AN: Thanks for sticking in there guys. My new medication is working and I'm back for the moment. Here's the next chapter. Hope you enjoy.
Vinnie dropped to both knees, but before she could say anything, Gabby's face lit up. "What's this, high priestess?" she crooned. "Is this the great sacrifice you have brought for me?" Gabby took the two steps to stand in front of me, her hand sliding under my chin. My heart pounded so hard it hurt. I clenched my teeth together as she dragged my face up to meet hers. What if she saw through me? What if she could tell that I was here to kill her? What if she suspected that Vinnie and I were in it together? I held my breath and tried to look angry and resentful.
Gabby's eyes flicked between mine, and a long, slow smile spread across her face as she pulled my chin up and up, my neck straining. Her eyes narrowed. "You're terrified," she whispered finally. "At long last." She let go of my chin and my neck jerked. She raised her voice as she turned to stalk around the pole. "You have always been too independent, too sure of your value to me. It made you haughty, presumptuous. But look at you now. My high priestess, so much less powerful than you, has brought you low, has bound you, and has turned you over to me. Do you suspect that your nuisance has finally overwhelmed your use?" I held my tongue, making sure not to meet Gabby's eyes. My stomach hurt so bad I couldn't think, acid boiling and burning.
Gabby stopped pacing directly in front of Vinnie. Like a queen, Gabby kept her chin raised as she gazed down on Vinnie's back. "And how, high priestess, did you manage to catch someone so much more powerful than you?"
Vinnie mumbled something, and Gabby frowned. "Speak up, you worthless cow. Is that how you speak to your goddess?"
"No, my goddess, no!" Vinnie choked out, much louder this time, her entire body trembling as she prostrated herself before Gabby. "My apologies!"
"Well?!" Gabby insisted. "How did you capture her? With this display, I can scarcely believe you were able."
The back of Vinnie's neck reddened. "She has no powers, my goddess," Vinnie choked. "She knocked her head escaping you and lost them. But she came back to get me, thinking that she had gotten to me when she was here last. I tricked her, and now I've turned her over to you."
Gabby pursed her lips and tilted her head. "You tricked her?"
"We struggled. I threatened to burn her and she gave up," Vinnie insisted, her voice shaking. She rose from the ground to kneel back on her heels and looked up at Gabby, the cords of her neck straining. She clasped her hands in front of her chest. "Oh, please, my goddess. I have brought you a great gift, a great sacrifice. I will burn her for you. She will bring you so much power, all her flame into you."
Hands on her hips, Gabby glared down at Vinnie. "You just said she has no power, high priestess! How can she be worth anything more than one of the acolytes? And I will have to find another like her! Do you know how difficult that is? Do you know how many idiots I burned through to get you?"
Vinnie was shaking so hard, she should've been crumbling into dust. I couldn't stand it anymore. "The fire's not gone," I lied, raising my chin and glaring straight into Gabby's eyes. "I just can't use it."
Gabby's blonde eyebrows shot up. "You can't use it?" Gabby asked.
"Like Vinnie said, I hit my head. I couldn't even feel the fire for the first week. It's there now, but it's locked in. I just haven't healed enough." I felt hot and cold at the same time, my head light despite how quickly my heart was racing.
Gabby crossed her arms over her chest. "And what are you doing here, priestess?"
"I couldn't leave Vinnie in your gentle care," I said, trying to ignore the weakness in my legs and grateful for the post behind me. "I was trying to convince her to leave with me, but she wouldn't go." I snorted, hoping it came across as scorn. "Despite what you do to her, she's your creature. Congratulations, you're a monster." Over her shoulder and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dean and Sam creeping from the stall. I kept my eyes firmly on Gabby, unwilling to give the guys away.
"Is this true, high priestess? Do you serve me through fear alone?" Gabby asked, looking down at Vinnie, poor Vinnie who Gabby had beaten so many times, who had to kill for Gabby, who had to keep all of her emotions in all the time just to keep Gabby from hurting her. Poor Vinnie, who was at that moment looking straight at Dean and Sam and not paying a bit of attention to Gabby at all.
Gabby whirled around while the guys were still five feet away. Sam lunged, but Gabby raised her fists and blasted both of them backwards into the wall. The barn shuddered with the force of their landing. Screaming, I struggled to get out of my bonds, the ropes falling off me as Gabby grabbed Vinnie, pulling her to her feet. I'd barely gotten my hands in front of me when Gabby yanked my hair, swinging me around.
