The soreness on his wrists and ankles was the first thing that he realised, the feeling of something irritating them caused him to try and take them away to try and get rid of the pain. He couldn't. His wrists were tied together with a thick metal chain whilst his feet were bound to the chair with rope. He groaned, putting his head against the top of the wooden seat that he was trapped to. What had happened? He didn't remember half of it. Hell, he didn't recall anything.
Sam opened his eyes as the light hit his eyelids and a muffle of noise disrupted his ears before it slowly turned sharper. The sounds became more distinct, dripping, like water onto the floor; the shifting of others moving around- were they rats or people? His blurred vision became of higher definition and he started focusing on some of the details of the room.
The walls were a light brown as well as the floor and it unfortunately smelled exactly how it looked. He also realised that he was in a tunnel, the walls were curved and in the shape of a semi-circle, the tunnel went on in a straight line into the darkness. There were several yellow lights on the sides of the ceiling giving off a dim, sickly light. There was also thick, large pipes on top of the ceiling, some of the fluids inside dripping on the floor, making an annoying, high pitched splats every few seconds. He was tied to a chair and pushed painfully into a wooden table in the middle of this mysterious chamber. But he wasn't alone and there were three other people there, people he recognized. At the table, joining him were a sleeping Alice Jones and Jake Goldberg and a conscious Ross Fletcher looking at the floor.
"Hey," Sam said quietly, catching his attention. "You're Ross Fletcher."
"You know who I am?" he asked curiously, his voice was hoarse and weak. He looked like he was in his early twenties with big ears and massive brown eyes.
"Yeah, you're on the news. You went missing a few days ago."
"Only?" he asked in disappointment. "It feels like it's been a year already."
"What happens here?" Sam asked curiously.
"She makes us…play with her."
"Who?"
"The lady."
"What-what lady?"
"Sam, you're awake!" he heard a voice behind him, a smooth voice he knew all too well.
Eliza came to Sam's side before leaning down and smiling at him widely.
"You." He spat angrily.
"Yes, Sammy, me." She beamed. "Everyone wake up!" she shouted, causing Alice and Jake to snap their eyes open in a heartbeat. "Good, you're getting better at it. This is our newest guest and family member: Sam Winchester. He's an agent, who was trying to take you guys away from me." She announced with a sly grin on her face. "Ironic isn't it."
"You better listen to me." Sam said dangerously. "They'll know I'm gone, I told them exactly where I was going before I left, they'll be searching for you so you better let us the hell go otherwise you're going to pay."
"Oh Sammy, Sammy." She laughed. "You didn't tell anyone remember, it was our little secret."
Sam groaned slightly, putting his head against the top of the chair again, why didn't he tell Dean or Emma. He'd been stupid and now he could only count on his two other agents to save him, using the evidence he'd so reluctantly given to them out of foolishness.
"So why am I here?" he asked sincerely, he was curious about this case after all. "What are you going to do? Make me sit here forever?"
"I'm not here to bore you Sammy, you love me remember? If you didn't then you would have agreed to have had met me yesterday night."
"So, you think I love you?" he asked, laughing slightly.
"You all do, that's why you came to meet me, you signed up for this. I only take people who I know are loyal to me."
"And the people you've kidnapped before, where are they?"
"That's the problem; they never live for as long as I want them to. I take ones in their twenties, they'll live with me for longer but some die of disease or hunger or if they don't show their devotion to me, I kill them." this last statement made all other of them shift uncomfortably and share glances of terror with one another. "But that won't happen, will it." She said to the three of them. "Because you love me don't you."
"Yes!" Jake said eagerly, the other two nodded with him.
"What are you?" Sam asked through squinted eyes. "What kind of creature kidnaps others to feel loved."
Eliza leant down and kissed Sam's lips softly, he pulled away from disgust. She chuckled softly before going to whisper in the hunter's ear exactly what she was, making his eyes widen. She couldn't be, could she?
X
"Hey Dean," Emma greeted as she came into the brother's motel room the next morning.
"Hey Em." The brother welcomed.
"Where's Sam?"
"I don't know, probably at the hair dressers getting his perfectly long locks cut." He guessed, making Emma giggle. "I'll call him." The older brother got out his cell and dialled the other hunter. After it went to voicemail, Dean put the cell down and looked at Emma curiously. "I don't know where he would be, if he goes anywhere for a long time, he normally leaves a note and that boy is addicted to his cell, hates missing a call."
"Strange." Emma admitted.
"Come on, we'll go find him, maybe he's passed out in a bar or something." The brother shrugged before leaving the motel. The Impala was nowhere to be seen in the motel parking lot.
"Where's the car?" Emma asked slowly.
"Oh c'mon!" Dean said angrily. "First he disappears and then he takes baby with him?" he walked back in the motel room and grabbing his phone out again.
"Who are you calling?"
"Someone who can trace my baby and my bitch for a brother back- hi." He said after a person came to him on the phone, his voice turned soft and kind as he talked to the receiver. "I've been an idiot and I let my teenage son go off with my car, can I trace it back please? Yep, it's a black, 1967 Chevy Impala, I know, hell of a car isn't it. Number plate is CNK 800, three. Thanks." He waited in silence for a few long moments before saying "thank you so much," and hung up the phone.
"So, where is it?" Emma asked, hoping Dean had the answer.
"Get this, it's outside that pizza place we were at yesterday."
"Why would he go back there?"
"I have no idea, but something about this doesn't smell right to me," the older brother confessed sceptically.
X
The two went to the place that they had lunch at the day before, the journey feeling slightly longer because they had to walk but mostly due to Dean grumbling the whole way there about the lack of transportation. He said several times that 'this is exactly what cars are supposed to get rid of', making Emma roll her eyes at his laziness.
