We used to think that demons were completely disorganized and totally random. Just the odd possession or lightning storm cropping up every few years, sometimes with Biblical themes. More recently though, especially as we're getting looks at older sources and accounts, there's a much clearer picture of Hell as a rigidly tiered place. Almost like we think Heaven is.
At the top, you used to have Lucifer, but we know now he's out of the picture. Under him are the Princes, who have been the de facto rulers for most of history. Then the Lords, and there used to be Knights, but they're an extinct breed, which sounds like a good thing with what little we know about them. You've got your other little sects and units - crossroads demons, Sins, the Princes' individual Courts. So maybe not quite as strictly regimented as Heaven, but still under the iron control of a few demons, going on down the ladder to ordinary corrupted souls with black eyes.
This is useful mostly because we know that there are different types of demon, we know how powerful each one is, and we know what will and won't work against them. For example, Lords and Princes? Demon-killing knives and angel blades absolutely will not work. See each breed's individual chapter for your options.
If you've had a lot of contact with demons, you might wonder just how the Princes (and all the others) retain their grip on Hell. After all, as a species, demons aren't super motivated by loyalty or duty. They thrive on disorder, chaos, betrayal and broken promises, and when you're born from torture, the threat of physical pain only goes so far.
My personal theory is that in addition to all their other powers, higher-level demons come equipped with some sort of ability to force anything lower to obey them. Same basic principle as an obedience curse. But nobody's ever seen it in action, since hunters don't generally hang around for big boss demons handing out orders to their underlings, and it's not all that relevant when it comes to killing them, either. Which is what we're here for.
- Demons and Other Biblical Monsters, Sam Winchester
As Sam stared Alastair down, refusing to give an inch, he heard Dean stand and come up next to him. Sam sidestepped, knife up, dividing his attention between Lord and Knight as his stomach and leg got tighter and tighter. Like they were wound into a positive feedback loop together.
Dean barely looked at him, though something flashed across his face too fast for Sam to read.
"Okay, he heard you." Dean addressed Alastair. "Obviously, he ain't interested. But we had a deal, so. Heal him and let him go."
"I'm not sure what you're talking about, Dantalion." Alastair slowly shook his head. "That wasn't the deal at all."
"Don't give me that," Dean growled, eyes black. "You said we could go if Sam didn't like what he heard. Took me weeks to get you to agree to that, I think I'd remember."
"Guess you misunderstood, then." Alastair laughed. "Did you really think that we'd just patch up a Messiah and send him on his merry way? After what happened with the last one?"
Sam saw Dean's jaw tighten, his throat work as he swallowed.
"Fine," he said quietly, and turned towards Sam.
"Stop," Alastair ordered. There was a weird sound to his voice, a heavy, echoing quality, and Dean froze up like an electric current just ran through him and locked him solid. Something a lot like panic crept through the lines of his face. Sam looked up at Alastair.
"You haven't been home in almost a year and you already want to leave?" Alastair's voice was dripping with toxic honey. "Oh, Dantalion, I'm so disappointed. I didn't raise you like that. And I've barely had a chance to get to know Sammy."
"Don't call me that," Sam spat, and Alastair looked at him, then at Dean, shaking his head again.
"Look, your backtalk's rubbing off," he accused. "You're all kinds of bad for him. Good thing we got a hold of him when we did, eh?"
Sam was suddenly surrounded by a ring of demons. He reacted immediately, tried to stab for the nearest one, but he was weak, shaky with adrenaline and anger. It flickered backwards and he only caught its arm, dull orange light flaring like cooling brimstone for a second. Others caught Sam's arms, his shoulders, one squeezing his wrist until he had to drop the knife with a grunt and a gasp. He heard it clatter, saw a demon pick it up.
"Hey!" Dean shouted, loud and aggressive.
"Just stay put," Alastair commanded, voice full of irritation and that same powerful note from earlier.
Sam struggled, panted. He probably wouldn't have gotten far even if he hadn't been running on fumes...one human against half a dozen demons?
