Part Five

"Is Dean sick?" Chester asked eventually.

After they'd watched the Impala disappear into the yawning black of the forest road, they'd climbed into the Mazda in silence. His mom had fussed more than usual with the lights and the locks. Then, while she set a tight-lipped course for North Silverbridge and home, Chester sat working open the rip at the knee of his jeans and looking at bugs flying towards the headlights.

Gina turned on the radio and got that glaring look through the windshield that suggested that if Chester was going to speak, he'd better make it interesting, helpful or at the very least relevant.

"What?"

She sounded like she was working hard not to snap.

"Is he sick, or mad or something?"

"Troubled, maybe." Gina paused, drummed her fingers on the wheel, nails tapping out a nervous beat on the leather. "You know what I mean by troubled?"

"Like Britney?"

She glanced at him, frowning. "No, not like Britney, Ches."

"I liked him," Chester said and was surprised when his mom didn't react like he was a pubescent retard.

"Yeah, I know you did."

"We helped him didn't we? I mean, whatever he's going off to do, we helped him, right?"

"I guess we did."

Chester let the silence go on for a bit. His Mom wasn't glaring anymore. She'd relaxed her arms a little, dropped one hand down the wheel, seemed thoughtful.

"What d'you think he's going to do exactly?" Chester pulled at the denim fibers, scratched the bit of knobby knee that poked through the hole.

"Get whatever it is out of his system. Keep the gun to himself I hope. Find his brother."

"Sam seemed OK. I mean, he seemed kind of in charge."

"Like he was looking after Dean?"

Chester snorted at that. "It's the other way round isn't it?"

"Is it?"

His mom's arms had tensed up again. Chester chewed his lip nervously. Once she started to be mad about one thing she generally got mad about other things. And, eventually, about everything. He wasn't quite clear what she was mad about right now, but he knew he should do whatever he could to calm her down. He hadn't told her yet about the letter from his math teacher that was still lying at the bottom of his backpack.

"What is it with you boys anyway?" she burst out suddenly. "What is it with all the game-playing, huh, the soldiers and monsters and God knows what-all else, I mean ... why are you all like this?"

"Mom ..."

"What?"

"What did the real estate guy say?" Chester plucked the question out of a shaky thin air and managed to stop his mom in her crazy, hate-everybody-with-a-Y-chromosome tracks.

She made a little noise then as if she might be about to burst into tears, which, let's face it, wasn't unlikely these days. Chester sighed.

"Well, it was pretty interesting."

Yeah, right. Like a real estate guy would be interesting. Dean with his trashed hand and monster-fixation was interesting. Sam with his understand-everything vibe, he was interesting. Real estate guys, not so much.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Seems like we have two offers on the apartment. Which means it might not be too long before we can tell Principal Moron to take his we-don't-need-a-policy-on-bullying bullshit and shove it up his ... until we can take you out of school and hightail it out of this crappy place."

"Where to?"

"What?"

"Where we going, Mom?"

There was that little almost-hiccup that preceded tears again, and once more his mom managed to swallow it down. Chester was proud of her.

"Ches, where is anybody going? Huh?"

Chester flung her a grin across the front seat. She grinned back, then glued her eyes on the road ahead, chin up.

"I saw, you know," he said, his grin making his top lip hurt.

"What did you see, Mr Mysterious?"

"I saw you give Dean your number."

"Yes. So he could call me if he wants to see the burns guy at the Center. I was just doing my job."

"Sure you were," Chester said.

"Little brat. You want pizza?"

"Pizza sounds awesome."

"Well all righty."

The headlights picked up the sign for North Silverbridge.

Chester wondered how Dean was doing, running around the mountain looking for his brother. He hoped he'd remembered how to find the cellar.

------

When Jim Broomfield materialized on the upstairs landing and blocked the way downstairs, Sam swung at him with the full-force of the poker.

If he hadn't known better he'd have thought the old man's form began to dissolve even before the iron made contact with the curve of pink scalp shining through the thin hair - almost, in fact, as soon as Sam raised his arm.

Perhaps it was just a very good iron poker. Good and solid, the kind Bobby would have multiples of, stashed in the cupboard under his stairs.

When he got back down to the kitchen he used it to batter through the locked door. It didn't take that much effort on his part, either. Sam vaguely wondered if there was some kind of charm working on it.

As the panels split, sending splinters of old wood flying in all directions, stale air puffed into Sam's face. He kicked in the last portion, hearing metal tumbling onto wood. The door was padlocked and chained, the remains now hanging from a large ring bolted into the wall at the side. The low babble of voices that had been following him around ran through the kitchen behind him and then faded out.

Sam ducked his head through the doorway. The mag lite threw shapes across the rough stone on both sides and down the stained wooden steps plunging into black.

