The Waiting Game – Pt. 2.
by: sifi
--
"I can't believe we're just... standing here... waiting... what if she double crosses us?" Sam asked, his words diluted by his shaky breathing, "What if she..."
Dean leaned deep on his beloved impala's hood, for all the times she'd gotten them in one piece (respectively), to hospitals, back to whatever motel they were staying at, or taken them gamely away from dangers ranging from the demonic to the hustled, or various other ornery types, she once more knew what had to be done. Someone had to hold Dean up, and his faithful black and chrome beauty would once more serve her doomed paladin, holding him tenderly as he stood awaiting his executioner.
"Sam..." his brother's name was barely a whisper in the night, "You gotta go... you gotta leave Sammy..." his head swam, his mind filling with cotton, every bit of focus aimed at getting his baby brother out of here, away from whatever carnage the crossroad demon and her hounds had in store for him.
"I'm not leaving you..." he could barely choke out between his own tremulous exhalations, "... wish you'd let me have one of the shotguns..."
He wasn't joking.
Dean shook his head, his face ghostly pale in the half moon's light. His eyes were wide as saucers and though he had no desire to die, nor did he have any fear of it. If only I could be sure Sam would be alright... that he won't do anything dumb... that he wouldn't try to make his own deal... there's got to be like an inherent clause or something... otherwise couples could pull switches back and forth forever... boy that'd piss the bitch off... I think I shoulda ordered the spaghetti for dinner... too late now...at least when he gets the note, he'll understand it wasn't his fault. Not any of it. You said I helped YOU be a better person Sam? You got that backwards little brother, the best I've ever been is because of you.
"Are we supposed to summon her?" Sam asked despite the doubt in his voice. Evan hadn't needed to summon the demon, neither would Dean Winchester.
Dean swallowed, "Maybe I got the time wrong?" he checked his watch.
"Dean?" Sam asked feeling his stomach clench and twist, "Have you heard anything? Have you heard the hounds?... at all?"
Dean thought about it but still shook his head, in fact he hadn't. Unlike all the others who did business at the crossroads, Dean hadn't heard so much as a yip, at least not one that hadn't come from the ADHD Yorkie at the other end of the motel.
"Come to think of it... I haven't..."
"Did we..." Sam shrugged, "...get the date wrong?"
He shrugged again when Dean shot him the patented, 'are you kidding?' look he'd perfected over the years. He pushed himself off the Impala and with Sam beside him, the brothers' Winchester moved into the center of the crossroad. Dean jogged to the trunk for his e-tool then returned to Sam's side where he began to dig.
"I shoulda hit it by now..." he huffed after digging down about a foot.
"Is this the right crossroad?" Sam asked, "Or maybe someone else has it..." in reference to the tin box Dean had filled with all the necessary implements to summon the demon last year. Wonder which ID he used.
"Shouldn't matter..." Dean shook his head pushing the rocks and dirt back into the hole. He frowned, "There's a bar down the road a bit," he suggested.
Sam nodded, "I could use a beer, and maybe someone in there knows something...not that I'm complaining... but I don't like it..." his hackles were up, his skin tingling with alertness, every sense focused to its limit so even the slightest breeze against his forearm sent a quaking shiver through him.
"Me neither...yet. C'mon..." Dean led them into the ramshackle structure that made Lloyds look like a night club and the roadhouse velvet-rope worthy.
--
"What can I get you boys?" the bartender asked.
"Couple beers..." Dean slid a ten across the roughened wood bar.
"You recognize her in here somewhere?" Sam asked quietly at Dean's ear while they both scoped the few other patrons, and dusky shadows.
"Nah, it used a different body last year than the one I trapped when we saved Evan..." Dean muttered.
Two grizzled old men sat at the far end of the bar, closest to the bathrooms, two on-their-way-to grizzled younger men sat at one of two crude, freshman year of woodshop tables in the middle of the room with two smaller versions smacked in each of the far corners, shrouded in shadow. The one in the left hand corner was empty, the one in the right, the one that they weren't sure was there at all for the curtains of shadow around it, might or might not be empty. They'd have to wait until their eyes adjusted to the darkness, and then there was the one where an older woman sat with her eyes closed, swaying to whatever beat lay within her, and a gentle satisfied smile on her lips. She was one of those eighty something women who savored and perhaps even lived for her two to three beers a day, every day, without exception.
I hope that's not her... I don't feel like choking to death on some old gal's partial... or full on dentures for that matter... Dean thought with a shudder.
