Beta-reading and general awesomeness by Jackfan2. Any remaining mistakes and foolishness are all mine.
Chapter II
"Hey, Bobby, it's Sam."
The words had barely left his mouth when Bobby started ripping him a new one. Sam just barely managed to pull the receiver from his ear, narrowly salvaging his eardrums from the older hunter's verbal tirade. Wincing, he stared at the phone; even from this distance Bobby's angry shouts were easily discernible.
"Don't ya 'hey Bobby' me, kid! Three weeks without hearing a goddamn word from either of you two id'jits and suddenly it's all 'hey Bobby'! I was worried sick, not knowing if you damn fools were even alive... going off, disappearing like that from the damn hospital! Couldn't you at least pick up a damn phone to let me know everything's alright? Or are you two taking a page out of John Winchester's book and ignoring your goddamn voicemails too?"
Sam sighed, letting the older man rant at will. Truth was, he didn't even know where his cell phone was. The one he was using was Sam Wesson's phone and that one only had fast food places and girls' numbers on it.
Bobby worried, Sam knew that, and the fact that their lives had gotten just a little bit more complicated ever since Dean got out of Hell didn't ease that particular behavior. In fact, it only made it worse.
"Everything's not alright, Bobby," Sam finally managed to wedge in. "Dean's been taken."
"What do you mean 'been taken'?" Bobby asked cautiously, the scolding gone from his tone.
Given everything that had been happening, it was a fair question. Bobby knew that Castiel and Uriel had pretty much snatched Dean right out from under Sam's proverbial nose. Since then, for them, there was being taken and being taken.
"None of our usual players… just two guys and a woman, in a gas station in Ohio, outside Cleveland," Sam told the older man.
"What the hell were you two doing in Cleveland?"
"We… It's a really long story, Bobby, half of which even I don't know," Sam stopped himself before he could start spilling everything that had happened since the last time they had seen Bobby, at Pamela's funeral. Now was not the time.
Sam took a breath and continued, "All I got is a black Ford pickup truck in the name of a Miguel Ruiz, a bottle red-head that was hanging out with him and a big guy who wears army boots size fourteen… any of this ring any bells to you?"
"Sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke," Bobby said from the other side of the line. Sam could almost imagine him scratching his beard in thought. "Why would any of those people mean anything to me?"
"Because they were waiting for him, Bobby," Sam replied, revealing the real reason why he had called the hunter in the first place. "They're all human, as far as I can tell. Just plain human, Bobby. This wasn't some random snatch for kicks or body parts either… they were waiting for Dean."
Bobby was a sharp tack. He understood what Sam wasn't saying. There was only one sort of people that knew enough about the name Winchester to set a trap like that for one of them. "I don't know any hunter by the name Ruiz, but I'll ask around, discretely… how long has Dean been gone?"
Sam looked at the watch, rubbed his face and sighed. "Two hours, give or take."
"Ok… We'll find him, Sam, you'll see," Bobby said in parting. 'In one piece' was left unmentioned because, at his core, Bobby was too much of a realist to actually believe that to be true.
0o0o0o0o0o00o0o
There are a couple of places in a guy's anatomy that are pretty much guaranteed to be extremely painful when messed with. Some of these Dean had learned from his father's lessons, some he had learned from personal experience. And while his father had been more of a theory kind of guy when it came to torture, Alistair was a very... hands-on kind of teacher.
Now whipping and beating a guy silly, breaking fingers and pulling out fingernails, fire hoses and burning sticks, those are all well tested and valid options that have been in use for decades on a row. They are also boring and lacking in artistic originality.
Predictable.
And torture is all about what you can't prepare your body to take; all that surprises you in to screaming the answers that are being sought.
Alistair had been all for the artistic forms of torture.
Take the neck, for example. Everyone knows that the neck is, basically, your connection between the cockpit and the rest of the machine. That fact alone gives you a couple of choices right there.
