High Noon – chpt 5

A/N – I mentioned earlier that there might have to be a small hiatus due to commitments of real life. I don't know when the next chapter will be ready to go up, hopefully within a couple weeks; I will be working on it as much as possible. Please accept my deepest apologies, and sincerest thanks for all of your incredible support and encouragement. I will do everything possible to keep delays between chapters to a minimum. Thank you though, each and every one of you for your generosity, with your time and your reviews. It really means so much more than I'm able to really put into words.

Sincerely,

sifi.

OOooOO

High Noon – chpt 5

by: sifi

OOooOO

Bobby stepped onto the back porch in the late morning light and looked around. The remnants of Laura's pyre were no longer smoking but heat still shimmered the air in that area of the yard. Nothing else seemed to be stirring except Ajax and Gader'el who laid a hand on the hunters' shoulder.

He shook his head, "Anyone ever told me I woulda found respect for a demon I'd'a..."

"Exorcised them?" the weapons' smith asked stepping onto the porch beside the man and dropped his hand onto the canine's head only to receive a slurp from the animal.

Bobby breathed awkwardly, "Killed 'em is more like... but... you get the point," he looked at his pup, wondering if the animal was corrupted or if it just saw the same thing he did.

"I do," the educator nodded, not bothering to take offense. "Your friend Mustardseed will be here shortly. Together we'll show you how to help your friends kill Anunnaki's rebellious lessers."

"Dean was right y'know," Bobby muttered watching the air shimmer, his mind and vision somehow unable to leave the spot where Laura's body had been burned, "Aside from being a teacher... I just don't get how you... and Marax, and Pine'me got made into demons."

Gader'el smiled indulgently, his long blonde locks, so very like Tommy's fell forward, and in a way the familiarity of his surface appearance helped to give the elder hunter comfort. Please... PLEASE... whatever powers there are... please look after those boys.

"Well back in the day the powers weren't all that keen on sharing... still not, far as I know, but the rules have relaxed a bit... mostly because your kind have forced the issue," he explained then motioned Bobby to the shed where they would meet the sidhe warrior and forge the hunters' defenses against the igigi, "And of course with the children being who they are, and the situation itself…" he shrugged, "This is a time of exception I suppose."

Heading down the steps and across the vacated yard Bobby felt the stillness left behind as the teams had dispersed through the veiled realm, each to their destination and their mission. Halfway toward the shed, Ajax returned to the pyre where he'd spent most of the previous night.

OOooOO

The tablets, the tablets... he needs them... Death has returned... nothing made sense and yet somehow these thoughts circled her very essence.

The body that held her could not move on its own, it was dead. She saw only what was possible from the angle of the eye sockets in the skull that kept her captive, and even so, knew she was alone.

Something is important... there was a strange sensation in what used to be her back, the feel of something crackling its way through crisped skin, the way the skin on chicken used to blacken. It was a brittle, dirty feeling that had something to do with a vague kind of stretching that came just before something broke and the remnants of the body she was trapped inside swung lazily to one side then arced back again. The queen's empty throne seemed to call to her, reminding her of something that should have been important.

Spots of light thrown by torches speckled the walls as she reached the apex of the swing and started the return trip. There was an odd pulling sensation in the deep of the fleshy prison's back but surprisingly, there was no pain. There was nothing; emptiness, numbness, nothing but perhaps a faint sensation of pressure as the return swing gave her the opportunity to see the majority of the remainder of the chamber.

There was something that needed doing... she thought as the dark chocolate wall to her far right came into sight. Faint in the dark were lines she could almost make out. Things that should have made sense, I know that language... I know those words...

OOooOO

Time meant nothing here, pain no longer existed. The charred, feathered ends of the bones of the body's hand that stretched before her, toward the door, toward those familiar words carved into its surface, felt nothing. Only impact seemed to be of note, even if it was in just a peripheral sense, just spatial data to be compensated for.

It means something... it's important... she thought the stone floor should be hot, but it wasn't. There WAS no hot or cold.

