Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; the original concept of this story was inspired by 'To Hell & Back' by EventRider87, but I've added my own spin to things and have received EventRider87's permission to use their idea for this

Feedback: Much appreciated

AN: The hunt turned out to be a bit simpler than I expected, but I hope the longer-term consequences of this storyline will make up for that.

The Corrupted Innocent

Once she arrived back at her hotel room with Sarah, Bela was relieved to find Deanna sitting solemnly in a chair, their borrowed paperwork gathered on a table; Deanna wouldn't stop carrying out research when they were dealing with something this important unless she'd found something useful.

"You know what we're dealing with?" the ex-thief asked.

"I found it," Deanna nodded, turning over a piece of paper to display the same Victorian-era portrait that had drawn a twinge from Bela's handprint, the man's dark suit and hair somehow appearing far more solemn in the photograph than it had in person.

"That one?" Sarah looked at Deanna in surprise. "What made it stand out?"

"It ties in with my late husband's family records," Deanna explained. "The earliest recorded death in this painting's history was its artist, Henry Basilton, although that was obviously a more straightforward death than any of the others in our records; he was found beaten to death and dumped in a river. The first death in the manner that attracted the Campbells' interest occurred a decade or so after Basilton's demise, when the painting's subject, a young lord called Benjamin Harrison, was found dead in front of the painting with a knife lying alongside it, looking far older than he had just the day before."

"Hold on a minute…" Bela said, looking thoughtfully at Sarah for a moment as she noticed the similar expression of inspiration on the other woman's face. "Does this sound familiar to you?"

"A lord dies in front of a portrait of himself and seems to have aged overnight…" Sarah said, looking thoughtful for a moment before incredulous inspiration dawned. "Hold on; are we talking about The Picture of Dorian Gray here? That's real?"

"Apparently," Deanna noted, turning the paper around to look at the picture more thoughtfully. "It just obviously didn't work entirely like Wilde depicted it, or the Dorian equivalent would have just stayed dead…"

"So what are we thinking here?" Bela asked. "The picture froze… Benjamin's age and then trapped his soul inside it when he tried to destroy it?"

"Which led to his soul being turned into some kind of psycho spirit?" Sarah asked. "Like Melanie was?"

"It's… not the worst description of the situation," Deanna smiled in approval at the young woman. "Granted, by all interpretations, Dorian was more hedonistic than psychotic, but try trapping a man in a painting for a few years, even if he gets out to some extent if our theory's correct, and I suppose we almost couldn't blame him for being cranky."

"We're talking about a man being cranky because he's spent decades stuck in a painting," Sarah noted, staring uncertainly up at the ceiling. "That is a weird scenario."

"We're dealing with the supernatural, Miss Blake; 'weird' is the norm for us in this scenario," Deanna noted grimly.

"Point," Sarah noted thoughtfully. "So… what are we thinking here? When the Dorian equivalent tried to destroy the painting, he trapped himself in it instead and now he's being forced to relive his hedonistic lifestyle through each new owner?"

"Ghosts have done stranger things," Deanna acknowledged.

"And that might explain the gap between each death," Bela noted. "These people remain victim to the portrait's influence until they've owned it for as long as Dorian lived until he fell under its influence, at which point…"

"He 'dies' all over again when he reaches the end of his original lifeline," Sarah finished grimly. "So is this a case where we just burn the painting, or do we need to find the subject?"

"As in find the subject's grave?" Deanna asked. "That… is a possibility, but from what I've seen of the records so far, I'm inclined to think that we're just dealing with a haunted painting."

"That's the thing about haunted paintings; they don't always adhere to the traditional rules," Bela explained. "If the artist put enough of themselves and the subject into the painting, the picture basically serves as the only thing that needs to be destroyed, whether or not the subject was cremated; cases like the Merchant painting only arise if the subject was so powerful that their essence could be divided between painting and remains, and I'm seeing nothing here to suggest that the painting wasn't the focus."

"Of course," Deanna noted grimly, "considering that I've never heard of paintings doing something like this, we're going to need to take more extreme measures to be sure that burning the painting does the job."

"How extreme are we talking?"


"OK," Sarah reflected, the three women standing around the nearest suitable graveyard, the painting leaning against the oldest grave they could find, "as far as extreme goes, this… doesn't seem that bad."

Bela didn't want to agree with Sarah out loud in case she jinxed it, but as hunts went, she had to agree that this one had been almost simple. With Sarah as an 'inside woman', it had been easy for them to gain access to the auction house and find where the painting had been kept, and Sarah had even managed to distract a passing security guard by claiming that she was carrying out some private inventory for a personal friend to confirm that certain items were up for auction.

"Ritual summonings are always a trickier prospect than some of the movies would have you think," Deanna said, as she studied the ritual in the book she was holding. "We need to get the terms exactly right, or we run the risk of summoning something more powerful than we want, or at least summoning the wrong ghost or spirit."

"Add in the fact that we actually know one of the powers we're invoking for this thing, and I'm not sure how this is going to play out," the former thief noted as she glanced over the book.

"You know… one of the powers?" Sarah looked at Bela in surprise.

"Castiel," Bela smiled. "He's the angel who's working with Dean and Sam these days."