You can go for the obvious and push the guy's throat in, which, besides being incredible painful and claustrophobic, also prevents the guy from answering any questions. Or you can go for the elaborate and push his throat out… or at least make him feel like that's what you're doing. Two fingers carefully placed on each side of the guy's pipe and you just squeeze. Push hard enough and you actually end up popping the guy's windpipe all the same.
Lower, you have the sternum, or more specifically, the tip of that bone, just at the base, smack-dab in the middle of the chest. Now, this particular spot is a bit tricky to find, but on a long term, proves much more effective than simply breaking a rib or two. Certainly broken ribs can be painful, but the risk of puncturing something that will cause a guy to bleed to death or drown in his own blood in a matter of seconds is too high and therefore, not very productive.
Now this tiny bone… spearhead-shaped, very easy to break and sure to cause internal bleeding, but one that won't turn serious for hours and hours, with the plus side that every time the guy tries to breathe, the fact that the break is right in the middle, makes him wonder if there are knives inside both his lungs.
If you break it the right way, the guy's actually right about that.
Lower still, you can go for the knees. Bony little things that they are, they're not the sturdiest of bones and any well placed blow to the kneecap can easily shatter it or displace it. Either option is valid. And extremely painful.
In the other hand, if the aim is for both humiliation and causing pain, there's always, of course, the guy's balls. Eyeballs are a good place to start, but the ones seating between the guy's legs are much more productive, no pun intended. Now those are, per definition, extremely sensitive. Usually, for good reasons, not so much when under torture.
There are a number of things that can be done down there, but whichever is chosen, the results are always easier to achieve if the guy's aroused. More blood to be spilled, skin more sensitive and prone to be punished.
There are a number of ways you can get that to that particular state of being. The more obvious way, which depending of your own sexual tendencies and personal preferences, can be very pleasant for the torturer as much as it is unpleasant for the tortured; asphyxiation, which, again, presents the same problem of difficult control as the crushed windpipe; and electrical shock way, which requires toys and props.
Either way you chose, it's only when the area is extra sensitive that's when the fun begins. And once that happens, anything goes. Anything.
Usually, by the time Alistair had gone through most of these and finally pulled his blade out to come and play, it was a welcome relief.
Fortunately for Dean, these guys didn't know any of this. He can't really deal with artistic anymore.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Do I know you?" Dean asked. There was no point in denying his identity. Given that they'd been waiting for him in that gas station, it was obvious that they knew exactly who he was. How the hell could they have known his exact location, was what was beyond Dean's understanding. With the millions of gas stations in the country, how could have they guessed the exact one he would be in when not even Dean could've guessed that a couple of hours ago?
Sam had been waiting in the car at the gas station.
He looked around covertly. The truck looked empty now and they were in the middle of nowhere. Dean couldn't see Sam anywhere.
Any other time before their lives had been turned upside down, Dean's first thought at waking up would be to check where Sam was. Now, it had taken him this long to actually think that these yahoos might have caught Sam too. Dean doubted it though.
Somehow, in between Sam's new in charge attitude, the air of command that his mere presence exude and the fact that Sam had single handily defeated a demon who not even an angel had been able to smite, Dean figured that these merry group of hunters wouldn't have stood a chance even if they had tried.
Dean couldn't decide which was saddest. The fact that the concern for his younger brother was no longer the first thing on his mind or that he had failed in avoiding being taken by a group that Sam could've easily defeated.
"You don't know me, but we have a couple of common friends… a couple of dead hunter friends," Tiger, in his army jacket and scruffy boots, spoke. No introduction, no gloating, no tease. Straight to business.
Dean could feel himself starting to sweat. Hunters. Just what he needed right now.
"So, this is what we'll do," the newcomer said, nearing the place where Dean was held up by Mustache and Beetle-Eyes.
He sounded polite and pleasant, like a client ordering a bouquet. Not too cocky, not too excited, just the right amount of glee and emotionless that you would expect from a professional. Which made Tiger all the more dangerous in Dean's book.
