Mystery was first to split the silence.
"I really fucking hate you guys." Her offhanded complexion turned to rubber, and she wore it over the dread that the screaming blackness had left in her. The sullen mask would have been convincing, too, had her knuckles not paled in her grip around her crowbar. Had she not shivered in her trepidation, in the one thing she could feel.
My boys kept a calmer composure, but there was concern behind eyes that stared in wait at the door. Freya's attentions too had settled on the door, and she stood ready. Her haunches were low to the floor, her body rigid, waiting for the word to spring forth in a brilliant and protective attack.
Me, my blood was boiling. My tarnished soul suddenly starving. Any urge to flee swept away in the desire to medicate my fever with mayhem. To feed my empty core the only thing it craved; blood.
"Think the parking lot is clear?" Sam asked his brother, freeing his knife from his back pocket.
"Hell no," Dean replied.
"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Me either." His lips pursed, his brow folded into apprehension and careful thought. "Monument?"
Dean bobbed his head from side to side, tangled in self debate.
"Yeah," he gradually agreed, and squared his shoulders.
"Would you like to share with the class what Monument means, or should I just wait and be surprised?" Mystery spat in agitated sarcasm.
"We were under siege in Monument, Colorado," Dean explained, reluctantly turning his head from the door to give the surly ghost hunter his attention. "Demons. We ended up letting them in. Trapped em and exorcised em."
I scoffed, folded my arms across my chest.
"You want to lure god knows how many demons in here to exorcise them?" I criticized.
"You got a better idea?" Sam challenged flatly. Rhetorical.
"Yes," I replied, and drew my Kurdish blade from my jacket pocket. My mouth revealed a toothy grin, dark in its delight. "Kill every last one of those sons of bitches."
"And if Crowley's out there?" Sam proposed with a raised brow of skepticism.
"He's not out there," I told him with easy confidence. "He's cruel, not stupid."
"But if he is?"
"I'll do what I have to do."
Sam nodded, then bowed his head, bringing locks of golden brown hair sweeping against his cheek. His jaw tightened and his eyes darted back and forth, focused on what was in his mind and not the peach carpet at which he seemed to stare.
Dean, on the other hand, gave into reaction over thought. He turned to me with a stern brow folded over determined eyes.
"Nobody is killing Crowley," he growled, sending a commanding look that lingered on me before he passed it to Sam. "And nobody is charging half-cocked into an army of darkness."
"I make no promises," Mystery said, twirling her iron bar in a sardonic show.
"Is that an order?" I challenged, dismissing Mystery's comment with a cold breath. Dean's face curled in anger and in pain.
"You are not killing yourself after all this." His gravel voice tinged with the sorrow he was too proud to pronounce.
"We don't have time for this conversation," I snorted. I craned my head to the window, telling myself I was searching for signs of activity to make me feel better about the fact I was turning away from my boys.
Sam looked up, the light glistening against a thin mist that had gathered across his eyes.
"When then?" His words were filled with a quiet rage that was just getting started. "When do we have time for this conversation? After you commit suicide?" Knuckles whitened over the demon knife he gripped as his brows furrowed. He swallowed. "Do you think we would have followed you all this way if we knew you were just going to give up?"
"They're not expecting us to charge," I snapped in defense, shooting Sam a sharp glare. Irritated. Blinded by my demonic compulsions, my willingness to sacrifice myself. Again. "Element of surprise."
"No," Dean said, shaking his head. "We're not going out there. Not until we get a better idea of how many minions Crowley sent and how to get them in here."
I was set to object, my mouth halfway opened, the words halfway up my throat, when the sound of fracturing glass cut through the room. Shards of windowpane blew against the curtain with rapidfire thuds, and, in a dramatic display of fluttering fabric and smoke, gave up a black, tube-shaped object that belched a blinding red fog.
"Yeah, let's just stay in here where it's nice and safe," Mystery said brusquely before shielding her mouth and nose in the crook of her elbow.
No more options. No more time. It would have to be my way, or it would be death. And goddamn I was practically giddy about it.
"Open the door!" I shouted into the rising smog that filled the room in an ominous hiss. "Let Freya out!"
