:-) Thanks for reading!
Chapter title is from song by Kansas.
32
Fight Fire with Fire – Kansas
"What happened? Where's Dean?"
The questions came in rapid succession as Sam sat up. Sam was scanning the restaurant with sharp eyes as he spoke, wiping the foam from the corner of his lips with a careless hand. There was nothing puppy like about him now, and this, this was the other Sam Winchester she had heard about.
She looked down at the dull table knife in her hand, a fine trace of gold gleaming along the cutting edge.
"Hex." She replied shortly. She glanced at the people still staring at them and lowered her voice. "You boys piss off any dragons or Trow goblins lately?"
Sam's head tilted to one side. He hesitated.
"Uh. Maybe."
"Uh, maybe, which? Dragons or goblins?"
"Both?"
She stared at him, because both? Trow goblins were rare, at least outside Orkney, and dragons rarer yet.
"The dragons were a while ago, though." Sam said, mostly to himself, looking around again, but more like he was Google mapping their location in his mind than actually looking around. "The lake…"
"What about the lake?"
Sam brought himself back to the present, and glanced at her as if he'd forgotten she was there. "We sort of sank the goblin's gold hoard to the bottom of Lake Erie. It seemed like a good distraction at the time."
She resisted rubbing at the headache forming behind her eyes as she looked at Sam, all six foot four of him whom should have known better.
"Did you want to make an enemy for life?"
Sam tilted his head again, this time helplessly, gathering up his gear and counting out bills from his wallet.
"He had something we really needed." And it was Friendly Sam that smiled apologetically at the waitress across the room, dropping an extra twenty on the table. But the naked command that came next sounded just like his brother. "Come on. Let's go. Let's get you guys back to the motel. We'll be more secure there."
They were marginally more secure at the motel. Four walls they could see, but they stayed blank walls because it was impossible to ward against goblins. The Trows were nasty buggers—vicious, greedy, steeped in sorcery and damned near impossible to kill. To top that off, they had a long memory, all too happy to nurse a grudge like it was a precious hobby. Even the most ambitious of the Families left Trow gold well alone for a reason.
Sam's long legs chewed up the room, pacing from one side to the other, glancing periodically at his watch.
"It's been too long. I'm going after him."
It had been a whole forty minutes since Dean had left, barely enough time to drive to the next town and back, but Sam was right. It had been too long. She stood up from the small table where she had been sitting, trying to ignore Sam's anxious pacing, and picked up her weapons.
Sam stopped in the middle of fishing the keys out of his pocket.
"You're not coming."
Pigheadedness ran in the family. She threw him an impatient glance as she slipped her swords into the sling she used to carry them around when in public. It went over one shoulder, like a yoga mat or poster tube, odd, but innocuous looking. Toby was shrugging into his own jacket.
"No." Sam said. "It's too dangerous. I'll just go find Dean. Please, just wait for us here."
She gave him a flat look. "Any situation your brother can't get himself out of, you're going to need help."
Some thought darker than the others went across Sam's face.
She'd considered that possibility too, but the required action was the same. They were wasting time.
"Do you know exactly where he is?"
Sam's hand went distractedly to his phone before he jerked the telltale motion away.
"Well, come on, then. We're burning daylight."
They made the drive in silence. The interior of the Impala smelled unexpectedly like new leather, lovingly kept up, and buttery soft. Toby leaned forward from where he sat in the back. She turned her head towards him.
"When we get there, stay in the car."
He looked at her mutely, a stubborn set to his chin.
"Toby."
They'd been over this. There was one rule if he was going to tag along on the job, and that was to follow orders. They couldn't have left him alone in the motel room, and so here they were, a grim circus of characters, the frown on Sam's face getting deeper by the minute as he stomped on the accelerator. Toby clung to the back of the front seat with both hands, lips cinching in before he stated unequivocally.
"I want to help."
"No." She back-ended the flat denial with a glare, putting her foot down. "You stay put. Out of the way. That's how you'll help."
Toby's face puckered, a pout with determination underlying it, before he let go of the front seat and sat back, feet swinging in the air, a silent mutiny stewing.
"What if Dean's in trouble?"
She exchanged a glance with Sam. Toby's attachment to Dean went deeper than she thought, deeper than she wanted. If there was trouble, it would end badly. So maybe she should have just let Sam go off by himself, come whatever tragic ending may come, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Maybe she owed them for helping Toby. Maybe she owed them for sticking it out at the hospital. Whatever the reason, they were here now.