Inches crept beneath her until she lay before the door and fire erupted. Surprise cast her almost onto her back and from the angle at which she lay, flame filled the crevasses, the lines, the arrows, the language of the Gods as it filled each back side of each of the four panels that comprised the seventh set of gates to the Underworld.

Orange-white light licked, struck and taunted the corpse she had forced to move, threatening the last vestiges of her coherence. THIS is important, she thought staring at the top of the uppermost panel while her mind filled with the first words.

OOooOO

RAWLINS WYOMING –

"This is where it happened huh?" Jack asked in an effort to distract himself from the nausea that came with moving through the veiled realm.

"About twenty miles west of here yeah," Tamara nodded, taking a look down the eerily empty two lane blacktop road.

"Where what happened?" Djinn asked.

"Where Azazel's advance troops were let out, there's a doorway to hell not too far from here," Razakel explained then looked down at the sidhe warrior that stood at knee height, speaking its own language at the ancient crazy-making demon.

"What's he saying?" Tamara asked.

The side of Razakel's host's mouth turned up wryly, "He says that the Chosen one already knows it's a doorway to hell…"

"I'll say," Tamara nodded, "So does Bobby and Ellen and Dean," she confirmed.

"He says we don't need to worry about sealing it, the deed's been done, the trap has been repaired and the doorway's locked again," the demon explained.

"So all we have to do is feed then," Djinn smiled sedately.

"Just make sure you don't bite off more than you can chew mixed breed," the demon smiled despite the djinn's bared teeth and hiss of disapproval for the nick-name. He turned to the two humans present, "Since there's nothing for you to do here other than watch us… if you want to leave you're free to, I assure you, we WILL take care of the cultists…" he offered.

"Yeah y'know I think we're gonna stick around, thanks just the same," Tamara nodded.

"Are you sure?" the demon asked stepping forward, its hand stretched out toward her head, "You should spare your delicate sensibilities…" his voice lilted, something almost hypnotic about it.

"We're sure," Jack snagged his sister-in-law by the back of her jacket, drawing her out of reach of the demon just as the four sidhe escorts tapped the butts of their spears on the blacktop, gathering everyone's attention.

The demon smiled at the djinn and shrugged as the party turned, following the sidhe into the tree-lined road side where they would approach the cult-leaders' house under cover.

OOooOO

The Finger Lakes – New York State

To anyone passing by the scene would have looked peaceful and bucolic; a young teen girl lay nude on a perfectly sized boulder, sunning herself, perhaps even dozing with her hands behind her head in the warmth of mid-afternoon.

And the little girl with the blonde ringlets and cataract glasses that sat with four bronze cylinders would appear to have merely been playing. Until that is, one moved to the opposite side of the boulder.

The little girls' hand snaked into the teen's abdominal cavity, grasping a slick fist full of entrail she leaned to the side, her concentration never wavering from the cylinders in front of her as she took another bite. Chewing absently she picked up one of the bronze pieces, somehow managed to find a seam and ran a segmented talon firmly through the soft metal while whispers in an ancient tongue brought power to the fore. Sliding those piercing talons into the new seam, the creature inside the child continued to speak, gently unrolling the bronze. From the opening poured a fine stream of dust until the rend was split wide when the rest simply seemed to 'poof' out onto the ground as fine as ash.

With the first cylinder opened, the creature tore off the end cap, tossing it over the child's shoulder into the water and reached for another bite of entrail as it set the straightened bronze tablet down and proceeded onto the second one.

The process was repeated, the ash from within the pieces simply puffed to the ground, decayed and eons old ballast most likely meant to keep them weighted and upright touching the outside air for the first time in ages upon ages of man. The ancient deity straightened this piece as well and laid it beside the first one.

Again and again, twice more the same ritual, incantation, puff of ballast, and straightening of the metal until all four rectangular panels lay two by two.

The ancient creature wearing the little girl took one last slurp of entrail and set about rearranging the four pieces. When two edges that were in proper position met, a burst of copper colored energy sealed them together. In very little time, with all four pieces in the proper position, a land shape outline he'd seen for the first time just the day before showed him the entryway he needed.

