Chapter title is from song by Mother Superior.
26
Did You See It? – Mother Superior
"Meet me at the door. Now."
Dean's words were clipped over the phone. Toby started straight up out of bed at the sound, grabbing for his jacket in a panic.
Zee was already moving. Kid. Weapons. She pulled the door open and looked up into green eyes as they looked down at her and at the double thick salt line behind the threshold.
"What is it?"
She stayed on the inside of the protective white barrier. Sam was standing behind Dean, scanning the parking lot uneasily. Toby's hand felt cold in hers again.
"There's something here. We've got to go. Come on."
The parking lot beyond him was full of still cars. Quiet. Sam had his Beretta out, but Dean's hands were empty. She looked down at the safety of the salt line by her feet again.
He didn't say anything more. Just waited.
She looked back up into his face, set with tight lines. Into those hazel-green eyes, remembering how they flashed to full black in the flicker of an instant. And then back again.
With the sense of stepping off a precipice, she secured Toby's hand in hers and stepped out the door.
Sam led the way towards the long black Chevy that glistened under the parking lot lights. The midnight air was freezing cold as Toby shrunk further into his jacket. Only the sound of their footsteps echoed with Toby's smaller steps plinking along as a counterpoint.
Dean wheeled around at the same moment she felt it.
A jab, deep, quick, in and out of her side at the waist. Cold, startling pain.
A stiletto blade, probably.
Warm, slow blood.
The things she needed to do were remarkably clear.
With both hands she shoved Toby towards Dean, throwing the boy off balance to propel him the last few steps across the distance between them. She might have said, "Take Toby", but there was a rushing noise in her ears like she was beneath a waterfall and she couldn't hear the sound of her own voice. She saw Dean's hands come down securely on Toby's thin shoulders and pull the child behind him.
That was enough. She didn't have time to take a breath, had to turn, had to cut the throat of her attacker.
She didn't get that far. Her arms were rudely wrenched behind her and held tight with ice cold hands. Strange, because she could feel they were small hands. She should have been able to break the hold. She couldn't see, but it didn't feel like her captor was very tall or very large. Just wicked, unnaturally strong.
She smelled sawdust.
Mother.
Her hands were going numb, angled awkwardly behind her. She tugged in vain, but Mother's hand tightened reprovingly, sharp nails biting into her wrists. She struggled harder, trying to yank free somehow, when suddenly a second jab into the hole in her side brought her nearly to her knees, her eyes watering with pain. She bit down on her lips to avoid crying out, because she didn't want Toby to totally freak out. The zombie queen murmured something, soft and saccharine, and she couldn't quite make it out around the starry field of white blossoming in front of her eyes. The metal smell of her blood came closer—on one of Mother's fingers, followed by the sound of a long slurping lick.
"Delicious."
She focused her eyes enough to make out the nauseated repugnance on Sam and Dean's faces, and the sheer panic on Toby's. She really wished Dean would cover Toby's eyes, instead of standing there looking all infuriated and threatening and helpless. Were his eyes black now? Maybe they were, focused on a point behind her shoulder, his lips forming words that were swept away by the rush of water still drumming in her ears. She really should try to pay attention. They might be saying something important.
She must be getting a little light headed, although it didn't feel like she was bleeding that badly. Toby was squirming behind Dean, trying to move towards her in response to something the crazy bitch behind her was saying. No, no, no. Why was he doing that? He was afraid of Mother, remember? She tried to tell him to stay put. To go with Dean. Dean would protect him.
Oh yeah. She was sending him off with a demon.
She was looking at the snarling demon and the crude blade in his hand. It was a funny weapon, really—didn't look like it would have a cutting edge at all, but Mother flinched away from it, jerking on her wrists and pulling her with as she stepped back, making her move and holy shit that hurt. She bit down on her lip again. The demon was looking straight at her now, and in those black eyes was a bottomless anger, a tidal wave of it threatening to swallow whatever was in its path.
And also in his eyes, failure.
Maybe the stiletto had punctured an organ and she was hemorrhaging internally somewhere where she couldn't feel it. That had to be it. She'd spent the last week losing blood here and there, and that must have been what was making her loopy into thinking what she saw in Dean's eyes were the words, failed couldn't protect you.
Was he an idiot?
He had Toby by the scruff of his jacket, his grip firm. That was all that mattered. The rest was the risk of the job.
Her lips were slush. She tried to make the words "Just hold on to Toby" but she had no idea if she was only making random mushy mouthed motions like being on the drugs again when everything was a swirly haze of twitchy limbs jerking involuntarily outside her control and never sure what was real or memory or nightmare or truth in the never ending darkness.
Darkness.
There was a little thing squirming in his grasp.
With a start, Dean let go with both hands. The blade in his right clanked to the ground. The kid in his left jerked away and turned on him, shouting.
"We have to go get her!"
Pure panic and horror was in Toby's eyes.
"You don't understand! We have to go now! Before Mother eats her!"
The kid was looking left and right and left again in a frenzy. He wasn't thinking straight.
"Dean!"
Sam's voice. Steady. Steady over the hollow rush of failure and the pummeling of the kid's emotions, beating on him like tiny invisible fists.
He tried to orient himself to the present, to what was happening. He was in a parking lot. It was full of cars. Toby was still jabbering something about the sawmill and eating and Sam was unlocking the car.
He smelled blood.
It wasn't much. Just a few drops.
He'd heard the knife sink into her flesh.
He hadn't been fast enough.
One minute there was nothing. The next minute that presence coalesced behind him. Behind Zee. Coalesced out of a mist like nothing he had ever felt to date in the darkness, neither light nor dark, just hungry. So very hungry. The hunger socked him in the stomach, almost bent him double, before he could turn and see what it was.
