Ten
There was a dotting of footprints across the sand outside the motel, blackened marks leading into the swelling horizon. Sam did not have to crouch to the ground and run his fingers along the edges of the tracks to feel the familiar curves or see the well-known treads of the boots to know to whom they belonged. He could recognize the prints as Dean's immediately. After all, Sam had followed in his older brother's steps all his life. This time was no different.
In his haste to leave, he had grabbed only a gun and a knife for weapons, but he had fortunately remembered to take along a flashlight and a bottle of water. The beam of the flashlight bounced spasmodically as he moved swiftly across the cool sand. After some time, he turned off the light, tucking into his back pocket, and he ran with Dean guiding him. Even in the darkness, Dean's footprints seem to glow, and Sam's gaze could not leave them. With the stars watching from above, diamond eyes in the clear black shroud of night, the world around Sam was silent and barren. There was the occasional mournful cry of an unfamiliar bird, and even during those moments, he was so focused on his ragged breathing that he barely heard the animal. Although he did not know where he was being led to, Sam continued on faithfully, his brotherly devotion propelling him into the night.
The tracks twisted down a sloping hill where the sand became coarser to crunch as gravel beneath Sam's feet. When he pulled the flashlight from his pocket and swept the beam along Dean's footprints, he saw a black entranceway in the side of a hill on the opposite side of the small valley he had entered. Suddenly, a chill passed through Sam, and he looked to the sky where a thin sliver of moon floated, and he wished that Dean was beside him, and they were hunting the monsters together instead of him hunting Dean alone. Nevertheless, he walked to the opening, hunched over so that his hands dangled near his feet and shuffled awkwardly through the small doorway.
After he had made it through the opening, Sam was pleased to learn that the entranceway opened up to a reasonable space where he could stand freely. Craning his neck to look for the ceiling and sweeping his flashlight along the rocky top, Sam estimated the height to be too far out of his reach to jump for, and the width of the tunnel was slightly more than his arm span. With the ground rippled rock below him, Dean's footprints were no longer impressed into the floor, but Sam had no doubts that his older brother had passed this way.
Sam kept his back pressed to the wall on his right side and moved carefully down the tunnel with the gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. Both instruments were positioned in front of him, and careful jerks of his wrist flicked the beam of light where needed. His finger, wet with perspiration raised from his terror, pressed tightly near the trigger, and he struggled to keep his breathing quiet in the still environment. The solitary sound was that of steadily dripping water from nearby.
As he continued down the tunnel, he suddenly emerged into a small room that was not much larger than his first dorm room at college had been. On the opposite side of the space, an assortment of shadows bulged out from the wall, and he immediately aimed the shaking gun at them before he realized that they were not moving. Hesitantly, a primal fear climbing up within, he lifted the flashlight to the shadows.
Corpses, some more rotted than the others, were shoved against the wall in a crude pile of eaten dolls from the Devil's playtime. Bloated eyes stared up at Sam when he drew closer, and the mouths were flayed back into a choked screams of pain. A few of the bodies were gnawed to mangled flesh and pieces of grayed muscle were scattered on the ground around the bodies. Squirming white maggots buried themselves into rancid ear canals, their wet, wormy bodies glistening under the beam of light. When Sam saw the blonde hair of a young girl who was missing half of her face, reminiscent of the motel owner's step-daughter, his diaphragm contracted and tore at his stomach. Drunkenly, he turned and vomited into the corner, one hand wrapped around his convulsing abdomen and the other splayed onto the cool rock wall to hold himself upright.
This was to what Dean had voluntarily returned. This was for what Dean had left him. Suddenly, Sam did not know whether to hate or fear his older brother.
Sam wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, forcing his jagged breathing to a calm pace, and he took a sip of his water to wash away the acidic tang festering on his tongue. As he was doing so, a small lizard scurried with clicking nails across his shoe. With beaded yellow eyes, it began to clamber up the leg of his pants, and a thin purple tongue shot out at Sam as it climbed. Although it was nowhere near as large as the creatures that had attacked him in the middle of the night, he still knocked the little monster with the butt of his gun to send it flying into the darkness of the room.
His heart was a wild frenzied pounding in his ears, and his throat seemed to constrict uncontrollably, making breathing difficult. It took all of his control not to scream.
Trying not to linger, he moved out of the room into another tunnel that twisted off one side. As he walked with shaking legs, he realized that there were muffled sounds coming from the end he could not yet see, and he tensed in anticipation and fear. Tucking his arms to his chest, he pointed the gun towards the ceiling and tightened his hold near the trigger. Although he did not know what awaited him at the end of the tunnel, he knew that if he had to shoot, he must shoot to kill. There was no doubt in his mind that if he did not kill them first, they would shred his body as they had to the poor souls in the last area.
When he reached the end, he turned off his flashlight and saw that the enclosed passage opened up onto a wide ledge that circled the wall of a large room. Analogous entranceways from other tunnels were dotted along the perimeter of the room as well, all of which opened up onto the shelf that Sam peered from. Beneath the ledge, the walls slanted downward into a gaping pit at the bottom of the well lit room. Even though all the adjacent tunnels were void of life, Sam crouched down on the ledge and felt the bitter taste of forgotten bile and blood rise in the back of his throat once again.
