Chapter Ten: I Know What You Did Last Summer
Present Day...
"So Daddy's an angel who was a little too enthusiastic about his job and that makes you the black sheep of the family, eh?" Dean said. They were sitting in another bar at a small round table, the air thick with smoke and the 80's rock wheezing out of the ancient jukebox in the corner, nursing beers and watching Sam run a con on a pool player.
"We've already been over this, Dean," Eli said wearily. Her head pounded and she was tired, tired enough that she was starting to get bitchy and definitely too tired to be sitting here shooting the shit with no case in sight. All she wanted at that moment than a deep soft bed and about a million years of sleep.
"Yeah, I know, but it's a little hard to swallow," Dean said, taking a long drink, his eyes never leaving his brother, who was weaving drunkenly as he tried to steady the pool stick. "I mean, come on, angel spawn? Magical guns? Clarence getting her wings? It's a bit much, don't you think?"
"You ring a bell and I'll rip out your fucking throat," she snapped. "Plus, you were pulled from hell by an angel, Sam's got demon powers, and your gun is actually magical."
"Touché," he said, setting his beer down on the table. "Well, it looks like I've got to save baby brother from losing all of our hard-earned money. Poor kid just can't hold his drink." He winked at Eli and ambled away.
Eli rested her elbows on the table and pressed her thumbs into the edges of her eye sockets, right below her brows, like she could lift the front of her skull and alleviate some of the pressure inside. She couldn't decide if she was pleased or irritated that her secret had gotten out so quickly, but despite her general grumpiness, she was leaning toward pleased. The two brothers had enough of their own supernatural problems that they barely batted an eye at Eli's story.
Plus, she thought, dropping her hands from her face and casting her gaze idly around the room, hanging around with them certainly meant that she would be seeing a lot more of Cas in the real world. She knew it was wrong – hell, it was blasphemous—to think about her angelic friend that way, but she couldn't deny the little jump of excitement deep in her belly whenever she saw him. It was hard to think of his appearance as just a vessel; she had known him that way for six years, as he trained her, stood by her, showed her who she was. And besides, she thought, taking a sip of beer, heaven hated her anyway, so a little extra blasphemy couldn't hurt.
Suddenly she was jerked out of her reverie by the sight of Sam and Dean having a tense conversation with a woman at the bar. Eli couldn't see her face at first, but when her head turned she immediately recognized the monstrous visage of a demon. She leapt to her feet and pushed her way to the bar as fast as she could.
"Oh look, and your little guard dog is here, too," the demon said as Eli approached, hand raised. Sam stopped her by grabbing her arm.
"Eli, no! It's okay, she's here to help. Her name is Ruby."
"She's a demon, Sam," Eli said, struggling a little in his grip. Dean snorted.
"That's what I've been trying to get through his thick skull."
"She's cool, I promise," Sam said. "She's helped me a lot. You just…" He sighed deeply. "You're gonna have to trust me."
Eli glared at the demon, who smirked back at her; through the nasty, oozing image Eli could barely see the attractive young woman underneath. "Fine," she snapped. Sam didn't believe her.
"So if I drop your arm, you'll be okay?" he asked.
"I said fine!" She jerked her arm out of his grasp and rubbed it. "Man, way to give me Indian brushburn, jackass."
"Tell her what you told us," Sam urged Ruby. The demon tossed her black hair over her shoulder and uncrossed her legs, looking smug.
"A girl named Anna Milton escaped from a locked ward yesterday. The demons want to find her. Badly."
"You know why?" Eli asked coldly.
"We were hoping you could tell us," Sam said in a soft voice, resting his elbow on the bar and giving her an intense stare. Eli shook her head, tugging down the sleeves of her long-sleeved shirt and pulling her hair into a messy bun. It looked like her lazy evening of aspirin and Benadryl was going to have to wait.
"I'm not really tuned into Angel Radio. Mostly I only hear things when they want me to hear them. I'm as in-the-know as you are. But I'm guessing the idea is to find her first, am I right?"
