "Why don't you ask him when we find him?"
Heavy machinery that looked far too complicated for a sock factory hung at their flanks as the brothers carried on. A rank stench –the smell of rotting flesh that both Dean and Adam knew all too well – was riding in the air, and Dean indicated with two fingers that Adam follow him up a dilapidated stairwell.
"So Sam tells me there're some great colleges in Cicero." Dean trained his gun at a corner and checked it was clear before moving on, "Once we get back, you should ask him to show you around."
Adam was stunned, "Uh…you know, I don't think this is really the right time to be having this conversation." He studied a metal-rimmed table littered with an ancient assortment of grimy socks in an effort to keep his voice neutral.
"I know, right? It's the socks – they're friggin' creepy!" Dean, on the other hand, gave the table a wide berth as he moved towards the source of the stench; a sturdy-looking door, "Time to ring the bell and run, kid."
"Would you stop with the 'kid' crap?" Adam drawled as Dean tossed him a charge and he stuck it to the door, "I dunno why we can't just use Sam to blast the thing open."
"Because Sam is not a weapon." Dean growled curtly, placing another blinking circle against the cold metal, "That's why."
Adam shrugged churlishly, "So once the thing blows, then what?" He followed Dean around a peeling corner of the wall, "The two of us are gonna take on this Crowley guy and his zombie army single-handed?"
Dean shoved Adam's head out of the path of scalding metal as the charges combusted. A new, charred smell pervaded the air, burning their nostrils, throats and eyes.
Adam coughed and blinked at the smoke fogging up his irises. Dean was already striding determinedly towards the steaming, jagged slash in the wall.
"Don't like the plan?" He cocked his gun without sparing a backwards glance at his little brother, "Wait outside."
Adam rolled his eyes as Dean's imposing silhouette disappeared into the smoking mouth of the doorway. He fingered the cold weight of his gun and cursed his relative's pigheaded obstinace.
"Fucking Winchesters!"
Adam had just made the reluctant decision to take up Dean's rear when a raspy hiss behind him made him whirl. A pale, russet-haired woman with dilated pupils and a foaming mouth clutched his throat. Adam was shocked at the strength of her delicate hand as his esophagus constricted and cut off his air supply. The croatoan-infected woman slammed her other fist into his solar plexus even as she lifted Adam off the ground, and what little oxygen he had remaining left him with a rush.
She tossed him like a ragdoll against a cracking pillar, laughing hysterically as he bounced off the plaster and crumpled to the floor, blood pouring from a cut to his temple. The smell excited her and she pounced, landing astride Adam's torso even as he tried to regroup his scattered limbs.
"Just…one…bite…" The woman ground out, teeth gleaming in anticipation as she struggled with the gun Adam was attempting to shove at her face. Her hands were closed around his wrists so tightly they stood a risk of snapping. He glared balefully at her, and the pounding of his heart against his breastbone and the blood rushing in his ears became a marching band. Adam knew this beat – the fear, the anger, the rage…all so primal.
The soundtrack of the Pit itself. This beat he could dance to.
He yanked his hands backwards, and the woman, taken off guard, fell forwards onto his chest. The warm neck beside him exposed, Adam bit viciously into her jugular vein. She screamed, her blood spurting over them both in a thick, sticky fountain. Adam sunk his teeth deeper, tearing at sinew and flesh. The woman struggled to get free, and he let her go, shoving her off him and burying two bullets in her forehead.
"Adam!" Sam appeared, bounding around the corner, shotgun raised. He froze for a moment too long at the sight of the blood-soaked pair, hazel eyes darting from the lifeless woman to the dazed young man. Sam hastily made his way to Adam's side, one giant hand twisting his brother's head towards him, "You okay? You bleeding?" He narrowed his eyes at the gash mixing Adam's blood with the woman's own, "Did she bite you?"
Adam let out a mechanical laugh, "I bit her!" His eyes never left the woman as he spoke the words that turned Sam's blood cold.
