Lemara woke feeling sick. The body aches, the bad taste in her mouth, her swollen tongue and throat, the shivering that did nothing to warm her.
Something was digging into her forehead. She groaned, trying to roll away from it.
Then she cracked her eyes open and wished she really was sick.
It stank like an outhouse. If she could have breathed through her mouth, she would have, but something – duct tape, by the feel of it – covered her face from chin to nose.
Eyes watering, Lemara tried to sit up, but found that her ankles were bound like her mouth, her wrists behind her back. A rock, or bit of debris, chewed savagely at the skin of her forehead as she lay, holding her breath so she wouldn't have to smell human waste. Where was she?
Warehouse. That was the only word that came to mind. Besides "movie set." Because that was what it looked like. She was lying in the kind of abandoned building used in so many horror flicks. Pigeons streaked beneath a ceiling two stories tall. Faded blue light filtered through high, filthy, broken windows, pushing the shadows to the warehouse floor. The shadows pooled like heavy gases, hiding most details from view. Chains and hooks hung in the still air over silent conveyor belts. Dirt caked tarps, canvas, and forgotten crates. The foul air nipped at her exposed skin. Lemara wondered if it was snowing outside.
Then she made a sound of disbelief low in her sore throat as the reality of her situation finally clicked into place. Son of a bitch. She'd been abducted.
Aya. Her friend's face flashed through her mind, and tears pricked at her sinuses. Des was on the okay list. How did this happen? Aya. I'm scared.
Oh, God – Des!
Lemara managed to roll herself onto her stomach. She'd been aware of other muted sounds of distress for a while. Squinting, she could make out the forms of people, taped up just like her. Maybe ten of them; Lemara couldn't tell from her position on the icy cement floor. Several pairs of frightened eyes met hers. Including those of the redheaded girl from the nightclub.
Red had been crying. Stripes of freckled skin and dark dirt streaked her pale cheeks. Lemara tried to telegraph some reassurance with her eyes, but immediate disgust flooded through her and she ceased. What was she thinking? She was in the same situation! There was no comfort to be had.
Footsteps, loud and purposeful in the chilly air. The man who had introduced himself as Luka appeared. He bent down, preparing to lift a freshly crying Red. Shocked, Lemara watched Red struggle to evade her boyfriend's hands, whimpering and grunting through her nose, her face a mask of silver tape and terror.
"Not that one," a voice Lemara recognized as Kittney's said. The teenager in her Hot Topic ensemble appeared out of the gloom, looking irritated but unharmed.
Luka looked at her, his sneer ugly, and dropped Red. She squirmed like a kid zipped into a sleeping bag, inchworming her way closer to Lemara. At first, Lemara, though bewildered by Red's obvious fear of her boyfriend, felt relief at having a friend so close. Then the smell wafting off Red explained at least one thing. Like maybe not every abductee had been lucky enough to use a toilet before getting tranqed and brought here. Wherever here was.
"Take him," Kittney went on, pointing at a lump near the stack of crates.
Luka did, scowling. He dragged the struggling person free and hefted him in a fireman's carry.
Lemara recognized the blue silk shirt and the buzzed hair. Desmond!
He saw her too and began flailing, yelling into the tape. Lemara screamed back. Their muffled voices caused the rest of the captives to start kicking up a fuss.
That wasn't the only thing. Kittney walked over to Lemara and very calmly kicked her in the face.
Lemara's head whipped around. After a second of stunned silence, a trickle of blood filled her left nostril. She pressed her cheek into the gritty floor and squeezed her eyes shut. She would not cry. She would not.
Shortly after that, Luka returned. He picked up people as Kittney indicated them until only three of them were left. Red sniffled quietly, curled upon herself. Lemara had maneuvered herself into a sitting position, her eyes on Luka and Kittney, her hands working behind her back. She'd discovered that, by bending her wrist almost far enough to break it, or so it felt, she could hook her middle finger under the paper bracelet she'd gotten at The Church. She yanked and twisted and worried at it, watching Kittney closely to make sure she didn't see. She pushed her broken nail into the material, swearing in her head. Come off. Come off. Come off.
If anyone was looking for them, if anyone could trace them here, then she was determined to leave something behind to be found.
"Any more?" Luka asked Kittney in a dead tone of voice.
"This one." Kittney nudged Lemara with the toe of her shoe. She made a face, sticking out her tongue like a petulant child. "I won't be sorry to kill this one. But the other two are useless."
"Why?" Luka whined. "I screened them!"
"They lied," Kittney snapped. She nodded at Red, who cringed away. "She's never going to see twenty-two again."
"Great." Luka crossed his arms. "That's a whole day wasted. So, what do we do?"
"Lilith wants the full amount, and she wants you to fix your mistake."
"I've been using this vessel for a while. It might be recognized."
"Then take this one. It is too young for our purpose."
