Red eyes turned to me, thin, gnarled lips curved up in a wretched grin.
"Sam's not doing so hot, Johnny Boy," she chirped in mocking glee. A manicured brow arched as she straightened her posture, the smile curved higher on one side. "You're looking a bit torn up yourself. Rough night?"
"Get out," I growled, balling my hands into hardened fists at my sides.
She batted her vessel's long, painted lashes, daring me to make her move.
"You'd feel better if you just let go, Johnny," she sang, like a mother patiently rationing with her toddler. "There's no use in fighting what you are."
"I will never stop fighting what I've become." My speech had the conviction my heart was starting to lack. Like a word repeated to the point where it loses all meaning, a song the radio can't stop playing until you hate music. "But I will gladly shred you to ribbons if you don't get the fuck out of here. Now."
"Just doin' my job, Johnny Boy," she told me, pulling at the laminated RN badge clipped to her shirt pocket as her grin broadened. "I'm on rounds."
"Stop calling me that."
She rolled her eyes and went back to examining Sam.
"I was surprised to see that Misery woman earlier," she commented as she studied the too-still body of my son.
"Mystery." I corrected her. "Surprised or disappointed?" I paused as I tightened the distance between us with long, hard strides to her side. "I'm not going to tell you again to step the fuck away from Sam."
Xael snapped her head around to me, giving me a pinched, humorless smile.
"It's a shame to waste so much potential," she said, this time playing the disappointed mother whose found weed in her teen's sock drawer. "I'm telling you, Johnny Boy. It feels good. Really good." She straightened her posture and turned to give me a bestial smile that lit up her eyes. "Don't you want to feel good again?"
Split second timing had my hand clasped tight around her host's dainty wrist, and I pulled her hard into me. I grabbed the side of her head with my free hand, and I leaned forward, nose to nose, eyes locked. I parted my lips, like I was going to kiss her, and goddamn, I almost did.
Even worse, part of me wanted to.
I did want to feel good again. I wanted a distraction, and whiskey wasn't cutting it anymore. It had been a long several centuries as a human soul walking through Hell alone. It had been longer several centuries more as a demon in that regard.
Even if sex wasn't exactly what she had in mind, she wasn't opposed; her lips were parted in wait, ready to return what she was half hoping would come of this.
"Call me that one more time and I'll cut those pretty little lips off with an angel blade." I pulled away from her and pushed her sideways, away from Sam's bed. "Stay the fuck away from him."
Xael staggered, caught herself before careening to the floor, and laughed.
"Do you really want to damage the goods?" Her tone was teasing, but her omission of a pet name spoke louder than her words. "For all you know, I'm wearing a mint condition suit." She swept an elegant hand from her shoulder down to her knee, like she was showing off a new dress. "Like it?"
"I've made exceptions," I snarled, warning, despite my premeditated decision not to kill her yet.
"You would like that, wouldn't you?" Her taunt was seductive, a siren luring a sailor to his demise. "To rip this body to shreds." She glided back towards me, so confident in her position and cruel in her nature. "Ripping her heart out would feel as satisfying as fucking her."
I turned away, denying her the heated reply she was fishing for. Instead I put my eyes on Sam and my sights on my plan.
"Am I your future king, or am I your dinner?"
Xael arched a brow, skeptical but piqued.
"You'll thank me when the throne is yours," she said, studying the face I wore, and the real one beneith. "You're almost there. I'm just giving you a little nudge in the right direction."
"Crowley is giving me a nudge in the "right" direction," I told her, still holding my sight on Sam. "You're just a little mosquito along for the ride."
From the corner of my eye I watched her shift, put a hand on her hip and smirk.
"Torture is key," she allowed, unable to deny that Crowley was irritatingly smart. "But there are two locks here. You've already popped the first one and been handed the second key. I'm just trying to help you use it."
"By attempting to con me into murdering an innocent woman."
I didn't have to see the devilish grin that passed along her lips.
"Don't knock it till you try it."
I rolled my eyes, pretended to be bored with her efforts to sway me to the dark side.
"Future king or not," I told her, my voice more nonchalant than I felt. "You will stay away from Sam."
Xael huffed out a short laugh and folded her arms across her chest.
"Or what?" she challenged, so cocksure my threats held no weight. "You'll kill me?"
"Oh, no," I said, letting my eyes go black as I stared her down. The promise given to me in Vegas and in Michigan rang in my ears as I repeated them to her; "I will never let you die."
The words drew cold around her and the smug composure of her face receded. She pursed her lips, her self-serving posture crumbled. The air around us thickened until we were just breathing in violence and fear.
That's when Sam moved for the first time since the river, and fuck if it wasn't worse than the utter stillness.
It was the heart monitor that drew our attention to him, the pulse-tracking breedle that escalated in noticeable marks. His body stiffened, muscles constricted tight from his face to his toes. A tremble ushered in a convulsion that had his back arched and his arms outstretched like he was reaching for Heaven itself. His jaw clenched around the hard plastic tube that gave him air, and for a minute it looked like he would bite it clean in half.
"What did you do to him!?" I growed, shooting Xael a glare so hot I thought she might combust.
"Nothing," she promised, setting a troubled brow over the threat she could still taste. "This is all him, I swear."
The sound of sneakers slapping linoleum echoed off the walls in the adjacent hallway, and gave way to two nurses in blue scrubs bursting into the scene.
"Get Doctor Laughrin and the diazepam," the older of them instructed the other as she hurried to Sam's side. "What's wrong with you, Kat?" The bark was directed at Xael, matched with a sour expression that pinched her round face. "You're on thin ice already." She swept past us to Sam's side. "Get over here and help me hold him down, for God's sake!"