Sam wanted to punch Adam, to beat him for his complete stupidity, "You what? Adam, you could be infected!"
Adam just looked at his brother with vacant, unaffected eyes. Sam's temper spiked and he pinched the bridge of his nose in an effort to suppress it. A series of gunshots caused both men to snap back on alert.
"Shit. Dean!" Adam shoved past Sam and ran fullspeed towards the sound, Sam on his tail.
They cleared piles of rubble from the explosion, an upset table of syringes and other sterile devices, and came into sight of Dean, who was busy emptying his clip into what appeared to be the last of Crowley's croatoan posse.
Dean felt a fresh wave of contempt for Crowley as he looked at the body of the teenage boy he'd just wasted, shaking his head and vowing to make the crossroads demon suffer once they caught up to him. If they ever caught up to him, that was. Crowley had vanished the minute Dean had pulled out the Colt.
Dean turned to his brothers, "Everyone okay?" He frowned at Adam's appearance, "What happened?"
"Nothing. Just getting in some work experience for the, uh, wonderful family business." Adam wiped his face on a fistful of socks, "So where's Crowley?"
"Bastard took off before I could stick him." Dean kicked at a fallen syringe in frustration, "But judging by the bitch-face he gave me, I'm guessing we just smoked his Plan Z. You find anything?"
Sam shook his head, "Just a bunch of creepy-looking socks."
Dean winced in agreement and Adam huffed to himself.
"Oh yeah, and uh, this." Sam dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a sinister-looking pendant dangling from a knotted straw cord, "Symbols match the ones we found on the coffin. I'm guessing this might be the missing piece we need to find out whose that body is."
"Awesome. Don't lose it." Dean clapped his brother's shoulder as Sam rolled his eyes, "Now let's blow this joint before the cops show up. We'll stitch that up on the way." He motioned towards the cut on Adam's forehead and noticed a tense glance pass between him and Sam.
"What?"
Sam raised his eyebrows at Adam, "You wanna tell him, or should I?"
"The only 'telling' that would've helped this situation would have been 'Oh Adam, by the way, before we walk into a sock factory that's full of zombies, you might wanna know that any exchange of body fluids is potentially lethal'!" Adam snapped, tossing the bloodied socks bunched in his fist at Sam's boots in frustration.
"Well if I'd known I was walking into said sock factory with Edward Cullen, I might've mentioned it!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Dean interrupted, holding up a palm to silence his seething brothers, "That's not your blood?" He looked very menacing all of a sudden, and Adam would probably have taken a cautionary step backwards if he hadn't still been riding the adrenalin from his earlier fight.
"Some of it is." He offered haughtily.
"The rest of it's from the Croat he bit in the jugular!" Sam looked menacing too, come to think of it. Adam felt the sturdy weight of his handgun for security. Dean had gone deathly silent and was looking at him with green eyes that glittered with anger and disappointment and...was that worry?
A moment of silence, much too long and cold, passed between the brothers.
Finally Dean spoke thickly, "Let's go." He glanced once more at Adam before stalking past him.
That was definitely worry.
If the virus didn't kill him, Adam thought, the Winchesters most likely would.
Meg threw the contents of her glass in Crowley's face, showering him in gin and stepping back to watch it drip down his nose. She folded her arms and waited as he slowly wiped at the liquid with a handkerchief.
"Do that again," Crowely declared calmly, "and I'll kill you. Understand?"
"Kill me?" Meg raised her eyebrows with a smile of rage, "Don't make me laugh, Crowley. You can't even take down a couple of sloppy, gun-totting meatsacks!"
"The Winchesters took me by surprise." He growled, beginning to feel his temper slip.
"Twice!" Meg hissed, her voice almost drowned out by the roar of the Montana falls outside her raided hovel, "And now they've taken off with his vessel! Do you know what that means, Crowley?"
