15
Sam tackled the madman while Dean labored to pull the knife from his shoulder. Once it was out he unsteadily got to his feet, one hand clutching the wound where blood leaked between his fingers and rushed over to his brother, who was in the middle of a wrestling match with the crazy man. He had his hands wrapped around Sammy's throat in a death grip. Two tears from strain were hovering at the corners of his eyes as he kicked his feet uselessly and attempted to loosen the grip.
Dean stood behind the man, raised the blood, and plunged it into the back of his neck. Sam was startled when it exploded from his throat, silver tip stained red. The blood oozed off the knife and dripped onto Sam's chest as the man dissipated into smoke with a final grunt.
Sam lay there, sucking in oxygen before Dean reached a hand down and pulled his brother to his feet. Sam moved Dean's hand to look at the wound, which wasn't as deep as he had originally thought. Sam snatched a towel off the counter and pressed it to the wound.
"That was close," he commented.
"I wonder how many more knife wielding freaks are in here," Dean said dryly.
"I don't know," Sam answered. "But we have to find the girls."
They bolted from the kitchen, the adrenaline rush passing, and found the injured girl on the stairs in the foyer. Dean glanced around but there was no sign of Kya anywhere visible. Sam took the stairs two at a time and the girl was so startled by him she let out a scream. Sam eased back, holding his hands out as if to show he had no weapons.
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said gently. "What's your name?"
"Heather," she said softly.
Dean approached and was startled when Heather backpedaled up the stairs in fright. "Please don't hurt me!"
"I'm not going to hurt you," he said firmly. "Where's Kya?"
Heather looked at him in bewilderment. Her eyebrows drew together over her eyes as she stared at him. "You should know," she said accusingly.
Sam kneeled down in front of her. "What are you talking about?"
"He should know!" she cried. "He took her."
Sam stared at her in astonishment. She was accusing Dean of kidnapping Kya, when his brother had been with him the whole time. It wasn't possible. He turned to his brother, who was crouching down at the bottom of the stairs where a few drops of blood were all that was left as evidence that Kya had been there. Dean bit his lower lip and when he looked up there was rage evident on his features.
"Somebody that looks like me," he said tightly. "Who does that remind you of?"
"The shape shifter you killed," Sam said, recognition dawning on him.
"That bastard was created by the house," Dean said tightly. "And now he's got Kya."
When Kya came to her senses her head ached dully and she could feel dried blood at her hairline. The world slowly came back to her, and then she realized that she still couldn't see. She realized that a blindfold was covering her eyes and a thick strip of cloth was pressed against her mouth, tied securely behind her head. She could hear somebody walking around the room and she slowly tried to move her limbs, suspecting already that she wouldn't be able to.
She was in a high back wooden chair, and her arms were pressed against the arm rests. Her wrists had been secured with rope to them tightly enough to make them go numb and her feet were in the same predicament, tightly bound to the legs of the chair at the front. She felt the cool air brushing against her shoulders and realized that her leather jacket was no longer covering her.
She jumped when a hand touched the side of her face, trailing down her shoulder. Without meaning to her breathing quickened, her heart pounding in her ears. Terror clouded her judgment and her thoughts became muddled with it.
"I'll give him credit for one thing," a familiar voice said. "He sure knows how to pick the pretty ones."
She nearly started crying. She recognized that voice. It was Dean's.
Dean slammed a fist against the wall on the far side of the room. It broke through the plaster and he sat there, shoulders heaving as he breathed hard in his rage. He pulled his fist free and the moment that it was out the house stitched the broken wall back together. Sam stared at it in amazement before turning back to his volatile brother.
"Dean," he said carefully. "We'll get her back."
"Yeah," Dean said scornfully. "In how many pieces?"
"Dean!" Sam cried. "You can't think like that."
"You know him! You know how he works. He took her as bait, sure, but he's going to have his fun while he's at it. You know that as well as I do. And this place is huge. How are we supposed to find her before he does too much harm?" Dean seethed.
Sam was at a loss. "I don't know. I just know we'll find her, and put him out of his misery. Again."
"I appreciate your faith," Dean said tiredly. "But I just don't see how we're going to find her in time. He won't hesitate to kill her. As long as we think he's got her alive, he knows we'll come looking."
"So we'll go looking. And we'll find her. And we'll give him an eye for an eye and all that," Sam said firmly. "But we're wasting time. We have to start looking."
Both men were startled by a thin voice that spoke from behind them, that didn't belong to Heather. The girl was still crying on the stairs.
"I think I can help you with that."