Sort of human, at least, something he was reminded of when it felt like an axe blade suddenly sank dead center into his skull. There was a massive, ringing crack, and he only knew it wasn't his head because nothing slid out of him when he sagged in the hands of his captors. He barely noticed, in snatches, that about half the pews, and the altar, had jagged lightning-bolt cracks running down their middles now. Alastair had taken a huge step back, eyes white.
Sam coughed blood onto the floor.
After half a second's pause, Alastair ordered, "Bind him. Now."
They forced Sam down onto the floor. He was so limp already it barely hurt when he hit, a quiet grunt slipping out of him. He cried out when a demon grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head to the side, something else yanking the collars of his jacket and shirts in the opposite direction. Sam barely registered the point of a knife against the smooth skin between his neck and shoulder before it was carving deep into him, blood welling hot.
He shouted through gritted teeth, eyes squeezed shut. He wouldn't give Alastair or any of the others the satisfaction of a real scream.
Dean apparently didn't have that problem. He yelled, but it was so wordless and guttural it was more of a roar. One of the other demons suddenly screamed and the knife fell away from Sam's neck, the hand slipping free of his hair. The grip on his clothes relaxed.
Sam's eyes flew open at a horrifyingly wet, meaty ripping, a hundred times louder than when Dean tore Matt's lips off his face back at Bobby's cabin. Sam thought of tires churning their way through a torso, a leg in a wood chipper, a hand in a garbage disposal.
Lukewarm blood slapped into the back of his head, the side of his face. It stung like a bitch when it hit the cut on his neck. Hurt in a way that made him even more nauseous than he was already.
Sam twisted his head. The demon behind him took one staggering step back, a look of shock and agony on its face. It was torn wide open all the way from one shoulder down into its groin, and the two halves of its body bobbled, held together only by taut strings of viscera. Black smoke steamed up into nothing from the ruptured flesh, and the eyes flickered clear a second before the demon dropped.
Sam looked at Dean, who was staring at the corpse, face twitching where he stood. After a second, Dean's eyes, still black, moved to Sam.
"Dantalion." Alastair's voice rang out, furious. "To me. Right now."
Another demon pried an ordinary buck knife out of the dead one's hand. It grabbed Sam again, hair and clothes, and then started where the other one had left off, carving through the blood and flesh into Sam's skin. It felt like gasoline was coming in with every stroke. The pain left him breathless and jerking as he watched Dean walk up to the altar, stiff-legged as a wind-up soldier, cords standing out on his neck because he was trying so hard to look at Sam. Sam was almost waiting for a tendon to snap.
Alastair came forward to meet him, coming down the stairs and stopping on the last one.
"Down," he directed, and Dean dropped with a crack of bone against rock. Sam gasped, sympathetic pain that he hated himself for spiking through his legs. His left calf was killing him.
The demon behind Sam finished carving and let go of his head, which dropped forward. His skin stretched, he clenched his jaw to keep from yelping. Whatever had just been cut into him was burning and stinging, felt infection-hot. He had an image in his mind of a simple rune, just an X with a circle cradled in the upper arms, but something in him kept adamantly insisting that it was worse, ran deeper, did more damage than what the wendigo had done to his leg almost a decade ago.
Fluid bubbled in Sam's lungs, his head ached, and the thing on his neck ate its way steadily into him.
When he finally looked back up, Alastair was reaching down, cradling Dean's jaw almost tenderly in one hand. That lasted about a second before he wrenched it savagely to the side, and even though a burst of thunder hid the crack, Sam knew it was broken. His stomach twisted, fury, betrayal, sympathy, love frothing into a venomous mess inside him. It even pushed through the pain and sheer wrongness of the cuts.
"Even after all this time, it still shocks me, how stupid you are," Alastair hissed to Dean. "How pathetic and self-absorbed and broken. Even with all the examples I've seen, you just keep on hitting new lows. Just look at you, Dantalion - thinking there's nobody and nothing on the entire planet more important than you. Exactly the same as when you were human." He shook Dean's head by his loose jaw. "Lucifer knows I tried to cut this stuff out of you so many times but it just keeps...growing...back, doesn't it?" Each word was punctuated by the grind of bone on bone. "Actually, I think you're due for a pruning. It's a few months overdue because you've been bopping around all over the country. Playing coy, wetting your dick, and being a huge pain in everybody's ass."