"I'll tell you everything that I already know, and then you'll tell everything else. We behave like a couple of gentlemen and part ways in a civilized manner," Tiger went on, carefully and calmly lying his terms of the game. "Everyone goes to bed happy tonight… what do you say?"
Dean kept his mouth shut. Something about the man's poise and attitude made him measure and contain any hardwired, smart-assed reply. This guy knew something, and Dean wanted to know what.
He wasn't disappointed.
"I'll go first... you died last May," he started, looking closely to catch the reaction in Dean's eyes. Satisfied with whatever he'd seen there, Tiger went on. "And then, about four months after that, there's a bunch of messages on a bunch of dead hunters' answering machines from someone claiming to be Dean Winchester and sounding an awful lot like you."
Dean gulped and forced himself to not react in any other form. Fresh out of Hell and still reeling from the fact that an angel had rescued him, the last thing on Dean's mind when the whole rising of the witness mess had happened, was that he really, really should be keeping a low profile. The hunter community was made of a suspicious and deeply paranoid crowd. Dead hunters using the phone was a big no-no.
So, instead, Dean had promptly and loudly announced his return to pretty much every hunter contact on Bobby's phone book. Even if he had thought that his demise had gone unnoticed by other hunters, Dean should have figured that something like this could backfire on him. Apparently, it had.
"And that wasn't even the first time that hunter's have died or disappeared near the Winchesters, is it?" Tiger said, like his nickname-sake, prowling around his trapped prey with hungry eyes. "Gordon and Kubrick showed up dead over a year ago… guess who they were hunting at the time?"
It was a rhetorical question. The man clearly knew about Gordon's obsession with Sam and his anti-Christ crazy theories. Even if they'd had nothing to do with Kubrick's death, it still looked bad.
"Travis too… one day we hear that he's hooking up with John Winchester's kids, the next he's gone."
Tiger paused, looked at Dean, measuring up how much of the revelations had hit home.
Dean met his gaze steadily. The man was too well informed for his liking, which only made him dread what it was that he wanted to know.
"And then," Tiger continued after a moment, "there's the demon- talk... they've been awfully chatty lately."
'Here it comes' Dean thinks, cringing inside at what sort of details those demonic sons of bitches were blabbing about these days. There was plenty to chose, from Sam's demon blood and psychic abilities, to his own trip down under and untimely resurrection.
He and Sam already had Hell and the angry, rebellious part of Heaven on their backs… they really, really didn't need some misguided hunters breathing down their necks too.
"In between the shit and lies that they usually spit out, a couple start making comments about you and your brother… of how you spent your summer rotting in Hell, of how Sam isn't exactly what we might call… what's the word?... Human. Of how the apocalypse is so near that they don't even mind being sent back to Hell, because soon the difference between up here and down there, won't be any different at all," the man said, his voice slowly sinking in to lower, deeper tones. "Following me so far?"
Dean staid silent. He had to admit, this guy's knowledge of the facts, was scarily dead-on. While the Winchester mask of indifference held firm, underneath Dean was starting to squirm and itch to bolt. Bad as it was, though, Dean still sensed that Tiger was in no way finished and a part of him was just curious to know how much more these men knew.
Tiger drew nearer, his gaze mocking Dean, challenging him to deny any of this as he went on, taking his silence for acceptance. "When I got word that the fucking Winchesters and the end of the world were somehow connected with each other- I wasn't even surprised anymore. That, somehow you, Dean, were involved in how the whole mess started and seemed hell bend on having something to do with how it would end. No… what did surprise me was why the hell you would sit on something like this and not do a damn thing to help your fellow man... if you even still rank in that definition!"
Dean stopped breathing. This was bad. How the hell could they known something that not even he was aware of until recently?
It made some sense to him that a few of the demons who had been in Hell at the same time he'd been would know what Dean had done down there. It even stood to reason that a couple of them with pay grades high enough would have heard about the whole prophesy crap. But tell it to hunters? Why risk everything like that? Just to gloat? Not even demons were that dumb.
Tiger's paw hit Dean's head with a snap, calling the younger man's attention back to the here and now.
