The Devil You Know
Chapter 8
Dean's phone rang unexpectedly, and they both jumped. It half-killed him, leaning over to pick it up, but he didn't make a sound, and Sam's back was turned, so he missed the grimace. Dean glanced at his brother, who had his head out the window, hissing to Lucy that she could come back now. He couldn't find her in the dimly lit yard.
'Yeah?' Dean rasped into the phone. It wasn't a number he recognised.
'Dean?'
Lucy's voice; frightened and shaky. 'What the hell happened to you? We thought you were just going to wait outside.'
'I… I…' she began, but any further words were cut off.
'You heard her?' demanded another voice, all too familiar. Dean felt a chill trace a cold path down his spine.
'You still wearing girlie jewellery, Mikey?' he asked. Sam had turned away from the window and was staring at him, wide-eyed and impatient. Dean met his eyes, worried.
'Remember the coffee shop on Main Street, Dean? We're on the roof of it. She'll be splattered across the sidewalk in front of it if you don't hurry.' There was nothing in Michael's voice other than determination; no fear, not even malice. It made Dean's fragile stomach turn over.
Dean opened his mouth to answer, but too late, the line had gone dead. He put the phone down slowly, sighing, then looked up again to meet Sam's eyes. 'Well, Sammy, I'll say it again – your theory's trashed.'
Sam raised an eyebrow, exasperation spreading across his face.
'Why the hell would Michael go for Lucy? Don't think they've met before.'
Sam shook his head. 'Dean, if Lucy was the target, he wouldn't have called you… he'd just have killed her.'
'Don't ask me why he wanted to give us a bulletin, Sammy, but we can't exactly leave him to get on with it.'
'He wants us to go after her, you idiot! Who do you think the target is? He's doing what I did, using a bystander to get at his real target…'
'I thought you were claiming that they target loved ones,' Dean shot back, infecting the last two words with poisonous sarcasm. 'Michael hasn't got much love for us, Sam, sorry to break it to you.'
'Well, he's got to target someone, and he doesn't have much love for anyone. But you saved his life, Dean, and though neither of you like it, there's a connection there.'
Dean scowled at him, muttering angrily under his breath, mostly to disguise the sharp intake of breath as he hauled his weary body to its feet. 'Whatever. We've got to go.'
'We're not going after him half-cocked, you said it yourself,' Sam objected loudly, though there was a note of hopelessness in his voice which said he knew he wasn't going to win this one.
'Yeah? I don't know what I'm talking about, Sammy, you should know that by now. Let's go.'
Sam sighed, and followed. The car keys hit his shoulder, and he caught them reflexively, gaping at Dean's retreating back in surprise.
'You can drive.'
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Dean complained about Sam sticking to the limits all the way to the coffee shop, but offered no explanation as to why he'd given his brother the keys. The coffee shop was closed, now, and the clock visible through the dusty window said it was approaching midnight. They slipped round the back and broke the door on the staff entrance. Prowling the dim corridors, they found stairs, and followed them up, two, three flights. It wasn't a tall building, but it was tall enough, and the sidewalks were hard and unyielding.
The rooftop was stark in the monochrome moonlight, almost entirely flat and clear. Michael sat carelessly slumped near the edge, with Lucy similarly sprawled beside him. Both looked miserable, but there wasn't mush sense of urgency. When the Winchesters exploded out of the stairwell, Michael lurched to his feet, the medallion swinging conspicuously across his chest. He seized Lucy by a handful of her collar and her hair, and staggered nearer the edge, half dragging her with him.
She moved like an automaton, submitting too easily to his grip. A strange look was back in her eyes – the supreme, hopeless indifference Dean had seen at the mental hospital, later at the quarry. That sleeping taint the spirit had left in her was asserting its influence again. She wasn't going to be any help here.
Dean inched closer to Michael, his eyes taking in every detail of the situation. The possibility of a subtle approach had been eliminated by Michael's choice of location – there was no cover here, and no alternative way down – unless they all ended up bypassing the stairs, of course.
Lucy was like a rag doll in Michael's grip. His eyes were fixed on Dean with a mad, hungry light, and he trembled, waiting apprehensively for the brothers to come closer. Dean took a tentative step, and Michael didn't move, so he took another.
Drugged, and floating on the beautiful clarity of the necklace's influence, Michael watched his victim approach. He knew Dean would be armed, knew that he couldn't be careless. But if Dean would come close enough; and if Michael could distract him at the right moment, he'd be vulnerable. Michael knew he'd got him earlier, knew where to strike for maximum effect. The purpose was laid out perfectly in his mind.
The distraction, too, was forming neatly behind Dean's back. A glazed look had come into Sam's eyes, mirroring the one Lucy wore.
Dean stepped closer; he was only a few feet from Michael, now. 'Let her go…' he muttered, without really expecting his words to be heeded, but Michael's hand relaxed abruptly, and she staggered away from him to stand, teetering, way too close to the edge. 'Lucy!' Dean called; desperation and still-present pain lending a rough edge to his voice. She didn't give any flicker of recognition.
Still, at least she was away from Michael. One crisis at a time. Dean reached into the back of his jeans for the revolver – he was close enough now to use it as a club, and all he needed was to take Michael out of the equation. As he moved, Michael let out a strangled yell, flinging out a finger to point at something behind Dean.
'Look at Sam!'
Dean spun round, and his blow missed Michael's head by a foot or more. The image seared before his eyes: Sam, silhouetted against the yellow fog under a streetlamp, toes on the edge, staring straight ahead. Expletives chased each other round his head, but words failed him as a heavy boot burst into his stomach, and stars exploded, red and white, across his vision.
