There's a quick, hot lick of fire, the briefest kick of sulfur burning in his nose, and then Sam is crashing against the wall, pinned to the concrete block between Dean and Dad by invisible, iron-strong bands across his chest, his arms, as Meg, Meg-But-Not-Meg, shakes off her seared and smoking ropes and stands, strolls her way right out of the devil's trap and over to them, cat-got-the-cream grin creeping across her face.
"Oh, Johnny," Yellow Eyes hums through a smooth, satisfied smirk that Sam's never seen on Meg's pixie face. It doesn't belong to her, not to the cute, quipping con Sam met in Indiana, not to the purring, black-eyed bitch that wrapped herself around him as shadow demons closed in in Chicago, not to the snarling, smirking lieutenant, tied but not taken, that was trapped in front of them just seconds ago.
This is something different, something new, something that belongs to the yellow eyes glaring up at him, to the soft, excited murmurs at the corners of his visions-
You're my favorite, Sam…
"All these years, all those decades hunting me, and you had me right here. Right under your nose," she taunts their Dad, tightening the invisible bonds trapping them for just a second, just to show she can, yellow eyes bright and shining in the basement light. "You were so sure you'd know the second you laid eyes on me. That you'd just know."
She chuckles lowly.
"Tell me, Johnny," she whispers, superior and vicious and so, so sure. "How long was it me in here and not my girl? Five minutes? Ten? Was she ever here at all?"
"How the hell-" John grits out, but Yellow Eyes is there, smirking and laughing and cutting him off.
"Oh, Johnny. You really think a little salt and scribble could keep me out? Come on." She winks. "You should know better than that."
"And Meg?" Sam grunts, needing to know, to know if he's been up against the thing that killed Mom, the thing that murdered Jess, off and on since Indiana, if the filthy bastard that killed her in cold blood picked him up off the side of the road, sat across from him and listened and-
"Well, my girl's good," Yellow Eyes smirks from Meg's pixie face, derailing Sam's train of thought, "but she's not that good. Not yet."
Yellow Eyes takes a step back and gestures to the shabby, wrecked basement around them.
"Hate to break it to you boys, but your little mountain getaway? Ma and Pa Clampett's happy home? It's got leaks. One little drip," she crooks her finger and a thin, steady trickle of water makes its way through the salt line, down the wall, and across the floor to draw a second needle-thin break in the devil's trap on the floor, "and the best laid plans of mice and men…"
Sam hears his dad suck in a sharp, furious breath.
"Don't worry about sayin' your goodbyes, Sammy," Yellow Eyes continues. "She likes you. Thinks you're fun to rile up. I'm sure you two'll have chance to" she clears her throat with a chuckle, quirking Meg's eyebrows at Sam, "cross swords again, if you take my meaning."
And Sam can feel the heat rise in his cheeks, the hot, shameful memories from that warehouse in Chicago, of just how far he had to go with Meg before he was able to cut himself free, Dean gasping and swearing beside him, watching and hating the whole goddamn thing.
"It suddenly strikes me," Yellow Eyes announces, strolling around the basement, voice Sunday-in-the-park easy and hands clasped behind her back, "that in all of this runnin' around, the plotting and scrambling back and forth, the grand plots for justice and revenge for Mommy and Sweet Little Jessica."
She sighs, looking up at Sam, not with regret, but with sick, amused irony in those fucking yellow eyes.
"Dearest, darling, dead Jess. The only truly innocent one in all of this."
She takes a step closer to John, mouth quirking up at the corner.
"Sammy was gonna marry her, Johnny," she whispers conspiratorially, and it's black, awful having something so close- so secret- something he never even told Dean laid out and picked apart by the same soulless bitch that killed her. "He ever tell you that? Had a ring all picked out."
Yellow Eyes paces back over to Sam, a soft, sympathetic look pasted across Meg's face in a twisted parody of the character she'd played in Indiana.
"She'd have said 'yes', Sam. And why wouldn't she?" she asks, patting Sam's cheek, and laughing as Sam thrashes, struggles against the bands, the tight, invisible hands trapping him against the wall, fights to get away. "You're a catch, Sammy."
Yellow Eyes shrugs easily.
"Of course, none of that matters now," she says. "Regardless, with all the subterfuge and secrets flying around these days, I think it's time we all sat down and had ourselves a little chat. Cleared the air, as it were."
"Got nothin' to say to you," Sam hears his Dad growl.
"'Cept 'burn in Hell'," Dean adds.
"Oh, but if only that were true, Johnny," Yellow Eyes grins, with a dismissive flick in Dean's direction that has him twisting against the wall and gritting his teeth against a scream. "Why, you were so keen to get some answers out of my girl earlier, I'd bet you got a whole buncha questions for me. And by the way, Sammy?"
She tilts her head in Sam's direction, gives him a grin.
"Thanks for bein' the voice of reason in that one. Why, I think of my darling daughter in the hot seat—" She feigns wiping away a tear, then levels a predator's grin in Sam's direction. "Of what a bitch it would be to sneak my way in here with Johnny goin' all Guantanamo on this fine, upstanding citizen? What. A. Headache."
