Chapter title is from song by Ratt.
66
Round and Round - Ratt
They were almost all the way to the next old church on the list, somewhere outside Trappe, Pennsylvania, when Dean suddenly bolted straight up in the Impala's passenger seat, eyes narrowed and his attention on something out there.
"FUCK."
Dean vanished right out of the car.
If he hadn't been expecting that to happen at some point, Sam would have hit the brakes hard. As it was, he just took one hand off the steering wheel and reached into his pocket for his phone, toggling it on with a swipe of his thumb. He took his eyes off the road for a moment, to check his position relative to the two dots blipping red on his map. He stepped on the gas once he saw where it was he needed to go.
He should have remembered, that when Sam said old churches, that they came with old cemeteries. From a mile off he could feel the vicious hunger rolling off the rising undead, clustering around something, someone—some poor fuck who hadn't known better not to wander through graveyards at night.
And he should have known it would be her, poking at the hornet's nest with a stick. He just should have known. She couldn't have picked a nice tame vampire job, any ol' run-of-the-mill salt and burn, couldn't have gone off to track a werewolf under the glowingly full moon—nooooo. Like everyone else in his life, she had to be right in the thick of it, hacking her way through the costume party of the undead, Mr. Grubby Disco Outfit and Mr. Top Hat in front of her, and a slickly dressed Capone clone closing on her way too fast from behind.
"ARE YOU INSANE?"
He bellowed the question across the cemetery—a way too lively cemetery, mounds of dirt pushing up like molehills behind the tombstones, the ones that had managed to crawl successfully out of their graves shuffling mindlessly towards the nearest food source—her. His chest felt tight and his ears felt red, because there had to be…he stopped to count…seven, no, eight, of the walking dead out here, and she had no backup anywhere in sight. She was certifiable. Certifiable, and giving him the next closest thing to a heart attack, or whatever it was called after a heart stopped beating.
"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FRIGGIN' MIND?"
The look she slanted him was cool. Cool in a what-does-it-matter sort of way, and she didn't stop moving, fighting the good fight, solo. Two headstones over the earth burst open, and a pair of scrawny arms levered a fresh stiff out of its grave. His jaw set, and he glanced over at the tree line to make sure there was a soft looking spot to land.
He flicked his hand at her.
She didn't move.
Didn't go flying through the air with a pissed-off squawk the way Sam always did.
Didn't get thrown clear of the clawing arms and shuffling encroachment of the dead so he could do his thing.
What the…
He flicked his hand again.
She ducked down low, a sweeping arc of steel, slicing through Disco's knees, staying right where she was, in the middle of a pit of shit, trying her best to get her damned ass killed. He was striding towards her before he had another thought, because most of his thoughts were now just swear words, unhelpful and colorful swear words in between driving the First Blade through freshly risen mounds of dirt into un-emerged rotting corpses, and if she would just slow the fuck down for a second he could teleport to her, have her back, except she kept moving and hacking at the undead fashion parade, because yeah she kinda had to, and what the fuck was she thinking?
A rush of air came in at his 4 o'clock, a whiff of fresh graveyard dirt. He swacked through the incoming bogey, one long angled stroke from hip bone to shoulder, cleaving the zombie in half, not even breaking his stride. He was close enough now to feel the cut of her sword through the air, her eyes coolly focused on some point behind him, and all she had to say for herself was:
"Duck."
He ducked and turned, but before he could take care of the cadaver coming up behind him, her sword whistled over his head, lopping off the head. He finished the job with a single thrust of the jawbone in his hand. She spun back around, sword cutting through the pinstriped gangster wannabe at her six, stank blood spraying out onto the mossy headstones around them.
"ARE YOU NUTS?"
He bellowed the question at her, because this, this was like choosing to stand your ground, at ground zero. And maybe he had just been too far away before, because now at point blank range, he flicked his hand at her again, waving her towards the trees.
His knuckles slammed into an invisible brick wall, and she didn't budge an inch.
"FUCK! OW!" He yelped. He curled his fingers into a fist, because goddamn that hurt. And she ignored him. Didn't even break the pattern of her movement, pivoting a step to his left and whacking the fingers off a disembodied arm that was reaching for his ankle.
"Pay. Attention. Practice your spoon bending later."
He stared at her. She knew. She knew and she was doing…something.
"How the hell are you doing that?"
She didn't answer. He looked her over from head to foot, ignoring the involuntary pitter patter thing that started up somewhere near where his heart used to be, and picked out a shiny new glint of silver at her throat.
"Is that…?" His brow furrowed with the impossibility of it. "An anti-TELEKINESIS HEX?"
"Duck."
He ducked again, and she swung over his head again, and he turned and absently ran Walking Dead Extra Number 2 through before he went back to checking out the narrow silver chain glistening around her neck.
