Chapter 29

In Your Eyes

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.

Francis Bacon, English philosopher.

Dean ran as quickly as he could toward the house. He saw the man already looking out of the window, which meant that he'd probably heard Dean strumming the guitar. Now they needed a reason for the music, and the hunter was going to have to provide it. He tossed a pebble at the man's window and waited outside. It wasn't exactly standing the man's bedroom window while playing Peter Gabriel from a ginormous 80s boombox, but Dean was pretty sure Lenko would be impressed by the "sentiment."

He just hoped that everyone realized that there was a limit to just how far Dean would "take one for the team."

This would mean that Lenko would know who was responsible for the theft of the guitar and that he and Sam would need to leave town tonight and send their apologies to Andrea later.

The upstairs window opened and Lenko, wearing a black T-shirt, stuck his head out of the window. He looked confused at first, then incredibly pleased. "Dean?" the man asked.

"Hello, Oscar," he called from the ground below. "I managed to slip away from Sam to see you. Do you mind me coming in for a drink or something? I mean, not if I'm imposing."

"Not at all," the man said with a very happy grin.

"I'll meet you at the back door," Dean said, heading for the back of the house. He didn't want to give the man the option to go to the front and possibly spot the missing guitar, so he gave him no time to argue. He stood at the back porch and waited for the yellowish light to flick on and the ghoulish host to get a look at his late night visitor through the back screen door. The way that man practically undressed him with his eyes made Dean's skin crawl. (To each his own, and Dean knew he was a good specimen, but this guy was nasty by any standards.)

"I am a little surprised to see you here," Lenko said as he opened the door and allowed Dean inside.

"Really?" Dean said. Busty Asian Beauties. "Did I completely misread you when I was here before?"

Dean stepped into the kitchen. It had an old look to it, as though Lenko had updated it only as was absolutely necessary. Hunter green walls and dark cabinets adjusted to modern appliances, and Dean had to admit that this was probably the only normal room in the whole house.

"Oh, you didn't misread me. I just wasn't sure I was getting much back from you." Lenko walked over to the stainless steel refrigerator. "I think you mentioned drinks?"

"Beer if you have it," Dean said. "And as for getting anything back from me, I had to be a professional." Anna Nicole Smith in the Guess jean ads that got me through ninth grade.

Lenko pulled beer, much to Dean's susprise. He seemed the type to keep wine or liquor, but not something as common as beer. The guy had put on a red velvet robe before greeting Dean at the door. It didn't seem reasonable that the guy would actually have beer. At least some of the hunter's impression of the man had been right when he realized that this beer, whatever brand it was, required a pop tap. There were no twist-tops here.

Very purposefully, Dean ran his fingertips down the neck of his bottle. Gabrielle Union... God, I hope they've got this ritual just about done. They'd better call me as soon as they've lit that son of a bitch up. "Sam is a stickler for professionalism. He's afraid no one will take the site seriously if we aren't all business."

"So you snuck away just to see me?" Lenko asked, leaning across the counter. The guy was invading closer into his personal space than even Cas usually did, and it was all that Dean could do not to shift backward. At least with Cas it wasn't a completely and totally unwelcome invasion of Dean's personal bubble.

"Something like that," Dean said, and Lenko moved in just a little closer. Dean had never officially placed kissing a freaky guy obsessed with the weird and disturbing, but it was probably implied that it was right up there. Actually, he wasn't sure if he was relieved or not by the sudden sound of howling that made his spine straighten and his hair stand on end.

"What is it?" Lenko asked.

"Did you hear that?"

There was a flicker of something in the greasy little man's eyes at that. "Hear what?" he asked, looking around the room. Dean had always had a sneaking suspicion that the guy had known all along about the people who had died. Now he felt he was seconds away from confirming it.

With the sound of snarling outside the house, Dean felt the adrenaline pumping in his veins. There was the expected fear, and something else he'd really hoped not to feel again.

"Must be my imagination," Dean said with a cough before taking a drink of the beer. It was some kind of microbrew. Really strong, but pretty damned good.

"You were saying..."

The howling came again, and there was a sudden banging on Lenko's door. The short man in his absurd little robe looked Dean levelly in the eyes. "You touched the guitar." Yeah, the bastard knew about the deaths. "When?"

