Gimme Shelter – chpt 7.
By: sifi
OOooOO
"Wow... you look terrible," Sam leaned forward once Laura returned from the bathroom and gingerly lowered herself onto the couch beside Dean who shot him a scowl but concurred. "We can finish this up in the morning y'know."
She smiled loosely as the elder Winchester's lips pressed to her temple and his fingers combed through her hair, "I'm not quite back up to par yet... doc said it could take a while."
Dean frowned turning her to face him, concern flashed through his eyes, "Why don't you stretch out?" he suggested glancing at Sam who seemed to be on the same wavelength. He gave her his most charming smile and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, "You can territorialize me tomorrow." When her hand rose to his cheek he turned wondering how he'd ever jeopardized this.
Slowly she nodded, "I'm gonna go call it a night then."
"Go?" Dean questioned, "No," he shook his head, "stay... here... with me. Just sleep." He asked. It wasn't anything unusual for them anyway. If the three of them were together it wasn't uncommon for the two of them to share a bed. From the beginning they'd made it a practice that if they wanted to be alone they would either get a different room or ask Sam to go shopping or something knowing the young man would eagerly leave them be.
Her eyes flicked to her purse, there were still a couple pills in there if she needed them, and so she nodded.
OOooOO
In the teenage girl's bedroom, just a few miles down the road a tendril of smoky shadow that began as a manifestation of someone else's will slowly smiled. The body of gray moved, separating until it was bent around a crescent of almost white. It could feel the pull and call of its mother, but in this first instant of self-awareness it chose not to heed it. Instead it slithered down the wall until it reached the child it had been watching.
It sensed life and strength and power and it desired them. As it slid into the child seeking the source of its energy, it could still feel the call of mother. It felt heat, crumbling charred paper kind of heat then it was free and mother's call was gone. Somewhere deep inside there was the memory of red rock, warmth and swirling currents of energy it had been called from when it was only a thoughtform.
As it fed on the child it came to know the place of its origin, the same place where other entities waited to emerge from the darkness and into the light, and it knew it would set them free, it only had to grow strong enough to get there to the vortex it once called home and the energies it called kin.
When the child had no more it took to the shadows slithering out into the night to begin its journey.
OOooOO
"She should be resting... recuperating somewhere safe." Sam whispered motioning to the bed where Laura had pretty much crashed the instant she lay down.
Dean nodded and looked from the woman to his little brother, "Lilith was using your powers bypass the seal." Seal?... Seals... what about seals?
Sam's gaze snapped to him, he hadn't realized Dean knew that much, "Yeah," he croaked.
"Did you have any awareness at all? Anything? Did you have any idea what was happening? Or what she was doing?" he asked but didn't look at the younger man, he was afraid of the answer he might get.
"No," Sam's hand fell to his shoulder, "the Asag had me locked in this... alternate reality, this head trip... kinda like your djinn trip but... this was worse, the hounds tore you apart right in front of me, Lilith had taken over Ruby's host... the bill came due and I couldn't stop it... she had me convinced I buried you out in some... salt plain... and I didn't believe her. But when I went to dig you up your body wasn't there anymore." He shuddered while trying not to remember the sound of the hounds tearing Dean to pieces in that long ago living room, "At some point," he swallowed hard, "the Asag ran out of poison so that last time that Lilith was... the last time she was..." he shook his head.
"You don't have to say it," Dean assured him but this time didn't look at his little brother because he knew Sam wouldn't want him to see him struggling like this.
"Yeah... she uh leaned in... and told me what she'd done." He drew long and hard on the last half of the beer, "She told me..." he stopped, unable to go on and still somehow surprised by the depth of the pain thinking about it all brought back up. "We have to find her and kill her Dean. We can't let that child be born."
"She cannot be allowed to succeed." He heard a soft masculine voice he somehow knew even though it didn't belong to anyone he could name. "Did you hear that?" he asked Sam.
"Hear what?"
"That voice... a guys' voice."
Sam shook his head, "Maybe someone from the other room?"
"Yeah," Dean nodded then picked up the thread of conversation, "Anyway, you don't know it's gonna be evil Sam... it is yours too y'know." He glanced up, "could turn out emo instead."
Sam snorted wetly and got himself under control, "Jerk."
"Bitch." Dean retorted comfortably and shouldered him.
"So, why'd you ask now when you haven't before?"
"I want to know exactly what that bitch did to her. I want to know HOW she killed my child. I want to know if we'll ever be able to have one. I want to know why almost two weeks after the attack she looks like I think she might have the same night it happened."
"Imdugud was there just seconds too late, he's the one who found her and got her to a hospital," Sam frowned and startled, "I don't know how I knew that..."
"Perfect, no one better to look after her while we finish with this stalker crap once and for all." Dean nodded.
"You really think getting this person riled up enough to show themselves is a good idea?"
