Thanks for reading, and a special thanks to Rae666 for listening to me as I worked through my thoughts on how I wanted this story to end. I live for reviews, so if you're enjoying please let me know. bambers:)
Chapter Fourteen
"How did the spell book get here?" Dean said as soon as Rowena was seated opposite him and at the other end of the couch from Sam, and she pressed her red-painted lips into a smile, her eyes glowing amethyst as she looked upon the book of spells.
"Spells are worded very specifically, dear," she said, glancing from Dean to Sam. "Your father wanted you boys protected from Charlie, yes that is true, but he was more concerned about the demon." She paused when Bobby brought her a cup of tea, and sniffed it twice before taking a sip. "Your father, rest his soul, was a clever man. Yet, his fears were more focused on the demon your serial killer spoke of than of the man who abducted you. When I cast the spell for your father, it was with the demon in mind, and that is why the book returned to your possession when the demon wasn't taken down by it."
"So you cast a spell as a trap for the demon," Sam said, rubbing at the nape of his neck. Missouri had said as much when he spoke to her earlier in the day. If a demon and Charlie were ever together in the same place and he or Dean were in imminent danger, their father would be able to find them no matter where he was. That still didn't explain why his mother had been at the bunker or how his scars had vanished without a trace. "Then why was my mother there with him?"
"Oh, Samuel," she said with a playful lilt of her voice, "you can't possibly believe that demons are the only ones with a vested interest in your future?" Setting the teacup on the table, she shifted to face him. "In truth, I couldn't care less if Charlie tore both of you to shreds with his fancy little toys, it would save me the trouble of having to watch my back. But as I've already stated, your father was a clever man. If either of you boys dies by his hand, the book of spells with burn to ash and all its secrets will be lost, and that is why I am here."
"I want all the people he could go after to get to us, protected," Dean said, fear knotting in his gut that it was already too late for Jake and Margaret. "If you want the spell book, I want them protected from harm."
"Well, of course you do, dear." Her hazel eyes slid to Dean, and smoothing a hand down the front of her burgundy dress, she smiled. "And I will help them, but the same rules apply to you as they did your father. Once Charlie is gone for good, I get the book and you will forget about me. Is that clear?"
"You can't trust her," Bobby said, eying the heavy leather-bound spell book. From the concern etched into every line and contour of his face, Dean realized he'd seen the book before, and didn't want to her to have it in her possession, and if Bobby didn't want her to have it neither did he. "And this book in the wrong hands…." His voice trailed the warning clear without needing to be elaborated any further.
"Sam…Bobby…." Dean pushed to his feet and nudged his head for them to follow him into one of the back bedrooms. Rowena stayed where she sat, not the least bit bothered that Sam picked up the spell book to take with him. As soon as the bedroom door closed behind them, Dean pivoted to face them, and grimaced at the pain shooting upward from his ankle. "I don't like the idea of handing over a powerful spell book to a witch anymore than Dad did, but we're out of options, and I would much rather live to kill her another day than to see any more people die. Do I trust her – hell no, I don't. It's not a matter of trust though. Our way of dealing with things like vampires, werewolves, and vengeful spirits isn't working for Charlie, and that means we have to try something different."
"Dean's right," Sam said even as Bobby grumbled about the potentially catastrophic spells contained within the leather-bound book. "The way I see it, she's had the book for a long time and hasn't used it to bring about the end of the world. I'll look through dad's journal to see if there's anything else that might be useful, but the most important thing right now is to make sure Jake, Margaret, and everyone else is protected from him. If Charlie can't get to them, he can't hurt them."
"It's not that I don't agree with you." Bobby scrubbed a hand down his face and sighed. "I know you boys have been through hell, and I want that sonuvabitch dead every bit as much as both of you…I guess I'm just worried that we're trading the evil we know for the evil we don't have any clue about. You heard her, she wants us to forget she exists and that right there sends shivers down my spine."
Deep down Dean wished he could forget about Charlie and everything that had happened since that snowy night he'd answered the phone, but that would mean forgetting about the people who had helped them and then lost their lives for their effort. He'd listened to Doctor Lee die while Charlie goaded him into describing every wound he'd inflicted on the serial killer's body, and then there was Jake who put his own life on the line to help him find Sam and almost died because of it. He didn't want to think about the girl he'd bought flowers for, and yet he could still see her face staring up at him from the coffin Charlie dumped her in. No, he needed to remember her and Jake along with all the others, and would write them down the way his father wrote down Rowena's name and phone number before he forgot about Charlie.
"Then we write it down," he said, limping to the desk set beneath the window, and pulling out a piece of paper and pen from the drawer, he scrawled Rowena's name on it, and why it was important. Beneath it he wrote the names of everyone Charlie killed and left a large space before jotting down his name and what he had done to them. When he finished, he folded up the piece of paper and stuffed it in his wallet. "There, now with that settled we can start making a plan to kill that sonuvabitch once and for all."