Dean made a dive for the door, his left arm swatting the smoke in front of him as he went, distorting it into crimson curls that danced around him like blood fire. Salt sprayed up from the floor when his boot severed the protective line in one hard stomp, then sank into the carpet with the opening of the door.
"Freya, kill!" I shouted.
She did not need to be told twice. The hound had sprung for the door halfway through the sound of her name. There was a low growl caught somewhere deep inside her chest, but she made no other sound as she disappeared into a thick cloud. I wondered briefly what it looked like from the outside, the red smoke spitting out a hellhound with gnashing teeth and terrible claws. The twisted look of horror on the demon's face as he screamed, the blood that fountained from his neck...
"The object is to make it to the van," Dean instructed, more to me than anyone else. "Alive." He was little more than voice now, the smoke choking the room in its rouge vapor. The duffle over his shoulder was a dark blob, his shoulders a silhouette. A shadowy movement in my peripheral told me Sam was nearby, a cough confirmed Mystery's presence.
I wish to all the gods that ever existed that my mad sprint to the door, my desperation to be first one out, was sourced entirely out of parenthood. That the only thing that drove me forward was my position as protector, and that its power was so great that I trembled with it. And a fraction of it was the instinct to safeguard. Mostly, though, it was the adrenalized rattle of a boozehound about to taste his first drop of liquor in the morning. The maddening thirst for blood, and the idea it would soon be quenched.
I surged through the smoke and, when I broke into the clearing – into a star spotted night, sour with sulfur and thick with humidity – I stopped. I counted three, six, twelve, twenty demons scattered about the parking lot, their eyes devious and black. There were two more writhing in tatters on the blacktop a few yards away, and another pair cantering from Freya's advances. Twenty-four. Piece of cake.
A grin, bloodthirsty and conceited, spread across my lips as I held my Kurdish blade up in a flashy show. An invitation to just try and fucking take me and my boys. (Please, I want you to try.)
And suddenly there was pain.
The initial jab wasn't so bad; it was swift, clean in cut, steady in hand. It wasn't really even the feel of a blade's hot teeth chewing through flesh and muscle that got me. What got me was the weapon's target, the organ where it had lodged itself, and the consequences of the puncture.
Crowley wasn't here, because he was some place safe. Someplace far, far away. Making damn sure I would go down without a fight.
No.
My right lung filled, drowning in blood that pushed up my throat and poured from my lips.
No no no no no! Not now!
I summoned every ounce of determination the strike hadn't carried away with its horrific pain and panic that came with a chest tightened by oxygen deprivation. A grimace swept over my face, my jaw tightened, my blade trembled beneath my fingers. Taking a single step was like trying to run underwater, and a single step was all I could take. A second stabbing sensation violated my chest, my left lung this time, but this assailing weapon was thinner. Hollow.
Needle.
Sweet fucking Je–
Liquid fire washed away any remaining air, burned the alveoli, the bronchiole, the pleural membranes and fluids. Threatened to burn down the whole goddamn lung before it erupted, mixing with blood in my trachea and spewing forth in a spray of lava and smoke.
Time slowed to a febel crawl as I descended to my knees. My knife slipped from hand, clattered against the asphalt, close but so far away. A swirl of disturbed smoke tumbled around my shoulder as it gave way to Dean. He paused for what realistically could have only been a fraction of a second, just long enough for him to calculate the counterattack. His duffle slid from around his shoulder, landing on the ground with a clank and a thump, as he marched forward with his angel blade brandished and his face set in stone.
Sam was next to belch forward from the smoke. His tall stature lurched in a hacking fit upon landing, nearly toppled over. He regained control with an urgent swiftness, turned his watery eyes on the scene before him. Took in the sight of a third demon being ripped apart by a force he couldn't see, the vision of the remaining twenty-one demons that were descending. His hair shook around the sides of his head as he craned his neck to me.
I wanted to tell him not to worry about me. Wanted to scream leave me, save yourself and kill as many of these fuckers as you can on your way out. But all that would come out was scalding blood.