"That's what I said," Sam agreed.
"And I said that we're already working a case," snapped Dean stubbornly, crossing his arms over his leather jacket, his almost delicate mouth twisted in distrust and hate.
"No we're not," Eli said.
"Yes, we are."
"No, we're not."
"Yes, we…"
"Guys!" Sam held up his hands, then turned to Dean. "Look it's two to one…" He glanced at Eli nervously. "Isn't it?"
She nodded, signaling to the bartender for another beer. "Looks that way."
"This system is flawed," Dean groused, but gave in. "So the hospital Anna escaped from - it got a name?"
The girl Anna clearly had some kind of psychic power, they discovered after a trip to the hospital. At her house, they found nothing but the dead bodies of her parents and the stink of sulfur.
Eli felt a pain in her chest as she knelt by the two corpses. She couldn't imagine her parents lying there. She hadn't even visited them in over two years. At times like these, she wondered if she had made the right choice, walking away from everything she loved into a world of near-certain death, where even heaven itself hated her.
"Eli, you okay?" Sam asked, crouching next to her. She nodded fiercely, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Fine," she said, standing. "Where are we going now?"
Dean held up a photo in a frame. "Church," he said grimly.
The three of them entered the church attic with guns drawn.
"Anna?" Sam called out. He motioned for Dean and Eli to put away their guns. "We're not gonna hurt you. We're here to help." He paused, but the room stayed silent. "My name is Sam. This is my brother, Dean, and our friend, Eli."
After a moment of hesitation a red head peeked out from behind a screen. "Sam? Not Sam Winchester?"
Sam glanced back at Dean and Eli with raised eyebrows. "Uh, yeah."
The woman moved into the light skittishly, like a wounded deer. She was thin, breakably so, and her big eyes studied the trio with hesitant, unbelieving wonder.
"And you're Dean. The Dean?" she asked, hope lifting her voice. She pushed a curtain of red hair away from the hollow edges of her face, her fingers long and delicate. Eli felt like she could blow on her and she would crumble into a pile of salt and bone.
Dean's expression flitted between impressed, confused, and prideful. "Well, yeah. The Dean, I guess," he said, puffing out his chest.
Anna rushed toward them as if unable to help herself. "It's really you!" she exclaimed, seizing Dean's hands. "Oh, my God. The angels talk about you. You were in hell, but Castiel pulled you out, and some of them think you can help save us. And some of them don't like you at all. They talk about you all the time lately. I feel like I know you." She turned to Eli. "And you! Elijah Grant! The Nephilim. Oh, you're so very important to them, you don't even know, and they're not happy about it. They call you an Abomination. But I think you're doing God's work."
There was a pause as everyone absorbed this information and Anna just beamed happily. "Sooo…." Dean started, scratching the back of his neck. "You talk to angels?"
Anna shook her head fiercely. "Oh, no. No, no way. They probably don't even know I exist. I just kind of... overhear them."
Eli gaped at this, falling out of step with the conversation for a few crucial seconds. All she could think of was how much Heaven disliked anyone intruding into its territory, and how very fucked everyone was going to be when the angels found out.
Eli was shaken out of her dark thoughts when Anna turned inexplicably to her and asked, as if needing the reassurance of another woman: "Hey, um, do you know - are my parents okay? I didn't go home. I was afraid."
Eli's mouth went dry. How was she supposed to answer that? Unbidden, the image of Anna's dead parents flooded her mind, except this time it was Eli's parents lying in their own blood. Eli swallowed hard, refusing to meet the redhead's eyes.
"I, uh…"
At that exact moment, Ruby rushed in. Eli had never been so happy to see a demon in her life.
"You got the girl," Ruby said, glancing around nervously. "Good, let's go."
Anna screamed, backing up so fast Eli was afraid that she would trip over the old carpet. "Her face!"
"It's okay, Anna," Eli said, moving quickly to her side. "I know, I can see it too. But she's here to help."
"Yeah, don't be so sure," Dean muttered.
