Chapter 4
Adam bolted around a corner and down the aisle. He barely had time to wonder why no one was paying attention to what was going on. They all seemed to be going about their business while he was running away. The only upside was that there was no interference for his running away. No one was trying to stop him from getting to wherever he was going. He paused behind a row to take a breather.
He was definitely sure that they were after him and it made perfect sense. He was the guy that got away. But it didn't make sense since there were the three of them in this literal hell hole. There were a lot of 'rules' he was learning and it seemed that they were geared for him, Angela and Sam to lose. Looking around, Adam regained his breath and looked for the hell hound that had been following him.
He had barely managed to get away even though he was surrounded. Cerebus bought him time by lunging at the one facing him and he ducked to avoid the other guy. He did give a good 1-2 combo to put him down for good measure. Of course they weren't alone and it made it seem like the whole Han solo being chased by Stormtroopers like a game.
He did manage to slow them down by toppling a few things. He didn't look back as he did that but the grunts told him that he was making some headway. He now needed time to regroup and figure out what to do. Well first order was to find Angela and then figure out what to do next.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."
It was taunting but Adam didn't move to reveal himself. He had to stay hidden since he was certain that if he were found and captured it would mean… Taking a breath, he moved quietly to scope out what he cold. He also tried to keep an eye out for Cerebus.
There was some barking that sounded and shouts that followed. Adam recognized it as Cerebus. From what he could tell the mutt was snarling and putting up a fight. He heard the screams that followed the snarls. Adam didn't even what to think about what the dog was doing since he heard the wet sounds of blood spattering everywhere. He had seen Cerebus fight but he was more about taking down and making the other guys run away. Here it was fight or die situation.
There was a clang and a slight yelp. Adam looked up. He heard someone shout that they got him. That had Adam swallow slightly in alarm. If Cerebus was hit… but he didn't hear a shot. It was more of a clang so that meant they threw something at the dog. Still if they hit him badly then it was not a good thing. It would put him at a disadvantage.
"You know we're going to find you one way or another."
Adam didn't respond. Rather he moved to look around and look for a way to try and find Cerebus and get out. He stayed low and moved through the aisles. It took him a moment to realize that the store they were in seemed to increase in size though it could be that he was going in circles and trying to avoid the guy chasing him.
"Why bother running? We can always find you."
Adam rounded a corner and tripped. He grunted and prayed that he wasn't heard. He then heard a slight moan. Pushing himself up, he turned to see Cerebus. The hell hound was stuck under a shelf and from what Adam could tell, he wasn't going to be able to get out without any help. He knew that the removal would cause noise but he wasn't going to leave the mutt behind.
Cerebus made a low moan and shifted. Adam hissed, "Stop. Let me."
It was slow movement but Adam managed to get enough leverage to lift the shelf. The thing was heavy and he grunted. He had a brief moment of panic when the metal grate but it was what he needed to shift the shelf. With enough space, Cerebus was able to get up and slipped out of his holding. Adam grunted, trying not to drop what he was holding… like it really mattered.
Cerebus panted and moved towards Adam and gave him a lick on the cheek. Adam rubbed the hell hound's head. "Fine, fine. I kind of like you too." He looked around and saw they were near the exit. "Come on. Let's find Angie."
Cerebus gave a low rumble and immediately started trotting. Adam marveled that the mutt wasn't acting hurt though he was certain that he might be since that was a heavy shelf. He wasn't going to quibble since he had seen Angela get up after getting a hard blow or two the last couple of fights. He gave a shrug and followed the hell hound.
They were almost to the door when Adam was tackled from the side. Cerebus wheeled and snarled but was cuffed aside by another guy. That was a feat in of itself since Cerebus was larger than most large dogs in the first place. Then again the guy that did that was pretty big himself. It didn't slow down Cerebus though and he was back on his feet and attacking the other guy.
Adam was winded from the tackle. He pressed his palms onto the ground and struggled to get to his feet. He wriggled to deliver a couple of choice blows to wriggle out from under. He was almost to his feet when he felt a hand around his ankle. Well it felt like a hand. The next thing he knew he was sliding across the floor and slammed into a display that toppled over him. Luckily it wasn't a shelf but a display mostly made of cardboard.
Adam grunted when a box hit him in his midriff. He rolled but stuff was still falling on him. He shielded his head and looked over to see who it was that had done that. He barely had a chance to breathe before he was pulled out of the pile and he was sliding along the floor once more. He couldn't help but cry out since he was not used to that. He slammed into another display only there was a little more stuff that was a little harder.
"I prefer that you come willingly. It will save a lot of questions from the boss but it doesn't really matter."