"Here you go boys... that's 3.50..." she smiled, turning to the register to make change.
"Excuse me... we're kind of expecting someone..." Sam said as she turned back.
She leaned forward, chin resting on the back of her hand as her eyes flicked over both of these handsome passers through, "Aren't we all?" she asked not unkindly.
"Heh yeah... see the thing is... we're not exactly sure what she looks like... uh... anymore... it's been a long time since we've seen her..." Dean smiled awkwardly.
"Do you know who's in the corner over there?" Sam asked motioning to the darkest spot in the bar.
"Ain't no one over there boys..." she motioned to the spot with her head. "Just looks like it cause of the coat tree..." she righted herself, looked around and sighed, "Look, s'only a couple a reasons boys like yourselves are gonna come to a place like this... and I can tell ya, I ain't seen hide nor hair of the bitch since someone summoned her about a year ago..."
"Excuse me?" Dean leaned in while Sam swallowed wrong.
"I did however hear a big ass ruckus this morning... a girl screaming... someone was pretty pissed off though, had a shotgun. I heard that sure enough!" she grinned.
The brothers exchanged looks, Dean checked his watch then shook his head, Maybe I DID get the time wrong... but I should be hearing the hounds... oh God what if she's got something 'special' in store for me? he checked a groan, noted a full and heavy sensation in his lower bowels, and after a moment of calming himself finally shrugged, "What happened?" he asked.
"Dunno..." she shrugged, "Don't care... I rolled over back into Ernie's arms and had me a grand old time... nothing like the sound of a fight and firing hardware to get a girl het up..." she smiled, her eyebrows dancing beneath her bangs.
Neither of the Winchesters were sure if she was joking or not, so they both smiled awkwardly and nodded, "Where was this fight?" Dean asked.
"And when?" Sam added.
"Just in the field out back..." she thought for a moment, "...musta been around six ish when I heard the shotgun go off..."
"Six this morning?" Dean asked.
"Mmm hmm," she nodded.
"Are there any hunters in the area that you know of... you know... the kind of hunters that might want to have an up close and personal with... you know..." he asked.
"Not that I'm aware of... nobody 'round here got much ambition to do anything besides drink... 'cept folks like you, they just come for her, or him..." she shook her head.
"Thanks," they said together before draining their beers and heading outside.
"Don't know what we're gonna find in the dark... and how is it that so many people KNOW about these things and there's still..." Sam muttered while they each grabbed a shotgun and flashlight from the trunk.
Dean shook his head not understanding either, "I know, I don't get it either. And you know we gotta look anyway..."
"Why? Can't we just take this one and walk away?" Sam asked. Why Dean? Why can't you ever just accept a bit of good luck... still...
"What if I got the time wrong Sam? What if it's still out there?"
"What if it's exorcised?" Sam countered.
"If someone else did send it back to hell, does another one take its place? Is the deal null and void or does the new hire come to collect?"
"Dean think positive man... this could be really good if someone got to it! Did what neither one of us could do..." Sam kept pace with his big brother as they entered the knee high dying grasses in the field behind the bar.
"What if someone just took the box and that's the link to the place? What if it's just going to take time for the bitch to zero in on me again?... We don't know Sam... but yeah... Oh man... what if someone DID what we couldn't and it nullified the contract... it would still leave you safe..."
"And you too..."
"Yeah, and me too...maybe... let's hope..." Dean nodded, the beam of his light finding disruption in the grasses, "Over here..." he led his little brother to the right.
They entered an area of bent and broken grass stalks about twenty yards in diameter, "Look... definitely something at least people sized... the weeds are all broken down..." Dean muttered.
"Dean..." Sam called softly, his light shining forward, resting on brown that might recently have been red. It seemed to call to them, beckon them forward toward a low slung long building hidden in the depths of Easterly shadows.
"Got shells?" Dean asked.
Sam patted his messenger bag, "...and salt, and lighter fluid, and matches..."
"That's my boy..." the elder hunter smiled shaking his head. God it feels good to be on a hunt! I feel freakin' ALIVE! I know I know... better not get used to it until we know what's what... we can't afford to take it for granted, think everything's alright... find ourselves in a bad sitch only to have me drop dead leaving Sammy without someone at his back... nuh uh... gotta cross those t's and dot those i's... MAN that is a weird expression...but... heh.. anyway... do the job first... figure out what's what... then we'll see what's gonna go on...