"I'm fully aware of what it means!" He yelled, "You think I'm a bloody idiot? We'll get it back!"
"How?!" Meg hurtled her glass at the crackling fireplace, the remainders of the gin causing a fresh burst of flame from the dying embers, "We have no more Croatoan, no more subjects, no more time! He rises in two days, Crowley, and not only do we have no army to defend our power, we have no way to prevent him from taking his vessel because, and I repeat, YOU FUCKING LOST IT!"
"And I repeat, we'll get it back!"
"And if we don't?"
"Well let him take it then!" Crowley roared back, and Meg stilled in horror at the words. He forced reason back into his tone, "If he comes, at least he'll take the Winchesters down before he gets around to us. Thanks to my brilliance, Castiel's decided to flap his pesky little wings back to Heaven for the moment, which leaves them one man down."
"Forgetting someone, aren't we?" Meg tiltled her head obnoxiously, "Sam's little progeny just resurrected Uncle Adam! If Nate's all-access card gets her into the cage itself, who knows what else she's capable of?"
Crowley jutted out his lower lip with a nod, "True. We have made the dastardly mistake of underestimating that little weasel more than once. Not to worry, though." He raised a finger at Meg even as she gave him a cold stare, "Once the Winchesters find out what she's really here to do, they'll kill her themselves."
"I doubt it." Meg snarled, her boots crunching on the dried leaves scattered on the ground, "And do you really think Winters would ever let them find out she's here to gank Sam? She hasn't slipped once, Crowley, and you know damn well that unless she does, there's no way they'd ever believe it!"
"Well if we can't get her to slip," Crowley turned his back on Meg, dark eyes dancing to and fro as a plan began to take shape in his conciousness, "then we'll just have to trip her up, won't we?"
Meg frowned, "What do you mean?"
"It's brilliant." Crowley smiled to himself, whispering the congratulatory remark before he whirled around to face Meg, "A simple spell, old as the hills really. One that's guaranteed to keep little Natey out of our hair – and if we're lucky, one that will bring all her dirty secrets kicking and screaming into the light!"
"What spell?" Meg raised an eyebrow.
Crowley pulled a cigar out of his black coat and rolled it between his fingers, "For me to know, and you to wonder, love."
Meg eyed him contemptuously, "A little early for a victory smoke, isn't it?"
"Oh, this?" Crowley smiled, "I just envisioned that coffin opening up right in the Winchesters midst and it made me all warm and tingly inside. I feel like celebrating."
The corners of Meg's eyes wrinkled with the grin that tugged grudgingly at her mouth.
"You got a light?"
The Shiloh Inn had witnessed many a domestic issue in its timeline. There had been Casey and Zach Hall, newlyweds who had crashed there on their wedding night and spent two and half hours having a spectacular argument about veganism. Or Harry and Ted McCullum, the Irish couple who, having fled Ireland to escape gender prejudice, had debated separating in order to avoid Harry losing the fortune his millionaire father would have left him had he not married for love.
But the episode it was about to witness, courtesy of the Winchesters, would put the previous contestants to shame.
The Impala roared unapologetically into the parking lot, its purring engine only enunciating the fact that not one of the three brothers had spoken a single word since they had entered the car.
Sam was the first out, long limbs clearing the asphalt in a few quick strides as he entered the lobby, Adam and Dean on his heels. The receptionist flashed him a million-dollar smile.
Apparently, Sam was dealing in a different kind of currency.
The rapid ascent (more accurately described as a jog) up the stairs couldn't have gone faster for Sam, who wrenched the key forcefully in the lock of the door. The sight that greeted him assuaged his deep-set angst only mildly – Nate curled up in a fetal position dozing on Adam's bed while Pierce buried his face behind Sam's laptop screen..
"Hey guys…" Pierce's greeting fell flat as he took in Adam bandaged head and bloodsoaked collar. He lowered the cheery tone to match the shadows on Dean and Sam's faces, "How'd uh…how'd it go? Everyone okay?"