Xael froze for a second, weighed her options and their consequences, then ran to the side of the bed when she decided I would probably kill her if she didn't touch Sam this time.
The demon had an easier time holding Sam, pinning his right arm down at the shoulder and wrist without effort. The nurse was left to half lay on top of his right side with her own shoulder while trying to avoid the IV in the crook of his elbow. A doctor and the other nurse emerged in a blur of scrubs and medical equipment, pushing me aside to watch Sam's body heave and arch in the background. It cast me back into Hell time, seeing the muscles in his neck swell, his jaw draw fast under a pained expression. And it nearly snuffed out the sliver of light that remained within. I could have left. Hell, I wanted to leave. To walk out into the parking lot and mute the ache in my chest with tobacco and killing something – anything – and I damn near did. But if Sam died and no one was with him when he passed into the veil, knowing that I had left would be enough to finish Crowley's work for him.
I stood by the door, leaning with my head and my back against the wall, arms crossed as I waited for relief from this new nightmare. For twelve minutes and forty-three Sam wrenched and seized, the heart monitor spiked and screamed. Then the tranquilizer took hold, sung his body back into his motionless state, and it was over. Sort of.
The doctor and nurses stayed for a few minutes, checking his vitals and the various wires and tubes that protruded from his body. They exchanged medical jargon and orders before the nurses made an unceremonious exit, but the doctor lingered with his green eyes on me.
"I know you're not the one I'm supposed to talk to," he said with a halting breath, his eyes darting between Xael and me. "But you're obviously emotionally involved, so I'm not going to let you sit here and wait until your agent friends get back to hear this." He folded his arms across his chest and straightened his shoulders. "He's stable now, but I gotta be honest with you, an epilectic seizure in a subarachnoid hemorrhage this severe isn't a great sign."
I was listening, but I wasn't looking at him. My eyes had locked onto Xael's, watching as she backed in slow, short shuffles from my son.
"So he's dying."
The doctor pursed his lips. Xael continued her cautious steps for the door, but paused just behind the doctor and waited.
"I don't want to give you false hope." He drew in a deep breath, buying himself a moment to calculate the right words. "Essentially what the seizure indicates is that there's still a large amount of pressure in his skull, which puts him at risk for a rebleed."
"So he's dying," I repeated, and my eyes finally met his.
Another pursed lip, another sigh.
"We're doing everything we can," he insisted with the somber air of a dead man walking.
I wanted to put a hole in the wall with my fist. I wanted to slit Xael's throat, craved the feel of her second and final death. I wanted to summon Crowley, right then and there, and force him to fix Sam before I drove my knife into his skull. Holding all of it back, the instinctive pulls of murder and mayhem and revenge, made my head spin and my chest tighten.
The doctor stood in awkward study for a moment, eyeing me, waiting for me to say something, then left me alone with Xael and Sam's withering body. The crossroads demon flashed me a knowing half smile as I wordlessly narrowed my eyes at her.
"You wanna earn a spot at my side or you wanna keep batting me around?"
She arched a perfect brow and a sly grin.
"I'm listening."
I drew in a long breath. I knew my plan would eventually require her help, but Sam's episode lit the fuse in a screaming (and entirely unnecessary) reminder that time wasn't ours.
"I need a ride into Hell," I shared, trial two on my mind but away from my tongue.
"I can arrange that," she said as she reached out to grab me.
"Not now." I batted her arm away and pretended to crack my neck. "Later. By someone else. A reaper." I paused to collect my words before they could spill faster than I could think on them. "I'm kind of partial to this… suit."
Xael pursued her lips and wrinkled her brows.
"I might be able to whip something up," she agreed. " But you have to tell me what you wanna go back down there for." She paused, loosened her frown and brought back her playful smile. "And what's in it for me."
"Mhmm." I nodded with exaggerated beats. "I can't imagine admitting defeat to fate and overthrowing Crowley is exactly what you had in mind." She shook her head, and I nodded again. "Fine. I'll kill Mystery." I forced a casual but hurried tone, and, judging by her smile, she had bought the lie.
Sort of.
"That was an awfully quick turnaround," she said as she cocked a brow. Her arms folded across her chest and she cast a quick glance over to Sam. "Seems kind of desperate. And really, you'd be getting more out of it than I would." She sized me up while the cogs in her mind turned, until finally; "What's the plan?"
"You do realize I don't completely trust you, right?"
Xael rolled her eyes and scoffed.
"You do realize I'm the only thing holding Crowley back, right?" she retorted.
"Fine," I sighed, pretending to allow her credit to the pretend plan I was pulling out of my ass. "Call it a tactical hive-kicking. I've been there. I probably know it better than anybody, and I know how to bring him to his knees before the real fight even begins."
I may as well have been fucking her with the way her lips parted just so as a pleasurable shiver rolled through her.
"Oh, John," she practically moaned. "I love it when you talk warfare to me."
I rolled my eyes.
"After you take care of Misery," she stressed.
I opened my mouth to correct her, but caught myself before I failed her little test.
"Yes," I said instead. "After I kill her, and cause a little mayhem." I simpered. "Just in case the first one doesn't work."
If my mistruths weren't passable, Xael was too drunk on her own daydreams and pride to notice. She beamed with delight at the mental image of me blazing a trail of brimstone and blood across the earth, congratulating herself on a job well done convincing John Winchester to let go.
"Are you sure you don't want to fuck?" she asked, this time more than halfway sincere. "I'm incredibly turned on right now."
I groaned.
"Fuck off, Xael."
AN: Sorry about the heavy dialogue again. Sorrynotsorry about Sam.