How lucky would we be to have had some other hunter exorcise the bitch! Dean would HAVE to believe in destiny then! There's NO way it could be a coincidence... that's IF the contract becomes void if the demon is sent back to hell...maybe Bobby would know about that little technicality... do demons have laws? They gotta... laws of the universe, laws of physics... laws of heirarchy... yeah... hell they're probably so like our laws I wouldn't even have to study... is there a deemonic Bar Association? IS that where Lawyers come from? a laugh got stuck up his nose where he trapped it until later, if indeed there would be anything worth laughing about. For the time being, he shook the random thoughts from his head, frowning, but safeguarding that ember of hope that struggled to catch fire in his heart as they followed the trail of folded grass and dried blood.
They approached the building low, with their flashlights off, the moonlight now providing all they needed in the open. The trail that led them to the building had thinned to uselessness but upon approach, they realized they no longer needed it. The door lay cleaved in two, the right hand side having fallen into the building, the left tottering on its hinges. It was a sign that didn't bode well for whoever might have been wielding that shotgun. In the darkness their eyes met and they both knew the other was thinking the same thing, Someone was hurt, whether it was a hunter or a demon host they had no way of knowing. Yet.
Hmm wonder if Gordy's grown eyes in the back of his head yet...heh... pretty sure even he couldn't split a steel door down the center, son of a bitch! Dean thought feeling his heart and hope sink just a bit as he took up station on the right, Sam on the left. It was an understood. He'd go in low, Sam would go in high... they both would go in real quiet-like.
There was only one level to the place, and it seemed as they entered that the bulk of it had been open space, there were a few areas at the back and on the ends of either side that might indicate offices or closed off areas of some sort.
"What the hell is this place?" Sam asked quietly.
Dean shrugged, his first thought leaning toward something along the tool and die trade, or some other machine type shop.
"Dunno..." he shook his head, the movement lost in the churning eddys of dust and debris that thickened the air.
"Light?" Sam asked, his whisper barely audible.
"Not yet..." Dean shook his head.
The brothers took their time, blinking through the dust, letting the shadows try to differentiate shapes, support beams from refracted light, walls from areas of deeper shadow. They stood, their backs to the wall, shoulder to shoulder, their breathing synchronized and hushed, shotguns pulled taut against their bodies, flashlights returned to their pockets, and like the exemplary hunters and soldiers they'd been raised to be, they waited and let the place tell them what it would.
"Time counts, and keeps counting... and times past count I done the tell... but this ain't one body's story, it's the story of us all... and you got to listen it, and 'member... cause what you hears today you gotta tell the birthed t'morrow..." Man that was freakin' poetry! slang ass poetry but still I get the goosebumps!... Dean thought while listening for signs of life and feeling for the sense of death. I'm pretty sure if the demon won I'd be hearing those hell hounds right about now... but what happened? I need to know... I can't leave anything to chance...
"D'you see that?" Sam asked softly, his finger pointing to the left, to a small square of dark in the middle of a lesser dark, lightened by the ambience from outside through the windows.
"Are you kidding?" Dean half snarked noting only a blockish darkness, "Yeah... I see it..."
"C'mon..." Sam nodded motioning them forward. Leading the way, taking point, he led his older brother through shadows. His body was tight and hot, and coiled in the dark, ready to spring into action in defense of either himself or his big brother. He had hope now, it was past the time Dean had struck the deal, past the time he'd sealed it with demonic tongue, everything was up for grabs as far as he was concerned. No hell-spawned bitch is gonna take my brother now! Not without some serious negotiating... I'm thinking... a life for a life... its for his if need be... I'm not above saving a demon to save my brother... a thought flitted through his mind with speed very like a hummingbird, the voice is quiet... I wonder why? maybe he'd remember to think about it later.
Half the distance to the chair was behind them. They remained in shadows, their footfalls careful and soft even in their own ears as they approached. In moments they'd come to recognize the contents of the chair. Each man knew they would find a body there, but who's, who the person had been in life, what they'd been at the moment of death, there was no way yet to know. What they were fairly certain of was that whatever had done, what it had done here, was gone.
There were no hackles on end, no warning bells rattling their bellies like pennies in a piggy bank, whatever was in that chair was most likely as dead as this building, or would soon be.
A lance of light shot from Dean's hand to the chair, his hand grabbed Sam by the shirtfront dragging him through the mote filled air to the figure slumped so hard forward it was a wonder the shebang remained upright. Then Dean noted, the chair was bolted down.
