Title: The woods are lovely, dark and deep
Author: Wysawyg
Summary: Sam Winchester had begun to wonder whether the demon had forgotten his plans for him. Sam Winchester had forgotten that the demon played a long game. Dark!fic. Multi-chapter. Not WIP.
Disclaimer: Everything the light touches belongs to someone else. The darkside too. It's all Kripke and the guys and gals at the CW.
Author's notes: Many thanks again to my awesome beta TraSan who corals my meandering tenses.
Chapter two
"So what's the game plan?" Dean asked as soon as they had finished searching the motel room for any physical bugs and using the EMF to try and pick up any spiritual ones. "Watch the girl and see what she does?"
Sam's personal plan was to keep his brother as far away from the girl as possible without locking him in the trunk of the Impala and driving out of there - that was the back-up plan. "I don't know how much good that will do. It seems like finding out who the members of the coven are is gonna be easy enough. That waitress told you the high priestess after just ten minutes of knowing you."
"Winchester charm," Dean said with the habitual lazy, cocky grin on his face. "Don't worry, Sammy, maybe one day you might grow into it."
"Anyway," Sam grouched, "The fact that no other hunter has finished this job means there's something more to it. I'm thinking some kind of high level protection."
"Deals with a demon? Tisk, they never learn." Dean shook his head, "We'll need to find and destroy whatever empowered artefact the demon gave the coven. Otherwise it'll bind the demon here and the exorcism will bounce right off."
"By the sounds of it, these witches aren't hiding their power but flaunting it. Hopefully they'll be doing something similar with the artefact."
"So drive around later and look for signs stating, 'Demonic artefact here' then?" Dean joked.
"Not quite that flaunting it. I'm thinking we need to work out what demon it is so that we'll have a better idea of what sort of relic to look for." Sam cocked his head, frowning. "There's something else here. Old power, strong."
"Man, it's not enough you get full-colour visions but you are now picking up long-wave crazy too?"
"It's not like that. It's just a constant, irritating hum in the back of my head." Sam struggled to put it into words.
"Dude, if that's a complaint about my musical skills then forget it! Just because you can't sing to save your life."
"I can sing." Jessica had said he had a lovely voice.
"I have a whole karaoke bar who would protest otherwise," Dean smirked then kept talking before Sam could retort, "So what type of old magic are we talking about? Freaky, wrinkly voodoo priestess? Past her prime pow-wow princess?"
"It's a hum, not a soundtrack. I can't tell." Sam hated how Dean would flip between belittling his psychic weirdness and then expecting it to give him all the answers. "However if it is old, there's one good place to look." At Dean's expectant eyebrow, Sam said, "The old people's home."
"Urgh, hate those places," Dean shuddered. "Old people smell and a bunch of people too frail to take care of themselves. Old people's homes are what hell looks like at a glance."
"Ideal place to hide from a coven though. Enough lingering traces from plenty of peaceful and not-so-peaceful deaths to mask the magic."
"Fine. What's the local dumping ground for the aged called?"
Sam scowled. "Golden fields retirement home," Sam answered, remembering the leaflet he'd seen in the motel office.
Dean wrinkled his nose, "Why do they always have to give them poetic names? It's not like it's going to feel so much better for your family to drop you off when you get too much bother because it's got a pretty name."
"Could you just promise not to punch any of the staff?" Sam pleaded with his brother, hoping to knock him off course.
"Of course," Dean looked at his brother like he was an idiot, "It's not the staff's fault. Hell, most of them try to make the best of it. Not their fault the poor old biddies in there got stuck with relatives who don't give a shit."
"Could you promise not to punch any of the relatives?" Sam added.
"I promise not to punch any of the relatives," Dean said all too quickly before adding, with a characteristic smirk, "Hard."
Sam sighed, "I figure we should go in claiming to be students investigating local folklore. Just quiz a few of the old folks that are amenable and see what we find out."
Hunting had taken Dean to old people's homes far too often for his liking. Often the people who had been victims of the creatures they hunted would find themselves in one decades later, their minds finally catching up with their inability to cope with what they'd seen. Dean never understood how Sam could be so calm in them. Every old person Dean passed he wondered, 'Is that me?' Forty years down the road, would he be the one sitting by the window staring aimlessly out at the clouds? His father was dead, his brother would have his own apple-pie life and Dean couldn't imagine a future for himself with a wife and children. He considered it somewhat fortunate that most paths Dean could see for himself ended in early death.
Sam and he had split off once they'd bluffed their way past the home's administration. Sam had been ambushed by a couple of old ladies, obviously reminding them of some grandson who never visited. From what he could hear though, their information was less about old sources of power and more about old sauces for pasta, not to mention Sam's life and whether he had himself a nice girl.
Dean wasn't sure what appealed to him about the old lady sitting by the window. Perhaps it was the way she held herself slightly aloof from her surroundings, aware that she didn't truly belong there and she wasn't willing to give in yet. Her white hair was still long and braided in two long plaits. He could see a red-brown tinge to her leathery skin that hinted towards First Nation's ancestry, "Ma'am?"