Dean reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag of goofer dust, which he used to line the door and window. "I did a hell of a lot more than touch it. It should be burning right about now."

He tried not to jump as the hellhounds bounded at the door and slammed against it. "So much for the theory that I'd be exempt. Guess you need an active contract to avoid those ugly sons of bitches. He didn't bother to look outside the window. He knew what the ugly things looked like.

"You need to get out of here," Lenko said, and it was just about hysterical that the man was actually trying to give him an order.

"Yeah... that ain't happening Besides, you should be safe. You could be trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey and these ugly bastards would still only go after me." Lenko looked at him curiously, and Dean smirked. "At least, until your contract is up."

"How do you know so much about them?" the man asked. Lenko obviously worried that Dean was a demon, like anyone in his situation might have when someone talks about hellhounds like they were his own personal pet. And, a few years ago, that wasn't so far from the truth.

"Name's Dean Winchester," he said as he searched the kitchen for any other points of entry as he heard Lenko's front door being burst open.

"I know that name," he said. "You are the only man to get out of your contract."

"Get out of it?" Dean asked with a laugh. "Only way I got out of it was to fulfill it." The man actually looked sick at the thought. "I did time down in the Pit. If someone with a hell of a lot more power hadn't wanted me more, I'd still be there. Still remember what it felt like, those things tearing through my flesh, opening my chest with their claws, ripping through muscles and tendon on my leg." He huffed in laughter. He could feel the edge in his voice, the desire to torture this man. Alistair had done more than just train him how to cut with a blade. If necessary, he could be especially cruel with his words.

Being cruel as he relived those memories was much better than being afraid.

Somewhere in Dean's mind, his brain was reminding him that he wasn't that thing anymore, that he was a father and a hero—a broken one, perhaps, but he did try to save as many people as he could. The problems were the hounds. His mind had only two reactions available for those things: Fear or... this.

Dean heard something crash outside the kitchen door and he smirked. Was it something of Manson's? Maybe that stupid clown hat?

"Get out of here!" Lenko yelled, now hysterical.

The hunter circled the slimy little man, pulling Ruby's knife from his waistband. "Oh, you should see how they can use these downstairs. But I guess you will." He gave a malicious grin. "Tell me, what did you trade for your soul. Was it worth it? Did you trade it for your hall of horrors here or what?"

Lenko had backed himself into a corner as far from either door as he could get. That was for the best. As much as a part of Dean just wanted to rip into this little son of a bitch, he still would make sure that Lenko lived through this night. He'd just get the guy started early trying to find a way out of his deal.

"I traded it for money and to appeal to … like-minded men."

"But you left yourself looking like a greasy toad?" Dean asked, incredulously.

"I am comfortable with my body," Lenko said, defensively. In other situations, it might even have been an applaudable statement. Not many people could genuinely say they were comfortable in their own skin. "I just wanted it to matter a little less to other people."

"Do you have any idea how stupid that is?"

"Do you have any idea what a hell this place was before I did it?"

Dean's phone began buzzing in his pocket, which meant that the curse was finished, but with his usual luck, that didn't, apparently, mean that the hellhounds were leaving. Apparently, they held true to their legends. Once they got your scent, they didn't give that up easily.

"Hey, Sam," he said.

"Curse ended. There was this huge shockwave when we did it, so we're pretty sure it worked."

"That's great," Dean said, "but the hellhounds didn't get the message. I've got about couple of them outside the door."

"Lenko there with you?"

"Yeah. He knows who I am now, but he's busy trying not to piss himself in the corner. So, you know, I wouldn't turn down some backup."

He no sooner heard Sam telling Cas that Dean was surrounded by hellhounds than he heard something outside fighting them. He wasn't going to let the angel have all the fun. Especially when Dean wasn't sure that Cas could see the disgusting things. The hunter opened the door with Ruby's knife in hand and began hacking and slashing at the things. That was, after he pushed through the initial shock that stopped him dead in his tracks for a split second upon seeing those things again.