"We're fine." Dean growled as he shut the door behind his brothers, "Aside from Crowley gettin' away and a major health scare from the Count here," he thumbed at Adam, "we're just peachy."
"Well maybe he can go to the same clinic as Nate." Pierce hastily moved the conversation forward as Adam opened his mouth to start a quarrel, "I've found this really good one in Cicero – you uh said that's where you're living, right?"
"We don't have time to hike it all the way back to Cicero!" Sam snapped impatiently, "Just find the closest hospital with a treatment programme for cirrhosis!"
"Yeah if they have anything resembling a zombie recovery unit, that'd be a plus!" Dean's vicious quip lit Adam last fuse.
"Bite me, Dean!"
"No thanks – not that stupid."
Nate rolled over and pushed herself slowly to a sitting position, silencing the conversation as she yawned and stretched out her limbs like a cat. Nate instantly cast Adam a hostile glare.
"Well, well. If it isn't Pinnochio." She nodded at Dean, "What happened? You guys get Crowley?"
"No." Dean stormed past her to dump the duffel bag of weapons at the foot of his bed. He frowned at the window sill, "This salt line's broken!"
"Is it?" Nate knit her eyebrows and reached out a slender hand, poking Pierce in the back, "You do any entertaining while I was under?"
The young man gave her such an injured expression that she may as well have accused him of backstabbing, "No I did not!"
Dean and Adam were too busy engaging in a whispered quarrel about zombies and viruses and stupidity to capture the subtle rise of Nate's eyebrows at Pierce.
Pierce noticed however. He coughed and ducked his head down, "I did open the window to get rid of this nasty smell from the room next door, though. Just for a minute. Sorry."
Unfortunately for Nate, who was already riding on Sam's last remaining nerve, her father had noticed the eyebrow-raise as well.
Sam's hand slammed the laptop shut hard enough to make Pierce jump like a startled rabbit.
"Nate didn't do much sleeping, did she?" The hunter's tone was hard as his eyes, as he leaned over the desk and placed a hand on either end of it to glare menancingly into Pierce's face.
"Sam, what's your problem…"
"Did she?" Sam repeated, eyes blazing like fire and knuckles whitening as he gripped the desk tighter.
Pierce swallowed tightly, glancing back at Nate who flashed him a wide-eyed face of apprehension.
He felt sorry for her, really, he did. But Pierce decided on that particular day that life and limb were more important.
He went with the truth. "Some dude came by about an hour ago and tapped on the window. I told Nate not to open it, but she said it was cool and she knew him, that he was a friend of you guys." He purposefully ignored the scraping of Nate's boots against the floor as she rose angrily to her feet, "He handed her something, she gave him a wad of cash. That's all I know. I'm sorry."
"That was Kurt!" Nate insisted, spreading her arms in a show of frustration as the brothers looked on stonily, "He'd been trying to track me for months to warn me about your little Ghostfacer pals' latest attempt to take me out! When he finally caught up to me, he gave me this," She dug into her pocket and produced a USB device, "which has a record of all the conversation logs between Ed and Harry and their crazy, light-sabre-wielding hitmen!"
"Oh really, and the wad of cash, that was just to express your gratitude, right?" Sam had heard enough, but apparently Nate wasn't ready to stop talking.
"It was two hundred bucks in 20s, okay? I felt bad at how much gas Kurt had to blow to drive three states over just to warn me!"
"Dean," Sam stated calmly, eyes never leaving Nate as he spoke, "Adam, Pierce, could you guys excuse us for while?"
Pierce was already pulling on his jacket, looking more than eager to beat the scene. Adam joined him, flashing a poorly-concealed smirk of gloating at Nate as he brushed past her. Nate responded by whipping out a foot, hooking it behind Adam's ankle and shoving her shoulder into his with the full weight of her body. He fell backwards, landing on his ass with a curse.