Kittney knelt by the last bundle of person. She propped him upright, turning him toward Luka, who came over to stand in front of them. Lemara recognized Vahe by the shock of dark hair and the ultra-pale face. Kittney was still freakishly strong; she cradled the terrified Vahe in her lap, holding him still effortlessly.
"Ready?" Kittney asked.
Luka nodded. He blinked. The grasshopper-wing sound sent a stab of fear through Lemara's belly. Guess she hadn't hallucinated that after all. Black eyes shone from the tanned, handsome face. Red whimpered in such a rhythmic way that Lemara wondered if she was praying.
Good. They needed some prayers.
Because Luka threw back his head and opened his mouth as wide as it would go. At the same time, Kittney ripped the tape off Vahe's mouth, probably taking a night's worth of stubble and several layers of skin with it.
Luka and Vahe both screamed. Luka's body heaved as though he were about to vomit, and then he did: A cloud of black smoke poured from his open mouth. The smoke curled and twisted upon itself, forming a snake of darkness, which then shot straight for Vahe's open mouth and delved inside, cutting off his screams. Kittney held him steady, her black grasshopper eyes unblinking, her smile satisfied.
The last of the smoke streamed from between Luka's teeth. He collapsed.
Vahe closed his torn, bleeding lips. Flicked open eyes that were completely black. Kittney produced a box cutter and proceeded to slit the tape binding his arms and legs. She moved back as he stood up, tearing the last of the tape from his ankles.
"Two more before Friday. Do not fail," Kittney said.
Vahe nodded, turned, and walked out of the warehouse.
Shakily, Luka raised his head. "Oh," he said in a voice that wobbled. "Julia! Oh, my God, Julia, are you okay? I'm sorry, babe, I'm so sorry –"
He crawled toward Red – so Julia was her name – tears welling up in his blue eyes. He reached out a hand to her.
Kittney wove her chubby fingers into his cloud of sheep curls, gripped his yellow-sprouting chin in her other hand, and then yanked in opposite directions.
Luka's neck snapped with several wet crunchy sounds. Kittney released him and he flopped to the floor.
Julia and Lemara both scrambled away from Luka's corpse. Not like they could get far, hogtied as they were. Both were crying, Lemara in total frustration because the stupid – wristband – would – not – come – off!
Kittney descended upon Julia and snatched a fistful of vivid copper hair. Julia sobbed and struggled as Kittney lifted her halfway off the floor.
The pewter knife struck fast and neatly. Kittney wiped it on Julia's top, tucked it away, and then picked up a cheap-looking metal goblet, tarnished and lumpy with some sort of design. Another Hot Topic relic, no doubt. This, she held under the gash in Julia's throat, which pulsed with thick, liquid red.
Heart hammering in her ears, Lemara watched in horror as Julia died hanging by her hair, choking on her own blood. Kittney dropped her as carelessly as she had dropped Luka, all her attention on the shallow-bowled goblet in her hands.
She clearly said something, but in a language Lemara didn't recognize. Probably Latin, considering everything else. These people – these murderers – were crazy. Absolutely bonkers. It was as though they thought they could do magic!
Then Kittney dipped two fingers in the blood and swirled them, making Lemara fight against a rebellious heave of her stomach. Ignoring her red-painted fingers, Kittney brought the goblet up to her face the way most people brought hot coffee to blow on it.
"Master," she breathed. "It's me."
Lemara watched the petulant expression crawl across black-eyed Kittney's face, all the while working at the wristband, which felt less like plastic-coated paper and more like steel cabling. She almost had it.
"It wasn't my fault!" Kittney cried, but then she flinched as though someone had yelled at her. "But –" She deflated. "Yes, Master . . . yes . . . I understand. I'll clean up. Not a trace."
She listened once more to the goblet of blood, then turned and hurled it into the shadows. Red liquid spewed from it in an impressive arc, splashing across the floor. The potted-metal goblet landed with a clank and a skid.
Lemara wondered if it had occurred to Kittney that now she had a bigger mess to clean. Her finger poked through the wristband with a tiny snap. Progress! Just a little more . . .
Kittney stretched as though getting reacquainted with her limbs. She licked the blood from her fingers, shook out her hair, straightened her dress, and then fixed that horribly alien gaze on Lemara.
"Time to go," she said in her sweet little-girl voice.
..::~*~::..
The sound of someone's labored breathing made it through to Aya's dream. She climbed her way toward consciousness, though her dream stuck and stretched like bungee cords. The breathing sound didn't make sense in the dream, but as she tossed and turned closer to wakefulness, it became clearer.
Not labored breathing. More like . . . someone crying. Someone who didn't want to be heard crying.
Aya opened her eyes, fully awake. She glanced at her phone. Four in the morning. Just a few minutes before her alarm would go off. No messages from Lemara. Aya wondered if she had come home yet.