"We have to hurry," Ruby said as fast as she could, practically jogging in place. "A demon's coming - big-timer." She looked at Dean, and even with the image of the demon underneath Eli could see the blatant panic in her eyes. "We can fight later, Dean."
He ignored her look of fear, instead snarling: "Well, that's pretty convenient - showing up right when we find the girl with some big wig on your tail?"
"Dean, I think she's telling the truth," Eli called from the back of the room, cradling a hysterical Anna in her arms.
"I didn't bring him here," Ruby insisted. "You did. He followed you from the girl's house. We got to go. Now."
"Dean!" Sam exclaimed, pointing, and all of their heads whipped to witness one of the creepiest things Eli had ever seen: thick blood dripping like viscous tears down from the eyes of a Virgin Mary statue.
"It's too late," Ruby said grimly. "He's here."
"Eli, take Anna to the closet," Sam said in a terse voice. She complied, tucking the terrified girl into the confined space.
"Everything's gonna be okay," she whispered, not believing her own words. "Just stay very quiet." She shot Anna a brief smile and then rushed to join the brothers.
"Now's not the time to bellyache about Sam going dark side," Ruby was saying. "He does his thing, he exorcises that demon, or we die."
"No!" Eli yelped, just as the demon, in the guise of an older white man, burst into the room. Sam held up his hand instinctively. The demon smirked.
"That tickles," he drawled, flinging his opponent down the stairs. "You don't have the juice to take me on, Sam."
Eli pulled out her guns, but she couldn't make them flare. She tried again, pouring all of her strength into the metal, but all she could make them do was flicker weakly. She looked up at the demon's rotted face, scared and confused. He was waving a finger at her.
"Uh uh, don't even try it, little Nephilim. You're not even close to Sammy's strength, and even he can't make me go ouch. Trying too hard would just drain all of your life force, and we don't want that, do we? Especially not when we have so much to discuss." He waved his hand and sent Eli flying to the back of the room. "I'll deal with you later."
Eli crashed through a screen and into a table, sending it shattering to the floor. She lay in a heap, stunned and surrounded by splintered wood. Someone screamed. After a moment her vision cleared and she hauled herself to her feet, stumbling dizzily. The back of her head felt damp; she touched it, and her fingers came away red with blood.
Suddenly Sam and Dean were running at her. Dean grabbed her arm, propelling her toward the stained-glass window. "Jump!" he yelled in her ear, giving her just enough time to throw her arms up and protect her eyes before all three of them shattered the glass and went flying to the ground.
"Are you almost done?" Dean shouted from the bathroom, his voice thick with irritation and pain.
"I'm going as fast as I can," Eli said from her spot on the bed. She pulled another stitch through the gash near Sam's shoulder, trying to make it as clean and even as possible. Dean marched shirtless out of the bathroom to glare at them.
"Good, 'cause you know I got a dislocated shoulder over here."
"I'll pop it back when she's finished," Sam said, wincing and taking another swig from the whisky bottle.
"Hold still," Eli commanded, threading the last stitch. "I'm almost done."
"You know, what I don't get is, if you have these super-special angel powers, why can't you just, you know, lay your hands on us and be done with it?" Dean asked, watching them from the bathroom doorway. Eli frowned and stuck her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated.
"Because," she said, knotting the end of the string. "I have very limited healing powers. Just cleaning up the wound on the back of my own head took out most of my juice. Any more and I'd probably be convulsing on the floor with a bloody nose. Done!" She pulled away from Sam to scrutinize her handiwork, then turned to Dean with a wry look, the shadows under her eyes tellingly prominent. "I guess you could say I'm a fighter, not a lover."
Dean shook his head and directed the next question at Sam. "So, you lost the magic Knife, huh?"
"Yeah, saving your ass," Sam huffed, standing and stretching carefully. He inspected the row of neat stitches, gave Eli a quick smile of thanks, and shrugged his shirt back on. "Who the hell was that demon?"
"No one good," Dean said grimly. "We got to find Anna."
