Caleb watched next to the bound body of his cousin's daughter while the Bringers dug through the walls of the cave. Somehow with their eyeless faces they could read the runes etched in the stone for millennia, and were even now digging in one particular area with shovels that they'd stolen from tool sheds and some with their bare hands. The girl whimpered, looking up at him with wide blue eyes that looked uncomfortably too much like his own. "Hush now darlin'," he drawled as he crouched down besides her lifting a lock of her light brown hair with the flat of his hunting knife. "Since you're family I will make sure this don't hurt you none. It'll be a fast death, and you won't have to worry 'bout that taint in your blood."
"How sweet," the First said from the edge of the pit the Bringers were digging for her glory. She was still dressed as the black whore who had taken so very long to die when he'd gutted her that he swore he could still feel the slickness of her blood on his hands and arms whenever he looked at her face. While he watched the First let the image of the wound spread on her stomach, blood seeping to soak into her tacky clothing until it was running down her fishnet stocking covered legs. "Wouldn't want to scare her now would we."
"Didn't know you needed her to be afraid," the ex-priest said in a hushed voice feeling his temper flaring. "Think it should be 'nough for you that her virgin's blood, tainted as it is by the slayer's spirit, will be used to open that portal for you."
"Oh I am pleased. I just don't want to see you go soft on me," she sauntered over to him, pretending to stroke at his arm with hooked green nails that looked more evil than any he'd ever seen on a monster.
"Ain't goin' to happen. An you know that." He left the girl lying in the dirt, and went to supervise the digging.
Dean rubbed at his face, it was cold in the depths of the coal mine, and he and his father had crossed into the dangerous tunnels that had been shut down in the cave-in. "Something not look right to you dad?" he asked as he glanced at the cavernous area that wasn't supposed to be there anymore according to the map he'd stolen from the office.
"Something looks entirely too right here," John came up besides Dean flashing his light over the map. "Did we take a wrong turn?" He doubted it. He and Dean had a keen sense of direction.
"No, you're in the right place," he looked up over Dean's shoulder to see Mary smiling at him.
"Dad?" Dean squinted as John's flashlight blinded him. "Dad? What's going on?"
"Nothing," said gruffly pulling his gaze away from of the spectre of his dead wife and mother of his children.
"Oh John," Mary went on as she stood besides Dean. "You know he shouldn't be a part of this. I miss him. Please I've been alone for so long. Kill him for me. Let me hold our son in my arms again."
John took a step back, nearly tripping over a lump on the floor of the cavern. "Get out of my head!" he snapped.
"Dad what the fuck is going on?" Dean let the map fall to the floor, bringing his flashlight up and his gun along side of it. He turned in a circle trying to see what was bothering his father.
"Why don't you tell him, John? Tell him his mother misses him." Dean shivered as the apparition of his mother that only John could see walked through him. It was the same cold he'd felt when they'd first met Brother Caleb on the side of the road.
"You're not here," John spat getting his wits about him. "I'm not like the other people in this town." He aimed his gun at her ready to shoot.
"Dad, if you shoot that down here, you'll bring the mountain down on top of us."
"I know Dean," He sounded so old and tired in just those three words. "It's something pretending to be your mother. She wants me to kill you, so she won't be alone anymore. Saw her in the Sheriff's office too."
"Good," Dean said with a dismissive snort as he gathered the map back up again. "Means we're close. There was no cave in here dad. You think whatever it is made them all kill each other down here?"
"Makes sense to me." John took a deep breath of the cold dank air of the chamber. "Come on. According to the map, there's another passageway back there." He pointed his flashlight towards the furthest point of the chamber. "They were digging someplace new when it all happened."
It always amazed Caleb how fast the Bringers could work. The hole they'd dug showed a stone seal on one wall, more runes with tales of the First and the power of the Slayer covered it. "Bring the girl here," he told one of them. He couldn't think of her as Lizzy anymore, from now on, she was just another dirty girl who needed to die. He watched with a smile on his face as they trussed her up to the front of the seal spread eagle.
"For you," he said looking into the stolen eyes of the First as he slowly took the knife, and set about peeling the skin from the screaming girl's body. The first cut went into her arm; a long cut that ran up from wrist to shoulder, deep enough to touch bone now and again. The blood welled in the cut, instead of running down towards the ground; it defied gravity to begin filling the carvings in the seal.
Like a red serpent, the blood twisted and twined through the seal while the murderer finished his work. Lizzy screamed in pain and fear, the whites of her eyes shining in the darkness as he went. Her sobs touched no one as her life was taken from her, the potential power of her soul swallowed by the seal. Caleb stepped back kissing the blood from the blade after slicing the girl's throat open, so the last of her blood did its job. At the edges of the stone seal, cracks began to appear and the sound of stone grating on stone filled the cave.
The sound of stone grinding against stone made Dean's heart skip a beat. It wasn't a sound you wanted to hear in the bottom of a coal mine that was for damned sure. He stopped as his father touched his arm, drawing him back as the air practically vibrated around them. There was a sound of a hundred screams and a fetid wind blew into their faces driving the Winchesters back against the rough sides of the tunnel they were following. It was different in this section of the mine; no machinery had been used to create this tunnel. It was like walking into the mouth of Hell.
