The Supernatural World of Vladimir and Viktor, Chapter 52
Sam and Andros made their way through the dark toward Clara's house.
"She called you Sammy," Andros stated.
"Hmmmm?
"I thought nobody but Dean calls you Sammy."
"Don't let it tax your brain," Sam replied and they trudged on.
The house lights were on upstairs and down, so Sam did not hesitate to bang loudly on the front door. He knew all four demons were active and the most powerful one was probably already aware of his presence.
Sam's knock was answered by Clara's youngest daughter. He heard the quiet footsteps behind the door and then the door opened slowly and the small girl stood there. She lifted her dark eyes up toward Sam's and announced softly, "Mama is not here."
"Uh, yeah," replied Sam, "I know. She told us to come here and wait for her to return. May we come inside?"
The girl continued to look up at him, not saying a word until the situation began to feel awkward.
Then a booming voice from inside then house told her, "Tell them to wait on the front steps."
She slowly closed the door.
So Sam and Andros sat on the steps.
"So, do we wait for Jill to come? Or Clara and the carrot-monsters?" Andros asked.
Sam did not answer the question. He was not sure. But one thing was sure of: he told Andros that the voice he had heard in the house was of an archdemon. He needed to explain.
"Don't look it directly in the eyes," Sam advised. "If they start to glow or change in any way, turn away or you'll be completely disintegrated. Of course that won't stop anything else it could do. It could draw your body back towards itself, cause boils, or maybe set your skin on fire..."
He pulled out his angel blade and ran his thumb over its blade. "This could stop it, but I'd have to get close to it. I wish I had the Colt. That would be best. Let's walk over to the greenhouse and see if we can find some salt."
"I don't think you will find salt around here," suggested Andros, but he followed Sam towards the greenhouse. True there was no other out building on the property, so any supplies would be in or around the greenhouse.
But he still conjectured to himself as he trudged along. "I mean, it's too far south to keep road salt on hand, and she seems too poor to have a water conditioner, and she only sold vegetables and herbs and plants don't require salt. No hunting gear, so probably no salt blocks to attract deer...They would invade in her gardens anyway."
Sam opened the greenhouse door and slipped in and began looking along the walls and shelves in the dark.
"Clara is involved with demons, one of them seriously powerful," Sam explained. "At some point she would have researched demons and discovered she could hold a demon at bay from inside a circle of salt. I'm sure she has some hidden. It wouldn't be in the house where the demon children would find it, and it wouldn't be out in the open. Like you said, it isn't useful for plants, so where best to hide a bag of salt but in a greenhouse."
He pulled garden tools out from under the potting table, then brushed off something half-buried in the earth below them. He pulled out a large flat plastic bag, then another which he stood on end. The bag read 'salt pellets.'
"Da da dee da daaa!" Sam teased Andros. "Enough to circle the whole house."
Andros could only shrug his shoulders in acceptance and drag one of the two bags out of the greenhouse.
They discovered Jill curled up against the house's front steps, nursing her injured arm.
"Jill!" Sam looked over the damage done to her arm and fumbled around for his phone.
"Castiel can fix that," he said as he pressed Castiel's cell phone number. "Where's Daniel?"
"Oh," said Jill weakly, "he had to take his fairies back home. Some bad fairies were about to attack and we had to scoot. He left me here."
Sam helped her walk away from the house as he listened to Castiel's phone ring.
Castiel's answering service responded. "This is Castiel. I am not available right now. Probably in another dimension. I will call you when I get back." The familiar leave-a-message-at-the-beep came on. He said for Castiel to call immediately and left his phone with Jill.
Jill winced from the pain in her arm and smiled and laid back. "I'll pray for him to come, too. Dean said he did that once and if Dean can get him doing that, I can do that. It'll take my mind off of my arm."
"Oh, yeah, the angel hotline," Sam muttered. Everyone had become so reliant on their cell phones that Sam had almost forgotten that God hears prayers, but so does his angels.
Jill struggled with her flamethrower harness, then rolled her body off of it.
"There's still a charge on this if you want it," she offered.
Sam nodded and carried the device with him towards the salt pellet bags. Andros was already pouring the pellets of one bag in a line around the house. Sam would do the same going the other way with the other bag.
When the circle around the house was complete, Sam emptied the last of the salt into a ring around Jill. She didn't respond, just laid there motionless in her meditative state.
Andros held Sam's angel blade as Sam put on the flamethrower gear and gave Andros last minute instructions.
"Okay. You take the sword and some salt. The salt should burn when it touches one of them and if you can get close, poke the sword right into a body and the demon will have to leave it and go away. If the big one pays attention to you, run like Hell. I might be right behind you. When we get beyond the salt line we'll regroup. Here we go..."
Sam slammed his large body against the door, breaking it in, and the two rushed into the house. They ran down the hall and into a large livingroom where they came upon the three sisters.
One of the sisters' body had practically melted to the floor. It was a smoldering heap of blackened flesh and boils. Black smoke poured from the emotionless face and streamed up through the ceiling..
The second sister looked down at the long bleeding cuts all down her arms and body. When she looked up at them the boys noticed the distinct outline of the sole of a shoe cut across her face. She didn't react in any pain, just looked at the others, waiting for some explanation of what to do about it.
The youngest seemed unharmed, but watched the other two impassively. She looked at the two men and waited.
Once they had taken in all of this, the men noticed the archdemon. First they saw what first appeared as swirling black smoke was the bottom of a robe, then the massive body of something that was half-man and half-bull. The face was more monster than it was bull, but it surveyed the room and spoke.
"The old lady is dead. Our contract is complete. You may leave," he told the demons.
The usual demon black smoke flushed out of the mouths of the sisters still standing and left to follow the first demon. The bodies dropped lifeless to the floor.
Sam judged the situation and decided to look to Andros and say.
"Run!"
Andros was so jacked up on adrenaline at this point he felt the effects of the blue solution drain from his body. He became bold.
He looked the archdemon in the face as steadily as he could and declared, "you cannot see us." Then leaped to the ceiling and scrambled along it as fast as he could.
"Hmmf! Fool! I can hear you." The archdemon snapped his fingers and the entire hall ceiling collapsed, causing a fog of drywall dust to emanate into the room.
Sam knew he was invisible at the moment and tried to stay quiet and think of an escape. He had the flamethrower, he had a pocket of salt pellets. Andros had thrown the angel blade in Sam's direction as he fled, but it was out of reach.
Then Sam heard a familiar voice. It was Castiel. From the corner of his eye Sam saw him standing in the drywall fog. Given a moment of relief, he wonder which had finally summoned the angel, the phone message or Jill's prayer. If it were the latter he definitely needed to get into the practice himself.