Sam walked over to Dean and placed one hand on his shoulder, the other on his arm. "Ruby's got her. I'm sure she's okay." He gritted his teeth in preparation. "All right. Come on. On three. One..."
With a startling crack and a gasp of pain from Dean he reset the dislocated joint.
"You sure about Ruby?" Dean asked, wincing and rubbing his shoulder. "'Cause I think it's just as likely she used us to find radio girl and then brought that demon in to kill us."
"I agree with Dean," Eli said, kicking off her boots and sitting cross-legged on the bed. She felt disgusting, the hair on the back of her head still matted with blood, her shirt grimy with sweat. "How do we know she's really doing this to protect Anna? Why hasn't she called to tell us what's going on?"
"Because that demon is probably watching us right now, waiting to follow us right back to Anna again. That's why he let us go." Sam seemed so sure of himself that Dean snorted as he pulled on a black shirt and picked up the bottle of whiskey from off the ground.
"You call this letting us go?" he asked, taking a long drink and sitting on the bed next to Eli. He offered it to her and she accepted, wincing as the liquid burned her throat. The boys continued to argue, but all Eli wanted to do was shower. Or go to sleep. She felt like little weights were attached at the corner her eyelids, dragging her down. She missed the days when sleep meant a night full of hunting dream-demons with Castiel. Nowadays she had only nightmares.
"Hey, and I'm not trying to pick a fight here," Dean was saying, holding up his hands placatingly. "I mean, I really want to understand. But I need to know more. I mean, I deserve to know more."
"Because... " Sam said in a halting, oddly emotional voice. "She saved my life."
And then he told them a gross and entirely too-explicit story.
And then Ruby showed up wearing a maid.
And then Eli realized that it was going to be one very long, showerless, sleepless night.
Fuck.
At the cabin Anna immediately rushed to Eli and fell into her arms. Eli rubbed her back and murmured what she hoped were calming words as she watched Dean and Ruby argue on the other side of the room. She didn't know why the girl seemed so attached to her. Maybe it was because she was the only other female who wasn't a demon. Or maybe it was because of her status as heavenly bodyguard. (Mostly useless heavenly bodyguard, her mind amended nastily.) Either way, it was disconcerting. The only person Eli had turned to for comfort in the past six years was Bobby Singer, and his comforting skills usually involved insults to her intelligence, self-medicating with alcohol and shooting tin cans off of a fence.
Anna was tall, a bit taller than Eli, but she was hunched over so that they were eye to eye. "Hey, do you know… are my parents okay?" she asked tentatively. "I'd love to call them and let them know I'm safe, they must be freaked…"
She trailed off, noting the pained look in Eli's eyes. "What?" she asked, taking a step back. "Eli, what is it?"
"Oh shit, Anna…" Eli mouthed the words awkwardly for a few seconds before finally spitting them out. "Anna, I'm so sorry, but your parents…they didn't make it."
Anna backed away, her hands covering her face. "No, oh no no no…"
Sam guided her onto a bench. "Hey, hey now…" he said, with a soothing ease that Eli could only envy. Anna began to weep into his shoulder.
"Why is this happening to me?" she cried, rocking back and forth like a child. "Oh, God…"
"I don't know," Sam said helplessly, looking at the others. "I wish I did."
Suddenly Anna stopped crying and sat up, her eyes glazed over. "They're coming," she whispered. Eli concentrated, hard, and there it was: the familiar glimmer in the back of her mind. For once she wasn't happy to feel it.
"Back room," Dean ordered.
"Dean," Eli began.
"Where's the Knife?" Ruby demanded.
"Uh, about that," Dean said, not meeting the demon's eyes.
"Dean," Eli said again.
"You have got to be kidding," snapped Ruby.
"Hey, don't look at me," Dean said, holding up his hands.
"Dean!" Eli shouted, and they all turned to look at her. She was breathing heavily, feet planted on the ground with determination and just a little bit of fear. "You don't need the Knife."
Dean stared her down like she was personally responsible for the situation. "Why not?"
"Because it's not demons that are coming. It's angels. And they are pissed."