From the satchel he unrolled the map of this land the pulsing wave of copper energy visible as it rippled across the face of the tablet map, he dragged his talon along the path until it stopped in a placed called Idaho.

With the place marked in mind and on the paper, the marauder rolled the map, returned it to the satchel and picked the slab of bronze up from the pile of ash upon which it rested.

Blood poured down the boulder from the teen's body, a blackish tarry pool had formed in the sand until rivulets created tiny tributaries, carrying the life giving essence into the ash where the heart of the pile gave a shudder before a faint coppery spark took hold.

Content that he had what he needed, a route to the underworld, the way into the dragon's lair where he could destroy the keeper of the sacred tablets and carry them away for himself; he strode with his tools into the line of trees and hid them. Moments later, finding a small clearing he could drain, he lay down, his form breaking apart, mingling with the earth around him.

Far to the west, midway through this land, he could feel rising power, but he was a step ahead, and with that knowledge, he filled his mind with fantasies of what he would make when he was done destroying the very universe from which he'd been driven. When all was done, he would build his own universe, and he would rule supreme over all life.

OOooOO

Alberta, Canada

"You go with Pinem'e around the front, Berith and I'll come up the rear and take 'em out, your job is to make sure none of them get away, got it?" Ellen asked her daughter.

Jo nodded checking her weapon, "Got it."

"She won't fire on a human until its too late and it's going to get her killed," Berith told Ellen.

"I will," she looked from the demon host to her mother's eyes, "I will. I won't let you down."

"You won't mean to but you will," he pushed.

"You ever heard the saying, if y'can't say something nice don't say anything at all?" Ellen asked Berith.

The hosts' mouth stretched in a parody of a smile, "Ahhh good old Walt… too bad he didn't practice what he tried to preach."

"Stay under cover as long as you can," Ellen instructed, fighting every instinct that wanted to reach out and grab her daughter and send her back with the sidhe, but their presence was the only reason she didn't.

The quartet crouched in the shadows of a neighboring yard watching as Jo, Pinem'e and the other two sidhe moved around to the front. Turning her head between the sidhe female on her right and Berith on her left, she chose expedience knowing he was bound to answer a direct question with the truth, "Is there a reason all this is happening tonight?"

The demon grimaced as the sidhe tried not to smile, "Yes."

"Why?" she asked.

The demon sighed, "They know HE's come."

"How?" She asked.

He shook his head, "Maybe demons, spirits, maybe they recognized the signs, I really do not know," he acknowledged, "Now… stop asking questions," he clenched his teeth, his eyes blazing anger as he added, "Please."

She gave a curt nod as they turned their focus back to this cult leaders' yard and the nearly dozen humans around a bonfire that shot almost twelve feet high. It took a moment before Ellen really digested what was going on.

On a chair, two people appeared to be nearing orgasm. Tied to the ground a few feet away, a man and woman, both stripped naked, were being skinned in patches with gleaming blades. In another area of the yard, a man had been bound with his back to a tree, he'd also been stripped naked and barely moved when the cult member before him ferociously beat him with a whip that looked like it had metal woven into it. And lastly it appeared that on the far side of the fire, two men and a woman were taking their turns raping a teenage girl who was far beyond putting up a fight.

"Oh dear God in heaven…" Ellen breathed barely able to hold her rising gorge, "I think they just made Sam's case."

"Looks like a helluva party t'me," Berith grinned.

"I have to ask one more."

He rolled his eyes and nodded his permission.

"As far as you can tell, are any of them demons?"

He chuckled, sighed and shook his head, "Not a one."

Ellen nodded, met eyes with the two sidhe warriors who nodded their readiness, then turned back to Berith, "You ready?" she asked feeling foolish for doing so.

He nodded his hosts' head and licked his lips, "Oh so very…" he took her hand in his bringing it to his almost glowing grin, "Come kill with me."

Together the demon, hunter, and two sidhe warriors readied their weapons and charged into the fray.

OOooOO

tbc.

Please R&R.

Thank You.

sifi