Nate moved forward to kick Adam in the ribs, when Dean's arm restrained her.
"Stop it! Just calm down!"
"I'm fucking sick of your kangaroo courts!" Nate yelled, shoving Dean off her and turning to face both him and Sam, "I can't win, can I? Damned if I do and damned if I don't – I don't know why I fucking bother! I should just let Oplexicon kill you off and go back to ganking zombies in the future, because that was bad enough but this? This is a living hell!"
"Yeah well you know what I'm sick of?" Sam snapped, "Being lied to, over and over again! So if you think for one second that hysteria is gonna get you off the hook this time, you can forget it!"
"UGH!" Nate fairly screamed at the sky in frustration, "Again with the accusations! You know what?" She threw up her hands, "Screw this! I'm outta here."
Sam's eyes flared, "You're not going anywhere…"
"Hey Oplexicon!" His daughter's holler took everyone off guard, "I need a personal day!"
"Who the hell is Oplexicon?" Adam muttered to Dean and leant against the window sill.
"An arch-demon." Dean explained tersely, eyes focused on Sam.
"Okay, and why exactly is he taking orders from Sam's little angel?" Adam continued tersely.
"Apparently, he's not." Dean folded his arms and felt a grim satisfacti0n at the fact that Nate's insistent calls were going unanswered.
"Oplexicon!" Nate yelled, louder and more frantic, "Damn it! Beam me up already!"
"Nate, enough!" Sam yelled, and the TV not-so-spontaeneously combusted in a cloud of smoke and glass.
"Sam…" Dean cautioned his brother.
"Sorry." Sam ground out the word irritably and jammed his fist into his forehead in an attempt to regain his composure.
"Uh, Sam?" Pierce spoke up hesitantly, hands coming down from where they had defensively shielded his face.
"What?" The hunter ground out the word, broad back turned on the group and hand still pressed into his forehead.
Pierce pointed at Nate, who stood frozen in place, her head tilted sideways and her eyeliner smeared around two unseeing orbs. She didn't react when Dean waved a cautious hand in front of her face.
"Oh great – what now?"
"Kid's probably in shock. I mean, Sam did just blow up the TV, which, by the way, I am not paying for!" Adam shoved off from the window ledge and moved to stand beside his brothers as Dean snapped his fingers several times in Nate's eyeshot and the girl didn't so much as blink.
"Please, Nate in shock? The Oroville Dam'd bust easier than she would!" Dean turned to Sam, "You wanna try and snap her out of it?"
Sam's arms were crossed and he glared over his shoulder, "If I touch her, I might kill her."
"Fine." Dean rolled his eyes and reached out, gingerly patting Nate on the shoulder – then jumping when her eyes leapt up to meet his own, "Whoa. Hey, what happened? You kinda blanked out on us for a second there. You okay?"
Nate blinked in confusion, lifting a hand to the side of her temple, "I did? Huh."
"'Huh'." Sam repeated her wording, turning around to face his daughter in irritation, "Well that's a step up from 'it's none of your goddamn business'." The irony in his voice rang clear as he unfolded giant arms and rested his palms on the back of a chair.
"You're mad." Nate's tone was anxious, "You have every right to be. What I did was totally obnoxious! I'm sorry, Sam."
The stunned silence that made camp in the hotel room was thunderous. Dean's eyebrows hit the roof and he turned to Sam, who straightened with a face of complete bewilderment.
Adam rolled his eyes and Piere shot him a dirty look.
Nate's face remained a picture of contrition and she looked down at her fingers which were tangled together, "You forgive me?" Her eyes shot up to Sam, and he was even further taken aback at the sight of actual tears brimming.
"Uh…" Sam shot Dean a confused expression, and his older brother shrugged helplessly in response, "Sure. I… guess."
"You're still angry!" Nate's hands flew to her mouth and she turned away from the brothers.
