Without looking, without waiting to see who had hit him, Sam swung with his right hand. Astonished, Aya watched the demon-killing knife sink to the hilt in a strange man's chest.
Sam let go of the knife. The sickening ocher hue and leathery shine of his skin flattened underneath its normally soft, healthy tan like water disappearing beneath sand. The eyebrows smoothed, the nose rounded, the sharp-toothed smile shrank, the ears shortened, and the awful yellow glint in the eyes cleared. He was human again. Sam again. A Sam who was breathing too fast, a welt rising across his high cheekbone. Meanwhile, the black smoke hurriedly spiraled back into Paulie's body, sucked up as though by a vacuum.
The three of them, Sam, the demon within Paulie, and Aya, stood in a breathless, weightless moment as the strange man, his thick lips pursing, calmly looked down at his torn, powder-blue dress shirt. At the aged bone handle sticking, obscenely, out of his chest.
He wrapped large fingers around the handle.
He slowly, slowly pulled the knife free. The blade emerged, a cringe-worthy centimeter at a time, smeared with red blood.
Deliberately, he looked at Sam. He held the knife to the side.
He opened his fingers, one by one.
The knife dropped to the carpet.
Still, no one breathed. No one else moved.
"Uriel," Sam gasped, appalled, and the weight of the world crashed down.
An angel, Aya realized, feeling a bit numb. He's an angel!
Uriel smiled in apparent delight. "I've been waiting for this," he said in a deep, soft drawl. "I said I wouldn't tell you again, boy. Now you're mine."
He wasn't like Castiel, Aya thought, dazed. He wasn't like her angel, as she'd started to think of him, her dreamwalking friend. The gentle creature who wanted to watch the sharks swim. Out there on the street – had it really been only a day ago? – Castiel's true form had blazed white-gold, like an immense sword of fire, like the rays of a dawning sun as seen from Venus. Here, in her little apartment, Uriel's true form teased the edges of her filtered reikan. Wavering on the air, an insubstantial purplish halo spread around his head, absorbing the light rather than producing it. The shadows of his humongous wings, furling and unfurling with the same lazy motion as a cat displaying its claws, seemed sharper than Castiel's, as though the feathers could cut like blades.
An angel, not a demon.
But absolutely terrifying.
Demon-Paulie moaned, "Aw, give me a break. Another one! Your daddy must be punting your giant feathered asses off his cloud left and right. What did you do, shit on the holy rug?"
At that moment, Aya hated him. She hated the demon for stealing Paulie's voice and hiding Paulie's face under all the smoke patterns.
"You dare blaspheme in my presence?" Uriel said in return, the bulge of his dark eyes narrowing. He didn't acknowledge in any way that Aya stood within arms' reach. "Insignificant pustule."
"Yeah, same to you, brother –" the demon snapped, working himself up.
"I," Uriel said, his slow voice gaining volume, "am not your brother."
Aya saw it coming. She was learning how these new scary things liked to work. The angels. The demons. When Uriel threw up his hand and the demon crouched down as though preparing to pounce, Aya launched herself at Paulie.
At Paulie. And at the demon inside him.
Castiel was wrong. She wasn't useless. There was something she could do.
To save one, she had to save both.
Her arms clamped around Paulie's middle, her face barreling into his stomach.
She had meant to knock him aside but had underestimated the demon's strength. He didn't budge so much as an inch. One of his arms reflexively snaked around her shoulders. He twisted as though to shield her, but this turned out to be a bad thing.
A wall of icy air hit them like a sheet of steel swinging down. It shoved Aya forward. Her skull struck her closed front door. Her teeth slammed together and her brain squashed into her eye sockets.
The taste of blood was the last thing she knew.
..::~*~::..
Aya and Paulie crashed through the door, tearing it and much of the jamb out of the wall. They disappeared in a flurry of echoing crashes and splinters and feet and thuds that shook the stairwell.
"Aya!" Sam cried. He leaped forward, but Uriel appeared in front of him.
The angel clasped his hands down by his belt, rolling his shoulders to settle his dark blue jacket, and eyed him like a cat salivating over a particularly fat bug. "Where do you think you're going?"
"Get out of the way!" Sam said desperately, calculating whether he could tackle the angel and get past him before Uriel's solid hands could wrap around his throat. "The demon has her!"