16
Kya was numb. She floated somewhere between consciousness and blackness, drifting in a void that her mind had created for the sole purpose of taking her away from the pain. She couldn't tell long she had been in the room with her attacker; the part of her that was still aware enough to think reasoned that he couldn't possibly be Dean. It must be the house, playing another hideous trick on her. But all the same it was his voice floating toward her in the void, his voice that penetrated the darkness she had imposed on herself.
"He'll come for you," the voice said with confidence. "He'll come and I will have my revenge."
She pushed herself away from the voice mentally, trying to outdistance the throbbing, burning pain. She could feel the warmth on her limbs from the dozens of cuts he had inflicted with a knife. Her blood ran like rivers down her skin and her throat was raw from the screaming that she had done. It hadn't done her any good. Her screams had not been cries for help, or to get the attention of anybody nearby, they had been merely an outlet for her pain. The pain as the knife raked into her flesh had been more than she could hold in, no matter how much she gritted her teeth through the gag. For every time she played it strong he dug in a little deeper. Every time she failed to flinch he tried a little harder.
Her blindfold was soaked with both sweat and tears. She was fairly certain she had lost at least two shades of color in her skin, and her hair hung limply around her face, damp from the salty water her skin produced in accordance with her body's stress. Her body shook visibly, trembling from weakness, from fear, and from pain. She was drifting away; drifting into the safety of darkness.
Her tormentor had not been satisfied with knife play, however. Eventually he had grown bored with it, and moved on to better things. At least in his demented world. Kya could feel the blood seeping between her fingers, dripping onto her jeans, from where he had driven two large nails through the middle of her hands, staking them to the wood beneath. She had screamed for that. She had screamed and thrashed in the chair, nearly knocking it over, and all she got for her effort was a vicious backhand that left her ears ringing, a large bruise, and a bloody nose. He had moved on to shove more nails in her legs, two in each calf, penetrating deep into the muscle.
She could hear him walking around the room now, moving things around, metal ringing on metal, while he hummed a chipper song to himself that she couldn't recognize. Inside herself, Kya drifted.
Dean turned toward the sound of the voice. A young woman hovered a few inches off the floor in front of him, plainly incorporeal, dressed in straight legged jeans and a white blouse. Her hair was pulled back in a braid and her eyes framed by glasses with slender silver frames. She had the appearance of a studious woman, quiet and reserved, an introvert who lived in a world apart from the rest of humanity. The only evidence of her death lie in the horrendous cuts that marked her body and Dean remembered her from the crime scene photos he had looked at with Sam.
"Elizabeth," he said.
"I couldn't make it out of here," she told them quietly. "But you can't let this place take my cousin too."
"You said you could help us," Sam said, pulling her back on topic.
The ghost nodded. "I know where he has her. He's waiting for you."
She looked pointedly at Dean. Then she glanced to where Heather had curled up on the stairs, rocking and back and forth and singing softly to herself. Elizabeth had pity in her eyes.
"You can't leave her alone," the ghost stated. "The house will take her at the first chance it gets. One way or another."
Sam nodded. "She'll stay with us."
Elizabeth shook her head. "The foyer is the only safe place in here. The lights, they ward off what lurks in the rest of the house. The rooms off to the side, they aren't safe. But the foyer is. Stay here with her. I'll show Dean where to go."
Sam shook his head vehemently. "No. I'm not losing my brother."
"You won't," she said sternly. "I'll take him there and back. That's all I can do. But if you bring the girl, you could all get killed. She's not strong enough to make it and she will only be a burden."
"She's right Sam," Dean said. "Heather needs to stay here where it's safe and heal a little bit before we drag her with us. I can handle my evil twin."
Sam sighed and looked to the stairs. "All right. But come back as soon as you can. I'm not waiting for long."
Dean turned to the ghost. "Show me."
Elizabeth nodded and led the way.
"So pretty," the Dean-look alike stated. "But beauty is a fleeting thing. Girls like you, they think they're too good for me. Too good to love a monster."
Kya was startled when he ripped off the gag. She was too weak to open her mouth, not that it would have done her much good. Her jaws ached from the pressure of the gag and her throat burned from her efforts at unleashing her agony upon the sound waves of the world. She had no idea what he was talking about, but that didn't stop him from venting.
"People like you," he went on, his tone dangerously quiet. "All they ever did was cause me pain. So now I'm returning the favor. Hold still. This might hurt, a little."
He seized her jaw in strong hands, forcing her face up. In the back of her mind, where she still clung to the waking world, she wondered what in the hell he was going to do now. She was so past the point of pain that it didn't seem to matter anymore.
"Okay," he admitted. "I lied. This will hurt a lot."
As she felt the sewing needle pierce the flesh of her lips, drawing a line of thread through with the first puncture, she realized belatedly that she had been wrong. She wasn't past the point of pain, at least not yet. For the first time in her life, Kya prayed for death.