The wind kicked up around them. Thunderclouds loomed ahead, black shadows on the horizon lit by jagged flashes of lightening. They could just make out the curve of the shoreline, and the vague shape of a long wooden pier jutting out over turbulent waters. She turned fully around to face Toby as Sam pulled the Impala to a stop.
"Stay. And that's an order. Stay, or you're not coming with us next time."
There was a long obstinate silence before Toby finally nodded.
It seemed the moment they stepped out of the car the heavens opened up with a deluge. Rain sleeked down the sides of the Impala, a pounding drumbeat of water, while the wind whipped her hair into her face.
"DO YOU SEE HIM?" She shouted over the din of the rainfall at Sam, a vague dark shape on the other side of the Chevy. "CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING?"
A bolt of lightening danced down from the skies, touching on the water, making everything white bright for a moment. There were two shadowy figures at the end of the pier, and…
She peered harder. Sam rounded the car to come up alongside her, peering where she was looking through the murk, his Beretta tucked under his soaked jacket. Another flash of lightening lit the lake again, a glint of something red and gold and green, and her jaw dropped before she could help it.
"Is that?"
The expression on Sam's face could only be described as awe. Awe, and maybe enchantment. Over the crash of thunder and between the sheeting beat of the rain, came a faint strain of music. A woman's voice, high soprano, crooning…
Metallica?
She jabbed Sam sharply in the ribs, motioning frantically at him to cover his ears. She was putting her hands over her own ears to block out the music, the elements pounding to the now recognizable melody of Enter Sandman as the ethereal voice singing it rose high over the waves lapping at the seawall.
It was a mermaid.
A bloody, sodding mermaid. In a lake, where mermaids were not supposed to be.
These things didn't happen.
Mermaids did not sing Metallica.
Except this one did. The wind and the rain were her guitars, the thunder and the lightening her drums. Another burst of lightening flashed across the end of the pier like a spotlight, and there was Dean Winchester sitting with his legs dangling off the end of the pier, a goofy smile on his face as he listened, completely enraptured by the red-headed, scantily clad, green-and-gold-scaled, fish girl rocking it out in a foaming whirlpool of water.
Oh…for the love of turnips.
Of all the dire scenarios she had envisioned in the last half hour, this was not one of them.
Sam half turned, and was shouting at her. She couldn't hear, obviously, but he stopped, and mouthed the words exaggeratedly.
"METALLICA. CALMS. DEAN. DOWN." Sam yelled. "I. DON'T. THINK. IT'LL. AFFECT. ME. -US."
Uh-huh.
She took a tentative finger out of one ear, testing Sam's theory, ready to stomp on Sam's foot if he started smiling stupidly again. As she did that, something brushed by her, mindlessly heading down towards the pier.
Not something. Someone.
Her hand snaked out just in time to grab the back of Toby's jacket. She reeled Toby in and turned him around to face her, and she probably shouldn't have been surprised by his glazed eyes and zoned-out face, because of course this had to happen.
She clamped her hands over his ears.
It took a second before Toby blinked, the spell broken. Toby looked at her, at the puddle of water he was standing in, his eyes wide with confusion about how he got where he was.
A pair of orange earmuffs bumped her hand. She recognized them from yesterday's shotgun practice; Sam handing them to her with a gesture towards Toby. She took them and tucked them over Toby's ears securely.
"CAR!" She mouthed. "STAY!"
Toby shot her an apologetic look. It wasn't his fault, and that would have been fine, except she turned back to Sam, to find the faintest smile tugging at the corner of Sam's lips, an almost pleased smile that vanished when she looked at him, and she narrowed her eyes. It wasn't funny. But before she could say anything, Sam shifted his attention down the pier, peering through the murk at his blissed-out brother. It must have been a trick of the lightening dancing across the lake surface that made Dean looked younger, almost boyish, belting out the chorus at the top of his voice, banging invisible drumsticks at the air.
She put a hand on Sam's shoulder, and he leaned down, but she still had to stand on her tiptoes to shout near Sam's ear.
"ANY IDEAS ON HOW WE FREE FLUFFY DOWN THERE?"
One corner of Sam's lips quirked up again before he caught himself. He turned his head toward her ear before he yelled back.