Alastair flicked his fingers. Dean grunted. In the darkness, Sam could barely see rosettes blooming on his jeans, wounds opening instantly all over his body.
"I'm not going to let you screw this up for me just because you've somehow gotten it into your head that this Messiah's your own personal fuckpet," Alastair went on. "That hole must be something else, to drag you away from me...or is it the cock? Do you take it up your ass? Does he fuck you better than I did?" He ran his hand through Dean's hair, rough, fingers coming out with tawny tufts and strands clenched between them. Dean didn't make a sound as Alastair jerked his head around and he continued to bleed.
"Stop." It came out before Sam could stop himself, but he didn't regret it. His stomach twisted hard inside him. He couldn't just sit here and watch this, any more than he could sit and listen to Gordon exorcising Dean.
Never mind what he'd done, what had happened.
Alastair glanced at Sam and smiled. Then he looked back down at Dean.
"You know, he reminds me a lot of you, back in the beginning," he said conversationally. "Maybe they pop all of you out of the same mold. Or maybe you've just somehow infected him." He snapped his fingers, and Dean's spine bent painfully backwards, shoulders pulled in towards the middle of his back, elbows nearly touching. Still no sound. "I'm going to have to do all kinds of work on him before we can even start with the blood. Before he'll be of any use at all to us. You know, you can help, once we've got you leashed up tight again. Remembering what you are and who you belong to." Alastair looked at Sam, stroked Dean's straining, fluttering throat. "Now, obviously, we're going to do both, but. Should we cut him first? Or fuck him?"
Sam's eyes snapped shut as he tensed, practically able to hear the sick pulsing of the wound on his neck. Bones suddenly snapped back into place with a crunch, tendons, and Sam barely had time to realize that Dean had healed his jaw before he was snarling, "You fucking touch him, I swear to god I'll - "
Sam's eyes flew open at the harsh smack of flesh on flesh, hard enough to split skin. Dean hit the ground hard feet away from Alastair, and Sam lunged against the demons holding him on instinct. He didn't go anywhere.
Alastair followed Dean, put a sensible shoe on his chest. Sam saw blood on Dean's full lips as Alastair leaned heavily on him.
"My plans are your plans," Alastair snarled. "You're grateful for the chance to be a part of them. You know no greater joy than - "
All of a sudden, Alastair's eyes widened, and he cut himself off.
"What was that?" He reached down, grabbed Dean by the hair, hauled his head up. "What was that, Dantalion? Don't think I didn't hear it. What did you do?"
Sam saw Dean struggling. Muscles jumping under his skin, the slice of face that he could see twitching hard. With what looked like massive effort, Dean spat blood at Alastair, then snarled out, "Eat me."
"Oh, you piece of shit - "
A familiar ringing rolled through the convent then, effectively shutting Alastair up. The other demons around Sam flinched. Alastair looked at him, eyes white in a sea of rage, and then he and Dean blinked out a second before what was left of the windows shattered. Sam shook his head but the noise didn't really hurt him even as it built. A demon on his right let go of him and when he looked up at it, it had its hands tight over its ears, smoke bleeding out of wide eyes.
There was a noise like a bedsheet snapping...wings beating. A glow from behind Sam lit up the sanctuary. The demon holding its ears started to back away but suddenly, it went rigid as light streamed out of its mouth and eyes. The burnt-out husk of the body dropped to the floor as, one by one, all the other demons followed rapidly suit. Sam looked around at each one, breathing hard.
He turned. It hurt. And there was Castiel, glowing, wounded wings thrown up on the wooden doors behind him. Lunging forward, Castiel grabbed Sam without saying a word, and the next thing he knew, he was back outside the motel room Dean had teleported him out of.
Sam stumbled, falling against the wall. The door swung open before he could touch it and he pushed himself up, headed inside. Almost absentmindedly, he scuffed at the chalk Enochian on the carpet as he walked over it. Sam barely made it to the bed before he collapsed.