Adam grunted as he tried to get out from under the display. He rolled over when he felt a hand on his shoulder and the squeeze. It was enough to crush his shoulder bone and he heard a dull crunch. He grunted as he was lifted in the air much like a puppy being held by the scruff of its neck. He looked down to see the guy who had been chasing him looking at him like he was inspecting the goods. "And I think you're gonna get it."
"Is that so?"
Adam felt the crushing pressure on his shoulder before he was thrown into a wall. It was some miracle that he hadn't broken something. Even if he did break something he would have been put back together. And then made to do it again. That was torture and that would be a working definition of hell. He fell to the ground and looked up to see the guy pulling on a set of leather gloves. Oh so that was original.
"Well… seems like she isn't coming." The guy looked down at Adam and grinned. "Goes to show you that you are nothing to her and that she is only here for one reason." He kneeled and smiled in a mocking fashion, "And you aren't that reason."
"Wanna bet?"
Adam blinked when the guy was yanked from behind and thrown with a two handed throw to the side. He saw Angela emerge from where she had snuck up from behind. She was looking really pissed and Adam wasn't sure if it was because of him or something else. At least she was directing it towards the guys that were after them. He slowly pushed himself up and was going to saw something when a bunch more of those guys burst in and they were ready to fight. And they were greatly outnumbered.
Adam felt himself being yanked to his feet and pushed to be behind Angela as she leapt forward with her fists swinging. It was like watching one of those ridiculous television shows or movies where someone throws a punch and the fight is on. It wasn't any different than what they had gone through when they were on the road but they were pinned a building. Well sort of.
Adam felt the hand on his shoulder and whirled around and gave a punch only to nearly hit Tsura in the face. He gasped as she stared at him solemnly and gestured for him to follow. He protested, "What about Angie?"
"Just go Adam."
Adam turned to see Angela glancing back at him as she was joined by Hawkins. Cerebus had joined the fight too but was backing off to join him and Tsura. She gave him a nod saying that it was okay to go. "But…"
"Just go you otherwise I'll start to think that you have something for me," Hawkins shouted before he took a swing and sent a guy flying.
Adam spluttered a little before closing his mouth. Giving a nod he turned to follow Tsura who was leading him out of the store. She had a bag of stuff in one hand which he guessed were supplies. He paused to grab another bag full of food. Might as well since they needed stuff anyway. They would do inventory later but he prayed that it wasn't full of useless crap.
"Come on," Tsura called as she reached with her free hand to give him a tug.
Adam followed after glancing to see Cerebus covering their exit. He turned to follow and ran with Tsura. It was like they were running from an explosion that was going to happen like in the movies. In this case though, they were being chased by the guys that basically set a trap for them. All to capture him and for what? There were a lot of questions he had and he wanted answers but now was not the time to be messing around with that.
Cerebus barked to indicate that they were being followed. Adam risked it and saw that they were being chased and not by guys on horses. They were on fricking motorcycles. This was like something out of the Twilight Zone or some other weird ass shit. He shouted, "We've got a little problem here, Tsura." He put an extra spurt into his legs so they could keep a little bit ahead of the group chasing them.
Tsura turned to look behind them and noted the motorcycles. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight but she remained calm. She looked around. They needed to find an advantage of sorts. "We need to find an advantage then."
Adam knew that she wasn't familiar with a motorcycle or a car. That meant he had to step up on this one. He looked around while Tsura just walked to the middle of the street and started using her Romani magic that was some scary ass shit. There was a reason why Angela said it was a bad idea to mess with Romani gypsies and he was looking at it while he was trying to find a means of escape.
He found a car but he didn't have any skills hotwiring and there were no keys in sight. He grunted in frustration and looked around for another means of transport when one of the guys on motorcycles came careening towards him out of control. He dove out of the way to let it bang into the car and he noticed that it was driverless. That didn't matter since it was still running. He knew what to do.
Righting the bike, he straddled it. He looked at Cerebus and told the hell hound, "You're gonna have to keep up." He wasn't confident the mutt understood but it helped. He then called out, "Tsura, come on! Behind me!"
Adam prepped and was ready to go as Tsura climbed on behind him. She put her hands around his waist and told him to punch it. It sounded weird since she was from a century before the 'horseless carriage' came into being and that kind of phrase was much more modern. He wasn't going to question that though and he gunned the engine and took off. At least they had an advantage now but he had to find a way to ditch the few remaining guys that were behind him.
Adam was a med school student and he never thought that he would be doing this kind of thing. This was more along what Angela would be comfortable with. She was the one that could lure and take out the bad guy. This was a little out of his league even though he knew how to ride a motorcycle. Here he had to get creative with a few things.