Alarm took over his face as he stared at the claret flowing from my lips in a steady stream, the widening stain that soaked my shirt where Crowley had stuck the knife. He hesitated, instinctively compelled to rush to my aid, even turned his body to me. That was when Mystery leapt forth with her backpack and her crowbar, and collided with him. Sam spilled sideways, stopping himself from crash landing with an awkward hop and the flailing of his arms. Mystery staggered backwards, her eyes streaming black tears down her cheeks, her chest heaving desperate breaths of clean air.
"Goddamnit, Winchester!" she growled. I caught her eye for a brief moment and she scoffed before giving Sam a hard shove. "He's the only one here whose definitely making it out of this alive."
She raised a leg to let forth a solid kick, seemingly at Sam. The jolt, however, was delivered a short degree to the side, her true target a demon wearing a pretty young woman. The sole of her boot made contact with the demon's stomach, causing the Hell bitch to double over and teeter back, more stunned than hurt. Mystery took the time time to shoot Sam a dirty look before she curved her iron bar in a wide arch that came down on the demon's skull with a vicious crack. And then they were gone, striking and stabbing their way through the warzone.
My body made a violent attempt for breath, and responded with a hideous gurgling of liquid before it spewed black against the night. Darkness crept into my vision, gathering slowly at the sides. I was drowning in fire and blood, but I wasn't dying. There was no mercy like that for things like me.
I fell between the cracks of chaos and mind-numbing agony, tumbling vulnerable from faculty and function. There was enough left in me to take a sickly swing at a gang of demons advancing upon me, but not enough to strike, and not nearly enough to recover from a bone snapping jab to the ribs. On reflex, my lungs gasped for air, and again I gagged and spewed blood that stained my tongue with a metallic taste. This got a good laugh out of them, the five-ish that had been appointed to drag me in. They encircled me, howling as a demon wearing a kindly old woman threw a right hook into my side. I could feel the jagged snap of another rib somewhere beneath the terrifying sensation of suffocating and burning without end.
The group disbanded before anyone else could get a chance to have their fun, scattering in different directions as Freya vaulted into the circle. She chose a victim by tackling him from behind, pushing him to the ground where she all but unhinged her jaws to get them around his skull, and clamped down.
The darkness pulled itself in thin sheets across my vision, the measure of time continued to evade. I remember seeing the hazy outline of Dean and demon, Dean's face contorted in a snarled yell, the demon's face arranged in horror as an orange light illuminated his skeleton from the inside out, the angel blade sunk in his neck. I remember spying Sam's gritted face as an anvil of a fist clobbered him in the side of his head, and Mystery swinging her crowbar back, her lips curled in a warrior's yell. I saw it, but it stuck in my mind as a still-frame; a blood-based watercolor on depravity and death.
Hands grabbed at me, seizing me by my arms, the back of my neck, my head. They forced me to feet that refused to hold my weight, propped me up with their raw strength. The sound of metal scraping pavement rang in my head, and a demon wearing a brunette man pulled into view. He held a vulgar smile, and my Kurdish knife.
"Hold onta this for me, would ya?" he asked in a southern drawl.
I had hardly registered what was going on when he drove the blade to its hilt into my shoulder. A wave of electric heat came crashing through my arm. My chest struggled for air, and my lips ejected frothy blood and holy water. They, the three, maybe four demons, whooped and hollered in savage glee.
Their hold on me fell away, and I crumpled to the ground with a dull wallop. The back of my head bounced off the pavement, burst open in a jagged line. Another round of barbaric laughter resonated as a solid grip seized a fistful of my hair, then yanked me back, dragging me away from the battle. My brain sent orders to limbs that would not, could not comply; in the chaos and the torment, I had slipped deep into paralysis. I was powerless to free myself, useless against the demons that swarmed my boys. Unable to rescue Mystery from the snug, arm-pinning hold that trapped her in an embrace she thrashed wildly against.
The menacing doom of Sam and Dean and Mystery was the last thing I saw before the blackness took complete hold. I tumbled into the depths of the red sea Crowley had created for me, plunged down into the crimson abyss of this fresh Hell. And, as I sunk, submerged in suffocation and pain and regret, I began to abandon all hope.
Special shoutout to celinenaville, Trucklady53 and mckydstarlight for sticking with me, reviewing, and for general awesomeness purposes; thank you!