He just needed a second. Just a second. Everything was numb, inside and out, except for the blight and burn of the cuts on his neck, but he knew, in a distant kind of way, that he was weak, that he felt sick. He was soaked in tacky-drying demon blood, crusted onto his face and into his hair, and there was a fever coming on. He could still smell sulfur on himself.
Fucking thing on his neck. It was like it'd run threads through his whole body, hurting and binding, a rotten tooth seeping poison into his brain. It had the flavor of Hell. Sam closed his eyes.
He heard Castiel come in, closing the door behind him. "What did they do to you?"
"We need to get out of here, now," Sam replied. "Dean knows where the room is, this is the first place they'll look."
"You're wounded. Show me, first."
Sam reached up towards his collar, but even that sent spikes of agony fanning through his chest. He gasped, gagged. Castiel was there a second later, gently pulling back his jacket, flannel, and T-shirt, and god, did that smart, because the blood had already scabbed into the fabric. Sam hissed through his teeth. Was it normal for it to hurt like this? He could've sworn he'd had worse, but...this was so, so bad.
Bind him, now. What was it doing to him?
"What is it?" Sam ground out.
"A binding sigil," Castiel replied. "A very simple one. It wouldn't have worked if you weren't in such a weakened state." A pause. "I'm...not familiar with human anatomy, but this much blood is concerning. Is it - ?"
"No. Demon got ripped in half while he was cutting it into me." When Castiel didn't respond to that, Sam asked, "Can you heal it?"
"Yes." Sam felt a cool, dry hand against the lacerated flesh. Then pain rocketed through him. He yelled, jerking forward, and tasted blood yet again.
Castiel's hand vanished. When Sam opened his eyes, looking for him through a fractal blur of tears, he was backing away, wide-eyed and nearly horrified. Looking at Sam a whole lot like he did Dean in the beginning, like he still did Dean...and that reminder just had Sam hurting worse.
"What's the problem?" Sam demanded, panting, as soon as the pain started fading. Castiel was shaking his head, mumbling to himself.
"It's not that much. I can fix it, or it might burn out on its own, maybe it's not even enough to…" He lapsed into another language, sharp, jerky. Sam assumed it was Enochian but wasn't about to focus on identifying verb patterns right now.
"What is it?" Sam demanded again, and Castiel looked at him.
"I can't remove the mark. I can't heal it. I'm sorry."
"There's more to it than that, though, isn't there?" When Castiel started shaking his head again, Sam forced himself to his feet, and there were needles in every muscle in his body. "I've had just about all I can take of being lied to today, Cas, so lemme tell you what's gonna happen." Sam swallowed. "Either you're gonna be honest with me, right now, about what's going on...or you can get out."
He knew it was harsh, and didn't know what he was going to do without Castiel. He didn't even know what he was going to do with him, besides rabbit as fast as he possibly could because every second that passed here brought him closer to Hell. But Sam had reached the end of his rope an hour ago; it felt like he was in free fall now.
For a long second, Castiel just looked at Sam. Then he spoke.
"It's sealed onto you," he said. "The sigil. It's blood magic, it's fueled by your power, the demon who was...ripped in half bled into the wound."
Sam smiled, and even that hurt, empty as it was.
"That's awesome news," he said. "I mean, demon blood and Messiahs go so well together, don't they?"
Castiel looked at him sharply. "How do you know that?"
"Alastair was in a chatty mood."
Castiel was quiet, then said, "There are theories, unsubstantiated, that demon blood can have a certain effect on a Messiah. But it wasn't that much and you didn't drink it, it entered your veins accidentally."
Sam thought of Dean tearing it apart in a welter of gore, ensuring as much blood as possible would hit him, and he snorted. "Yeah, I don't know about that." When Castiel cocked his head, Sam asked, "So what's going to happen to me?"
"I don't know," Castiel admitted, "but it may be a problem we have to solve later."
"Are you serious?"
"Do you have any immediate ideas?" Castiel asked, an edge in his voice, and Sam couldn't answer. Castiel continued. "For now, the sigil needs to come off you, and since I can't heal it, I'll have to mar it."
"You're gonna need to cut me again," Sam realized.
"I'm sorry," Castiel apologized. "It's going to hurt."