Uriel, as wide as a new door, cast a glance over his shoulder. "Why should I care?"
"Because Lilith's going to summon Kammapa," Sam said, tossing his last hope into the ring. Surely, Uriel would care about that. He would help. His job was to stop the breaking of the seals, wasn't it? "She's going to summon the Eater of the World, and she's going to use Aya to do it."
"Got there at last, have you?" Uriel asked in his unruffled drawl, throwing Sam off balance.
"Wait," he breathed, feeling his way through his scattered thoughts. "You knew? But Cass –" Castiel didn't know.
"We knew," Uriel interrupted indifferently.
"Isn't Cass your commanding officer or whatever?"
"Not for much longer."
Uriel sounded so pleased. A nasty pause ballooned between them.
"Castiel did not need to know, though somehow he learned which prophecy was next. And then he shared it with the two of you. Against orders. Do you know what it means when an angel disobeys orders?" Uriel advanced one slow, predatory step at a time. "It means he has been corrupted. The corruption must be cleansed."
Sam backed up warily. The demon knife lay on the carpet, smeared with blood. He cast it a glance sidelong but then dismissed it. He had nothing that could hurt an angel. Nothing.
Nothing . . . except . . .
"Too bad it's not your fight anymore, boy." Uriel grinned, obviously relishing the moment. He swelled, cracking his knuckles. "You chose the wrong side, didn't you know? You went back to your demonic piece of ass. You rolled around in the scum, and now, I'm going to cleanse you. Just like I said I would."
He plowed into Sam with both fists. One caught him in the mouth, the other slammed into his gut.
Sam doubled over, his breath leaving his lungs in a great gust. He staggered. Blood drooled from his split lip, the gash in his cheek. He touched it, marveled yet again at the deep, shining color of it.
"Heaven commanded that you not use your powers," Uriel went on. He clenched a fistful of Sam's collar. Lifted him several inches off the floor. Then slammed him onto his back, onto the coffee table. The table cracked. One of the legs splintered. Paper and coffee mugs went flying. Sam writhed, clawing at Uriel's fist, his face hot, his mouth working over yells he didn't have the air to voice. "Like a selfish child, you used them, anyway. But don't worry. Castiel isn't here to stop me this time."
Uriel raised his other fist. "He's confused," he said. He drove the fist into Sam's face. Once. "He thinks you can be redeemed." Twice. "He doesn't see how dirty you are." Thrice. "But don't worry. I won't tell him about this." The fourth time, his fist came away bloody.
Uriel grimaced, inspecting his knuckles. He leaned close to Sam, who lay limp, his arms outspread. He whispered, "Your stain is never going to wash off."
Sam shifted. Just enough to relieve the pressure of the fist pinning him to the table. He raised his chin. "Not my . . . problem," he managed to hoarsely say. He gave a lopsided grin, one corner of his mouth tucking up into his bloody cheek.
He held up his fingers. They glinted bright red.
Uriel blinked. His skin paled enough that the black moles across his cheeks seemed to jump out, standing at attention.
"Shouldn't . . . have let Anna . . . teach us this one," Sam ground out.
"No!" Uriel bellowed. He lunged across the coffee table, his heavy vessel thudding into Sam's sore body. His hand reached out, blunt nails scrabbling at Sam's forearm, snagging in the thin black bracelet he wore.
Sam slapped his sticky palm directly onto the angel-banishing sigil he'd painted in his blood on one crooked couch cushion.
The sigil flared to life, and an answering blaze of light poured from inside Uriel. The light surrounded him. Enveloped him. Sucked him away at warp speed. He vanished into a pinprick of light, howling his fury. The pinprick winked out. Sam was alone.
"Come again when you can't stay so long!" he shouted somewhat deliriously at the empty apartment, the shattered hole where the front door used to be. Then he groaned, reeling from the beating he'd taken.
The silence in the aftermath of a fight always seemed expectant, ringing like distant, old-fashioned telephones in the back of his head. His temples throbbed. It seemed like too much work to get off the table. He had no idea where angels went when the banishing sigil blew them away, but he knew it would be hours before Uriel made his way back, roaring like a bull seeing red.
Sam heard a gasp. Upside-down, from his perspective, he caught a glimpse of wide eyes in a frightened face, and then saw the door across the hall slam shut.
"I'm calling the police!" a muffled voice called shakily from the other side.