As quietly as she could, she lifted herself against her pillows. Oh! She rubbed her bare arm, frowning. Was the furnace on? It was freezing.
The sniffles and muffled sobs continued from the corner of the room between Aya's dresser and the wall, reminding her why she'd woken.
"Hello?" she softly called. "Who's there?"
The crying stopped. Aya squinted. The soul, whoever it was, was still there.
"Do you know your name?" she tried next. "Why have you come here?"
A whimper. Furtive shuffling.
Aya crawled out of her blankets and to the end of her bed. Her breath puffed out, steamy in the cold air. This soul was deeply disturbed, which frightened her a little, but since it hadn't attacked her, that meant that it was just confused. Probably newly dead.
"It's okay," she said as gently as she could. "You're safe here."
Slowly, so as not to trigger the soul's defenses, Aya scooted off her bed and then parted her curtains to let in light from the streetlamp outside. She was startled to see snow falling in fat flakes. It had been such a nice day yesterday.
"Mmmphf," the soul said. A woman, her long hair tangled so that strands caught the light and burned like copper wire. She lifted her head and leaned into the thin stream of yellowish light.
Aya gasped. Silver duct tape shone from the lower half of the woman's dirty face. Below that, blood pumped from the open wound in her pale throat.
Overcome by empathy, Aya knelt by the frightened soul. She reached forward, thinking to remove the tape – which she couldn't actually do – and the woman threw up her arms as though to fend her off. Broken tape decorated her wrists, trailing threads. Her hair hid her face. She trembled on the floor while the temperature in Aya's bedroom plummeted. The numbness of ozone stung Aya's sinuses.
"Mmmffff!" the dead woman sobbed. "Mmbbth!"
Aya ached for this poor soul. Until she calmed herself and accepted what had happened to her, she would remain stuck like this, the way she had been at the moment of her death. And if she didn't find peace, well . . . neither had Rapist Randy. He had not violated Aya, who had only been fourteen at the time she caught his eye, but after haunting and harassing and harrying her for a solid week, he had managed to hurt her by flinging her through the door to the basement. Her trip down the stairs and into a workbench at the bottom had granted her an extended stay at the hospital. An experience she was not eager to repeat.
"My name is Aya," she said. She shivered, but she didn't want to search for her robe and risk breaking the connection with this soul. "I can help you if you'll let me."
The soul wasn't listening. Her hands flailed in the semi-darkness like gray moths. Then she began to lose concentration. Her image flickered and fizzed and then froze as though she'd maxed out her bandwidth.
Before she disappeared, Aya, her heart and her stomach sinking right into her toes, caught sight of the paper bracelet around her wrist, partially obscured by the tape.
The Church.
..::~*~::..
After piling in a thin, uneven layer over wet asphalt, the snow seemed to give up. A few grainy flakes floated earthward. Early-morning light snuck in under the dissolving clouds and made the snow sparkle like broken glass.
A sound of feathers, like pigeons taking wing, disturbed the empty parking lot. Castiel walked into the open. He did not leave footprints in the snow.
From the highway, distantly, came the low rumble of traffic. He surveyed the lot, then turned and studied the abandoned factory, its defunct water tower standing black against the clouded, silvery dawn. The giant sign circumnavigating the tower proclaimed this condemned complex to be Gates Rubber Co. Checkerboard windows, glass and plywood and empty panes, looked wearily out from red brick or gray cement walls. Cold smokestacks stood against the sky, defying the passage of years. Pipes and exhaust tubes big enough for a human to fit into wept rusty tears from their joints. Depressed, abused chain-link tried, and failed, to keep out trespassers.
He did not go inside. She was gone, the believer, the one with faith. The one who had prayed for salvation.
His job was to stop Lucifer's escape from his cage, and thus prevent the coming Apocalypse, not to answer prayers. Still, something about these prayers had disturbed him. Enough that he had felt the need to investigate, though Uriel had scoffed at him. Now that he was here, he could smell the demonic vibrations in the air, growing fainter with each passing second.
He was close to something. He would have to receive revelation from his superiors to know what he should do next.
He turned to go. Then he stopped. Knelt. Peeled something off the ground, pasted onto the asphalt and the snow by double-wheeled tire tracks.
Castiel stood looking at it for long moments.
The unseen pigeons flew by, flapping their wings noisily. The dawning sun broke through the cloud cover, lighting up the deserted parking lot.
A/N: The abandoned Gates Rubber plant was a landmark in Denver for years. It's demolished now, much to our collective sadness, but looking at all the pictures that have been taken of it are worth your time. It was a fascinating place that caused a lot of trouble (people would sneak in and get hurt, or sometimes killed, because it just wasn't safe).
Reviewer Thanks! Topkicker26 and Darwin. Thank you! So much!
What do you think? Please leave a review before you go and let me know. If you're writing your own SPN fic, let me know about that too!
Cheers,
~ Anne