When they got to the restaurant, Dean saw the car almost immediately before running over to it and stroking the hood with his hand. "It's okay Baby, Dean's here."
"So, where's Sam?" Emma asked, disrupting Dean's moment with Baby.
"Good question."
"Oh shit." Emma whispered.
"What?" Dean asked quickly.
"There's a drain here." She said, walking over to the storm drain by the curb.
"I mean, drains are a common thing." Dean bargained.
"But he hasn't picked up his phone, he snuck out of the room in the middle of the night and now we still can't find him."
"Shit." Dean repeated, coming to join her, looking down the drain, half expecting see his brother to be down there. "I think he's one of the victims."
"What do we do, we don't know what the hell it is."
At this moment, a sharp ringing emerged from Dean's pocket. He quickly went to take it out, hoping it was his little brother but his face grew disappointed when he heard the voice of Bobby instead.
"Bobby, Sam's gone, that son of a bitch took him."
"Balls!" the older man cursed on the other side of the phone. "Trust you two."
"Sorry Bobby, but what information have you got?"
"Well take it this way, I wouldn't call this monster a son of a bitch."
"So, this thing's a girl?"
"Not just a girl, a goddess. I know, it sounds pretty out there. The only thing that I could find with a connection of sewers and shadows is the goddess Cloacina."
"Cloacina, what the hell is she the goddess off?"
"Sewers."
"Sewers?"
"Exactly."
"You're telling me that the goddess of sewers has kidnapped my brother?"
"What?" Emma asked curiously, not being able to hear the full conversation, this sentence did sound out of the blue.
"Not just the goddess of sewers, sexual intercourse in marriage as well, she was believed in by Romans. God knows why she's in Chicago."
"Yeah tell me, so how can we kill this stinky bitch?"
"Well that's the tricky part, you can't technically kill a Roman god, they're immortal but you can get their immortal juice out of the mortal body they're in so to say."
"Well that's good enough for me, how do you do that?"
"There are many accounts on how to 'kill' a Roman god, first of all you're going to need something that belonged to one, try an actual weapon because you're going to need to stab her with it, this will have ancient voodoo in them with enough power to kill things as old as her. You then have to get bowl filled with chicken blood and drop the artefact in before summoning an ancient spell, I'll send it to you. This will purify the weapon and will leak out the ancient power hidden within in so to speak."
"Okay, thanks Bobby."
"And Dean, this thing is powerful, she's a goddess remember. There's also an ancient Roman prayer that they used to say to her, I'll send you that as well, if you say it three times, it means that she cannot turn into a shadow but she'll still have powers."
"Okay, thank you Bobby."
"Okay, make sure you're all alive at the end of the day or so help me." The older man chuckled. Dean laughed back before hanging up the phone. "We got work to do." He said gravely. This case would inevitably be a hard one.
X
"Cloacina?" Sam asked as 'Eliza' leant back from him, "Cloacina the goddess of sewage?" Sam remembered learning about Roman gods and goddesses in 5th grade, his teacher at the school he had attended for less than a month. His teacher used Cloacina as a joke for the end of the lesson, making all of the children cackle with laughter at the goddess with such a pathetic title.
"Not just sewage!" she spat angrily. "Why does everyone always think that I'm just that?"
"God-goddess?" Alice stuttered.
"Yes, I'm a goddess," Eliza smiled at Alice.
"Wh-what the hell?" Jake screamed.
"Sewage?" Ross asked in a frightened tone.
"Not just that!" she yelled. "I'm the goddess of intercourse in marriage as well! That's why you're all here- to love me."
"Maybe if you wanted us to- to love you, you wouldn't ke-keep us here." Ross replied.
"Are you questioning me?" Eliza asked dangerously. "Once men prayed to me to keep the Cloaca Maxima protected, they worshipped me! How dare you, a mortal man, question my intentions!"
"So, what's your story Eliza?" Sam asked raising his eyebrows. "You said you were once worshipped what's the story?"
"I was never one of the great goddesses; I was never loved by royalty or anybody that was anybody. I was worshipped by swine! Sewage workers, peasants, lowly creatures, they were the only ones who were devoted to me. But what's the point of being prayed to by people infested with disease?
"As time moved on, my whole family were forgotten, no one worshipped us gods and goddesses anymore. But people still remembered them. Even as myths, Jupiter, Minerva, Neptune, were remembered and people still liked them. Planets became their legacies. But was I remembered? No. Only if I was being referred to as a sick joke like 'guess what, the Romans even had a god for sewage'! ha ha ha. I deserved to be loved, I protected Rome for hundreds of years; they wouldn't survive if the sewage system wasn't functioning.
"I had to come back to earth, to get the love I deserve. Jupiter was supposed to be my father and what love did he show his daughter, making her the goddess of excrement? But down here, I'm loved by all of you!"
"Oh God, I'm going mad!" Alice whispered.
"Why Chicago, you're a Roman goddess?" Sam questioned.
"I couldn't go back and live in Rome! They are the ones that are the most familiar with their ancient god and goddesses. I had to start where nobody knew me, and what better place than Chicago?"
"Look Eliza," Sam said softly. "You're not loved, I get it, it's hard but you can't force people to spend forever with you. It's not worship and it's not love. Times moved on and that's tough but you got to face it rather than make others suffer with you."
"I'm not making you suffer! I am going to take care of you, I love you and as soon as you get to like it here, you're going to love me too. We're going to have fun here!"
Sam closed his eyes painfully; he hoped Dean and Emma would get here as soon as they possibly could.