"Dean..." Sam said softly, shining his light on the floor beneath the victim while Dean's light shone on the object tethered to it. The divergence of the light beams did not go unnoticed by either brother, the meaning, the symbolism was subconscious and wholly telling. Each examined a separate piece of the puzzle, shedding light on what the other might need to contemplate. This was why the brothers Winchester had survived as long as they had, it was WHY the demon world feared them above all other hunters. They were two sides of the same whole, and neither one of them quite understood what that meant. Yet.
"Oh jeez..." Dean groaned, his attention called to the irregular puddle of dried brown on the floor.
All around were splatter strips, cast-off lines, and drip smears surrounding the area. It was a woman, they both knew. Her long chestnut hair hung like theater curtains awaiting a pull, but the play upon her face was one neither man was certain he wanted to see. Her body was petite but full in all the right places, her bra was lavender lace, and her drawers were rainbow colored boy/cut shorts. Her skin, what was left of it, was ivory but the port wine kiss over her heart had been left alone.
Areas of pale marble that remained told a sketchy tale of what could have happened. Several small tears in her chest, neck and shoulders told them about the shotgun blast, it had been rock salt, not buckshot. Dean could tell the difference having been on the receiving end of such a blast once before.
As Sam leaned in, his light shining on her chest, Dean noticed what had caught his little brothers' keen eye.
"Dean... isn't that...?" he started, pointing to the jagged edges of flesh that appeared to have been torn.
"That's the same binding link Meg used on you," he nodded.
"She was the host..." Sam breathed.
"Looks like..." he nodded, his light flicking to the right, his eye having caught the unnatural angle of the woman's forearm, bent in half over the arm of the chair, splinters of bone barely rupturing the surface of the skin, "Oh man..."
"Do you think whoever did this knew..." Sam started to ask.
"They used a freaking binding link to keep the demon INSIDE her! Whoever it was sure as hell knew what they were doing!" Dean barked.
"Right..." Sam nodded.
"This isn't hunting Sam... this is someone with a vendetta!... someone who knew enough to lock the demon inside and didn't give a damn about the woman it was using..." Dean hissed.
"But why?" Sam asked shaking his head, then remembered the door split in two, "Dean... do you think it coulda been one of... the 'other' one's... demons?"
"I thought its demons were Igigi?" Dean shook his head.
Sam frowned deeply, "I don't think so..."
"You gotta be kidding me... you mean there's MORE? Different!? Something ELSE that's gonna be coming?" Dean groaned, Well isn't this just... ducky... he's gotta be wrong... we don't even know how to kill Igigi yet and there's gonna be a cavalry coming? DAMNIT!
Sam shrugged, "Well, I don't KNOW... but would YOU send your heavy artillery before your advance troops?"
Dean stopped, his head cocked to the side and his eyebrow spocked high in thought, "It'd definitely be a surprise move..." he shook his head, "Later Sam... if there IS a later for me anyway, if not you better take this to Bobby and STICK to him like glue until you know you can get out safely!"
Sam felt his hand twitch toward his pocket but stayed the impulse and simply nodded meeting Dean's eyes. Dean raised his hand, sliding his fingers into her dirt and sweat streaked hair, he cupped his palm, pressing up against her forehead, needing to see her face.
"Cut her free Sam..." he croaked lowering his beam from her face so he could stand to see the welts, bruises, cuts and broken facial bones he knew had come before her body had the sense to die.
Her eyes were still open angled downward to the floor but only one was visible. He wasn't sure if the other was gone, or just buried under tortured flesh, light brown... kind of an amber color, he noted. With the movement of her head a rubber band of blood slid from her mouth landing in the middle of a part of her thigh that remained alabaster around the black football sized bruises then broke off to slide toward her body's midline.
"Cut her free Sam. What the hell happened here..." he breathed in horrified wonder.
Sam finished cutting her bindings then slid his arms between hers and her body. With a nod, he and Dean lifted at the same time. Even in the darkness they knew something was wrong other than the wounds they'd already noted. As Sam raised her up, where he should have met enough resistance, through simple bony connections, she nearly slid through his arms. He clutched haphazardly wrapping his arms tightly around her chest, pulling her to himself to avoid dropping her, and felt her ribcage nearly flatten against him. At the floor Dean grimaced noting bends beneath the bruises on her thighs as his grip faltered too. Finally they were able to lay her down on the dirty floor. They realized quickly that though her body had been stripped to the bone of skin, connective tissue, and muscle in places, making it look as if something befitting Dinosaur week on Discovery Channel had got hold of her and raked her without thought, it was the ragdoll laxity of her limbs, the jutting pieces of broken bone ends moving beneath her skin, that left the boys wondering if the same monstrosity might have taken a couple chomps before spitting her back out.