Dean mouthed 'What the hell?' in Sam's direction and his brother shook his head in perplexment. The latter cleared his throat and moved in Nate's direction as though he was approaching a hive of bees.
"Nate?" Sam heard muffled sobbing coming from the girl and rubbed his neck awkwardly, "Look, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't mean to make you so upset."
"I'm the one who upset you!" The young girl continued her highly uncharacteristic display of emotions as she whirled on her heel, throwing herself at Sam and securing her arms around his broad torso, "I've been a total bitch to you, Dad! But that's gonna change now, I promise!"
Dean gaped, jaw slackened by the about-face his surly niece had just pulled out of her hat. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, paying careful attention to Sam's reaction at having been called 'dad' by his obstinate daughter for the first time in history.
Fortunately, Dean's little brother wasn't stupid – sentimental, on the other hand…
Sam couldn't resist the vice-grip of a hug Nate was yanking him into. His arms lifted automatically, embracing his child with a face of utter loss.
'What just happened?' He silently mouthed to his brother.
'I have no idea.' Dean had nothing. If this was Nate's latest attempt at shifting the limelight off her questionable activities, the kid deserved an Emmy.
Adam thought so, apparently. He broke into a slow, obnoxious clap, ignoring the glare Pierce sent his way, "Bravo. Are you gonna thank your agent, though? Cuz last I checked they don't invite arch-demons to the Oscars!"
"Why don't you get off her back, huh?" Pierce, who seemed to have taken a strong liking to Nate despite the way she dragged him around like a toy, was on the defensive.
"Why don't you get out of my face?" Adam's tone rumbled like a thundercloud, eyes darkening in like fashion.
"Would you knock it off?" Dean snapped from his position beside Sam, "We've got bigger problems right now than you two duelling pistols at dawn!"
"He's right!" Nate sniffed, pulling away from Sam and wiping her nose on the sleeve of her sweater. Her red, puffy eyes and smudged mascara gave testament to the fact that she had either snorted cayenne pepper, or had actually been crying, "Crowley and Meg are gonna want that body. We have to hide it somewhere they'll never get their hands on it, before it's too late!"
"Wait, you said you didn't know anything about that body." Sam raised an eyebrow, and Nate lowered her long eyelashes in what, shockingly enough, appeared to be shame.
"I didn't. That's why I reached out to the demon network to see if I could dig anything up on it." She played with the ends of her hair and shifted her boot against the floor, "That's who the guy at the window was. He said all the information I needed was on the flash drive."
Sam spread his palms and felt a tidal wave of anger and frustration threatening to crash, "So why didn't you just tell us that in the first place?"
"Because I…" Nate's face froze again for a moment, and Sam dipped his head with furrowed eyebrows to make eye contact.
"Nate?"
She jumped, startled back to reality. Sam raised both eyebrows and waited.
"Because you what?"
The young girl seemed to be warring internally, and for a moment a glimmer of defiance sparkled in her still-red eyes before Nate's shoulders slumped and her eyes fell once more.
"Because I wanted to use to info to blackmail Crowley into giving me the book."
"Wait, the book?" Dean took over, stepping past his brother as Sam's eyes became dangerous, "You were willing to hand over the only bargaining chip we might've had with Crowley for some two-bit book of spells?"
"It was for Castiel!" She insisted, and the velocity at which Nate was suddenly declaring her hoarded wealth of secrets was throwing everybody off balance, "He was trying to get the book off Crowley when we found him at the warehouse. That's why we argued!"
Dean's face matched his brothers in a grim, angry scowl. He pursed his lips and muttered a curse to his left before crossing his arms and looking back up at Nate. Her wide, frightened eyes suggested that she knew exactly how the Winchesters were going to digest this particular piece of news.
"Why would Cas want the book?" Dean's tone suggested that he wasn't buying his niece's tale.
"I…I think he wants to vanquish Oplexicon."
"And why the hell would you want to get it for him?"