She shrugs.
"Nonetheless," she says, giving Sam a smack on the chest and striding to stand in front of John, "you've got questions, I've got answers. Let's hear 'em, Johnny. Bet I know what's at the top of the list."
"Don't—" their Dad grits out with a glare.
"Come on, Johnny," Yellow Eyes taunts, leaning in. "You been burning through my boys for months trying to figure it out. I'm right here. I could tell you, just like that."
"NO," John snaps.
"Just how much," Yellow Eyes whispers, planting a hand on John's chest and looking over at Sam, taunting grin on Meg's face. "How much of sweet little Sammy, your bouncing baby boy, belongs to you and how much did I steal away all those years ago?"
She leans up, gets Meg on her tip toes as the shock steals the breath from Sam's chest and the feeling from his hands.
"You wanna know if he's in there at all, John?" Sam hears her whisper to John over the roaring in his ears, Meg's voice taunting, laughing. "If I've been playing you from the night Little Miss Mary burned?"
"What's he talkin' about, Dad?" Sam demands, forces out through the tightness in his chest, the fists clenched around him.
"Oh, but he doesn't know, does he?" Yellow Eyes crows, laughing, giving John a familiar, chiding smack. "See, John Boy, this is why our little chat had to happen. Can't have all those secrets staying buried, festering, souring the soil. Gotta get 'em out. The truth will set you free, as they say."
She gives Sam a winning grin.
"You see, Sammy, what Daddy dearest and dumb old Dean-o have been keepin' locked up tight is just why you're so extra special," she starts, and why did she say Dean's name? Why did she say Dean's name? "Just why you get those super fun visions, those little peeks at whatever pie I've got my finger in at the moment."
Yellow Eyes looks up, shoots a wink in Dad's direction.
"Oh, but John Boy didn't know about those, did he?" she says, shaking her head. "Tsk, tsk. Secret secrets, never fun, Sammy. Secret secrets hurt someone."
She crosses back over to stand in front of John.
"Didn't you ever wonder, Johnny?" she taunts. "Just how he happened to have the hottest leads? The most up to the minute info? It's 'cause he's been getting peeks at the playbook. Little hints of the master plan, shot directly into that big, beautiful brain of his."
She steps back, laughing.
"And let me just say, John Boy, after toying with your Stone Age ass for the last twenty years? It is refreshing to finally square off with someone who can navigate the information superhighway."
Yellow Eyes grins.
"Why, I wasn't in town more than a couple days before little Sammy here had you and Dean-o hot on my heels. What d'ya think, Johnny? If you were workin' this thing alone, you think you'd have made it in time to hit town before Ma and Pa Clampett burned? Or would you have just read about their oh-so-tragic deaths in the local paper a week later?"
John growls, thrashes against the invisible bonds pinning him to the basement wall.
"But then, nothing's certain," Yellow Eyes says. "Maybe sweet, simple what's-her-name would have slept through the cuddly little tyke's fussing. Maybe Papa would have been too bushed from a day tromping through the woods to hear me doing my good works."
"Which is what, exactly?" John grits out.
"Oh, Johnny. No need to play coy with me." Yellow Eyes wags a finger. "I know you've been on my boys for a while now, got a few tasty tidbits outta 'em. If you don't know for sure, I'd bet you've at least got a pretty damn good guess."
She steps up to their Dad, a challenge in her eyes.
"So hit me, John. What've I been doing all these years, sneaking into good girls and boy's beds and leaving 'em… special?"
"Demon blood," John growls. "You're giving 'em demon blood."
"Right in one, Johnny," Yellow Eyes grins. "Just a few drops when they're small? Better than mother's milk. Makes 'em grow up big and strong. Well, bigger and stronger, in Sammy's case. It gives 'em that little extra jolt, and when they're grown? Oh, that's when the real fun starts."
And there it is. That's why.
That's why Sam can see the future. That's why he could destroy that cabinet in Illinois. That's why Mom is dead. That's why Jess burned.
That's why he's felt wrong, known he was different, less, his entire life.
He has demon blood.
And Dean knew.
Dean knew, and he didn't tell him.
"Of course, it can be a little unpredictable, giving the little tykes the special sauce. Mommies and daddies interrupt. Accidents happen."
She shrugs, dismissive, waving away Mom and Jess and their whole lives as just the cost of doing her sick, twisted business.
"But the results? Well, they are spectacular. Powers, Johnny," she goes on, wonder in her voice. "Powers like you've never seen. God, the things they can do, the little gems I've got sleeping out there, waiting, just waiting. And your Sammy? With his visions?"
And the way she looks at Sam, the promise in her eyes, the excitement, it turns his blood from the steamy, hot rush of shock to the cold, sudden freeze of fear.
"I couldn't have planned it better myself," Yellow Eyes says in a low, almost reverent voice. "He's my favorite, Johnny. My very favorite. You helped with that. Made sure he grew up strong, grew up smart. Grew up in the know, training, preparing. Gettin' him all ready for us."