He managed to get rid of them by making them chase him into a stunt that they couldn't do and because his timing was better. They lost them and they were well outside of town when Adam brought the bike to a stop. He let out the breath that he had been holding and eased up on the engine. He took a couple of breaths and said, "You know you can let go now. We've stopped." He shifted to shoot a grin at Tsura.
Tsura released Adam with a bland expression and turned to see Cerebus trotting up. He was panting but he looked like he just went for a jaunt. She gave a slight shake of her head as she got off the bike. She looked around, looking for Hawkins and Angela.
Adam got off and started looking around too. He had to ask, "You think they got out?"
"What do you think?" Tsura looked at Adam with a raised brow. She took a breath. "I guess we wait."
There really was no other choice but to wait. It was Angela that knew the way and how she did… that was something they no one else could do. Adam suspected that it had something to do with what she was since he knew she wasn't human. He nodded and looked around and kept his eye on Cerebus. He was their best bet of letting them know if there was an enemy nearby.
It seemed like hours as they sat there on the grassy knoll they had stopped at. Adam felt antsy as he rested his forearms on his knees as he looked in the direction that they had come from. That seemed the best way to keep an eye on things. He breathed a sigh when Cerebus lifted his head and then suddenly stood up. Adam followed the hell hound's lead and noted that that the mutt wasn't growling. So it wasn't an enemy and that meant… He moved to join Cerebus and look in the direction he was looking in and he spotted something that he thought he'd never see.
Angela felt foolish and guilty. She had jumped into the cage with the intention of being there for Sam and then finding her way out. She vaguely had thought about how to help Adam and she got him free from Michael but she dragged him into her mission of finding Sam. She had put her focus on Sam and that was the one thing that really seemed to have people disapproving of in terms of her relationship with the younger Winchester and both brothers in general.
When she assumed the mantle of Malachi of Absolution, it became a life and duty. She was the one that protected man or taught those that could do it from the things that went bump in the night. She wasn't allowed to do relationships so to speak. And yet she ended up caring and people got hurt. It was no different here. She really hadn't given much thought to Adam and what it was like for him even though she had explained it all to the kid. She really was a selfish bastard.
She left Lucifer there in the store and went to save Adam after she heard Sam in her head. Usually it was her trying to reach out to Sam and stop him from doing something stupid. Here it was the opposite. He was doing what he had always did just by being there, reminding her what she had said she would do and that was to give consideration. He reminded her that there were other people under her care. She hadn't forgotten they were there but she hadn't been giving her full diligence.
She had run from the store to go save Adam and found one of Lucifer's lackeys ready to beat him up a little and deliver him on a silver platter. It was like she went on overdrive or something. She charged in and let her abilities take over and hauled that guy like he was nothing. Her limbs felt super charged and it was a good thing too since more of Lucifer's men came in ready to make life hell.
It gave her an opportunity to get Adam out. She had no doubt that Tsura would make it out and go to help him. She was able to spare one last look at Adam to let him know that it was okay to get out and that she wanted him to get out. She didn't have to look to see. She knew that they got out and she could turn her full attention to the fight that was coming hers and Hawkins' way.
She dodged a swing and came under it with an uppercut that literally lifted the guy. And it wasn't just a pop. The guy flew up and over in an arc backwards. His weight and momentum was used to slow down two others. It left them stunned but she was already moving onto the next opponent using her telekinetic abilities to lift two more up and then slamming them down towards the ground.
It was nothing to deliver a punch that sent a man flying. It was part and parcel of being a dhampir; they did have that increased strength much like any creature of the supernatural. It was like going back to the days when she didn't have qualms about who she was hitting because she knew that they weren't human and she needed to put the extra punch behind it to get what she needed done. The added bonus was that she could do more things with the abilities that she had kept under a bush for so long. The last time she used her powers to power slam someone into the ground was when Ruby screwed with her senses by unleashing those pheromones.
"Now if I had known you could do that, I would have given you more to do," Hawkins teased having observed what she did.
Angela hummed as she blocked and countered with a punch to the face of another opponent. She managed to take a breath and reply, "And that usually means doing more of the gross things aboard a ship." She ducked as she finished speaking, the movement taking her to her knees where she slid on the ground to get to a position to stand back up.
"Maybe but you would have been able to take care of those blighters that tried to steal my cache."
Angela snorted at that. Those times in the Caribbean were memorable. She had sailed those seas mostly to hunt down the migration of creatures. What the humans didn't know then and even now was that those days masked a hidden war. One that would have tipped the balance of humans and supernatural. She didn't really know the ramifications of it at the time but after that, she could see and it was shocking to find that out and since then she had been careful as to how she acted. It fed right in there with the natural order of things.