"I READ ABOUT THEM! I THOUGHT THEY USUALLY STUCK TO THE OCEAN!?"
They did. The lore on sea sirens was that they haunted the ocean's rocky outcrops, not so much pining for princes as watching the horizon for ships to sink and sailors to nibble on. The elements did their bidding, and you did not mess with a sea siren near a large body of water if you could help it. She stared harder at the crooning Ariel—it was hard not to—watching the mesmerizing sway and dance of mersong as the redhead's voice softened seductively. Despite the howling wind and rain, girlfriend was only strategically clad. Seashells were woven into her auburn tresses, seashell bracelets on her arms like a reminder of the ocean. Seashells over her, er, assets. The only thing that was out of place in the mermaid's beach bunny attire was a discordant gleam of metal around the ginger's neck.
"That leather choker." Sam said almost at the same time. "That medallion on it. It's gold."
Goblin gold. She took a step forward, trying to see through the rain more clearly.
"Is that etching on it?"
Sam came up beside her and nodded.
"You're thinking spell?"
"It'd be one way to get a treasure hoard off the bottom of a lake."
"Your goblin enslaved a mermaid?"
"Looks like it."
She glanced up at Sam when he said that. The set of Sam's jaw, exactly like his brother's, locked in over-protective-alpha-male mode. Over a mermaid. She looked heavenward, and reached for patience.
"You realize you're nothing but a tasty snack to her, right?"
A series of expressions flickered across Sam's face, settling on stubborn. "She's not doing this by choice."
Uh-huh. Still, Sam had a point. Given the opportunity, Disney princess there should head for salt water the moment she was freed, which would solve at least one of their problems. Freeing the mermaid meant getting that choker off her neck—without cutting her—because that would really tick the mermaid off, and they did not want to tick the weather-controlling mermaid off. Zee measured the distance between the edge of the pier and the fishy redhead with a frown. It was too far for her to reach, even if she weren't hampered by the bandage corset around her waist. What they needed was someone tall; someone with adequately long arms.
She glanced up at the towering giraffe next to her, and scowled. She slid the sling with her swords forward, and undid the clip. She pulled out her katana, gripping the hilt before releasing it reluctantly.
"Don't nick her. And do not drop my sword."
Sam hesitated before he accepted the katana from her two-handed, handling the weapon with a degree of reverence she wouldn't have expected. She felt a little better parting with her sword for that, but it was hard anyway. She slid the shorter wakizashi out into her hand next.
"Be careful. That goblin's still got to be around here somewhere."
The wooden pier was slippery beneath her boots. She fell into step besides Sam, her back to him as much as she ever had her back to anyone, one eye on Toby, his faced pressed up against the Impala's foggy windows, the huge orange rounds of the earmuffs protruding awkwardly over his ears. Her boots squelched through a slick of lake, waves splashing over the planks as the wind shrieked against the seawall. Lightening cracked across the sky, touching down on the water near them, and Sam hastily lowered the steel blade in his hand down to his side.
Just around them the rain eased. The downpour turned into little puffs of drizzly mist that kissed her cheeks, and the thunder faded into a distant rumble. She turned her head around to see the sea witch staring at them, at Sam, specifically, and at the sword in Sam's right hand. The music shifted, the drumbeats stretching and deepening, slow and rhythmic. Sam's right arm started to droop, the point of her katana lowering. She could just barely make out the words drifting to them like a caress on the wind.
I want to know..what loving is..I want you..to shooooww me…
She trod on Sam's foot, on principle alone.
Sam's head snapped up. She would have tightened her grip on the katana, but Sam eased up instead, holding her sword with an almost negligent looseness. What the…? Sam caught Ariel's brilliantly emerald gaze and held it with his big sad eyes, artfully resembling a golden retriever begging for dinner. He held his left hand palm up and peacefully open—we're not here to hurt you, we're here to help, we're not the droids you're looking for—Sam's Obi Wan act, and she wouldn't have believe him, but she wasn't a Disney princess. The wind puffed softly once and died, the thunder crashed back into Some Kind of Monster, full on jammin' Metallica, and the rain beat down everywhere except in their way.
Well, damn. Who knew?