Well, son of a … "How come we've never heard of those?"
"Rare. Expensive." She bit the words off between sword swings. "Usually not worth it."
He skipped over the first two bits as nonsense. He knew hunters who would pay a fortune to have a hex like that.
"What do you mean, usually not worth it?"
She gave him an impatient look he so did not deserve, because it was a legitimate question, and bumped him roughly aside to take a golf stroke at a grimy-haired head digging its way out of an old grave, her unspoken bloody hell, working here? loud and excessively clear. He let himself be bumped, and followed through by plunging the First Blade through the ground to where the body should have been. The dirt stopped moving.
The beam of Baby's headlights cut through the night as Sam pulled up along the far edge of the cemetery. It only took Sam a glance to size up the situation, because you know, that was what backup did. But when Sam spilled out of the car he pulled to a complete and surprised stop, looking right at him, Sam's eyes all squinty and way too thoughtful.
What?
He looked around the graveyard. Huh. Somehow they were the last ones standing, for now, if you didn't count the bits of feet toeing along looking for their legs. He poked at the nearest pieces, keeping a wary eye on them to make sure they fell over and stayed dead.
Zee flicked and sheathed her sword abruptly, leaving him to chase down the pieces still moving. She headed towards the parking lot to get the gas out of the Durango that he could now see was next to the Impala. Sam mirrored her movements, heading around to Baby's trunk for their own salt and burn gear.
He glared at her retreating back and focused in on the SUV, visualizing the hatch in his mind's eye, popping it open with the power of his mind. Sam jumped, startled, when the red can of gas and the big tin of salt went floating by him.
She shot him the narrowest of looks.
"Really."
He shrugged and smiled, all teeth and no humor. So. This unmoving thing, it was just—her.
The tin of salt bobbled a little bit when she plucked it out of midair.
"Stop it." She said without looking around. "Trying to work."
Sam looked at them curiously, not following the conversation.
Dean scowled.
"Princess here got herself an anti-telekinesis hex."
"Really?" Sam's eyebrows jumped right into his hair. "How come we've never heard of those?"
See. That's what he said.
She poured salt and gas over a cursing head and two handless arms and lit it all up with a match, the whoosh of fire flaring up loud enough he had to strain to hear her words.
"Because you can't get one that is universally effective, so it usually isn't worth the bother."
His eyes narrowed.
"What do you mean, not universally effective? It seems to be working pretty well to me."
She ignored him, moving off to the next mound of freshly disturbed dirt and doused the crawling limbs around it.
Sam's forehead squished up into a row of wrinkles, working something out with that lightening calculator Sam called a brain. Sam's eyes widened, and he was a second slow in following.
"It only works AGAINST ME?"
He howled the words, outraged. He saw Sam thinking, and he braced. He braced for Sam to get it—what Billings had been all about—he braced for Sam's anger and accusation and betrayal, not expecting the huff that sighed out of Sam like relief.
What the…
He had a second to turn this around. See what Sam saw—the smoking piles of zombie parts scattered across the graveyard instead of zombie jam slathered thick and lumpy across the ground. Him, the First Blade in his hand and eyes still green, marginally in control, and how often that seemed to happen when she was around him—and Sam, Sam thought…
Sam started to laugh.
It hurt, the way Sam laughed. Light, in a way Sam's laughter hadn't been since he didn't know when, a river of hope running through it, a little too hysterical for Sam's own good. It hurt, to see the mercurial flash of Sam's dimples, what Sam wanted to believe—that he'd been supremely one-upped, that there was a Colette for every Cain, hearts and rainbows and happily ever after, Sam's dream of his salvation.
It hurt, like the unmovable ninja thorn now stuck to his side.
He glared at his brother balefully.
"It's not funny."
Sam snorted like Bullwinkle breathing before Sam got it together enough to bleat out the supremely unhelpful, "Yes, yes it is, Dean," before Sam collapsed into whoops again, trying to salt and pour gas in between vigorous inhales and winding up with a lungful of smoke, which totally served him right.
Zee ignored them both, working her way around the tombstones silently like they weren't even there, focusing on the job. Because the job was what mattered. And he was a job.
He couldn't move her, couldn't sense her, and it was the perfect setup.
He didn't understand why she was wasting time leaving him breathing. Or, you know, standing.
She dropped a lit match on the last pile of twitching limbs. Sensing him glaring at her, she met his scrutiny through the rising smoke. She didn't flinch, and she didn't back down. That familiar glint was in her eyes, with no give to it at all.
My job. My terms.
His jaw clenched when she turned away, directed her attention to putting the cap back on the empty gas container, ice cold in a way Sam could never be. He would have been grateful, if it didn't hurt so damned much.
She tilted her head towards the cars.
"Let's roll, Jean Grey. They'll be hitting witch-y old Salem next, and we definitely want to get ahead of that."