"Crap." So nice of Aya's neighbor to see if he needed help. Frankly, he was surprised the entire building's occupants hadn't come running at all the noise. It wouldn't be long now. He rolled off the ruined table and slithered onto his knees and one hand. The other felt around his torso, checking for deeper injuries.
Finding nothing life-threatening, he dragged himself through the wreckage of the living room to locate his phone, once again wedged between the cushion and the arm of the couch. He scrolled through the menus and hit CALL with one thumb, his other hand busy exploring a line of fire under one shoulder blade.
"Sammy, we gotta stop calling each other like this," Dean teased. "I'm beginning to think you want more from this relationship than I'm willing to give."
"What – Dean – no, shut up," Sam spluttered. "What is wrong with you?"
"Ah, I dunno, Sam," Dean said, which passed for an apology in his book. "Been a long morning."
Tell me about it. Sam winced, now prodding his lip and battered face. His nose had not escaped Uriel's attention. It felt fevered and swollen to the touch.
"What's up?" Dean asked.
"Our friend showed up. He got Aya," Sam reported. There hadn't been a peep from the hallway for a while. He began picking up his things. "The police are on their way. I have to get out of here. You've gotta meet me somewhere."
"Wait, what? What the hell happened?"
"Uriel," Sam said with a snarl. "He pushed her into the demon's arms. Literally. Before he tried to kill me."
An indrawn breath. "Where is he now?" Dean growled.
"Probably somewhere in Mongolia. Maybe Saturn? I didn't specify a destination in the banishing spell," Sam said, and Dean grunted approvingly.
Their humor didn't last long, though. "So, the demon took Aya? Fan-frickin'-tastic. Time for Plan – No, Cass, wait –"
Sam heard the flapping and looked up. "He's here, Dean."
"Frickin' angels." From the sound of it, Dean had just stomped the accelerator to the floor.
"The demon took Aya?" Castiel asked without preamble. He stepped closer to Sam, who crouched on the floor, halfway through stuffing his Sharpies and the damaged notebook into his messenger bag. The blue tie swung into Sam's face as he leaned forward. He passed his palm over Sam's forehead.
In an instant, all the pain eased. Sam blinked. He ran the tip of his tongue over his unbroken lip.
"Thanks," he said grudgingly as Castiel straightened. An angel had hurt him, and an angel had healed him. Par for the course, these days. "Your buddy Uriel is a real piece of work, you know that?"
Castiel wasn't listening. "Where, Sam?" he asked, steel in his eye. "Where did the demon take her?"
Sam scented danger. "You can't go running off by yourself," he said as soothingly as he could. He tried to tug his laptop toward him without Castiel noticing. "Let's get out of here before the cops show up. We'll meet up with Dean. Then we can come up with a plan. Me and Dean, we'll help you."
Of course, Castiel noticed. His eyes flicked toward the laptop, and his fingers flicked out in an open-up gesture. Sam heard the zap! before he felt it. His hand popped off the aluminum case, making him gasp. Another sweep of Castiel's arm, and the lid swung upright by itself.
Frowning, Castiel spent all of half a second remotely blurring through every window and tab Sam had opened in the past few hours, including those on Red Rocks. Its history. A map of how to get there. Information on the renovations and current closure. Aerial views and weather updates.
"You've helped enough," he said, uncharacteristically cold. Then he was gone with flaps so strong they wafted Sam's hair back and stuck his t-shirt to his sweaty skin.
In the distance, sirens began to wail.
"Sam?" Dean asked, his voice tight with stress.
Crap. "Meet me behind the coffee shop. We've gotta make tracks."
A/N: So I look at my manuscript - the one originally planned to be 14 chapters, MAYBE 16 . . . and then I look at the most recent chapters, which seem to keep growing and expanding so I have to split them off into whole new chapters. This is going to be a bit longer yet! But I figure, of all the bad things I could do to you guys, giving you more chapters probably isn't one of them. XD
Reviewer Thanks! Momochan77, Darwin, happyperson42, IHeartSPN, MiMiMargot, and Topkicker26 (twice!). So happy you all could share in a little Sam-love with me! Thank you for your kindness and support. ^_^
Please review before you go! Reviews are so helpful to me - sometimes, you guys connect a couple of dots I didn't even see. It's amazing to read about!
See you next time!
~ Anne