XxXxXxXx
"What's wrong, Chuckie?" Azazel taunted with a grin, waving a hand around the bunker he'd returned to its former glory, and nudged his head toward the blood staining the earthen floor in front of the rack where the boys' landlord now hung. "Suffering from performance anxiety?"
"Dean isn't answering his phone," Charlie grumbled, his anger rattling the cruel-looking torture devices on the table nearby. "It's not as much fun killing the people in his life without him listening to their screams."
"Even the dumbest human will have a good idea once in a while." Azazel pushed away from the wall where he was leaning, and pushed past Charlie to cup hold of the plump, older woman's face. She whimpered as he leaned in and licked away the blood dripping down her face, drinking in her fear. "If you had killed the old man when you had the chance, Sammy would have crumbled. He would have used the gifts I bestowed upon him, and struck you down where you stood. You failed, Chuckie."
"The way I see it, you're the one who failed," Charlie jabbed the button on his phone to call Dean again only to have it go straight to voicemail. Pocketing his phone, he stalked to the table and grabbed a knife off of it. A knife, when there were other more brutal weapons at his disposal. Definitely not his style. Without Dean and Sam's fears and pain to goad him on, he was coming unhinged. "You let John escape from Hell to save Sammy." He touched the tip of the blade to the burnt edges of his face then tapped at the exposed bone of his cheek and jaw. The left side of his face had completely melted away, his left eye burned down to the socket, his hair burned off leaving behind a single singed brown tuft. Mary's revenge, and Azazel couldn't help but admire her style. "And you healed his wounds and scars completely. All that work to break him and you wasted it."
"It wasn't me who healed him." His grin never faltered as he added, "There are other players in the game, Chuckie. Powerful demons that see Sam as a prize and my guess is John figured that out and used the knowledge to free his son from the scars that have crippled him emotionally." The smiled slipped from his face, his lips pressed into a thin line. "Fair warning, your torture devices look like harmless toys compared to what is used in Hell so you'd better not fail again."
"I will not lose to the Winchesters again," he gritted out, stabbing Ms. Burkitts in the chest. She drew in a sharp breath, tears rolling down her face to mingle with the blood from the gashes on her pudgy cheeks. Yanking out the knife, he stabbed her again and again as her cries turned to harsh gurgling, blood leaking out of her mouth. No finesse at all, no pleasure taken in the torment or kill of his latest victim. "You want Sammy to use his powers." Azazel nodded. "All right. I was planning to save Dean for last, but what the hell. When Sammyboy sees what I do to his brother, he will unleash his powers and we will both win."
XxXxXxXx
Sam watched his brother write out a list of names for Rowena, studied it closely as the list grew longer and longer. It wasn't enough to just put the names of those who had helped them over the past year. He added names of other hunters and people they'd saved, and if he didn't know the name of someone they'd encountered during the year, he wrote down a detailed description of what they looked like. Not that it would be of any use to the protection spell, but after what happened to the cashier he bought flowers for, Dean wasn't leaving anything to chance.
His brother, the person he loved most in the world, was on the verge of a breakdown, and he didn't know what to do or how to pull him back from it. Dean had been so strong, had put aside his own pain, buried it down deep in order to help Sam recover from his injuries, and Sam feared no amount of beer bottle target practice would be enough to heal his brother's psychological wounds. Even if by some slim chance they won, they'd still lose.
While Bobby and Dean worked to gather the items Rowena would need to cast the protection spell, one Sam didn't believe would actually work as there were too many names on the list and the people they wanted to see protected were too scattered in location, he studied his father's journal looking for a way to get rid of Charlie permanently. From what was written in the journal, Sam learned that their father encountered Charlie on a hunt to kill what he thought was one vengeful spirit that turned out to be several of them, and they were all haunting the home where Charlie and his son Tobias were living.
John had gone the usual route of researching the history of the home for any violent deaths and checked to see if it was built on any old burial grounds. It was only after Tobias ended up a victim of the vengeful spirits that John discovered Charlie was the serial killer responsible for their deaths. But by then he'd already enlisted Missouri's help to rid the home of every single spirit much in the same way she helped Sam and Dean rid their first home of the spirit that was haunting the house. Charlie disappeared before their father could go to the police with the evidence he'd uncovered, and not long after that the deranged serial killer abducted Sam.
Sam skimmed through the pages detailing how John found Charlie with the help of Rowena, noting how they weren't very detailed likely due to the spell taking hold. He wrote of their injuries and of how Rowena used a powerful spell to make most of them vanish and the ones that remained, the ones that were the worst, became nothing more than scars that neither of his sons remembered ever getting.
It wasn't much to go on, not anything like he'd expected since his father's spirit clearly told him that all the answers he needed to get rid of Charlie were in the journal, but if they were he didn't see it. There was mentioned of the Spanish Tickler a few times, yet if it was the key to getting rid of the serial killer turned supernatural monster, Sam couldn't figure out how. The one thing he did find out, however, was that Rowena could heal Dean's injuries, and that brought him a surge of hope.
"What'd ya find out, Sammy?" Dean asked, peering over his shoulder as he set the journal down on the kitchen table and rubbed his eyes. "How do we kill Charlie?"