"Does it have to come off now? Shouldn't we leave first and worry about it later?"
Castiel's eyes strayed to Sam's neck, where the thing was. The X and the circle. "In this case, sooner would be much better than later."
"Fine." Sam sat back down after a second of frustrated jaw-clenching. Bitchface. "But then we're gone. Understand?"
"Do you have a clean knife?" Castiel asked.
Sam knew that there was one under the pillow right next to his hand. Dean's pillow. But he didn't move towards it. Instead, his eyes landed on his backpack, fallen by bathroom. He pointed. "There. Middle pocket, top pouch. The mesh one."
Castiel dropped to one knee, clumsily following Sam's directions. He found his cell phone before the knife, holding it in one hand as he searched with the other, and when it buzzed, Castiel jumped close to six inches and almost squawked. Under any other circumstances, Sam might've laughed. Dean probably would've anyway.
Shut up, shut up, shut up. Fucking useless.
"It's okay, it's just a text," Sam reassured Castiel. "Remember? I showed you those."
Castiel peered at the small screen on top of the phone. "You have three new messages, and it's quite enthusiastic about them. The little envelope is dancing." He glanced over his shoulder. "Do you want to look at them?"
"...might as well, I guess." Sam cleared his throat. It might be Dean. Probably was Dean. He didn't want to see it if it was. But it also might be somebody else and just because his world had collapsed in on itself like wet paper didn't mean he could ignore everybody again.
Castiel found the knife. He brought the phone over to Sam, who just held it as he watched Castiel string a blue-white glow between thumb and forefinger and run the blade through it. When he took hold of Sam's head in an echo of what the demons did, Sam felt his breath catch for a second, but he knew this would be over quick. And Castiel was infinitely more gentle.
He still tried to distract himself by looking at the phone. The buzz that scared Castiel was a reminder from his carrier to buy more minutes, pay-as-you-go phones sucked. But one of the other two messages was from Bela.
This is me confirming it really is him, just in case. You suspicious boy, you.
The third message was from an unknown number. An extremely-blurry picture that was basically just a smear of bright orange and a shape that looked like a smile, with a text attached.
Hi sam its vaugn! i have a phone now!1! bella taugt me to use it n i hope u n dean are doing good i miss u both!
All of a sudden, the phone buzzed again. A new text from Vaughn. Sam read it as Castiel made a short, quick cut on his neck, a cut that hurt like a new wound on top of old ones always did, bad enough to make him grunt.
can u tell dean i started reading slaugterhouse 5? i dont have his #. its wierd so far but i like it. i cant wait to see him again so we can talk about it
Sam's vision was blobbed with tears again, breath shuddering in and out of him. He shoved his phone into the pocket of his filthy jeans and roughly asked Castiel, "That do it?"
"It did." With a touch, Castiel cleaned him up, demon blood and grime off the floor of the sanctuary gone. The rotten-egg reek. The raw burning in his eyes, too. It made him feel better, but it was a drop of white in a sea of oily, clinging black.
"We need to go, then." Sam stood again, grunting. Castiel reached out to steady him, but Sam was already moving. He was going to stay on his feet if it killed him, which it felt like it might. Right now, he thought he might be halfway okay with that. Soon as he was done with everything he needed to do. It was all more important now than ever.
"Maybe I should've kept that thing on just a little longer," Sam commented. He'd just heard the lightbulb fizz as he bent to pick up his backpack. "Might be kinda nice to get upset without breaking everything within twenty feet."
"Trust me," Castiel said grimly. "You wanted the sigil gone as fast as possible."
Sam scooped up his backpack, slung it onto his shoulder without overbalancing. He turned to Castiel. "Let's go."
"What about everything else?"
Sam didn't have to look to know that he was talking about Dean's stuff. His duffel, his weapons, clothes, all kinds of other shit, because for some reason he'd practically exploded all over this room and of course hadn't bothered to pack it back up. Why would he?
"Leave it."
"Where should I take you?"
"As far away from here as you can get," Sam said grimly. "Out west. That'd be safest, they don't have much of a network out there yet. I think."