--
"Dean?" Sam breathed after several long moments.
His big brother sat on his heels, his palms pressed to his eyes, his breath hitching while he looked at the mutilated body before him, slowly he drew her eyelids down, hoping that whatever she'd been in life, however her life had ended that she was now at peace.
"Dean... come on... please... we need to ... we need to leave..." Sam reminded him softly, Please Dean... don't cry man... please... I can't hold it back when you cry... you're part of me Dean! stop it please! STOP IT! I can't take your pain!!
'Then give it to me... I can take it... I relish it... I devour it... you never have to know pain again... imagine what bliss it would be to live without ever knowing hurt... emotional, physical, intellectual... just imagine what you could accomplish!' he felt his throat spasm closed once again, choking on his tears.
I could... I could be free... I could feel... I could feel... he stopped and scratched his head, what would I feel? 'nothing, never! there would be no feeling that could bring you despair, pain, fear, hatred, you could be clear, you could be emotionally pristine' No! 'you don't know what you're saying...' I KNOW I'm saying NO! however many times it takes to get the point across... NO! he barked within again and felt the 'voice' retreat once more, though he was beginning to understand now that it would never go away, it could never be silenced entirely, but with each grasp, each immersion into his own certainty it lost hold, and Sam Winchester began to believe that he could one day rule his own destiny.
"What the hell happened here Sam?" Dean asked shining his beam around the place, moving through the shadows to a support beam that sported a rust brown smear, "Was it a hunter? Was it someone with an axe to grind specifically against this demon? Or was it someTHING else?" he asked meeting Sam's eyes, his questions mirrored in them.
"I don't know..."
"And you don't think it was Igigi?" Dean asked.
Sam shook his head, "I don't think so... I think they just... eat the demons themselves, I mean some of them feed on the hosts too... but I've never seen even the gray ones actually TOUCH let alone crush a person..."
"You think a hunter might've done it?" Dean asked, his stomach squeezing sickeningly at the thought of a human being who KNEW the woman was only a host, going to such horrible lengths to trap and without a doubt, torture the demon inside before doing God only knew what to it. "So do you think the demon is dead?" he asked now able to see strips of flesh littering the floor around them.
"Dead or back in hell, I don't know, either way let's hope it buys you some time," Sam shrugged his shaft of light caught against something on the floor, "Dean..." he shouldered his big brother indicating a line of white that glittered faintly.
"Salt..." Dean shook his head a moment later.
"I don't believe this..." Sam called from about ten feet away, "It's a freakin' devil's trap Dean..."
"Big ass devil's trap!" he muttered.
Sam smirked and cocked his head to the side, "We've seen bigger..."
"Yeah, but still... I'm leaning toward it having been a hunter that did this..." Dean looked at Sam, joining him as he stared down at a symbol drawn between points of the pentagram. "What?" he asked.
"I've seen this before..." Sam frowned.
"Huh... it does look familiar..." Dean pulled his phone.
"Ingwaz... Dean it's the Egg, said to ward off the evil eye," Sam started.
"And astral attack..." the elder brother nodded, "Right...Go that way, see if there's more," he angled his light to get the best possible shot then followed Sam around the trap taking pictures at each junction.
--
Eyes watched as they moved forward from the shadows, toward the building, into the building, through the layered darkness within to the host the crossroad demon had chosen. They cut free the body of the human it had inhabited, in the darkness they could not see the strips of flesh taken from the female, thrown hither and yon throughout the old machine shop, they knew the bones inside the suit were broken, some crushed. It didn't matter, none of it mattered.
There was still furious affront that the lowest had dared to try to take what was not in the offing, MINE, forever!... the thoughts were vicious and vehement, laced with blood stained venom.
There was vindication too though, as beneath the fingernails skin cells rolled, buckled and were torn from their moorings, fluid filled the spaces between, plasma and sticky cells that weighed the fingers down, made them feel like overstuffed sausages, and with layers of meat and fat finding spaces between the digits, between the nails and the fingertips, between the scant folds of skin, vengeance continued to burn.
--
tbc.
Please R&R.
Thanks.
sifi