Hawkins let out a blast of laughter as he finished off the last of the blighters. He stuck his arm out delivered a clothesline that would have taken the man's head off if he had used his full strength. Instead it had the attack flip head over heels and landing with a hard smack to the back of the head, knocking him out. He looked down at the litter of bodies and said, "Well this was fun."
Angela let out a snort as she looked around. She only paused when she heard a noise and she turned to look out. Her head moved as she tried to catch the sound and tried to determine a direction. Her eyes flared as she scouted until she said, "We need to go. Now."
Hawkins looked in the direction she was looking at as she moved away from the sound that was approaching them. He followed and it wasn't long before that more of the same type of guy was on them and with weapons and things that he had never had seen before in his life. "Alright, what's going on Scarlett?"
"Trouble." Angela found a way out and moved to the front. She peered around the corner and saw two more of the motorcycles she had heard pull up to join the other three that had parked outside the building, which turned out to be the store. "Damn, he's pulling out the stops. Both of them."
"You mean this Lucifer and Michael? Well they are angels and you have crossed paths before," Hawkins offered.
Angela made a sound at that. Like she needed to be reminded of the fact that this was Lucifer's playground and that he basically could look into her memories and play with them. He had been this entire time. So it shouldn't be a surprise that this would happen. "I know but I'd rather avoid if we are going to get through this."
"Not going to happen sweetheart."
Angela closed her eyes and let out a breath as she slowly turned around. She saw another person from the past and it was more or less an accidental run in. After all she wasn't exactly up to date with the biker gangs but you never forgot when you crossed a Hell's Angel. She looked at her pursuer and replied, "Hi Junkyard."
It wasn't his name but one she called him when he got fresh with her. She name called him and that started it since it was a 'slight' to his honor and since then… At least he died in a just desserts fashion since that biker club was into things that made the cartels down south look like a gentleman's club. Not that was any better. Her greeting though had the desired reaction and the guy clenched his jaw as he pointed a handgun at her. "Still a bitch."
"That never changed," Angela replied like it was the obvious thing. "I just have my standards and you fall below them. Way below." She gave a mocking look even though most would say that was a bad idea.
"Why you…"
Angela didn't have time for this. She needed to get to Adam and make sure he was okay. She let loose on her powers even though she was feeling a little drained and sent Junkyard flying back. She grabbed Hawkins and sprinted. She didn't see Adam or Tsura anywhere and figured that they must have gotten a ride. On what was something else so she decided to do the same thing. "How about we leave them a little short?"
Hawkins didn't need to ask what that meant since he found out that in the next two minutes he was on a motorcycle and followed Angela and heading towards the outskirts of town. A noise caught his attention and he looked back. He made a slight face and shouted, "We've got company!"
What else is new? Angela glanced behind her and saw what Hawkins had spotted. At least the numbers were down since they took their bikes. Now they just had to lose them. Her lip curled as she glanced at Hawkins and turned forward. She gave more speed and raced on. She had some ideas but she wasn't sure if Hawkins would be able to keep up.
Hawkins saw the look and got the feeling that she was up to something. It made him nervous but he was willing to follow. He had followed her into crazy shit before and came out on the other side. This was no different… even if they were in literal hell. He lowered his body over the bars and waited for her to make her move.
Angela didn't wait long and made use of her environment to mess up their tail. It wasn't hard to find something that would knock two of them flat on their asses. She was better at making jumps and knowing them… they followed and tried to imitate to their own detriment. That left only two that didn't fall for it. That required some tricky maneuvering. She looked at Hawkins and said, "Slow down."
At first Hawkins thought she was crazy but then he got that she was bringing them in closer. It was easy anyway since this guys were on those newer models. She waited until one was alongside her and leapt behind the other guy. Hawkins ducked to avoid being shot and swung out his arm to try and knock the other guy off. The only other weapon he had was on his wrist.
Twisting his body, he managed to get the blade out and stab the guy through the neck. He let go and straightened out just as the guy he stabbed fell over and rolled from the fall and speed. At that moment he saw a body shoot forward and hit a tree. He looked over to see Angela righting herself on the bike she had commandeered and shook his head, "You really are something Scarlett."
"All in a day," she replied as she adjusted her grip and sped up.
She started to worry that they might miss Adam and Tsura but she brushed that aside. Instead she went with her other senses. If she could find Sam and Dean that way, then she could find Adam. So following her nose, she led the way until she came to a grassy knoll and saw Tsura and Adam just sitting there. She breathed a sigh of relief.
A/N: Another close call but it seems like Lucifer is toying with them. Stay tuned for more of the Winding Road...