The plank beneath her feet rattled. An angry clatter came from their left, and one of the pier posts shook. A short round blur levered itself up from under the dock, a turtle like shape barreling towards them with a heavy iron pike. The Trow charged in at Sam, the pike lowered and leveled like a battering ram. She shoved Sam out of the way.
"Go!"
The pike clanged against her sword, the impact vibrating down her arm. Rain and wind cleared a little space around them, and the goblin's brows lowered furiously at the mermaid's subtle betrayal. Cracked green lips muttered something, a chant, an imprecation, and the music squeaked up to an alarmingly sharp E, pain vibrating in it as the mermaid flinched, one hand going to the tightening choker around her neck. Zee ducked again as the goblin swung his pike back at her head, moving rapidly out of arm's reach as the Trow raised the mace in his other hand. Her wakizashi was still too short to counter the goblin's pike and mace combination, even if for once in her life, she had the height advantage. She feinted, dodging a swing of the mace from the enraged mutant Ninja Turtle, looking for any opening in between the plates of the Trow's heavy armour.
The Trow's gleaming red eyes looked past her, at Sam's unprotected back. The goblin lowered it's pike like a lance and tucked its head deep into its armour.
Shit.
She stepped directly into the Trow's path, wishing like hell she had Sam's size and mass. She adjusted her grip on her wakizashi to a backhanded grip. It scraped with a hideous screech along the pike as the goblin charged forward. She spun and blocked, throwing her full weight low against the Trow's squat frame, sending them both skidding to the dock's edge. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam balance precariously with one foot on the edge of the pier, drawing her sword with one smooth motion, the tip of it just reaching far enough to delicately slice through the mermaid's ensorcelled choker without drawing a single drop of blood.
The sea siren spun around towards the goblin the moment her choker splashed into the water. Zee almost jumped out of her skin when words sounded directly in her mind, liquid and melodious.
Cover your ears.
She dropped her blade on the pier and stuck her fingers in her ears, turning and flattening herself on the pier as the mace whirled over her head. She could just hear the lower edge of the mermaid's shrill high C as the goblin's head blew apart with it, splattering her with blood and brain and gloop.
The sun was breaking through the clouds when he woke up, and Sam was kissing a mermaid.
Sam was kissing a mermaid.
"Her name's Theodora." Sam informed them primly, as if waking up to find your brother making out with Ginger Splash was a perfectly normal, everyday thing. And he wasn't going to ask why Sam was handing Zee her long samurai sword back, dripping wet with lake water, that apparently—Theodora—had retrieved for him.
"She was grateful." Sam added, his eyes wistfully following the silvery wake streaking north across the water.
That gave whole new levels of meaning to the lore, and why Sam spent so much time "studying" mermaid "tales", but he wasn't going to say any of that out loud, not with Zee's eyebrows making an impressively high arch, looking at Sam like Sam might be some throwback version of James T. Kirk, green alien women and all.
"Dean!"
He wasn't ready when Toby banged into him, two arms around him for a split second before Toby pulled back, their orange shooting muffs clanking awkwardly around the kid's neck. Toby looked up at him, bright blue eyes filled with concern, concern for him, which was absurd in the extreme, except Toby actually said, "Are you okay?"
He cleared his throat, because it had gotten scratchy in the rain.
"Yeah, tiger. Yeah. I'm good. We're all good."
"Was that really a mermaid?"
He turned his head in Sam's direction, because it was always best to defer to the experts. Besides, it was fun watching Sam turn red.
"Sam? Mermaids?"
Sam made a series of coughing, vaguely choking noises.
The rain must have really gotten Sam good.
Toby was still firing questions at Sam when they got back to the Impala. Mermaids and goblins and dragons and no, as far as they knew, the tooth fairy was dead, because, well, Garth. Sam winced when he said that, and he was kind of surprised Sam still remembered. It hadn't been a quarter every time—he did the best he could—and it was a good thing Sam had been a sound sleeper, back then.
He popped the Impala's trunk and rummaged around until he found Sam's extra jacket and tossed it at him.
"Don't drip on my upholstery."
He looked around. One car. No Durango.
His eyes wanted to stray. Sam looked like a waterlogged rat. No wet T-shirt winner there. She was wearing a leather jacket, water beading up on the front and traveling a path down to clingy soaked denim, not that he had been looking or anything…she had to be freezing. He put his hand on one of his jackets blindly, and threw it in her direction without looking.
"You too."