He figured if he went down there they would come to him, and when he had both of them in one place, then ... Sam felt a little flutter of anticipation in his blood. He swept the mag lite ahead of him, put some testing weight on the first step. It creaked.

Of course it freakin' creaked.

At the bottom, the cellar was laid out tidily. The flagstone floor was clean of everything except dust and although a putrid smell hung in the air the interior seemed dry. Shelves heaving under fileboxes and bottles of wine lined the four sides of the room. There were no hidden corners and nothing remotely nasty that Sam could see. It was a neat, tomb-like little room. The voices he'd been hearing in all the walls remained quiet. They hadn't followed him down. He didn't feel Jefferson either.

Sam stood still, concentrating on what else he could get a feel for. It was instinctive to try to tune in. It was the way he worked now and it gave him a thrill as much as it set off a twitch of guilt. After a moment or two he got a keen sense of something incoming and this time he managed to turn right around just as Jim appeared.

The old man looked into his eyes, and Sam's gut squirmed a little.

"You're so like Jefferson," Jim decided. "We happen to know that. We happen to have been told all about you. Left your family high and dry, then not a card, not a goddamn peep."

Putting aside the super-disturbing fact that nobody but demons had ever known squat about him before, Sam allowed the jibe to hurt a little and then nudged it out of his mind.

"Jefferson didn't get sick, did he? You killed him."

That seemed to amuse Jim Broomfield mightily. His whole face screwed up in a laugh, eyes disappearing into folds of ancient skin, teeth receding under his lips as his bony shoulders shook. Then his teeth appeared again, and his eyes, dangerous.

"Oh he got sick all right, something with an oma in it. Sick blood. You know all about sick blood, don't you, Sam?"

Sam felt the sting of acid at the back of his throat.

"We never killed him," Jim said. He looked rueful, like a man who'd been an old fool, knew it, but didn't care that much. "All those other boys though ... who came grubbing up to the house to get high on M's good bread, and then just wanted to leave again."

All those other boys.

Damn. All those other boots.

Jim cocked a head, eyed Sam and then the poker. "Just got the picture, huh?"

"Oh, there you are," Marlena said, "are you hiding from me?" She had popped up halfway down the cellar steps holding a meat cleaver. She was wearing a silky print scarf round her neck, and more damn bangles. Like she was ready to go out somewhere, not try and sink a wicked-looking blade into his neck. She was smiling and her eyes were unblinking. They weren't dead eyes, like some ghosts wore, but they were empty of life nonetheless.

"Didn't need any of your sleepytime toast, M. He couldn't get down here fast enough," her brother stated.

Marlena, too, eyed the poker thoughtfully.

"I'm just sorry we couldn't have had your no-account brother stay," she said. "When he came in all limp and sad-eyed ... well, I thought he might have been our easiest one yet. Wouldn't even have needed the bread."

Sam had heard Dean called many unpleasant names before. Some of them had even been a perfect fit. Hell, he'd called him some colorful things himself and meant every word of it at the time. But it seemed to Sam that checking yourself into eternal damnation for the sake of your brother was so very far away from being of no account that it was practically funny. If, of course, it hadn't been so hopelessly fucking tragic.

The rage he felt was sudden and overwhelming.

"How many?" Sam asked, throat constricted with it. "How many were there?"

"Oodles, and not one of them as tricky as you."

"How's the poker doing?" Jim asked brightly. He took a long step forward.

Sam jabbed it at him sharply and Jim sucked in his chest, stopped moving.

"No," Marlena chided. "Let me. You know the old rhyme, Sam? La-ti-tumty-tumty-ted, here comes the chopper to chop off your -- ?"

Sam wielded the poker again. It met the thick, ugly blade with a loud clang, sent shockwaves right through his body. He swung again, aimed to separate some part of Marlena from the rest of her, but although she staggered slightly, nothing else happened.

"That thing won't stop us," she said, frowning. "Things have moved on, Sam."

"Fine," said Sam.

The poker fell to the stone floor with a dull thunk. He was getting tired of it anyway. Energy sparkled within him, a heady sensation, something akin to adrenaline, and yet nothing like it. He felt his chest swell with a sweet rush.

Oh God, how he hated this.

But how he loved it. How he loved the feeling he got when he harnessed it, a sweep of pure light through his bones.

"Brad," said Jim. "Scott, Christopher, Michael and .... I don't remember."

"Cordell, Jim. Cordell from Fairbanks, Alaska."

Sam's knees nearly went. He'd heard their voices and now he could feel every last one of them, an unbearable mixture of hope and youth deadened by narcotics and shot through with fear.

His arm came up.

Marlena's mouth fell open in little "o" and she let the cleaver slide from her grip. There was smoke rising from the floor and a tiny lick of orange flame had caught at the heel of her right shoe.

"Oh my Lord," Jim said, looking down at it, "Sam, are you something to do with that Lilith bitch?"

