CHAPTER
EIGHT
Something
to Someone
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Sam was sitting in reception, twirling his cell phone between his fingers when the lights went out. He didn't need psychic powers to tell him it was a bad sign. He leaped out of his seat, drawing the attention of the receptionist.
"Which room is my brother in?" he asked her urgently.
The woman smiled condescendingly. "I'm sure he'll be out in a minute."
Sam was in no mood to be talked down to. "Which room?" he demanded with a little more force.
"Exam four," she replied, clearly offended. "Down the hall. But you can't...!"
Sam was already running. When he found the room he burst in without knocking, the exact moment the lights came back on. Dr. Thorne and Dean turned to meet his gaze. Everything seemed fine.
"Ah, Sam," Thorne greeted. "I was just telling your brother I'd like to put a couple of stiches in the wound on his head, then he'll be free to go."
"Dean?" Sam inquired. He needed reassurance from the source, not from a doctor he'd never met.
"I'm fine, Sam," Dean told him, knowing exactly what he wanted. "Go wait outside, I'll be out in a minute."
Sam nodded and left.
"Well, he's jumpy," Thorne joked lightly, and began sewing up Dean's head wound. There was no trace of the Braken left in his eyes, and seemingly, no memory remained of the possession.
"He's protective," Dean said. That was the problem, and Dean knew it. If the Braken carried out its threat to offer Sam a trade; a brother for a brother, Dean knew that he would take it. He would take it because Dean would do exactly the same.
He knew what he had to do.
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"Everything okay?" Sam asked, when Dean finally left Dr. Thorne's clutches.
"Fine. Got enough drugs to keep me going for a month. That junkie comment wasn't some kind of psychic prediction was it?" Dean joked, testing Sam's mood. Sam didn't show any signs of amusement but that wasn't unusual. The brothers didn't always share the same kind of humour. "So, you happy now?" he continued. "Am I permitted to leave, mighty one?"
That raised a smile. "Well, since you've been well-behaved," Sam started, pretending to consider the request, "I suppose we can hit the road."
The sun was still shining outside, but both brothers were tired after the recent events. Sam insisted on driving, but since he had agreed to look for a motel so they could crash for a while, Dean didn't complain. Besides, he'd never admit it, but Sammy wasn't all that bad at driving his baby.
They drove in silence, until Dean decided to break it. "So me and dad were in Bridgestone. One of dad's friends, from before he met mom, called him up. Tobias Copperton."
Sam seemed surprised that Dean was actually talking, and he shut up, fearing that any questions would somehow scare away the truth just as it was passing Dean's lips.
"The Braken had marked his wife, Julie. Me and dad did a little research, found a banishing ritual that would send this thing back to where it came from, and waited for it to show up. Only it didn't exactly go to plan..."
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Bridgestone - May 10th 2003 - 9.44pm
Tobias Copperton was a tall, balding man in his forties. He lived in a suit and tie. Dean couldn't picture the man and his father as ever being friends. But sometimes Dean forgot about all the time that went before, a time when John was a normal person, without a family, without the weight of love and loss.
The Copperton's house was so immaculate it looked as if it was the set of a TV show. Dean half-expected the fruit that sat in the middle of the table to be made of wax. The only humanising element of the sterile space was a box of colourful children's toys that say in a corner. It was sad to think there was no longer a child to play with them. The Copperton's daughter had died in a car accident only a month prior to their visit.
"Is she going to be alright?" Tobias asked, breaking the silence as they waited for the Braken to show itself. "If you kill this thing...will she get better?"
John sat next to Dean on the sofa of the living room, ritual incantations and shotguns at the ready. He sighed. "We're going to kill it. But I think Julie will need a little more time to get better. She's lost someone she loves. That pain doesn't go away easily."
"I know. I miss Alice every day, but Julie..." Tobias trailed of, sadly. "I wish there was more I could do."
"Everybody grieves in their own way," John said after a while.
Dean watched his father shift uncomfortably and knew why. The man wasn't exactly an expert on grief. Hell, if he had been, maybe his sons wouldn't be so screwed up. Maybe they would be able to talk about things instead of having constant arguments that eventually lead on one party running away and the other telling them to never come back.
Dean was still sore about Sam leaving. He didn't think he'd ever get over it. It felt like a knife in the heart every time he even thought about it. It wasn't just Sam that made him angry, it was John too. Both of them were so stubborn, so selfish, so blinded by their own fury that they barely noticed what they were doing to the one person who was trying to keep the family from falling apart at the seams.
"I'm going to sit with Julie," Tobias said, rising from his chair.