Far below the high shelf, a great multitude of lizards, similar to the ones that had attacked him previously, was standing around a larger pit in the middle of the room. They chattered and whispered amongst themselves, and they moved in a mass of shimmering colors and sizes. But, what stole Sam's breath away was the lone figure of his brother in the middle of the pit.
Despite the fact that Sam was far away from Dean, he could see that Dean was essentially unharmed. There was no fresh blood on his skin, and he appeared calm and unafraid in spite of the alien monsters gathered in a mutant chorus around him.
Then, the crowd of reptiles parted as if on silent command, and Dean turned in the same direction as well. When he moved, the back of his left forearm became visible to Sam, who fought the urge to throw himself from the ledge and steal his older brother away from the place before further damage occurred. Against Dean's normally tanned skin, a light flecking of blue shimmers covered Dean's forearm. Sam did not have to touch the strange markings to know that they were scales much like the ones they had taken to the college professor days ago. Silently, Sam berated himself for allowing Dean to use the excuse of "old scabs" to deter him from the conversation. Dean had grown the scales over the night and had most likely cut them off himself.
Sam wished he had helped his brother while he knew there was more of a fighting chance for the two of them.
From the separation in the crowd, two prominent creatures emerged. Even though they appeared reptilian, Sam was reluctant to classify them as lizards, as they were so much greater than the others he had previously seen. These two were only slightly larger in size, but they walked upright easily on their two hind legs, whereas the others moved in a more crouched position, reminiscent of a slouched gorilla in comparison to an erect human. The duo had rather humanistic faces, if Sam was able to believe that such a thing was possible. Instead of the pinched yellow slits for eyes of the others, they had rounded eyes of white and blue, and their lips were not mere snarls of dried blood. What struck Sam the most was that these two both wore massive wings folded against their backs. The wings were taller than the creatures themselves, rising above their heads and scraping the ground with a dry scratch as they walked towards Dean. Although Sam doubted his chances of defeating such monsters, he angled the gun towards them anyway in preparation of them harming his brother once again.
Sam expected them to scream bestially like their counterparts, perhaps even roar and snap their wings open to a deadly span. Instead, they did something that caused Sam to nearly fall off the shelf in shock: They spoke.
"Welcome," one of them with a distinctly feminine voice said to Dean, who nodded silently in return. "We are glad you have returned, Dean Winchester."
A ripple of agreement passed through the crowd, who murmured in hisses and wordless shrieks.
"Do you understand what we ask of you?" the other creature asked in a deeper, masculine pitch.
"No," Dean answered, and even though his voice sounded familiar in its tone, for a moment, Sam did not recognize it as belonging to his brother.
The two monsters that Sam decided must be the superiors, exchanged pointed looks to one another before directing their gaze back towards Dean. When they moved closer to him, their wings rustled like dry sandpaper against the rocky floor, and Sam wondered how massive they would appear with the wings extended.
"You are to give us the blood again," the assumed male creature said. "Lest we take your own."
A flicker of something passed through Dean, and when he spoke, his voice was hollow and lacked conviction. Sam instantly recognized the tone Dean used, even though he had heard it only once before when he had tone Dean he was leaving for college. In that same defeated voice, Dean replied, "Kill or be killed, then."
"In your terms, yes. We will give you immortality and all your wishes for one mortal's life. If you cannot complete this task we set before you, then you are not the one we have wanted, and we do not suffer mistakes well."
"How long do I have?"
"Until the day of the new moon dawns." When Dean bowed his head, one of the leaders looked down at him. Even though the face that smoothed over its features was sympathetic, the words it spoke were not. "You may run in hope that we will not find you. We will find you if you do not give us the blood we desire. You are marked now for all of us like a beacon in the night."
"Why?"
"You know why. For you have searched for the same thing we now offer you in exchange for only one life. Give us the life, the blood, and we will let you drink of immortality, and your search will end at last. You will find peace with yourself once again."
Slowly, the other inferior lizards began to exit through the same opening through which the larger two had first entered until Dean was left alone with the ruling pair. His chin was pressed to his chest, head bent in loss and sorrow. Then, the more feminine of the two moved towards Dean, raised one scaled claw to his face and lifted his head to meet her eyes.
"We know your pain, for we have traveled your road before, but we cannot free you until you give us the blood. We have to know you have the strength to become something greater than the flesh of man." Dean nodded mutely, broken in their words. "Do not fear, Dean Winchester. If you are the one, you will find the courage needed, and you will not die."
With that said, they turned and left Dean alone in the pit. While Sam struggled to control his own hitched breathing, Dean pulled his arms to his chest and rubbed the back of them with cold hands. Then, he too, walked through the exit and disappeared into the black mouth.
Quickly, Sam scuttled back into the tunnel and began to run down the enclosed alleys through which he had come. He knew that he needed to return as soon as he could to the motel room where the remaining weapons were stored. Even though he wanted desperately to believe that Dean would never harm him, Sam had seen the scales on Dean's arms and the desperation on his face.
And Sam wished there was not a nagging voice in the back of his mind whispering that his older brother might be gone to him forever.