Sharp dark eyes looked up to meet Dean's and she studied him before motioned to a seat, "Please, just call me Amelia."
"Amelia," Dean sat, resting his elbows on his knees to pay full attention to her, "I'm Dean. I'm doing a project on local folklore and I was wondering what you knew."
"You after the witches?" Amelia said, grinning at Dean's surprised look. "I may be senile according to the doctors but I'll be ten years a pile of dust before I don't recognise a hunter's gait. Your friend there has it too though not quite as pronounced as yours. New to the game?"
"Old to the game, new-ish to the return," Dean replied. "You were a hunter?"
Amelia laughed, light and silvery like bells in a breeze, "Don't be daft. Don't need to be a hunter to see what's out there. I been around hunters a lot, helped out on occasion."
"What do you know about the witches then?" Dean asked.
"They're trouble," Amelia said, shaking her head, "Found themselves a taproot of power and got no sense to handle it right. They toss it around like it is just feathers. Ten, twenty years from now, this place will be a dried-up husk. Got themselves some help too: something which wants the power they found and is smart enough to use them to get it. You boys got any charms against that?"
Dean tapped the charm Bobby had given him which was permanently secured on the belt loop he was wearing, "This stops anything getting in." He tapped his necklace, "This helps too."
The woman nodded, looking pleased, "Bout time one of you hunters show a lick of common sense. Too much guns and salt, you forget the basics. How about your boy there?" She nodded to where Sam was picking up an increasing crowd of old women.
"He's got an anti-possession charm like me, nothing else though. Sam isn't great on… He'd rather hit the books and trust in Latin."
"Much like my older sister." At Dean's eyebrow raise, Amelia chuckled, "Yes, I do have family and they come visit me fairly often but not everyone can give up everything for family, boy. Sometimes the best thing you can do for family is realise you can't do everything for them."
"You like being in here?" Dean's eyes flicked around the room, taking in the people in various states of confusion or boredom.
"On my good days, not particularly. On my bad days, I don't much care. It evens out and the staff here do their best." Amelia smiled at a sunny faced woman who was making the rounds, checking on the old folks.
"Anything you can tell me which might help?" Dean tried to get the conversation back on track, feeling slightly awkward being challenged by somebody's grandma.
"The power they are tapping into, it's the power of the land and that belongs to nobody. You try to possess it and it'll work against you. Ask the spirits, give them tobacco and tell the truth then maybe those witches will find their power turning against them."
"Uh-huh. I'm not really an 'Ask the spirits' type, more a shoot the spirits full of rock salt 'til they go away," Dean admitted.
Amelia did not look amused, "Not everything in life is a joke to be made, boy. You take my advice." Amelia glanced out to the window, looking towards nothing Dean could see. When Dean didn't move, she swung her head back around, "You can go now."
Dean winced a little at her tone and shifted up to his feet, heading towards Sam and his increasing crowd of female admirers, "Hey, Sam boy, good to go?"
There was a chorus of disappointed aws and Sam sent such a desperate look towards his brother that Dean was tempted to just leave him there. "All the nice boys leave," One of the women whose still dark brown hair was an odds with the number of wrinkles on her face said, "They always go away."
Dean frowned at that, maybe Sam had managed to find out some useful information after all, "Sorry, I have to drag him away. It's a long drive back to campus and he needs to call his mother." The chorus of awws from the old women was worth it just for the red blush on Sam's face and the look which quite clearly said, 'I'm going to kill you.'
Sam kept a smile plastered on his face until they got back to the Impala when it turned to a scowl at Dean, "I hope you got something useful. All I got was three different pasta recipes, one story from each of them about how they met their husband and advice on how to get wine stains out of the carpet."
Dean slid into the driver's seat and slotted the keys into the ignition, waiting until his brother was situated in the passenger side before replying, "What about what the one lady said, about the nice ones always leaving?"
"I assumed that was just her rambling," Sam said, looking pensive. "You think there's something to it?"
"There was something in the way she said it, sounds like she was talking about now rather than her past." Dean thought it over, "Guess you get to play bait this time."
"That's a bit premature. Did you find out anything useful?"
"Sort of. Apparently the old power in this place is First Nation's or rather that of their lands. She reckons if we ask nicely and let it bum a cig then it'll turn the big off switch on the witches' mojo."
"We'd still have whatever the demon gave them to contend against but it's worth a try. I've got a book on Native American stuff. Should help us not piss off the spirits too badly."
"We still need to find where the witches practice so we can get at whatever the demon gave them. Which means you," Dean spared a hand from the steering wheel to poke his brother in the arm, "Get to be bait."
"Why me?" Sam grouched.
"Because I hardly fit the definition of a nice boy," Dean smirked. "Come on. All you have to do is wander around on your own, help a few kittens out of trees, a few old ladies across the road, visit some sick children in the hospital, just a typical day for you when I'm not around. Then when Glinda and co grab you, I'll trail them, do the whole 'oi spirits' thing and hey presto, coven ain't bugging no-one no more."
Sam shook his head, "Being glib about a plan doesn't actually make it more likely to go right."