-----

Dean dug down through earth and stones in the cold dark. He dug into debris and silt, where the forest floor had sunk through what was left of the Broomfields' kitchen.

The pick-ax did its job opening up the ground, and then it was time for the large shovel. When he picked it up the combination of weight and momentum swung it against his shin with a crack and he dropped it again.

"Holy mother fucking shit!"

For a second Dean stared angrily at his injured hand, already a mess of ruched bandaging, damp with whatever was underneath. He'd taken a couple more of the Advil Gina had stuffed in his top pocket but they were really doing shit to help. The damn singed hand was swelling up again. He needed fluid. He needed to stop digging for bones in the forest. He needed .... a flush of irritated energy made him seize the shovel, bottom lip jammed under his top teeth. He knew each strike was going to cost him, and they did. Every impact was a stab of rusty nails through his palm, echoed by a sharp light behind his eyes.

And when he couldn't hold the shovel anymore, he slithered into the trench he'd made and began scooping furiously at the loose soil and scraps of evidence that told him he was right on the money.

Bits of wood came up into his cupped hands.

Chester had been pretty adamant that the Broomfields were thought to have set the house alight on the ground floor, gone down into the cellar and barricaded themselves in.

They might have burned up in the inferno.

They might have suffocated.

Perhaps the incineration had penetrated so deep that there was nothing left and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it.

"Show me your bones, fuckers," Dean heard himself say.

Five dead young men. Drugged, killed, de-capitated. Bodies stuffed into the outhouse freezer.

"And you're the ones who're mad?" he ground out, mud clotting under his fingernails as he swiped. "You did that and you're the ones who want to come back and get mad?"

If they'd got Sam ... if they'd got him ... but no, they wouldn't have. Sam was good enough to think of something, to defend himself. He was a great hunter, nearly as good as Dad. Better than Dean, apparently. Stronger, smarter, bl-blah blah.

Yeah, and here I am still saving your ass, Sammy-boy. You remember that.

The ground shifted in a ripple of moving earth and Dean froze for just a second. It would be peachy, he thought, to manage to bury himself before he hit pay dirt, but he couldn't afford to stop, or even to slow down.

He was down deep enough now that the light from the Impala was not much use anymore. There was grit and soil in his sleeves and down the back of his shirt and he was wheezing like an old pair of bellows.

It was a yahtzee though. It was definitely a fucking yahtzee.

Even the nerveless fingers of his bad hand knew the feel of bone when they touched it.

Five minutes later he had the trench alight from end to end and he was scrabbling a frantic way up and out.

-----

"Dean," Sam breathed out when he saw the first little flame.

He knew without a shadow of doubt that his brother must be up there now, flinging salt and lighter fuel around in the forest like crazy, and that thought felt pretty damn good. What he didn't know was why he could work his mojo on spirits these days. And how come they they knew him.

Lilith had to be the connection. She was always the fucking connection.

Jim seemed to be a straight-up, full-on ghost though. Nothing came out of him, fled his body in a black swarm and a scream like a soul tumbling headfirst into hell. Instead, one reach of Sam's hand in his general direction and he just about caved in on himself, eyes round with surprise. He was gone before the fire caught. Sam left Marlena to Dean. She howled as she felt her bones ignite. It seemed to turn into a laugh at the last, and Sam, shading his eyes from the sudden flare of heat, realized that the shelves in the cellar were beginning to smoke.

It caught, dry and deadly, on the back of his throat and he made for the steps. Up in the kitchen the door to outside was still shut tight and he couldn't move it.

The hall was already full of smoke too. It had filled up like a movie on fast-forward. Sam could barely see the stairs through it, but he could hear crackling, feel the heat against his cheeks. The Broomfields were burning their house around them as they went, and it was going up like a torch.

Disoriented, Sam turned this way and that, hands outstretched, looking for the front door.

His heels caught something and he went down, back thumping what he guessed was the bottom of the stairs. Immediately he tried to stand up again, but the strength had gone from his legs. Above him the first floor was alight and the fire was burning at full volume. Chunks of plaster, lit like coals, fell near his head.

Sam rolled, pressing his face down, palming the floor. When he tried a lizard-slither under the smoke to what he thought was the door his head cracked a wall he wasn't expecting.

Not even knowing where the stairs were now, Sam got a fist to his mouth and coughed. There was an overpowering drag in his lungs,

Then he heard a series of muffled crashes, like something or someone was staggering somewhere near. After long seconds in which Sam could feel unconsciousness beginning to bleed across his brain, a shape loomed from the smoke, went right past him.

Sam got out a hand and swiped. He caught at a jean-clad ankle and nearly brought the figure down on top of him.

The figure twisted towards him, face unseen. Two strong hands grabbed him under the arms, started to pull. He felt himself shift across the floor as the flames roared in his ears.