"Pay attention, 'cause now I'll be telling you what I want to know," Tiger went on, his voice gentle and conspiratorial, like he was imparting some secret. "I want to know what kind of deal you made to get out of Hell, how that's connected to the end of the world, how your sorry ass is linked to it all and how we stop it."
Dean met Tiger's gaze, unflinching, defiant.
The whole group was looking expectedly at Dean as Tiger took two steps back, waiting. Their trust in Tiger's ability to get what he wanted was such that they actually believed that all he had to do was ask and the answers would be provided. Just like that.
The truth, however, was not something that Dean could share with anyone. The truth was something that Dean could barely stand to share with those he trusted, never mind perfect strangers. Perfect, angry and dangerous strangers. Even if he did, they wouldn't believe him anyway.
And since the truth was out of the option pool, there was only one thing that Dean could do. Give free reign to his ass, the smart-ass cheek.
"You know, I should've guessed that a buckets of crazy guy like you would be buddies with Gordon," Dean said, shaking his head as if he didn't believed in the whole nonsense of the thing. "Guess nuts really do come together, like a whole big family of shit-for-brains, crazy-eyed motherfuc–… argh!"
Pepe hadn't liked the label. The brutal kick to Dean's right knee, producing a pop that send a wave of pain and numbness all over his leg, would've send Dean folding in to the ground if it hadn't been for Mustache and Beetle-Eyes still holding him up.
Dean bit his lip, holding the whimper inside and turned murderous eyes on Pepe. The Mexican man was either too confident for his own good or too much of a dammed idiot to realize the danger and threat in that look.
Gingerly putting his foot back down, Dean tested his weight on the leg for a few seconds. The pain was still there, still strong. Yup, something had definitely popped. Dean could already feel his knee swelling up inside his jeans.
"On that... note," Dean went on as soon as he could manage to catch his breath, "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."
Tiger actually seemed offended by that. He closed the distance between the two of them and in one swift move, ripped open the already wrecked shirt Dean was wearing. One fierce pull and Dean's shoulders were bare for all to see. The mark left behind on his shoulder by Castiel's touch was bright red against the pale skin.
"Does this refresh your memory?"
Each finger perfectly outlined, Dean looked at the now familiar burn-mark like he had never seen it before. How could they even know that was there? "Birth mark," he said matter-of-factly. "Had it since I was a little girl."
Whatever retribution Dean was expecting for his smart-assed remark, Tiger wasn't gonna play into it. He simply stared at his prisoner, allowing the knowledge to sink in to Dean's mind that he was at this man's mercy; hard blue eyes unblinking, promising a thousand unpleasant things to follow, giving time for Dean to sweat out all the possibilities. "Take his clothes off," Tiger eventually said, the calmness back in his voice and face. "Shoes too."
The reaction was immediate. Bucking and squirming, Dean tried to break free of the two men holding him. But, between their bulk and the tree trunk at his back, he hadn't much room to move. "You should know that I don't put out on the first date, man," Dean said, forcing the humor and nonchalance in to his voice even as he cringed inside at the turn of events.
Red-hair actually licked her lips as she watched Pepe move closer to reach for Dean's zipper.
The second Pepe was close enough, Dean struck.
The pain in his right knee forgotten, Dean shifted and lashed out with his left leg. The kick landed with solid force in Pepe's crotch, doubling him over. With the Mexican's head down and within easy reach, Dean threw his weight back and swung his legs up, sending the four of them crashing to the ground. Scissoring in midair, he caught Pepe around the neck and locked his ankles around him.
One quick twist and Pepe's neck would snap.
Beetle-Eyes was the first one to recover and react. With a quick move that saved Pepe's life, he delivered a sharp whack, elbow high that caught Dean in the temple. The solid blow landed with enough force to send Dean's head crashing back, connecting with the tree in a sickening thud.