"I think getting our asses to a location that's gonna keep collateral read human damage as low as possible is a damned good plan to start with." He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a demi-god.
OOooOO
Just a few miles down the road from the motel where all the occupants were finally sleeping, in a three bedroom ranch house a mother entered her daughter's room to kiss her goodnight and screamed.
OOooOO
Dean rolled onto his side, the ground hard and biting into his left shoulder. It hurt more and more the older he got and with the number of times he'd been shot, nailed, hammered, stuck with hot pokers, had it shattered and the bone reconstructed and replaced, it was no wonder. He also knew he was dreaming. 'This is going to be important...' he told himself.
"Mmmshit..." he grumbled breathing in the familiar scent of old dirty motor oil and decaying metal.
"Dean."
There was that voice again, the one he recognized but didn't.
"Mm?" he sat up quickly, wincing and scratched his bed head.
"You have to tell Sam. You can't keep shielding him from this."
Now on his feet his belly filled quickly with dread as layer after layer of memories stole his breath and forced him to double over. 'This isn't the same dream...' he didn't even know why he bothered thinking that. He suddenly knew exactly what was going on, and he suddenly knew everything all over again. It was the same everything that had tried to crush him while he was in the hospital room watching Sam for signs of consciousness. With the weight of it all returned to him, he could feel it pressing in on him, but the voice continued.
"It's not really a dream, we've been over this before. It's the only way we can talk while your wards are up."
He looked at the owner of the voice, 'The rumpled trench coat, the bad haircut...' "I know you." He muttered scratching his head again.
"Yes you do. I'm Castiel."
"You're... Castiel." They said together, "You came to me in the hospital in New Castle a couple weeks ago... that night I almost died... again."
The rumpled man seemed to want to smile, "The night you DID die."He corrected.
Time seemed to race backwards, it was as if the ground moved around him, but for a moment, before he returned to the memory of their initial meeting, something happened. Dean looked down and saw blackness beneath his feet, but before he could breathe to ask a question...
... he was once again looking up through a hazy film as red splattered off to the right of his vision and somewhere off to the left a single long note sounded and someone yelled, "He's crashing!"
Breath leaked out of him and he felt the burning of his chest and belly torn to ribbons and his senses exploded with memories.
It took a moment before he could breathe again and when he did, 'Wow... man I looooove morphine!' he thought while smiling goofily into some seriously bright blue eyes looking down into his.
"Dude... you're a wreck, they should let you guys get some sleep." He muttered.
"C'mon Dean. Let's go for a walk." The warm voice suggested and he really wanted to.
"Mmkay... think I should though? I mean I'm not gonna rip up your handiwork right?"
But before he knew it he was standing beside the man who he noticed was looking very rumpled in a trench coat that really needed to be pressed, 'that's why I like leather,' he thought turning back as someone in a yellow Universal Precautions gown ran past them.
"What's going on?" he asked and tried to follow but the man in the trench coat turned him back.
"Nothing for you to worry about," he assured Dean as they left the hospital and meandered through a nearby park, "My name is Castiel."
"Dean Winchester," he offered his hand and felt lingering warmth suffuse him as the man gripped it.
"We have a job for you Dean. You and your brother."
"Sam! Oh God! Sammy! He's in trouble... I gotta find him!" he nearly panicked but that warm hand dropped onto his shoulder, and that strange soft but somehow powerful voice assured him.
"You will. Believe me when I tell you this IS more important."
At this Dean turned to face the haggard looking man, "Buddy I don't know who you are but nothing, do you understand me NOTHING is more important than saving my brother."
"How about saving the world?"
"HAH! Nice try, but we just saved the entire freakin' UNIVERSE... the world should be a piece of cake after that!" Dean scoffed.
Castiel nodded and seemed to want to smile again, "We know you did, and that's one of the reasons you and Sam have been chosen."
"Chosen for what?"
"You know the demon Lilith?"
"Not in a biblical sense but yeah." Dean nodded.
This time Castiel DID smile.
"She held the contract on your soul when you made the deal for Sam."
"What!?" Dean asked, he remembered that bitch of a thief Bella saying something to that effect just before her own contract came due, but he didn't believe her, especially when they realized the crossroad demon and apparently her hounds as well, had been killed.
"The ally of yours who killed the crossroad demon only postponed the inevitable," Castiel continued and though Dean didn't want to hear it all, he knew he had to. Somehow he knew his very soul depended on it. "The lord has certain rules, and by making the deal you broke two of them. First and foremost you offered your own soul, you de-valued something so precious that angels and demons have been fighting over them for millennia. For that alone you will go to hell."
He looked at the young man and shook his head, reading the protest right out of his mind, "IT doesn't matter that it was for Sam, it wouldn't have mattered if it was for your father, or your mother. In the eyes of the lord every soul is equally valuable and you devalued yours. It's a hell-worthy offense."