Nate made a low noise of distress in her throat, "Because…" She clenched her teeth, eyes welling up with tears one more, "Because I need him to help me dig up Ruby."
Sam lost it. Dean grabbed his little brother by the shoulders just in time to stall his lunge.
He quickly regained his composure but not his calm, "How could you be so stupid?" He yelled at his daughter, and Nate burst into tears yet again.
"I'm sorry!"
"Yeah well if you aren't, you will be!" Sam informed her matter-of-factly, pointing at the chair beside him, "Sit!"
Nate complied, tears rolling down her face even as she wiped them away. Sam grabbed Dean's arm and pulled his brother aside for a one-on-one.
"I think someone hexed her. It's the only explanation for the way she's acting."
"What, you mean like some kinda truth serum?" Dean wrinkled his forehead, and Sam gave his brother an impatient frown, "Why would anybody do that?"
"I don't know. Who cares? The point is that Pollyanna over there is not my daughter, and I want to get her back to normal!"
"Whoa, what's the hurry?" Dean glanced over his shoulder at the distraught, pale girl curled up in the chair behind them, "I mean, we're finally getting all the dark and dirty secrets here. Why do you want mean old Natey back so soon?"
Sam looked at his brother as though he were demented, "So I can kill her!"
Dean saw his point, but they had larger issues at stake just then, and he cast Sam his most patient expression, "I'm just saying – maybe we should wait, is all."
Sam's bitch-face was in full swing, jaw locked and eyes glaring at his brother. Dean raised his eyebrows.
"Look, it's gonna take us a while to figure out who did this and how to reverse it. In the meantime, I need you to chill out. Nate's not going to wanna spill all the sordid details if she's too busy being scared of you!"
"She should be." Sam muttered, but the tension leaving his shoulders suggested he was following Dean's lead on this one, "Call Bobby. See if he knows anything."
Dean's eyes trained sharply on Sam, mouth in a hard line and ready to call bullshit at the slightest sign that Sam didn't have his temper under control.
"Dean, I'm fine." Sam sighed, hand scraping across his face in a weary gesture, "I promise."
Dean pulled out his cell phone and retreated, motioning to Adam and Pierce to follow him into the hall. He left the door to the hotel room slightly ajar, and the action didn't go unnoticed by Sam.
He forced another calming breath and turned, taking hold of the other chair in the room and sitting down in front of Nate.
The girl had stopped crying, at least. She had her knees pulled up to her chest and was gnawing at her lip, visibly distressed. Sam felt a twing of guilt at the knowledge that the real Nate was in there somewhere, probably fighting tooth and nail to regain control of her body before all her clandestine activities were brought to light.
It was a very, very small twinge. Sam kicked it in the gut and slammed it back into the only corner of his brain that wasn't sick to death of Nate's lies and potentially lethal pet projects. He clasped his hands together and picked a question.
"You opened the cage, didn't you?"
Nate's face was tight with anguish, "Yes." She refused to look at him.
Sam nodded, "When? How?"
She clutched her knees more forcefully, knuckles blanching with the strain, "Right before I went to Texas. The book has a spell about a back door no one uses. I wrote it down before Crowley got ahold of it."
This was news. Sam broached his next question, "To rescue Adam or to look for Ruby?"
Her eyes finally met his, and Sam noticed that Nate's pupils were dilated.
"Both…I guess. I went to Wyoming cuz there was a demon who helped me with the spell. Didn't find Ruby so I hauled out Adam. I didn't really think it through."
"That's your theme song tonight, apparently." Sam couldn't stop the remark before it left his mouth. He saw Nate's eyes fall again and she brushed the hair dangling in her face behind her ear. Sam noticed the threadlike veins that had been present were gone.
He heard hushed voices in the hallway and was reminded that their window of time was very short. Sam straightened in his chair and studied the scuffed-up toes of his boots.
"What happened with Skandar?"