The next thing I knew, the walls were cinderblock instead of wood, the windows high on the walls. Gabby flung me onto the cement floor, hairpins flying as her hair tumbled down to her shoulders. Vinnie went wheeling across the basement, slamming into the wall by the stairs with a sharp cry, her cast cracking. Gabby didn't even look at her, just flung her hand in that direction.
"Traitor," Gabby screeched, and I felt the fire drain from Vinnie's furnace, flowing into Gabby until Vinnie slumped to the floor with her furnace empty. I struggled to my feet, my shoulder aching from its impact against the floor, my ankle throbbing from the landing.
"Bitch," I said, limping backwards away from Gabby. "You don't deserve to be a goddess. A goddess protects her subjects."
Gabby stared at me for just a moment and then laughed, just laughed until tears ran down her face. I flinched back in confusion, too scared to make a run for the stairs, knowing I'd never make it.
"They worshiped me in Lithuania," she said when she finally stopped, her hand over her heart as she struggled to catch her breath. But once she did, she straightened and narrowed her eyes at me. "Do you know why they worshiped me?"
I bit my lip and didn't answer, backing up until my spine hit the wall, the stake digging into my back.
"Because if they didn't, their houses burned to ash, blown away on the wind," she said, advancing on me. "Goddesses are served, not servants." I reached behind me, fumbling to get the stake from my waistband. She stopped, reached a hand out, opened her furnace, and pushed a tendril against me.
I gasped, pushing against the cinderblock as hard as I could, expecting the worst, but nothing happened. The tendril brushed against me and fell away. Gabby frowned and tried again, but still nothing. My mouth dropped open and I grinned in triumph. I reached into my shirt. "It's the ring!" I crowed. "You can't get to my fire when I've got my ring!" I reached behind me again, pulled out my stake, and lunged at her.
Gabby's nostrils flared. She swung her arm to one side, blasting me away from her with a wave of heat. I slammed against the wall with a crack, the wind knocked out of me, pain shooting through my chest. I tried to take a deep breath but couldn't. I staggered to my feet at the same time a sharp burning needle pierced the top of my head.
I knew that trick from Vinnie at the school. Gabby was piercing my aura to burn me. I grabbed Gabby's tendril immediately, before it could do anything else, and tugged it into my furnace, tracing the tendril backwards into Gabby, and pulling and pulling. My furnace filled quickly, my head starting to ache from the pressure since the fire had nowhere to go. Gabby gasped and grabbed it back, pulling my flame into her, pulling and pulling as I fought to keep control.
She was stronger than me, so much stronger. We wrestled over the tendril, but it was like tug of war with Dean's Impala. Once she figured out what I was doing, I had no chance. I stumbled to my knees as she pulled more and more flame from me.
"Liar," she crooned. "You said you couldn't use your fire."
I couldn't spare a thought to answer as I fought over every bit of flame, inevitably losing despite the help the ring gave me. Once I was empty, it would be over and I would be dead. We were down to the last little bit. I needed more. More. Panting, heart racing, I reached out with my last tendril, struggling to find a source, any source of fire, anywhere near me. My tendril reached far and deep, and there it was, flame! The fire burning beneath Centralia, Pennsylvania, deep in the coal mines. I pulled it into me, only barely able to keep up with her draining me into her seemingly bottomless pit. I kept pulling, taking the moment to catch my breath, my chest screaming with sharp pain. But I needed breath to act. I forced myself to breathe, in and out, in and out, and then I pulled in more flame, faster than she was pulling it out of me.
Grasping the ring in my hand, I took a deep breath and pulled back again, trying to wrest the flame from Gabby, remembering the feeling of the sun beating down on me as I stood naked in the flames of the fire pit, forming shape after shape after shape. I embraced that feeling, the memory, and flowed into our connected tendrils, into her bottomless pit of a furnace, swallowing her tendril with mine.
But it wasn't enough. She had too much fire, too much flame, and it overwhelmed me. My furnace filled and overflowed. Screaming, I pulled from Gabby and pushed into the house above me, but it wasn't enough. There was too much fire, and she was fighting me too hard, flowing over me like wave, swallowing me into her. I pushed into the coal fire beneath us, an inferno flowing through the corridors of the mine, and it was too much. I screamed and screamed, still pulling as my clothes burned away.
And then it stopped. There was nothing left to pull. I cut off the flow into the coal mine, my furnace still brimming and opened my eyes to find Sam and Dean standing over Gabby's inert form on the cement floor. Flames and sparks dripped from the burning house above me.