Dean's legs lost some their strength as the world dimmed around him. But the rest of the world wasn't important right then. The only thing that matter in those few seconds was Pepe's life in between his ankles and not letting go of the only advantage that he had so far. Muscles functioning on memory alone, no real conscious thought behind the action, Dean managed to hold Pepe's head hostage between his crossed ankles, both men struggling to stay conscious.
The familiar sound of a gunshot was more than enough to clear the cobwebs from Dean's foggy mind. The discharge sound echoed for a long time in the desert forest. Scared by the harsh sound, birds and other animals scattered, their complaining cries at the unwelcome noise following their hasty retreat.
Dean couldn't help but flinch as the bullet landed inches from his face, lost deep in the tree's bark.
"Enough of this!" Tiger said, for the first time sounding close to losing his temper. The gun, barrel still smoking, was now pointing directly at Dean's head, "Let him go, or the next one will land right between your eyes."
Dean's vision focused enough to see the nine-millimeter that Tiger was aiming at him. Those were odds Dean knew he couldn't beat. With a resigned sigh, Dean unhooked his ankles and released a very red-faced, very pissed Pepe.
Glancing at the big guy, Dean ventured, "No hard feelings?"
Pepe's large fist landed on Dean's mouth with rattling force, adding strength and tune to the ringing inside his head. Dean woozily noticed as the Mexican man readied himself to throw another punch, arm pushed back in a Popeye-likeness that made him look silly instead of menacing.
Dean smiled, a row of red-stained teeth robbing the gesture of any pleasantness.
"What you smiling at, coño? You like pain?"
Dean spit out a mouthful of gunk and blood on the floor, carefully aiming at Pepe's shoes. "You guys are pathetic," Dean said. "You actually believe that the end of the world is coming… and this is what you chose to do to fight it?"
None of the hunters answered him and Dean realized that, deep down, they were just as scared as everyone else, without a clue on what to do.
So they did what was in their power to do.
The next blow was strong enough to send Dean directly in to a deep, dark oblivion.
0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0
There are a couple of things that were never meant to be done while naked. Being frog marched through dense foliage was surely one of them.
Ever since he'd woken up to find himself stark naked and being carried like a side of beef over Mustache's shoulder, Dean had decided that none of these guys would live long enough to see the end of the world. Dean vowed he would end their miserable existences long before any apocalypse could take place, starting with Pepe. Judging by the sizes of the new bruises, the Mexican apparently had no quarrels in beating up a guy when he's already unconscious. Yup, gonna start with him.
Dean hurt in places that he didn't even want to think about. His face felt like raw meat, skin stretched too tight and pulsing with deep throbs where no throb was supposed to beat.
The second Dean stirred awake, Mustache had unceremoniously dumped him on the forest floor without a second thought about branches or rocks that might break the prisoner's fall. After that, things had only improved.
This was not how Dean envisioned spending his day; being led by his bound hands like a stray dog on a leash, and at such a brisk pace that gave him no chance to watch where he stepped. Adding to the hell his right knee was already giving him, somewhere along his forced march, a rock had upgraded itself to a knife and sliced through his foot. Pepe, taking great pleasure in being the one leading Dean along, gave him no time to even limp, which meant that each time Dean put his right foot down to bear his weight, all kinds of pretty stars flashed before his eyes.
More than once, after regaining consciousness, Dean had entertained the idea of telling Tiger the truth. Though, usually it was only after having another exposed body part viciously poked, prickled or slashed by the surrounding forest. But time and again, his mind always came back to the same question: what do you do when the truth is so ludicrous that no one would believe you anyway?
He could just imagine it... 'It's like this: an angel of the Lord named Castiel plucked me out of Hell, not because I was a good little boy and did my homework, but because God needed me to stop the apocalypse, because, apparently, I was the one to start it in the first place! Now, get this, 'cause this is the really funny part: I have no idea how to do that and the angel that is supposed to help me with it... he hasn't a clue either!'
Yeah... Tiger would laugh his ass off on that one. And then shoot him dead.
Speaking of the devil...
"We're here."
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Thank you for the reviews so far! Don't forget to press the pretty button under here and have a nice Easter, all of you who celebrate it!
