Thank you so much for beta'ing and VegasGranny and Ncsupnatfan for pre-reading.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dean had just called to say he was ten minutes away from the bunker and to check if they had a location yet, if the spell had finally settled in one place and they knew where Sam—and Jo by extension—were. It was Central Colorado. They gathered weapons and the ingredients needed to repeat the spell when they were closer, in hopes of nailing the location down more precisely and ran to the cars, Mary calling Dean to back tell them what was happening, and they set out after some argument with Jack that he not go flying off alone.
Mary drove with Jack and Castiel in the back while Bobby sat at her side, his phone tucked under his ear, and started the chain of calls that would bring his people to Colorado, too. When they stopped for gas, the woman with the spear switched to Mary's car and Castiel the Impala, and Bobby took a turn at the wheel while Mary sat in the shotgun seat, her palms sweating so much she was constantly wiping them on her pants' legs.
"Are you called Kaia, too?" Jack asked the woman sitting beside him as they drove onto Route 70.
The woman smiled slightly. "Names had no meaning where I came from, but I suppose, yes, I am called Kaia. We were the mirror of each other after all."
"I am going to stop Michael, Kaia," Jack said, and Mary thought he was reassuring himself as much as her.
"How?" she asked.
"I have power. I almost destroyed him once, but I was… distracted." Jack lifted the short sword he was carrying on his lap. "And I have this. It kills an archangel. Dean used it to kill Lucifer."
Kaia sighed. "I have my spear, too, but I don't want to use it. I don't know if it will do more than just hurt him, and I am not willing to die for this world."
"Then why are you here?" Mary asked bitterly.
"I don't know," she said, her voice sounding as confused as Mary had felt when she'd heard about the angel in Sam. "Dean promised to bring me somewhere safe, and then we were doing a U-turn and racing somewhere else. I don't know where this safe place is, and he has my spear still. I thought staying close to that and to the people that seem to have a plan was safer for me than being alone."
"You won't have to fight him, I promise," Jack said. "But you might be able to help in a different way. I opened the rift that took Sam and Dean to your world, and if I can't kill Michael, we thought we could trap him instead."
"You can open doors to the other worlds?" she asked.
"I can if I have a dream-walker." He shifted restlessly. "The Kaia I knew could do that."
"So can I. If I help you open a world to trap Michael, will you open a world for me?"
Mary frowned. "You want to go back to that place? Sam and Dean said it was some kind of hell."
"It was blood and pain," she agreed. "And I don't want to go back there. But there are other worlds. I have seen them. I want to go to one of them."
"I can do that," Jack said confidently. "Help me if I need it, find me a world for him, and I will find a place for you. I saw many with Kaia. They were beautiful."
"I know," she said in a tone of longing. "There is one I saw that…"
"Show me and I will send you there when it's time," Jack said.
Mary watched over her shoulder as Jack and Kaia joined hands and their eyes became distant. She felt a wave of anger at the peaceful looks on their faces. Sam was gone, being ridden by an angel and trapped by Michael, and they were doing this! Had they no respect for the situation?
Her anger lasted long enough for Jack's attention to return to the car and for him to say, "Yes, I remember that one. If you help us get Sam back, I will open a door for you."
The look on his face when he said Sam's name dissolved her ire and made her feel guilty for it coming at all. He was worried, too, scared for Sam, but he was being strategic. He was making a deal with Kaia that would help them, and he was playing down the risk of what they were all going into. He did care; he was just being smarter than her. While she was letting her fear rule her, focusing only on her son, he was thinking of the way they needed to get him back—dealing with Michael.
Perhaps sensing her distress, he was an unusually perceptive man even if he didn't often show it, Bobby said, "You should all try to sleep. We're still a few hundred miles away, and we need to be on top of our game when we get there. You haven't slept in a day, Mary."
"I can't sleep," Mary stated, holding back the question of how she was supposed to sleep as she knew he was right. It had been longer than a day as the case had wrapped up late and they'd driven back after, still too wired to rest.
"You can't help your son if you're too tired to focus," Bobby said. "You'd be a liability even."
"I can help you," Jack offered.
Seeing the sense in what Bobby was saying and realizing it might be better to sleep a while, Mary nodded and said, "Please, Jack."
Jack leaned forward in his seat and cupped her cheek with one hand and touched the other to her temple. She was cast into sleep, only peripherally aware of the hand easing her head down and the rumble of the engine.
She opened her eyes to the bunker, her face pressed against the cool wood of a table in the library, and she straightened up and looked around. The room was empty except for her and a man facing away from her. His form was blurred, and she had to blink many times before he came into focus.