It took effort to keep his nose buried in the trunk, rearranging weapons that weren't arranged to begin with. He wasn't paying any attention to the sound of leather shucking or the rustle of his jacket, and he wasn't looking up to see the way she tucked her nose into his jacket collar, almost as if she was inhaling his scent curiously. His jacket was too big on her, of course, hanging halfway to her knees the way one of his shirts would if he'd…
He closed the trunk lid with a thud.
"What was the mermaid singing?" Toby asked as he clambered into the back seat.
To Sam's inevitable eye-roll, he answered, "The classics, kid. Only the best thing ever."
He cranked the heat on high, waiting for them to get settled in. He reached around, grabbing the shoebox from the backseat where he kept it. Sam's eyes would be looking at the back of the car now if his skull weren't in the way. He ignored Sam, rummaging one-handed through the tapes before finding the one he wanted. Toby leaned forward, putting his chin on the seat back to get a better look at what he was doing. From the expression on the kid's face, you would think he had never seen a cassette before. He ignored Sam's silent, Dude. Cassettes. He's eight. What'd you think?
The thudding strings from Of Wolf and Man filled the car.
Sam reached over and turned it down a notch.
Spoilsport.
Out of nowhere Dean got another bug up his butt about the condition of his precious Baby. And so when they came across the car wash they had to stop, and washing apparently wasn't enough, because the Impala needed two more fresh coats of wax, like, right now. It gave him the chance to flip through the headlines on his laptop, only half listening to the tunes coming from where Dean was showing Toby the finer points of detailing.
He was taking another sip of his coffee, idly glancing over to check on Dean and Toby's progress, when Zee pulled up a chair next to him and sat down.
"What's going on?"
She kept her voice low to avoid carrying to Dean's sharp ears, and she had some cover, because Zepplin's Misty Mountain Hop was blaring from the stereo set on its usual 11. Sam kept the cup to his lips a second longer, then took a second sip, stalling, because he knew what she was asking, and it wasn't about his coffee drinking or what he was looking at on the computer.
"There was a rugaru last night." He held up a hand when she started to get up. "Dean took care of it."
While he'd been asleep. Typical. Setting that problem aside, he went on.
"The amulet Toby has on that chain with his dad's dog tags, have you seen it?"
She cast him a sharp glance.
"There've been more?"
"Yeah. A couple ghouls the night of the ghost. A rawhead the night before last."
She wasn't slow. He watched her consider the problem, the possibilities flickering through her eyes, and she glanced at Toby with a frown. He schooled his face carefully to neutral when she looked back at him, gesturing for something to draw with. He handed her his notepad and a pencil from his bag. With a few quick strokes, she sketched Toby's amulet for him.
"It's just an abstract shape. Metal. Gold toned, but not gold. I don't remember any markings or symbols. It didn't seem remarkable."
He studied the drawing in his hand. It looked innocuous enough, but something was drawing monsters to them. Maybe Mother zombie did just simply mistake Toby for her son Elias, or maybe there was something else. He pocketed the sketch.
"I'll look this up."
She stared hard at him, because her instincts said, correctly, that there was more.
Toby's laughter pealed out from where Dean had hoisted him so he could reach a spot on the top of the Impala. Sam kept himself from turning to look, even when he heard Dean chuckle, and strained to keep his poker face on under Zee's keen scrutiny. Toby laughed again, and Zee turned to look. Sam breathed like a bug freed from the microscope, and sucked that breath right back in when she glanced his way again.
"Angels?" Zee asked.
That he honestly did not know, and he said so.
"It'd be a first for them, but …"
The Fallen had fallen with Lucifer. Walked the earth millennia ago, and mingled with men. Who was to say they hadn't mingled with monsters as well? And then it wasn't that much of a stretch that the angels, the Fallen, were working with monsters, because there were a godawful lot of monsters dogging their steps, like someone was a monster magnet. Someone, or something.
He tilted his head uncertainly.
"Maybe. We're not sure."
Zee watched him, still studying him far too carefully. He cleared his throat.
"If it's not…"
He left it at that. Zee stayed quiet as well, what they were both thinking left unsaid. The three of them had more experience than normal with the supernatural and how it worked. Whatever was tracking them, however it was happening…if it wasn't her, if it wasn't angels looking for Dean, if it wasn't Toby's amulet, then it left one thing.
Toby.