"Just remember the plan," John told him. "When the triggers we set up go off, that's your signal to get Julie into the salt circle and stay there while we do our job." He and Dean had placed symbols on all the mirrors and windows in the house that were supposed to emit a powerful glow and shatter the glass when faced with a demon.
Tobias nodded sombrely and headed upstairs.
Dean waited until he was out of earshot before he asked what had been turning over inside his mind for some time. "If we destroy the demon, what happens to all the souls it's taken?"
John rose from the sofa and moved to the window. Dean had noticed the pattern in his behaviour. If they were in a room with other people, everything was normal. But if they were alone in a room together, John would walk away, put more distance between them. Dean did it too. He bet there was some psychobabble to explain how that symbolised the emotional distance between them, blah blah blah. Sam would probably be able to tell them. He was always the smart one.
Damn, there was that knife in the heart again.
"It's hard to say," John finally answered. "Maybe after we finish the incantation, they'll be freed."
"But you don't know for sure?" Dean pressed. Lately he'd been questioning more, arguing more. He couldn't help it. It wasn't just that he was angry; he was. But it ran deeper than that.
"The demon consumes them," John stated. "I don't know if they even exist any more."
"Don't you think we should try to find out a little more? I mean, there could be a way to save them, they might still be trapped somewhere."
"Dean, we have to end this tonight," John said, turning to Dean and staring him down. "We can't allow it to take another soul. This thing can't be pinned down and this might be our only chance to know where it's going to be. We've been over this."
Dean looked away, torn. He knew his father was right, but another part couldn't help feeling like they could do more. There was no way of telling how many souls this thing had taken. Evidence of the Braken's existence had gone back hundreds of years but it could have been around even longer than that.
"I can't have you in two minds tonight," John said in that tone that usually made Dean stand up a little straighter. "Can I count on you?"
Dean replied with the truth. The statement of unquestionable fact that all too often went unnoticed and unappreciated. "Always."
Bridgestone - May 10th 2003 - 11.12pm
The house was quiet. Somehow Tobias had drifted into a restless sleep, next to Julie. Julie had barely said a word since John and Dean had arrived. She was numb, letting everything happen around her. If she was afraid, she didn't show it. She just sat there, staring into nothingness, and it stared right back.
Dean was making some coffee to keep himself awake. John was checking on Julie and Tobias. Dean was getting the milk from the fridge when he heard the glass shattering upstairs. His reflexes kicked in and he bolted from the kitchen and sprinted up the stairs to the bedroom. The lights flickered on and off, then switched off entirely just as he reached the door.
Julie was screaming. If she hadn't been afraid earlier, she was afraid now. Dean could hear John reading the incantation stopped, then there was a large crash, and the chanting stopped.
With shotgun raised, Dean burst through the door and saw the Braken for the first time, its shroud of shadow giving only glimpses of the hideous features underneath. It was standing in the centre of the now trashed room. Tobias was in the salt circle, holding Julie as she cried in terror. John was slumped in the corner of the room, unmoving. Blood trickled down the side of his face.
Dean fired two consecutive shots at the demon. It screeched and disappeared. Dean knew it would be back. He rushed to John, made sure he was still breathing, and picked up the notes. But just as his fingers touched clasped around them, Dean felt himself being pulled from his feet and flung across the room. He landed in a heap beside the salt circle.
"Dean! Are you alright!" Tobias asked, still keeping inside the circle.
"Just stay where you are," Dean told him, and pulled himself up, expecting the Braken to finish him off.
But the Braken was more interested in John.
"It was after Julie, but then it was like it...changed its mind!" Tobias exclaimed, half relieved for his wife and half horrified for John.
Dean did all he could do. He started to read the incantation. This drew the Braken's attention. A quarter of the way through the latin verses, the demon turned. Dean suddenly found himself frozen to the spot. A voice penetrated his skull.
"A banishing ritual? That's not even worth my time, boy."
Though he still couldn't move, Dean felt blood dripping from his nose as the pain inside his head increased. The Braken turned away from him and back to John.
Dean took a few breaths to control his pain and carried on reading. He passed the halfway mark.
The Braken turned once more.
"Be quiet," it ordered, and amped up the pressure inside Dean's skull. "I've been waiting for this. A hunter who lost his love to something like me? A soul with so much pain...It will be mine. Don't stand in my way."
Dean fell to the floor as the Braken loosened its grip on him. Then it moved back towards John.
"NO! Get away from him you son of a bitch!" Dean shouted. His vision was blurring but he could see the demon looming over John. He had to stop it. "Leave him alone!" he choked, but his own consciousness was fading fast. With what felt like his last breath, he whispered the only thing he could think of. "Take me..."
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End
of Chapter Eight
Next
Chapter: Next Time Around