Her outer covering was beautiful. This Mother thing. Blond curls, delicate, blue-eyed, like a living china doll. A freaky doll. She wasn't very tall. If he squinted, he could see how she could be said to bear a passing resemblance to Toby. Enough to pass herself off as a relative, at any rate. She seemed almost frail.
What lay beneath, however.
Demon vampire shifter soul, flesh of the living, flesh of the dead. Screaming and screaming and still hungry.
She should be afraid of silver and salt and holy water. She should have died of a beheading. But none of that mattered in the face of the hunger.
Absently he picked up the First Blade from where he had dropped it.
How the hell was she doing that? What the hell was she?
Sam's hand was pulling at him.
"Come on. We've got to go."
Go where?
Toby was pushing at him. Two tiny hands on the small of his back, leaning all his weight into him, trying to get him to move in the direction of the car and getting nowhere.
He turned to face the kid, trying to school his expression. Trying to make sure his eyes were human.
"The sawmill?"
Toby nodded frantically.
He exchanged a long look with Sam. Sam tensed.
"No. You're not going alone."
"Sam."
"She wants the kid. What makes you think she's not going to just double back the minute you're gone and take him? You saw her."
Moving between moments. There and not there.
Like him.
The smell of blood was still in the air.
He couldn't risk Sam.
On a frustrated curse he opened the Impala's passenger door and got Toby inside.
"Gimme the keys."
Sam looked surprised for a second before the keys came sailing through the air to him even as Sam moved around to the other side. He didn't know how much time they had. He didn't know what they would find, if it was even sane to be taking a kid along for the ride. But who were they going to leave him with?
They didn't have time anyway.
Zee hadn't even hesitated. She had pushed Toby towards him with both hands even as he heard the slick sucking sound of that stiletto blade pulling out of the wound in her side. Even as the first drop of blood hit the pavement. She had looked right at him, and demanded that he hang on. Hang on to the squirming child that was vulnerable in his grip. He could have snapped the kid's neck without blinking, or entirely by accident, for all she knew.
But there it was.
He had to assume the knife hadn't nicked anything important. Zee had paled, but she was still conscious. She was still trying to tell him something before Mother blinked the both of them away.
And there wasn't that much blood on the ground.
His mind stayed away from the things he knew could happen. Internal bleeding. Fever and infection. The white pallor of death settling in like a caress. Wrapping the body in a sheet before committing it to flame.
No.
Not this time.
He gunned the gas.
"What's the plan?"
Sam kept an eye on the side mirror for lights and sirens as the Impala pelted down the wet thruway. There was no question they were somewhat over the speed limit. There was a question if Dean would even stop if the cops came up behind them. Sam crossed his fingers and sent up a silent prayer to Cas and anyone who might be watching over them.
"Gank the bitch."
Dean's reply was brusque. Sam looked over at Dean's profile, dimly illuminated by light reflected from the road. Dean's face was locked in a frown. The same frown he'd had on his face after Kevin died.
In a lot of ways the First Blade made hunting too easy. They didn't need to look up the hows or know the whys, and it seemed to suit Dean fine. In this particular instance, however, there were about six dozen ways things could go wrong, not the least of which was sitting in the back seat, holding his breath and inhaling in alternating spasms.
Sam turned around. If he'd thought at all, he probably should have sat in the back and not left the kid there by himself to deal with whatever was going through his head now. Humongous blue eyes looked back at him as Toby bit his lips together.
"Hey. It'll be okay. We'll get her back."
It was clear Toby didn't believe him. It was also clear Toby knew more than either he or Zee had told them.
"What can you tell us about Mother, Toby?"
The kid swallowed. His voice was high and thin when he replied.
"She eats things."
Zombies did that, but there was something more to it in this instance. Sam's mind flashed back to what Crowley had said about Dean's zombie bite. There was no way to phrase the next question in a non-traumatic way. He looked for the smallest, most innocuous words he could find and strung them together with a question mark at the end.
"And she's eaten a lot of … things?"
Toby nodded and swallowed again. He put his hand in his jacket pocket and curled his fingers around something there for reassurance.
"What kinds of things, Toby?"
Dean's rough voice was harsh, not cutting the kid any slack, not making any attempt to be gentle. Sam shot him a look. Dude.
But conversely, that calmed Toby down. The kid looked at the back of Dean's head as Dean turned to look in the rearview mirror.
"Vampires. Sometimes people." Toby's face was sallow with memory, a pale mask in the dark. "And things that looked like people with claws and fangs sometimes."
"Werewolves?" Sam muttered quietly in Dean's direction. Dean cocked his head. Maybe.
"A thing like you once." Toby said, directing his words at Dean. "Black eyes."
"A demon?"
Toby nodded.
"That must be how she got the mojo to teleport." Dean's eyes narrowed.
"Angel blade?" Sam asked quietly.
"Might work. Though."
"What?"
"Ruby's knife."
Sam blinked. How the hell had Dean come to that conclusion?
"Why?"
Dean ignored him and went back to interrogating.
"How is she catching these things, Toby?"
The silence from the back seat went on for so long Sam almost gave up when Toby said in a small voice, "Me."
There was a hitch in the Impala's motor as Dean took his foot off the gas for a second.
"How?"
How like now, when they were being led like lambs to the slaughter, braving the dragon's lair with Toby in tow, thinking they were on a rescue mission when in fact they might be pelting to their doom. Not armed with a plan, not given enough information, just blindly charging in to who knows what on the enemy's home turf.
Sam inhaled and looked at Dean.
Whose expression said, Exactly.