"I'm not being glib," Dean defended himself. "I'm being cocky. Big difference. Being cocky means I have years of experience of pulling little brother's ass out of trouble to back me up."
Sam just rolled his eyes and leaned on the window, trying his best to ignore his brother. "Let's just get back to the motel and then we can see if the Native American thing will be possible."
"Fine," Dean said, disappointed when he couldn't get his brother to rise to the bait. So instead, he just cranked up the volume on the radio and finished the journey to the motel.
Sam remembered the old adage: it takes forty three muscles to frown and only seventeen muscles to smile, so smile and save your energy. Dean always added that it only took four muscles to extend your arm and punch the person. Either way, Sam was feeling all seventeen of those supposed muscles as he walked around the town, keeping the grin plastered on his face and being polite and nice to everyone.
He wanted to glance back and make sure that Dean was close by but he knew he wouldn't be able to spot Dean. They had several pre-arranged signals for needing to talk to each other or calling a halt to the whole thing but Sam suspected using one just because of a bad feeling in his gut was unlikely to bring anything but mockery and irritation from the older man.
Researching the Native American thing hadn't taken long but both brothers had agreed that leaving it to the last minute was the best idea, just in case the witches figured out what was going on and tried to call their demon for back-up. Researching the demon had been less fruitful. There were several suspects, the kind of demon that liked manipulating others to get power, but nothing that would identify exactly which one it was likely to be or to give the boys a hint towards what the power object might be.
All that left Sam wandering around town for two hours so far, waiting to be snatched by the satanic section of the WI. So far there hadn't been so much as a speculative look from any of the women and Sam was starting to feel a little rejected.
His contemplations very nearly led to him tripping over some wayward apples when the old lady just in front of him tripped and the contents of her shopping bag spread itself across the sidewalk. "Here, let me help you," Sam offered automatically, bending to pick up the items which were within reach.
"Oh, what a nice boy," The lady grinned at him with all two of her remaining teeth. "Nice boys never stay around."
Sam tried to assess the likelihood of this one being a coven member. She seemed too old, the high priestess was in her mid-fifties but most of her coven was supposed to be younger. "So I've heard. I was visiting Golden Fields earlier."
"Did you talk to Milly?" The woman asked, holding her bag open for Sam to place the items he scooped up into. "She loves visitors. Poor old girl just couldn't cope on her own anymore, not since Schubert died."
Schubert wasn't a beloved husband as Sam had believed upon meeting Milly, but rather a beloved Labrador retriever. "I spoke to Milly. She seems very nice."
"Yes, nice," The old lady agreed. "Lots of nice women left but no nice men left for us. They all leave, drive away."
Sam frowned in confusion, "They drive away?" He tried not to give too much away just in case this was one of the coven members.
"Oh yes," The woman said mournfully. "All the good boys go and the bad boys get taken away."
Sam felt a jolt of panic arc through his stomach and he stuffed the last few items into the woman's shopping bag. "Sorry, I just remembered somewhere I need to be."
The woman nodded as if that was normal. "All the good boys go," She repeated and ambled off down the pavement.
Sam didn't run but rather dropped to one knee and started re-tying his left shoe lace. This was the signal they'd agreed on for, 'Something is seriously up. Get here now'. When Dean didn't immediately materialise at his shoulder, Sam let himself believe that it was just because he was a bit further behind than Sam thought and maybe he couldn't see the signal clearly. Sam lifted his foot up to rest on a nearby railing and made a bigger show of tying his lace, eyes scanning the milling people for any sign of his brother.
Last ditch was to head back to the motel to wait for Dean and Sam's feet were moving without any conscious effort on his part. When he passed the office and saw the smiling face of the motel girl inside, it took all Sam's willpower not to march in there and demand to know what her mother had done with his brother. Sam forced himself into his room and sat down on Dean's bed as if that somehow made it more likely that his brother was about to walk in the door.
When ten minutes passed, Sam let himself believe that maybe Dean had broken off the chase to flirt with some passing girl. He tried to believe even though he knew Dean would never abandon him like that, especially not when he was expecting Sam to get kidnapped.
When twenty minutes passed, Sam wondered if his brother had gotten himself injured. Some stupid injury like tripping over a loose piece of concrete sidewalk or getting side-swiped by a car. Some concerned passer-by had probably dragged him to hospital to get checked out and any minute now, Dean would walk in, all concern for Sam and only a couple of scratches to show for his trouble.
When thirty minutes passed, he decided that Dean had seen Sam heading back to the motel room and had decided to pay him back for the silence on the drive back from the motel. He was probably waiting outside and as soon as Sam got panicked enough to check, his brother would be there, smirking and saying something like, 'Can't live without me, Sammy?'
When forty minutes passed, Sam didn't convince himself of anything. He stood up from the bed and loaded himself down with part of their mobile arsenal. A knife strapped to his calf, one gun in a holster on the other side, another gun tucked down the back of his jeans in easy reach, one smaller knife slid up his sleeve for emergencies.
When fifty minutes passed, Sam left the room and headed towards the motel office.
The good ones go and the bad ones are taken away. Unless the good ones aren't so good and get them back.