"And second?" Dean barely whispered and felt himself swallow hard, behind them, attached to this Castiel's shadow was something that looked like folded wings, 'demons can have wings too... who's team are you really playing on?' he wondered.
"You've openly worked with demons," he once more halted Deans protest before it could hit the air, he held up his hand, "that's actually more of a... I think the word is, "tisk tisk?" offense but there are some of us that are a little unnerved by that willingness to work with 'the enemy', so when the time comes, you'll need to beware."
"So when I die I'm going to go to hell because I willingly sacrificed my own SOUL to save my brother!?" He ground between clenched teeth, "I guess no good deed really DOES go unpunished... I mean what the Fff...HELL man?"
Beside him Castiel shrugged, "You see Sam in many ways as your own son right?"
"Yeah... sometimes."
"How would you feel if he traded possession of his soul for another?"
"No way I'd let it happen!"
"Why?"
Slowly Dean nodded, "Alright I get it... but can't we... you know... a slap on the wrist some time in purgatory? Or Tartarus? I'll take the rock from that guy who's gotta push it uphill for eternity..."
"It doesn't work like that." Castiel smiled tightly but shook his head.
Crestfallen Dean turned the conversation back to something familiar, "So since I only have until I die to do anything worthwhile... let's go back to Lilith, how's she fit into all this or was that just about the contract?" he asked.
Castiel turned to face him, "No, there's more... you may not remember it right away though."
"Do you remember what your friend Jim taught you and Sam about the number of the beast?"
"What? Six Six Six?" Dean asked.
Castiel nodded.
"Yeah some of it... like... it's the number of locks on his cell in hell or something like that but it only takes like ten of 'em to be opened before he gets free or something like that." Dean shook his head feeling more than a little woozy.
"It's closer to one tenth of them... sixty six seals break and Lucifer walks free." Castiel explained.
"So what's Lilith got to do with it? She got the hots for the king of the unholies or what?"
Castiel looked at him, "She is breaking the seals."
"Well that ain't good...so what you want me and Sammy to help stop her? No problem I got issues with the bitch anyway... she nearly drove us nuts last year... course then there was Nergal and his little uprising... had to take care of that y'know?"
"We know." Castiel nodded, "But there's a problem Dean."
"What problem?"
"Your soul is held in contract BY Lilith. You literally can NOT act against her so long as that is the case."
"Who the hell are you dude? Are you some kind of DaVinci Code half priest half scholar or something?" Dean asked.
"My name is Castiel and I am an angel of the Lord."
Dean swallowed hard as the shadow of the angel's wings became visible. There was nothing he could say, as much as he didn't want to believe it he did. "So... if the very demon we're supposed to go up against holds the contract on my soul... what can I do?"
The angel reached toward him and he felt himself begin to fall, "You can go to hell."
OOooOO
"Guh!" Dean breathed with the memories returning completely to him, everything from his first encounter with this angel Castiel, to the decades he spent in hell and everything he endured, as well as every travesty he perpetrated with his own hands. 'I enjoyed it!... Eventually.' Disgusted with the memory, his gaze drove deep into Castiel's while the angel stood rooted to the spot and waited.
He remembered sitting in Sam's room after getting the boy back, feeling as if his entire world had shattered because in a fleeting moment between sleep and wakefulness, when Sam had touched his arm, he remembered it all. 'Thank God Sam needed me... I don't know if I could have lived with it for this long...' he thought.
"You sent me to HELL!" he stormed at the angel.
Castiel shook his head, "The deal you cut sent you down, I'm the one who gripped you tight and pulled you out of perdition."
He stepped forward as Dean acclimated to the memory of the pain of forty years spent in hell brought on in four minutes of physical Earthly death, "and I CAN send you back."
"Oh yeah? What about the job you wanted me and Sam to do..." 'there's something about the number forty... what is it about forty? Is it holy?... Am I done? When I die again will I have to go back? Do I get another chance?' he wondered.
"That contract has been satisfied, if it wasn't you wouldn't be here you know this. Thirty three seals have been broken Dean, you have to tell Sam everything, time is running out and our side is losing warriors every day. You must tell him, or I will." Castiel said firmly.
Slowly Dean nodded, once again shoving aside the anguish of what he'd done, "I didn't know..." his voice shook as he faced the angel with tears in his eyes, "I thought... I couldn't have known... no one escapes..."
"You were never supposed to know that you might be brought back out. To give you knowledge of the possibility would have been the real torture." Castiel explained, then motioned to the suddenly open barn doors, "Go. Tell Sam. It's time."
Dean felt his eyes snap open while his breath shuddered in his chest. His arms wrapped tight around the woman with him and as the night wore on he rocked her gently and in between the occasional sob, simply tried to remember to breathe.
OOooOO
Tbc.
Please R&R.
Thanks.
Sifi.