25
Heather half dragged Sam down the hallway, walking blindly into the hallway where there was no light at all. She held one hand out in front of her in case she was about to run headlong into a wall. For a long time they went this way, running through darkness with Heather pulling Sam to keep him from turning around and running back into the ballroom.
Her heart pounded through her ears and her own ragged breathing sounded frightening to her. She cast aside the thoughts that kept trying to plague her mind; that the chances of their friends getting out of that room alive were slim to none. They had a job to do; she was going to make sure it got done.
"Sam," she gasped, pulling him along, "we have to keep going. We have to end this."
"My brother," he said brokenly. "I can't leave him!"
She swung around and grabbed his shoulders, even though she couldn't see him in the darkness. They both stopped running, all sounds of the chaos they had left behind already far gone in the silence of the hallway. They must have run farther than she thought they had.
"He would want you to finish this," she snapped. "He would want you to end this so that all the souls here can go free, and the people out there will be safe."
Sam hung his head, gripping her shoulders, and suddenly fell to his knees. Her heart began to slow but her breath still came quickly from the sprint down the hallway that had left her breathless. She sank to the ground with him, wrapping his larger frame in her arms, knowing that to move on and finish the task at hand he would need this moment.
"He's always been there," he said in a broken tone. "He's always been there."
Heather pulled his backpack from his shoulders, keeping one arm around him while his head was buried in her shoulder, and opened it up. She dug through it until her fingers touched on something that felt like a flashlight. She fumbled with it until it switched on, blinding her momentarily as a solitary beam washed through the darkness pressing in on them from all sides.
"Sam," she said. "We don't even know that he's dead. We have to keep moving. Don't give up hope yet."
"How could they have gotten out of that?" he demanded, finally getting to his feet.
"I don't know," she answered honestly. "But there's a chance they did."
Sam snatched up his backpack and threw it back over his shoulders after retrieving a 9mm from it. He gripped the gun in his hands, checking to make sure it was loaded and shoving extra ammo in his back pocket. His motions were fueled by anger. He knew that Heather was right, there was a chance they had gotten out, but he couldn't help but think that if they did they would have caught up to them by now. Or at the very least they would have heard them coming down the hallway. He could feel it in his heart, an aching absence that signified something was horribly wrong. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had lost his brother to this madhouse and the thought nearly took him to his knees again. Heather reached out a hand to support him and he leaned against her, grateful for her strength when he had none at the moment.
"It will be okay, Sam," she said quietly. "We'll get through this."
Sam nodded, wiping at a tear before setting his jaw firmly. "Let's finish this. For Dean."
"And Kya," Heather added.
Sam gripped her tiny hand in his and took the lead, letting her shine the flashlight beam in his path from behind him. The hallway seemed narrower than the rest, more claustrophobic, and after the last event he was even more cautious than usual. He could swear he could hear his own footsteps on the plush carpet but it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.
He thought he heard a scream from behind them but he racked it up to his own imagination again, shaking it off and pushing onward until he ran into a wall with no place else left to go.
"This must be it," he said, more to hear a voice than anything else.
"Yup," Heather agreed, for the same reason. "Now how do we find a staircase in a wall?"
Sam stepped back, pushing her behind him. He held up the gun and told her to cover her ears and when she obeyed he began firing, punching holes in the wall with bullets. When enough holes had been made he handed her the gun and began kicking at the wall, putting all of his anger behind the blows. Heather joined him and together they broke the wall apart piece by piece. Clouds of dust and wood chips flew into the air, choking and blinding them, but they continued on fueled by nothing but the desire to see it all end. When they were done they stumbled back away from the pile of rubble at their feet and waved hands in the cloud of sawdust that had permeated the air.
When their vision cleared they saw through the hole a set of wooden stairs ascending steeply up into darkness. The steps were narrow and spaced largely, so that climbing would be difficult at best. It wasn't a convenient staircase of perfectly spaced steps; it looked as though it had been built by a drunken contractor.
Sam looked at Heather with apprehension in his eyes to find that her fear matched his own. They had no idea what lay above them, what they would have to face in order to find freedom.
"Ready?" he asked, reaching for her hand.
"No," she replied. "But that doesn't really matter. Let's finish this."
He led the way up the stairs as they groaned under his feet. He could here Heather coming up behind him and was slightly comforted by the solidity of her hand in his. All he could think about was if he died today, he would get to be with Jess again but for Heather's sake he would go down fighting if it was going to be that way.
He kept climbing until they reached the top where a door was buried among in wood framing. There were arcane symbols around the edges, glyphs to more than likely hold something in, and something scribbled in Latin on the door itself. Sam didn't have time to try and decipher the words or the ruins so he put a hand to the door knob. As his skin touched it he felt a shudder coarse through his spine and he pulled Heather up closer behind him, there hands interlocked tightly.
"Sam?" she asked quietly.
He pushed open the door and quickly climbed through the threshold to find himself in a rather large room lit by moonlight filtering in from a huge stained glass window on the far side of the room. His eyes landed on the middle of the room and widened in shock as he seriously considered running full speed back down the stairs.
"Oh," he commented. "Shit."