He had spoken the question so quietly it was almost a whisper – that was how much it frightened him to ask. But Sam needed to know, and he was certain his surly, tight-lipped daughter was never going to volunteer that particular piece of information.
Nate's breathing quickened. Sam watched her feet hit the floor with a thud and her spine stand at attention. She gazed at him, every muscle in her face tensing with an obvious internal struggle.
"Please don't ask me that." Nate breathed the words, and a lone tear escaped the corner of her eyelid even as she did so.
Sam felt sick. A cold dread took him, confirming his worst fears even as he leant forward, eyes and mouth and tone hard and uncompromising.
"Tell me." He ordered.
Nate was shaking like a leaf, a steady flow of tears rolling down her cheeks despite her silence as she rocked back and forth.
Sam persisted, "Did he…" He closed his eyes as the next words left his mouth, "Did he rape you?"
A sob, deep and painful, racked through Nate as she buried her face in her palms.
"Answer me!" Sam couldn't bring himself to repeat the question.
"Yes." The whisper was small and choked. But it still sliced through Sam like butter.
Sam looked away, the hand resting on his knee bunching tightly into a fist as he felt hot, white anger begin to boil in his blood. Nate was weeping into her hands, her lean body heaving with silent sobs that obviously came from a deep, dark place.
"Did you kill him?" Sam spat out the words.
"Please, please just stop!" Nate was begging now, but Sam wasn't listening. He took hold of her wrists, pulling them away from her face and towards him, forcing eye contact.
He ground out the words, "Did. You. Kill. Him?"
Nate was a mess, her face smeared with tears and masacara and snot. She lowered her head and Sam's boots caught three more tears.
"No."
Sam let go of her wrists, slumping back in his chair. Nate huddled into herself once more, her face disappearing into her hands as her long hair fell like a glossy shield of protection over her fingers.
"So I talked to Bobby…" Dean ambled into the room and froze at the picture of despair that greeted him. Sam's back was to him but Dean knew his brother well enough to recognize the rigid shoulders and bowed head. Nate stood up and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door hard enough to send a shudder through the floorboards.
"Sam?" Dean approached his brother, worry flooding his tone as Sam showed no reaction, "Sammy?"
Sam swept both hands across his face, over his eyes and through his hair before he stood. Dean saw the casual cold front that Sam adopted when he was attempting to cope with something painful, and he moved closer.
"You okay? What happened?"
Sam pulled a nonchalant expression, eyes refusing to meet Dean's as he nodded at the phone, "Nothing. What'd Bobby say?"
Dean squinted at his little brother, "Sam."
"Don't." Sam informed him bluntly, hard eyes focusing only a moment on Dean. The look that passed between them was a declaration of war – a war that would have commenced had not Adam stepped in with a proverbial white flag.
"Guys," The sandy-haired young man shut the door behind him and gave his brothers a deadpan stare, "no pistols, remember? Did you find anything out from Bobby, Dean?"
"Yeah." Dean gave Sam one last scowl before he turned, fiddling with his cell phone, "Turns out Nate's under the influence of a good old truth spell. Apparently not only is the person in question obligated to be honest, but they also, and I quote, 'manifest acute morality'. Once it's cast, there's no reversing it – just gotta ride it out until it passes."
"Kinda like a cold." Adam pondered, "Only instead of sneezing, you spill your guts."
"Well how long does this spell usually last?" Sam queried in an agitated manner, directing a curt look at his younger brother in the process.
"Bobby said normally it wears off in 24 hours."
"Great." Sam sighed, fisting at his hair in frustration as he lumbered over to the bed and parked his giant frame there.
Adam's eyebrow Dean's direction,"Someone remind me why this is such a bad thing, again? I mean, a little acute morality never hurt anyone."
Dean scoffed, "Trust me,kid – when it comes to magic," he shook his head at the muffled sobs coming from the bathroom and the black aura coming off of Sam, "someone always gets hurt."