"Sam!"
She got quickly to her feet and rushed across the room to him, touching his arm and trying to turn him. He resisted, and she dropped her hand.
"Sam?"
He turned to face her slowly, and she gasped. His skin was the grey pallor with flushed cheeks of his feverish time in the hospital, and his eyes were deeply shadowed. If not for the fact he was upright and his eyes open, she would have thought he was the same man that had lain in a hospital bed for days, unconscious and desperately ill.
"Hello, Mom," he said.
"What happened to you?"
Sam looked almost amused. "They didn't tell you? This is me without the angel. This is what I will be when she is gone."
"No," Mary groaned.
"Yes," Sam said, and there was a strange kind of triumph in his voice.
Mary cupped his cheek, and he allowed the contact, his face expressionless. "I'm sorry, Sam. I shouldn't have let you go to Michael alone. I should have protected you."
"We needed Dean back," Sam stated. "I was the price we had to pay."
"No! You weren't. We're going to save you. We're coming. We'll find a way to save you."
Sam chuckled. "We both know that's not possible. Without the angel in me, I am nothing, and I will not live with her."
"You have to!" Mary said desperately. "Sam, please!"
Sam shook his head and then his eyes flared with blue-white light and his face formed into an expression she had never seen on him before. Sam was gone. This was the angel.
"You know who I am," she stated.
"You're Jo, the one that is inside Sam."
"The one that is keeping him truly alive, yes."
"You're the one that stole him. You took him to Michael."
"I had no choice," she said, a bite of anger in her voice. "He would have destroyed Sam without me in here. He wants me; that's all that's stopping him now. I am protecting Sam."
"Is he okay?" Mary asked in spite of herself.
"He is… Sam."
"That's not an answer."
"I don't have time to reassure you or comfort. Michael could come back at any moment, and you might wake up. There are things we need to discuss. We're in Colorado."
"We know," Mary said. "We're on our way. We're coming for him." She realized when she'd said it that it was a risk, she didn't know where Jo's alliances truly lay, but it was too late to take it back.
"Good. Are you bringing the Nephilim?"
Mary bit her lip, unsure of whether or not to answer.
"You can trust me, Mary," she said. "Sam does. If he didn't, he would have cast me out already, even at the cost of his own ability to truly live. You need to tell me."
In spite of her misgivings, Mary did trust her. "We're all coming. We have Jack, Kaia, and the spear."
She nodded. "You have to hurry. We're in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. Michael is meeting me here soon. He left me alone for only a little while. I don't know where he will take us next."
"Can you delay him?" Mary asked.
"No. I can't run or hide. He will find me. And if he realizes I'm not loyal to him, he will kill me—and Sam as well. You're the only ones that can do this. I'm at South Gateway Rock. It's in the north end of the park. I will be watching for you."
"Okay. We'll come. Can you tell Sam? Make sure he knows we're coming to help him."
"He won't be happy," Jo said.
"I don't care. He needs to know we're going to save him."
Jo smiled slightly. "And what will happen to me when you come?"
Mary glowered. "If you really care about helping him and us, that won't matter."
"No, I guess it doesn't. I'm scared though. Michael is strong."
"I thought he wanted you. Why would he hurt you?"
"He won't," she said calmly. "But he will hurt the world, and humanity has already suffered enough."
Mary felt her waking mind trying to invade and knew she was waking up. "Tell him!" she said urgently. "Make sure he knows we're coming. I'm coming. I'm going to…" Her eyes flew open and she sucked in a breath as the rumbled of the engine and the bumps of the car woke her. "Save him," she finished,
"Mary?" Jack said cautiously.
"Colorado Springs," she said. "Jo is there, and Michael is coming. We don't have long." She pulled out her phone and dialed Dean's number. As soon as it was answered, she launched into speech. "They're in Colorado Springs. Garden of the Gods. Michael is on his way. Dean, we have to hurry…"
They were standing on the rocky ground near the base of a towering red rock formation in a park of many, some larger, some smaller, natural monuments. It was beautiful, illuminated in the light of the full moon, but Sam had no attention to spare on it. He wasn't in control, he couldn't move or control where he looked, but Jo was absent and it was quiet in his mind.
They were waiting for Michael, they had been waiting for hours, and Sam was helpless and angry as he thought of what would happen when he came.
When Michael had first taken Jo and Sam, they had moved around the country, possibly the world, and Michael had extolled on the beauty of the planet and what he planned for it—paradise for him, hell for humanity.
