Chapter Twenty-Eight
He didn't know if he'd killed Corey, and he didn't care. Sam had smashed his head into the floor, not hit but smashed with every ounce of strength in his body. The guy had gone limp at once. Letting go and turning over frantically, Sam kicked him on accident in his scrabble for Lucy. There was no response at the foot to the side, not even a grunt.
She was also still, until he huddled over her and whispered her name. The spell had left her unrecognizable, a frail ninety-year-old woman in a Penworth uniform and she was still aging. Her closed eyelids parted the smallest bit to hear his voice, and a sizzle made him look away. Hilary had just belted Dean to the portal, and he'd barely caught himself on the frame to keep from being incinerated. But some part of him had gone through, since he howled in pain and jerked away from the flickering light.
"Almost!" the demon cheered for Hilary. Then he laughed. "Just like Charlie, no one ever keeps down a Warwick for long." Utterly blasé about the fight, he leaned upon a chair. He had drained his spell but felt no danger. Then again, there was little reason for him to be alarmed when Hilary was taking care of Dean and Sam was down on the floor with Lucy. The others were gone and Sam hadn't even known. He and Corey had been fighting too hard.
"Sam," Lucy whispered. He looked down. Her hair was still long, but white and thin. The uniform was loose around her body, since she had shrunken. Struggling to force open fingers that wanted to curl in, she touched his cheek. Only her eyes were still the same, the vivid russet and the pale brown starfish swimming upon the green background. The whites were turning yellow, and even as he looked, the irises took on a cloudy cast.
He put his hand over hers and said in anguish, "Lucy."
She was going to die any moment now, her nineties having passed into her hundreds. Still, her filmy eyes were locked to his. "Sam . . . my . . . my blood. Get . . . get the . . ." Her throat failed her, but her eyes moved to the knife on the floor.
Sam launched away from her bird-like form and crawled across the floor. It smelled like singed flesh in the room. Hilary screamed as Dean caught hold of her hair, clearly intending to drag her to the doorway and throw her in. Just as Sam's hand closed on the handle, she nailed Dean with a drive to the arm. Sam looked up in surprise when that little was enough to make his brother let go. It was because Dean was burned there, his shirt blackened and the skin a mess.
Seeing Sam down on the floor, Hilary kicked him in the side. He flipped onto his back and struck a sofa, but still had the knife in hand. Dean got hold of her again and they fought brutally. She had had no martial arts training, that much was obvious, yet desperation was making her fight well and without limits, and Dean's burn was slowing him down.
"Sammy, give me the knife!" Dean ordered, but Sam was crawling back to Lucy as fast as he could. Would it even work if Lucy were dead? Her body had curled inwards in the short time he was gone, and she wasn't moving any longer.
Forcing one of her arms from her body, Sam whispered, "I'm sorry," and dragged the blade down the palm of her hand. A rattle of air escaped her throat, so she wasn't quite dead yet. The blood came out hesitantly, like it was drying up inside her veins just as her skin was drying up on her body.
The demon startled at the exposure of blood, his eyes widening with hunger. Sam covered the blade in Lucy's blood as her lips trembled slightly, from fear or pain or trying to speak, he did not know. He threw himself at the summoning circle and thrust the blade into it, screaming, "Dean! Dean, I don't know the words!"
Jerking a piece of paper from his pocket, Dean tossed it to Sam. Before he could reach it, the demon scooped it up deftly, read it, and said, "Oh! Well, we won't be needing that, will we?" and chucked it into his portal. It was burned so fast that it didn't even make a sizzle.
Dean ducked when Hilary lunged for him. Throwing himself down to the floor, he clasped his hands hard over Sam's upon the blade. The demon started forward with a hiss, and Dean shouted, "Kronoan, seres'tai yanu!"
It hit the room like an explosion, a tsunami of heat blasting out of the portal with such fury that it picked up everyone in the wave and threw them against the walls of the room. Chairs and sofas flipped over and some smashed to pieces. The demon cried, "No!"
Then it began to drag inwards, pulling Sam along the floor to the doorway like he weighed nothing at all. Cushions and broken legs of chairs shot past him to sizzle and vanish as the portal drank everything down. Still unconscious, Corey tumbled along helplessly to the light and disappeared. Sam shouted and reached for something to hold onto, anything, and then a hand stretched out and caught his wrist in an iron grip. It was Dean, holding desperately to a pipe along the wall.
Oblivious to the gale winds dragging everything to the portal, the demon stood rock-solid on the floor. But that was only because he was no longer fully corporeal, wood and material flowing through his form on its way to burn. He looked down to his chest in shock as a cushion passed through it, and then no one was there. The doorframe twisted and splintered.
"Help me! Help me!" Hilary was scrabbling over a sofa as it was dragged along the floor, her long hair streaming out straight behind her. Wrenching itself hard, the doorframe broke along the top and began to collapse downwards.
The pipe moaned in protest, one end freeing itself from the wall. Sam yelled to be suddenly moved a foot closer to the doorway. He tried to bury his foot into the ground, to brace himself a little, but the sofa smacked into his leg as it slid and scraped by. Hilary was not strong enough to force herself over the side of it. Holding on in panic to the arm, she looked over her shoulder and screamed as the far end was gobbled up in this strange fire.
The sofa overturned and spilled her to the ground. She lashed out wildly and caught onto Sam's ankle. The pipe groaned at the further weight and jiggled itself looser. Sam kicked to shake her free and she screamed as the portal singed her feet. A chair flew by and clocked her on the head, and she let go just as the last of the doorway came down.
With the gale forces gone, Dean and Sam hit the floor painfully. Something thumped within the circle. It was the goblet, beside a slim white hand. Dean looked at all that was left of Hilary Warwick and said, "Gross."
"Lucy!" Sam screamed. There was little left in the room, only the very heaviest pieces of furniture scattered about. He scrambled over to them and searched, finding a tiny form under the cover of a tipped sofa.
She was dead. He bent over her, sobbing and scooping her into her arms, and she crumpled into ashes in his hands.