"Hold on; they're working with an angel?" Sarah looked at her in surprise. "I mean, they're good people, but… they have an angel as a friend?"

"It's a strange story," Bela acknowledged, smiling at the young woman as Deanna turned back to the book. "I'll fill you in once this is over."

"Aziel, Castiel, Lamisniel, Rabam," the Winchesters' grandmother began. "Ehrley, et balam, ego vos conuro, per deum verum, per deum vivum… cuivos cuiaves eos supermontes et per eum, qui adam, et avum formovit. Et per eum…"

As the ritual continued, thunder shook the air above them for a moment, drowning out the rest of Sam's words, before a man in a Victorian suit appeared above the painting, looking around the graveyard for a moment before his gaze settled on the women.

"Well, hello, ladies," he smiled at the three, his gaze settling on Bela. "I'm-"

"I know exactly who you are," Bela cut him off

"Or we've got a pretty good idea of who you are based on what you inspired, anyway," Sarah added. "An arrogant idiot who thought it was a good idea to condemn himself for eternity by making a deal to turn his painting into a… a horcrux?"

"A what?" the man said, before turning around to glare at Deanna as she began to chant an exorcism. Before Bela or Sarah could do anything, the man raised his hand and a knife appeared in it, which he swiftly hurled at Deanna. Bela barely had time to throw herself at the Winchesters' grandmother and knock her to the ground before the knife struck, but the book fell from her hands and hit the damp ground before anyone could catch it.

"I will not go on to-" the man began.

"Eat iron, jackass!" Sarah yelled, flexing her wrist so that a poker slid down her sleeve into her hand, which she subsequently swung at the ghost. When the poker hit the man, the ghost briefly dispersed into smoke, but Bela knew that wasn't going to stop him for long as she scrambled back to her feet. Deanna grabbed for the book and turned it around, but cursed as she saw the pages. A quick glance from Bela confirmed that the ink used to write this particular ritual had run in the damp; it would be clear enough once the pages had a chance to dry with a bit of careful 'doctoring' but right now they didn't have the time to do that.

"Now that silly book's out of the way," the ghost said as it reformed, chuckling as Sarah stared defiantly back at him while adjusting her grip on the poker, "I would like to remind you all that I can offer a great deal to the interested party-"

"We have some ideas about what you can offer," Bela said, raising her left hand firmly. "And I can safely state that we are not interested in anything but putting you out of the way."

With that said, she thrust her hand forward, and felt that same strange pulse of energy from the palmprint on her shoulder fly down her arm and strike the ghost. The spirit of the man who had inspired the tale of Dorian Gray reeled back his head and screamed in rage as his body glowed, before it finally exploded into light, the painting burning into nothing by his feet as he vanished.

"Uh… how did that happen?" Sarah looked at Bela in surprise after a moment's silence had gone by as the three women just stared at the painting.

"I thought we agreed that we would summon the spirit and then exorcise it?" Deanna glanced firmly at Bela. "Didn't Castiel say that overreliance on that mark could be risky?"

"Mark?"

"This mark," Bela explained, rolling up her sleeve to display the handprint. "Long story short, when Castiel rescued Dean and I from Hell, I was being turned into a demon on the spiritual level, but Castiel was able to cure me of the worst of it; the mark's still working to purge the last bit of demon from me, but I can occasionally tap into powers I might have gained if the transformation had been completed."

"And… you used that now?" Sarah looked at her in surprise. "Why did you do that?"

"On one level, it was because we needed an immediate solution to the current problem," Bela explained, smiling at the auction-house employee. "On another level, I did it because I trust you not to talk about it to other hunters who'd just freak out."

"Not all as open-minded as you?"

"Let's just say there are some people out there who recognise that they've only lasted in this life as long as they have because they know the core rules and love violence," Deanna said grimly.

"Right…" Sarah said uncertainly, before turning her attention back to Bela. "So… you trust me with something that big?"

"I trust you," the ex-thief repeated with a smile. "After all, how many people can say they've dated a Winchester who was being honest with them?"

"It's not exactly dating; we only had dinner once before he had to destroy that painting-"

"A dinner where he was using his own name and then spent several hours with you where you saw everything he did on a normal day and didn't freak out about it," Bela noted. "I appreciate that it was a long time ago for you, but compared to some of the people Sam and Dean meet in their hunts, he was exceptionally honest with you."

"Uh… thanks," Sarah said, lost for anything better to say to that.

"And speaking of my grandson," Deanna added, carefully getting to her feet as she smiled over at the younger women, "assuming this experience hasn't quelled your interest, would you be open to us letting him know that you'd be willing to make contact?"

For a moment Sarah looked uncertainly between the other two women, a thoughtful expression on her face as she considered the offer, before she finally smiled and nodded.

"What the hell?" she shrugged, her casual tone belied by the smile on her lips and the apprehension in her eyes that Bela recognised from looking at herself in the mirror every time she thought of Dean. "It's not every day you meet someone who saves lives on a daily basis."

"And still manages to look that dashing while he's doing it," Bela added, smiling back at Sarah as she mentally crossed her fingers and hoped that she hadn't just made a mistake; Sam had certainly liked Sarah back when they'd met, but that was before the world introduced angels and Lucifer into their lives…