Jo had been attentive and seemed excited as she listened, but Sam had detected the conflict of what she was saying and what she was feeling when she looked around. He wasn't sure if it was for his benefit, to stop him casting her out, but she had convinced him enough to not act.
He knew he would be helpless without her, but he also wanted no part of it if she was going to serve Michael as he wished. He would cast her out and leave her to find a new vessel while he was stowed away in a hospital somewhere, and the people he loved saved the world without him. He would give up himself to slow Michael down even a little.
He felt Jo stir back to awareness inside him and his eyes moved around their surroundings without his control.
"Where did you go?" he asked.
"I was speaking to your family. I waited for Dean, but he never came. Your mother slept though, and I was able to find her in her dream."
"Are they okay?"
"Without you, of course not, but they're coming."
Sam felt a wave of horror. "They're coming here! But Michael is coming!"
"That's the point. They're coming for you and him."
"But they're not ready. Jack hasn't been tested yet. And Billie never answered."
She couldn't answer, Sam knew now from what they'd been told, because Michael had bound her when she tried to stop Jessica giving consent. She was now as powerless to oppose him as the original Death had been.
"They know that, but they are coming anyway."
"They'll get themselves killed!"
Jo sighed. "Do you really expect them to not come when you are here? When they finally have a location for Michael? This is the end, Sam. It's time for them to fight."
But they could die. Sam understood why they were coming, he would have done the same if any of them were in his position, but the thought of them facing Michael with Jack untested was horrifying.
"What do we do?" Sam asked. "You say you're on my side, that I have to trust you, so how do we fix this?"
"We do what we can to help them take their shot when they arrive. You and I can do nothing alone apart from perhaps distract Michael. Jack is the only hope." She considered. "They have the spear, too. That may be enough. They're as armed as they can possibly be."
Sam groaned. They were armed, they were coming, but he was terrified they were coming to be killed, no matter what they were armed with.
He could lose his family today.
Jo fell into thoughtful silence, and Sam withdrew into himself to deal with his preemptive grief. He tried to believe that there was going to be a good outcome, that they would win, that Michael would be stopped, but the odds were higher in Michael's favor. He was strong, and if Jo wasn't to be trusted, if she warned him somehow before Sam could stop her, it would end for them all.
He had no way to track time, but it felt like endless hours had passed before there was a fluttering sound and Michael appeared.
He smiled as he saw Jo and said, "I'm sorry I was gone so long. There were things for me to do, investments to check up on. Now, let's address your situation." He looked them up and down, seeming to be staring right into Sam's body, seeing the core of him. "Your vessel is weak, ruined even. You deserve better."
Sam stirred anxiously as he waited for Jo's reply. Michael was right, of course, but if she was gone, the little control he had to intervene, to cast Jo out and distract Michael at a pivotal moment, was lost.
"This vessel would be strong if he was whole," Jo said. "He was Lucifer's own."
"Yes," Michael said thoughtfully. "I can help with that."
Sam cringed back in his mind as Michael reached out a hand and laid it on Sam's chest. He hated the touch, it felt like yet another violation, but then pain like an electric shock overwhelmed everything else he was feeling, and Jo gasped air into his lungs. His head felt like it was filled with fire; it was all he could focus on for the endless time it lasted, and then Michael was withdrawing his hand and the pain faded to nothing.
"There," Michael said. "That's better."
Jo flexed Sam's arms and spread her fingers. "Thank you, Michael. It's perfect now."
"Did he just heal me?" Sam asked. If he had, he could cast Jo out now and be fine, though what he could do after he wasn't sure.
"Yes, but you can't cast me out."
"Why not?"
"Because they're almost here, and I am going to be more help in a fight than you."
Sam heard the rumble of an engine and saw a spume of dust kicking up in the distance before there were the sounds of many doors opening and closing, and Michael's laughter.
"They're here," he said with an amused smile.
"Yes," Jo whispered to Sam. "It's time. Let me handle it and they might live."
"Please don't hurt them," Sam begged.
"I won't. I've told you before, Sam, you have to trust me. I saved you twice, and I will do everything I can to save you and them all again."
Before Sam could form a response, Dean ran into sight with Castiel and Jack flanking him. Behind them came Mary and Bobby and the woman that had killed Kaia. Dean was gripping a long spear with a forked tip that was yanked out of his hand by the woman who held it close to her side.
Sam stared at them all, his fear battling his unexpected hope, and sent a desperate plea to Jo that he hoped would reach her, to make her keep her word. "Please, help them…"
So… It's time. One more chapter to go, and it's an action-packed one.
Until next time…
Clowns or Midgets xxx