When he could see, hear, feel anything other than pain, tearing him open at the stitches, he was on his knees, gasping. Two, maybe three of Lucy's inexpert stitches had been pulled out of place by Michael's kick. Maybe more – hot, thick blood was bubbling out to soak another shirt. The first thought that came was that he didn't have any more shirts to spare, and hot on its heels, a parallel thought; he didn't have blood to lose, or strength. The gun had slipped from his flaccid fingers, skittering useless across the smooth concrete.
He heard Michael moving behind him, but his eyes were still full of that silhouette in front of him, though he now looked at it through a pale red, blurry veil. He pushed himself up, and the world lurched violently around him. A dark shape rushed past his eyes, and the next second there was a sliver of silver before him, and he knocked it away blindly, wiling his eyes to focus. He grasped Michael's wrist with that surprising strength which springs from need, and forced it back, away, determinedly, one eye still fixed on his brother. Everything was spinning around him in a dizzying whirl of colour. It hurt his eyes to watch it. Desperate, he swung a fist wildly, and this time was lucky. Michael swayed and dropped to his knees. Scrabbling after his gun on hands and knees, Dean turned and knocked the teen unconscious. He moved on past with barely a glance.
'Sam!' he called raggedly. Sam turned. His eyes were cold and full of purpose. Dean staggered a few steps closer, reaching out a shaking arm to pull his brother away from the edge.
'I tried to kill you, Dean,' he said calmly. 'Please understand, I deserve this…'
Dean winced. 'I forgave you last time, didn't I? C'mon, Sam, you know it's that bitch making you do this…'
'You'll be better off-,'
'Don't even say it!' Dean cut him off angrily. 'Look… I need you, Sam. I'm hurt, alright?!' It tore his soul to admit it now, but he could find nothing else to say. 'I'm bleeding out, man, and I can't… I can't finish this alone.'
Recognition flickered in Sam's eyes, and he shuffled back. Dean let out a long breath as Sam took a step away from the edge, then another. Sam shook his head, confusion surfacing in his eyes, the glazed look dissipating.
'Dean? What the…? God…' He took in the blood on Dean's shirt, wide-eyed. Anger filtered into the concern on his face. 'How long have you been hurt for? You… I knew, I knew it! Well, I didn't; I knew something was wrong. Dean, you stupid, stupid freak! Why'd you do that?' he demanded, rage battling with worry in his voice.
Dean gently pushed his hands away and turned wearily.
Michael was sprawled unconscious on the concrete, a bruise darkening slowly on his temple. Lucy was standing uncertainly, staring absently down at the sidewalk. Sam drew in a sharp breath, and hurried over to her, casting anxious looks back at his brother. He settled his hands carefully on her shoulders and steered her away, employing more force when she resisted weakly. The dead look wavered and disappeared from her eyes, and she raised a shaking hand to rub across her face.
'Are you ok?' he asked her, breathlessly, still flicking his eyes over to Dean every few seconds.
'I…' She shook her head, then nodded, and shrugged, wild-eyed, muttering incoherently. 'I don't know. I keep losing myself… something just overwhelmed me, and I couldn't… couldn't… I don't know,' she finished helplessly, searching Sam's eyes for understanding. He nodded. The feeling had scared him, too. He could still feel it, too, suppressed for now, but in him still, like a sleeping serpent waiting to bite.
Dean crawled over to the inert Michael, and cast a disgusted eye over the teen's unconscious form. He fumbled for the medallion with strangely careless fingers, but found it eventually, and yanked it free of its latest victim. Touching it made his skin crawl, but he resisted the urge to pitch it away off the roof. Turning his eyes deliberately away, he thrust it into an inner pocket of his jacket. He wanted to know exactly where it was from now on.
'Sam?' he called, trying to inject some strength into his voice. Miles to go before I sleep…
Sam turned, and hurried over, concern and anger still warring with each other in his expression.
'We got to secure him until we can destroy the necklace,' Dean muttered.
Sam nodded. 'There's a supply closet at the top of those stairs. I noticed they left the key in the door.'
Dean half smiled, exhausted. 'Perfect.' He lurched to his feet, trying to ignore the nausea, the searing pain and Sam's hands reaching out uncertainly to help. 'M'alright,' he muttered, moving off.
Sam and Lucy exchanged glances, and she hurried after Dean, while Sam took Michael's wrists and dragged him, unceremoniously across the rooftop, bumping his inert body mercilessly on the way.
Dean found a length of rope, while Lucy rearranged the mops and buckets in the back of the closet to clear some space. Sam appeared, trailing Michael's body behind him. Dean passed him the rope wordlessly.
'Good idea,' Sam said, crouching down to bind Michael's wrists.
Dean clung to the doorframe, and carefully manoevered himself out of the closet. He took a breath, then stepped back and slammed the door shut, turning the key in the lock seconds before a thud told him Sam had reacted.
'Dean!'
He leaned back heavily against the door, steeling himself for the next step.
'What are you doing?' Sam demanded. He was definitely angry now.
Lucy's protests were quieter, muffled by the door.
'Can't have you committing suicide all over the place, Sammy,' Dean breathed, the words catching in his throat.
'Dean, you said it yourself! You're hurt, you can't do this on your own!'
'Watch me.'
Sam paused, and tried another tack. 'You're going to leave us locked in a cupboard with someone who keeps trying to kill us?' he asked, pointedly.
'So tie him up. Anyway, he never really tried to kill you, just me,' Dean replied, pushing himself away from the door, and limping towards the stairs. 'You tried to kill him, though, once,' he added.
Sam's angry objections, and the solid sound of his shoulder thudding against the door, followed Dean down the stairs. He ignored them, and kept walking. He'd had enough of this hunt. It was time to finish it.
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Hope you've all managed to keep up with this despite alerts being down again. As always, I'd really appreciate any reviews. :D