He waited, within arm's reach of Castiel. But Castiel didn't move. It didn't take long for frustration to start snapping inside Sam like static electricity, but before he could say anything, Castiel spoke.
"I owe both you and Dean an apology." Castiel avoided Sam's eyes.
"We don't have time for this," Sam replied shortly. "We gotta get outta here before - "
"We do have time, actually," Castiel interrupted. At either Sam's expression or his emotion, he added, "Trust me."
And as much as it wore at him, Sam couldn't exactly think of a safe way to try and force an angel to do what he wanted. His neck hurt. He ought to try and get a bandage on the wound, seeing as Castiel couldn't seal it up for him. But what passed for the first aid kit was out in the car, and the thought of finding the keys in Dean's crap, smelling sulfur and leather and gunpowder when he opened the door, digging through equipment with Singer fingerprints all over it...just the thought lit up fury in him so intense it hurt, feelings he couldn't afford to be fighting right now.
"I never believed, up to this point," Castiel began quietly, "that Dean genuinely cared for you."
Sam stared. It felt like an obscene joke, salt ground into every wound he'd ever received. Even though half of him wanted to scream and the other half felt like vomiting, he laughed.
"What the hell are you talking about?" He shook his head. "He doesn't give a rat's ass about me. He never did." It hurt so bad to say it out loud, but felt so good in such a base, ugly way. "It was all a lie. You were right, about everything. The only thing he cares about is making his masters happy. Serving Hell. And if I'm anything to him? I'm some kinda sex toy, or pacifier, or both. All rolled into one." He laughed again. "I don't know the truth, I probably never will, but I'm not even sure what'd be worse. That he came after me knowing, from the beginning, that he was gonna do this, or he decided he was gonna do whatever he could to keep me in one piece and close enough to use."
Sam didn't tell Castiel, but he already knew what the worst possible option was, because he was currently living it. Either or even both of those things being true but still worrying himself sick and burning about Dean, a reflex he couldn't kill. Missing him like he would a limb ripped ragged from the joint. His phone seemed to be melting a hole in the pocket he'd shoved it into, and he didn't know how to tell Vaughn what'd happened. How to tell anybody who'd been worried that they were right about the black hole of concentrated Hell he'd spent the last ten months building himself around. It'd come back to bite him in the ass, and still, he was ruined off weak, pathetic love for it.
"Y'know, I deserved this," Sam said. "With how stupid I've been. Trusting a demon."
"You're hurt," Castiel said, after a long beat of silence. "You feel betrayed."
"You could say that." Sam's voice cracked, and he gritted his teeth.
"I understand. I'm not aware of Dean's true motives or exactly what he intended to begin with, either, but what he did was incredibly stupid and reckless, with every potential to end not just you but the entirety of Creation." Castiel shook his head. "If I'd known he was planning to try and use Hell to heal you, I would have smote him where he stood, even if I had to call on other angels to fully extinguish a Knight. It was simply too great of a risk."
Sam eyed Castiel, warily. He started, "That sounds like you're about to try and excuse what he did."
"His actions were desperate," Castiel replied. "Not malicious."
Sam tried to talk. It took a second for something to come out. "Are you kidding me right now?" Something occurred to him, and he took a step towards Castiel. "Wait a minute, did he talk to you about this? Before?"
"No." Castiel looked away, off in some vague direction that might've been Maryland. "I wouldn't have found you on my own, gravely concerned as I was when I returned and realized you were missing. Dean prayed to me. As soon as it became obvious that there was no longer any conceivable way for him to manipulate the situation to your advantage, and as soon as it became obvious that harm he could not hope to protect you from would come to you. He...explained what he could. Showed me what thought processes and memories he was able to transmit in less than a second." Castiel stated, "I do not approve. After this, I cannot imagine ever allowing him anywhere near you again. But as much as it pains me to say…" He almost grimaced. "I do believe I understand. Somewhat, at least."
"He prayed to you?" Sam was hung upon a whole lot of things here, but that one was the smallest, the easiest to question. "He can do that?"
"Yes."
Sam remembered Alastair's fury, his reaction to something Sam hadn't seen. He hadn't gotten it at the time. Hadn't cared.