"For what?" Sam demands, icy licks of fear searing right into cold, hard anger. "What the hell is this all for?"
"Sammy my boy, they just don't tell you anything, do they?" She laughs. "Tell 'em, Johnny. Tell 'em just what I've got in store for our special boy here."
John glares at her silently.
"Come on, Johnny. Don't go clammin' up on me now," Yellow Eyes bites, drawing close with a thin, sharp edge of menace cutting Meg's voice. "This is only fun if we all do our part."
"Why don't you do your part and go fuck yourself?" Dean snaps from Sam's side.
"Oh Dean-o, there is that razor sharp wit I have heard so much about." She rolls Meg's eyes, and then pauses, a slow smile spreading across her face. "But then, I bet if Johnny knows, he's told you. Told his precious, perfect firstborn. His gun hand. His born soldier."
She draws closer, sizing Dean up with a grin.
"Oh, if we'd only had a chance at you…" Yellow Eyes says with a sigh of regret. "But what can you do? Missed our window, I guess. Doesn't mean you still can't share with the class. So tell baby brother, Dean. What's behind Door Number One? What're we gettin' him good and ready for?"
"Never gonna happen," Dean grits out, which means he knows. Knew everything, everything Dad did and never told Sam, and something in Sam just- just breaks at that, breaks and settles in his stomach, sharp and sour, twisting the knife of that much more.
"Wrong, Dean-o, but nice try," Yellow Eyes shoots back. "I'll give you another go, though, and this time, if you don't feel in the sharin' mood, I'll take it out of dear old Daddy."
She crosses over to their Dad and snatches up one of his hunting knives, drawing it toyingly from his wrist to his stomach and back again, silver blade glinting in the harsh flicker of the basement fluorescents.
"The only question is," she muses, "should I take a hand, or a kidney? Decisions, decisions..."
At Dean's silence, she digs the knife in over John's hand, dragging a sharp, agonized groan from their Dad.
"Tick, Tock, Dean," Yellow Eyes snaps. "Don't make me break somethin' that can't be fixed."
"An army," Dean snarls. "You're building an army."
"That's right, Dean-o. Thank you for playing," she congratulates, all smooth smiles again as she waves the bloody knife illustratively. "Change is coming, boys, and Sammy? The kids just like him? They're gonna help us bring in a grand new age."
"The hell I am," Sam growls, pissed, beyond pissed. Pissed at Dad and pissed at Dean and more than anything, pissed at her, filled with a black, burning hatred that roils, rises, threatens to swallow him whole.
"That is exactly right, Sammy. Exactly right." Yellow Eyes nods, stepping close, and she might have taken Jess, might have taken Mom, might have taken things from Sam in his cradle that Sam didn't even know he could lose, but there are some things, some things this bitch will never be able to take from him-
"Exorcizamus te, omnis immunds spiritus,"he starts from memory, sharp and exact and as fast as he can, livid and laser-focused as the words roll off his tongue. "Omnis satanica potestas—"
But then the steel-strong bands pinning him down shoot up, send his jaw snapping shut and his head kicking back to meet the cold, hard cinderblock at his back with enough force to send stars shooting across his line of light, his teeth rattling in his head as Dean calls his name and swears at his side.
"And he speaks Latin." Yellow Eyes laughs, the sound burning his ears. "You're just the gift that keeps on givin', aren't ya, Sammy?"
She draws close, brings a hand up to drag down across Sam's cheek in a sick parody of a caress that has his skin crawling.
"Just for that," she says softly. "Just for showing me that little spark in you that I justlove, I'm gonna give you peek. Just a little taste of what's to come."
And suddenly the hand on his cheek is stretching up, reaching out, fingers pressing to Sam's temple as he's hit with a vision like he's never had before, like he's only been getting them half strength, and this is pure, uncut insanity, streaming into his temple straight from the source, and there's nothing, nothing but pain, nothing but fire, falling face first into a volcano. Pure, molten agony, screaming and twisting inside of his veins, roaring through him and drowning out everything, shredding his skin and blasting through his bones and incinerating the concrete at his back, his brother at his side, burning away everything in him but what those searing, laughing yellow eyes want him to see.
Burning.
Screaming.
The Colt.
A door that's half Devil's Trap wheeling open an instant before Sam, eyes black and face twisted, leads a cadre of pitch-eyed soldiers across the ruined landscape, clouds of soot-dark smoke wheeling, racing above their heads, and monsters, nightmare creatures made of bone and blood and torment at their feet, and destruction, nothing but lifeless, hopeless, endless destruction in their wake as Sam, the Boy King, treads over the bodies of everyone he ever loved on his path to conquer the Earth in Hell's name.
"Like I said, Sammy," Yellow Eyes whispers, soft and full of promise, as she lets her fingers drop, as she lets Sam drop, gasping and choking to the cold concrete floor, pain tearing through his body, limbs not his own as the aftershocks of the vision rip through him, send him shuddering, seizing, shaking apart from the inside out, "I got plans for you. Big plans."