It was so familiar, being saved. Sam wasn't sure if that or the smoke was stopping him breathing. He let out a yelp as his back banged down steps. He felt the arms change position in a swift and seamless move, locking across his chest and hauling him backwards along the ground, carrying him away from the heat. Away from the fire.

Sam lost it then. He opened his mouth to shout but didn't get a sound out. His throat tightened and he blanked.

And then he was back again, he didn't know how long afterwards, sprawled outside the Broomfield house and he could feel cold, normal air wisping across his face.

Sam lay where he was, sucking in air, huge, painful gasps that burned.

The outline of the house, black and orange, faded to a pale gold shimmer before his eyes. It hung in the air for a few moments and then dissolved, leaving a faint imprint on his retina until he blinked. Then he saw only the outlines of the trees blanketed by weird light. When he realized it was coming from the Impala he immediately thought how awesome that was. It meant Dean had done what he said he'd do. He'd fixed the busted fanbelt with nothing but pantyhose and nailed it, because - yeah - Dean always nailed things like that, no matter how many hands he had to work with.

Dean's forearms were still clutched around his chest.

"Dean ...." Sam could feel his brother's ribcage pushing fast, heavy breaths into his back. "You can let go now."

Sam coughed as he felt the grip loosen. He rolled sideways, hit the earth, got on to his knees. Dean stayed where he was for a moment, then got into a painful-looking sitting position.

"Holy shit," he said and lifted one arm.

Sam got a good hold on it and levered him off the ground. He wasn't a bit surprised to find that Dean was shaking, his mouth and throat starting to work in that scary way that meant normal breathing service was about to be interrupted.

"Okay, Dean," he said stupidly. He let go but stood there in the half-dark with both hands in the air ready to catch.

"Holy motherfucking ... Jesus crap." Dean took one step backwards and then another one sideways. "Burning houses, man. That's ... man, that's motherfucking .. Jesus crap shit."

"Whoah," Sam said. "What's with the rhumba, dude?"

Dean's boots continued to meander until he got himself into a half-stable position, bent at the waist, one hand on his knee. Sam stayed near enough.

"Whathefff -" Dean said eventually. "Whattheffff -?"

"Yeah," Sam said, rubbing a big hand down his face. "Don't know."

"'Kay?"

"Yeah I am. I think so. That was ... what was that?"

Dean's first response went something along the lines of "muffucksh -" but Sam cut him off before he tried it again. He looked over at the Impala lighting their way. It was really cold now. The ground was littered with tools and clods of earth, and over in the middle of the clearing was a huge trench.

Sam took hold of the back of Dean's jacket. "Jesus, Dean, you didn't dig that with your hand all fucked up?"

"No, a freakin invisible bulldozer did it, asshat."

Sam pulled on the leather, got Dean upright, gave him a little push towards the car.

"Yeah, well thanks for that. You go sit, man, I'll get the gear."

Dean dug in his jeans pocket, tossed the keys and ignored his order. The steps he took toward where the duffel lay were steadier but still a little wayward. He bent over, snagged the duffel, rooted around for the shotgun and whatever else he could find, then watched Sam scooping up the shovel and pick-ax. "I've had enough of this fucking one-handed crap. You good to drive?"

"I'm good. Let's go find a bed. How's the hand holding up?"

"It's holding up just fine. Let's go find a bar."

Sam made a doubting gesture at his own cheek to let Dean know he looked like he'd had soot thrown at him. "You look like you've been down a mine, Dean."

Dean scrubbed at his cheek angrily. "I don't want a freakin' clean face award, Sam, I just want a drink."

Sam wanted someone to look at Dean's hand, but as it was past ten he guessed that was a vain hope. He also wanted a shower and to lie down and think. There was a possibility he might want to eat, too, but he certainly didn't want a drink. Getting Dean from a burning house straight into a clean bed without enough fingers of whiskey to fill a pair of gloves was going to be a challenge, that was for sure.

"OK, so let's see what we find. We're going to head straight to North Silverbridge, right?"

Dean banged shut the passenger door with a sour laugh. "Yup," he said. "Straight to Demon Central."

"And the car? She okay?"

The slight change in Dean's expression showed he was impressed at Sam's concern. "She's wearing Silky Beige, since you ask, and as long as you don't over-rev her with your giant freakin' foot she'll be fine."

Sam sighed.

When it caught, the engine didn't sound quite right to him and he couldn't help but press a little harder on the pedal. Cringing slightly he glanced across, but Dean was just staring out at where the house had been, lips pursed.

When Dean finally turned back and met his eyes, the piercing appraisal was kind of what he expected and he knew it was nothing to do with his driving.

"So, you're going to fill me in on how come your neck's still attached, right?"

"Right," said Sam, but he didn't know where to begin.

tbc