"Dean does not trust me," Castiel said bluntly. "He never fully has. I might even go so far as to say that he hates me at the moment, especially after learning what Heaven had planned for you. But he still recognized me as the only option to keep you alive and safe. He chose to separate himself from you in order to get you away from Hell, which is not a decision I thought he was capable of making." Sam was staring, hands in fists. "Make no mistake, Sam, all of his actions up to that point were appallingly selfish, short-sighted, and dangerous." Castiel lifted his chin. "But I can't allow you to believe Dean feels nothing for you, and that what he does feel isn't much more than I ever believed he or any demon was capable of...though he's hardly an ordinary demon."
I told you so. It was automatic, echoing in the empty caverns of Sam's numb brain, and he didn't even really hear it inside himself.
He walked past Castiel, turned, dropped back onto the bed. Then his elbows went onto his knees and his head into his hands, hair piling between his fingers. He stared down at the stained carpet, his boots, but didn't really see either.
He'd been hit in the head before, had his entire world knocked sideways, and this felt a whole lot the same. Thrown headfirst into a brick wall. Except it was the second time in as many hours that it had happened.
Sam didn't know what to believe, what was true and what wasn't. He didn't know who was on his side anymore when he'd been able to state that with absolute surety this afternoon. Hell, he wasn't even sure what his side was anymore.
Castiel was calling him Dean, not Dantalion. That wouldn't be happening if he didn't believe what he was saying.
A kernel of rock-solid certainty had crystallized at the center of Sam, something he absolutely knew, and he held onto that hard as he could.
"Sam?" Castiel asked, cautiously, after about a minute. Sam looked up at him.
"We gotta get him out."
"No." Castiel's response was instant and emphatic. "It's too dangerous. Dean is too dangerous, Sam. After what he - "
"So we can both tear him a new asshole later," Sam interrupted, fierce. Couldn't stop to think, didn't have time for it. "But right now, Alastair's got him. And Dean's the reason I got away. D'you have any idea what he's going to do to him?" Sam stood. "What he's probably already done to him, in all the time I just wasted?"
"Sam - " Castiel started to shake his head. Sam cut him off again.
"It's my choice." He pointed at himself. "He didn't give me one, you can. He's mine, I'm his, and I need him back right now." His voice cracked. "Hell knows I'm a Messiah and they're dead-set on using me. We don't have time to figure out how to keep Dean here without curing him, and we don't have time to try and figure out how to keep me from dying. I'm just gonna have to do the Third Trial now, and I'm gonna have to use Dean."
"I'm not sure he'll count," Castiel warned. "He's a Knight, after all, and - "
"Even if it doesn't work for the Trial, he deserves to be cured." And if he didn't like it, he sure as hell deserved that, too.
Sam dropped his backpack onto the bed behind him and locked eyes, unwavering, with Castiel. There was no time to process, to hurt. He was just gonna have to push through and deal with it later. His leg was killing him, his neck, everything down into his cells, but deep at the core of him, there wasn't any pain.
"I'm doing this," Sam said quietly, "and there's no way for you to talk me out of it."
Castiel looked like he definitely wanted to keep arguing, but didn't try. "All right." He squared his shoulders. "But before we retrieve Dean, prepare everything that you need to perform the Third Trial."
"No. Dean first."
"Sam, the moment you take him, they'll be after you with even more fury than they are now. I can't shield him and he'll likely be too wounded to conceal himself. You need to take every step you can beforehand to ensure your success."
"I'm not budging. I want him out first."
"It would be a disservice to yourself and Dean not to set things up so the odds of your success are at least slightly better than zero." Castiel glared. "Do you actually want both of you needlessly, pointlessly dead? Or in Hell?"
Sam's teeth creaked in his gums as he clenched his jaw. He hurt and he hated, but quietly, he agreed, "Fine."
Seething, he turned to his backpack, pulled a battered notebook out of the very bottom. For the first time in almost a year, he opened it, tugging fuzzy pages over a crushed spiral, combing back through years of notes on groundbreaking rituals until he reached the one to cure a demon. He looked at Castiel.
"Find me a church, then."