"Jessie, the stake," Sam prompted me.
"What?" I asked, shaking from the sudden void of the fight, the call of the fire above me.
Dean strode over to me, picked up the stake where it had fallen behind me, and shoved it in my hands. I blinked and stared at it, not recognizing it. "Quick, sweetheart, before she wakes up," Dean urged. He pulled me to Gabby.
I stared up into his green eyes, then looked at Gabby, then Vinnie. "Oh, right," I whispered. I got down on my bare knees, shaking, and crouched over her still body. I raised my arms above my head and shoved the stake into her chest, putting all my weight behind it. Gabby's pale blue eyes flew open despite the drugs. Grabbing my head in her hands, she looked into my eyes and screamed.
The world melted away.
Gabby's stone cottage. I stand before the fire, my arms outstretched. Through the fire, I hear the chants. They fill me with calm, with smooth, careful joy. These people, as they chant, as they give my offerings, my due, it soothes me. My angry feelings disappear beneath them. I am happy, I am content. My skin glows. They love me, they adore me. I bask in their affection, adoring it. I am real, I am here because of them, because of fire, because of their love. It brushes against me like fur against skin, like warm water on a cold day. I roll in their adoration.
Time passes, and fewer and fewer chants come. My anger skitters across my nerves. I cannot remain still, I am the absence of calm. My body does not feel like itself and I resent it. This is not my due. I am loved and adored. Where is my fur? Where is my warm water? I flow through the fire, I burn through the houses and farms of my worshipers and the prayers increase. I am soothed.
And then I am not. And now, the homes are out of reach. Needles and pins under my skin, poking me. The chants grow less and less all the time. I shrink, using my power to ease the pricks, but I cannot reach as far, nor can I reach as long. The needles and pins turn to sharp pains, pinches, aches. Nothing soothes my pain. I shrink and shrink until I am almost gone. My body aches all the time, pulses with pain, sharp, dull, and everything in between. It is unbearable, but I have no recourse, no way to stop it.
The world no longer loves me, no longer fears me. I struggle to survive. I search for fire, for worshipers, and in the distance I find a bright spark, calling me to it. I reach it, try to pull it into me in desperation, and the spark turns into flame, but I cannot control it. Still, its presence soothes me, calms me. The pain retreats just enough so I can think. All my hopes and fears rely on this one spark.
But the spark betrays me, hides from me. I must make another. This spark is not so bright. Its power is not the same, and only its sacrifices can ease the pain and only for a short time. My body awash in pain, my mind aching from the loss and abandonment of my followers, I seek new followers, but it is hard. They do not recognize my greatness, my worth. I must prove it again and again, and it is so tiring. What once came so easily to me is now stingy and mean. I mourn my loss, the sorrow eating into me, My chest feels hollow. I can trust no one. Everyone fights me. No one gives me my due.
And now, facing me is the spark, the first spark, my only hope, my only light, my last possibility of happiness, and it stabs me through the chest. I scream as the pain shoots through me. I feel my life ebbing away from me. I wail at the injustice! I deserve more and I am bested by this mere spark, this mere flicker. I am shamed and undone. I weep for my loss as the pain eats through me, but in the end I drift from the world like dust.
"Come on, Jessie, come on!" Dean chanted, his voice hoarse. I opened my eyes to a bright sky, the house burning behind Dean. He'd dressed me in his overshirt and was holding me in his arms, moving away from the house. "Oh, thank God," he said.
"Dean?" I struggled to put my arms around his neck and screamed.
"What is it?" he asked, but he didn't stop moving.
"My… my chest," I whimpered. "It hurts. I hit the wall…"
"Can you walk?" he asked me, pausing a second to set me down.
I put my left foot onto the grass. "Where's Vinnie?" I asked, then shrieked when I tried to put weight on my right foot.
"Ok, up you go," Dean said, lifting me back into his arms. I hissed at the pain in my chest again. "Sam's got Vinnie. We need to get out of here."
I curled up against Dean's strong chest and leaned my head against his shoulder. "Is she dead?" I asked.
"No, Sam's got her," Dean said.
"I mean Gabby," I said looked up at Dean's scruffy jaw. "Is Gabby dead?"
Dean let out a deep breath and kissed the top of my head. "Yeah, sweetheart. You did a good job. She burned to ash and blew away. Now let's get you home."