There was something cathartic in the fact that he could attack these monsters for once while actually seeing them. They were just as ugly as he'd remembered, and God did it feel good to make them uglier, followed by very, very dead. The smell wasn't much better, either. Dean had thought maybe outside of the Pit, they wouldn't reek of sulfur and the wet dog ass. He didn't know why he had assumed that. He should have remembered from the first time around that the sons of bitches reeked in hell or earth.

He turned around, trying as hard as he could not to be distracted by the whipping trenchcoat or the glowy wings. He watched as one of those snarling things crouched low, nearly pressing its matted, slimy belly to the floor. Its haunches twitched and Dean instantly followed the hound's would-be trajectory.

"Cas, behind you!" he yelled out to his friend. The angel whirled around with his angel blade and stabbed the monster in the head, straight through the skull. The sickening crack that echoed through Lenko's hall of horrors was proof enough of Cas's strength. As Dean dodged a set of yellowed and sharp teeth, he thought, One more reason why a person shouldn't piss off the nerd angels.

One of the things swiped at Cas's trenchcoat, and Dean figured he'd dwell later on why the thought of them ripping up that stupid coat pissed him off so much. Because it really did more than it rationally should have. In retaliation, he got the thing in the heart with Ruby's knife and used his other hand to punch another of the beasts square in the eye.

He remembered that one. It had been Alistair's pet in the Pit. Dean had been ripped to parts more than once by those teeth and those claws. It had only one eye, and Dean was fairly sure the other might have been on the necklace Alistair wore down in the pit. He didn't know if that was the only way to get one of these to fully submit or not, and he didn't have any desire to learn. But he knew this one and took far too much pleasure in carving it up in return for the number of times it feasted on him on the rack.

It was an ugly side of his own nature that was coming out with each fluid movement of the demon knife, and he was fairly sure he was operating on muscle memory—or whatever the soul equivalent was. In his head, he knew he shouldn't have enjoyed killing these things as much as he did, but these monsters had been a pain in his ass for too damned long. They may not have been the one to give the finishing blow, but they killed Jo and Ellen, as far as he was concerned. Crowley had used the things to guard his compound, even kept one of the bastards as a pet. They'd been the frontline in battles way too often, and those bastards cost him way too fucking much.

Yeah, Dean was damned glad that he could finally get back a little of his own.

Dean had become so accustomed to Cas as the awkward man in the trenchcoat or even the all powerful being who could zap a baddie with a touch of his hands or a demonstration of his true form—which Dean could still see, though it was fading, just as the hellhounds' shapes were getting blurrier. What the hunter had nearly forgotten, though, was that Cas was created to be a warrior, and he was a damned good one, too. He was a total badass when it came to fighting hand-to-hand.

Of course, Dean wasn't a slouch, either. And with invisibility, the hounds' biggest advantage after razor-sharp teeth and claws and immense size and strength, no longer an issue, Dean was doing some serious ass kicking himself. Cas wasn't able to just eliminate the things like he had the skinwalkers with a single bright light, but together they were quickly making puppy chow out of the hounds.

As they were finally down to just the final creature in the house Dean still wasn't sure that Cas couldn't see the things. It was about a second from ripping the hunter's arm completely off when the angel lobbed his blade at the thing. The short sword went right for the creature's chest, but it must have missed anything vital, because the monster was right back at Dean a moment later. Unfortunately for that hellhound, Dean had regained his bearings and was making use of the last of his blurry veil-piercing vision to make sure Ruby's knife hit at least one, maybe two, vital organs.

And then it got silent. No more hellhounds in the hallway, no more growling outside, just the sound of Sam yelling for Dean to confirm he was OK. The older brother moved toward the door and yelled back some reassurances before slumping against the wall in mental and physical exhaustion. All of the adrenalin was fading, along with the image he'd had of Cas's glowing figure.

The wings were still there, and when the angel neared to be sure that the man was unharmed, Dean couldn't help himself from trying to touch the feathery things. Dean was pretty sure he touched something, but he couldn't have said exactly what. He became even more certain that he'd just felt Cas's wings when the angel stood stock still and stared at Dean with wide eyes.

"Seriously, though, Cas. Your wings really are pretty." Because his vocabulary was too damned stunted to come up with a better word.

And just before they faded from view, those feathered appendages again puffed up in pride.