"It didn't say." Sam pushed the journal further away from him, and blew out a heavy breath. "The journal pretty much gave a detailed account of the hunt dad was on when he met Charlie. Apparently he was being haunted by some of the people he killed, and his son ended up dying. He blamed dad for Tobias' death and that's why he came after us." His eyes lingered on the journal a moment longer then traveled to the Spanish Tickler resting on the table, and a shiver of dread raced down his spine. "He always uses the Tickler – always. No matter what else he uses to hurt his victims, he always finished them off with it."
Dean moved to slump in the chair beside Sammy's as Bobby entered the kitchen and went to the counter to refill his cup with steaming coffee. He poured two more cups, added some sugar to Dean's and set the two cups down in front of them. "If he was a vengeful spirit, I'd say he's tied to his chosen means of killing his victims," the older hunter said, taking a seat opposite of Sam at the table. "But the question is, is he technically a vengeful spirit or something else?"
"You boys could always try burning the torture device," Rowena said in a lilting accent, sauntering into the kitchen as a knock came at the door. "Answer the door, Samuel. It's me."
"Huh?" Sam said, narrowing his eyes on her as her body began to dissolve into mist.
"Astral projection," she said as if the answer should be obvious. "Did you honestly think I could appear within moments of my book vanishing?" She looked down her slender nose at him. "No, it took more time than I would want to be parted from my book, and so I projected myself here while I drove the distance to the cabin."
"That's why you didn't touch the book," Sam said as he got to his feet and went to answer the door.
"Hello, Samuel," the real Rowena said as the astral projection vanished, and Dean swore under his breath.
"How did you drink the tea?" Bobby asked, glancing back and forth from where the projection of the witch was and the real Rowena.
"A simple bit of magic," Rowena responded evasively, slipping around Sam to saunter to the table, and picked up the Spanish Tickler, her willowy fingers lightly tracing along one of the four slightly curved metal prongs. The tip of her finger came to rest on one of the four sharpened points of the weapon, and applying a little pressure, blood trickled from the cut she'd inflicted upon herself. She whispered words in Latin, and while Sam was well-versed in the language, he couldn't decipher a single word she said. "You killed him with this weapon, Dean?" Dean gave a curt nod, and she set the weapon back on the table, the cut on her finger healing over within a matter of seconds. "When I pricked my finger, I saw the world through his eyes…he is tied to this weapon."
"So does that mean I can kill him with it?" Sam said, eyeing Dean as he muttered something under his breath. "It has to be me, Dean. I know you're pissed that I made a wager with a demon –"
"You didn't just make a wager with a demon, Sammy," Dean cut in, anger laced into his tone. "You made a bet with the demon that killed our mom, and it's a wager he doesn't want to lose. That means he'll do anything within his power to make certain you to lose."
"Then you need to do everything within your power to see that he wins," Rowena said as Sam opened his mouth to argue that he wouldn't use the powers the demon gave him to beat Charlie. "Your father gave you all the answers you need to win this fight in his journal," she added, and Sam thinking he perhaps missed something, headed to the table to get the journal. His fingers grazed along the worn leather, and then it vanished.
"Give me the damn book back, Rowena!" Sam snapped, his patience wearing thin.
"No, it belongs to me as your father cheated in the bargain we struck," she said, and with a quick wave of her hand, Sam flew across the room, and slammed up against the wall. Dean and Bobby tried to get to their feet to help him, but couldn't move, pinned to their seats by some unseen force. "What did your father write in his journal, Samuel?" She walked across the room with feline grace, and looked up at him with a knowing smile. "Think. He wouldn't have written it down it if it wasn't important."
Sam's mind raced as he tried to recall every word his father wrote in the journal. When his father had found Charlie, they fought and just as Yellow-Eyes had said, John had carved into him with a vengeance killing the murderer with a hunting knife, not the Spanish Tickler. Yet, his father told him he could use the Tickler to kill Charlie for good. "He said – he told me I could use the Spanish Tickler to kill Charlie," he said, straining his muscles to break free from the wall, to no avail.
"Uh huh…." Rowena smiled, and lifting a delicate brow, she twirled her hand for him to continue. "What else did he write?"
"But he didn't kill him with it…he used a regular hunting knife," he said, glancing across the room at Dean and Bobby still struggling against the power keeping them locked in their chairs.
She tapped a manicured nail to her lips. "So why would the Tickler be important?"
Sam searched his mind, and then it struck him, and as the answer came to him, she released her hold on him and he dropped to the floor in a heap. "Is it possible?"
"Anything is possible if you have the right tools for the job, Samuel." With a wave of her hand, the Spanish Tickler appeared in her grasp. Lowering her arm, she handed the weapon to Sam. "Are you ready to win this fight?"
"I think I am," Sam said, and for the first time in over a year he felt confident that he could face Charlie and win. "Dean, we're not going to wait for him to come to us, we're going after him, and this time, he's going to learn what it means when you really piss off a Winchester."