Thank you all for waiting this long. I have been having a great deal of trouble writing recently. I hope I've fought through the worst of it.
Thanks to all my readers and especially my reviewers. You make this worth it.
Thanks to my beta, K. Hanna Korossy. This chapter would not be nearly what it is without her efforts.
Enjoy Chapter 10.
--Kohadril
Chapter 10: Omen Formation
This time it was night, and the field was filled with desiccated corpses. He stood at the altar and a shadow loomed. He held a hysterical man tightly, keeping a knife at his throat.
The thing came upon them, broad and black and enormous, long and low like a serpent but chitin-clad, with an arrow-point head and scythe-like teeth. Blood red boils protruded through the cracks in its armored carapace. It stopped before them, the front section of its body rising up like a crested cobra, and it loosed a keening cry.
Dean was unsure why he'd awakened, but the bed was shaking. It took a moment for him to perceive that Sam was thrashing around beside him, wheezing and whining in fear. In a flash, he was fully awake, and he reached out a hand and shook his brother gently. Sam responded only by whimpering louder and batting at Dean's hand, stretching and trying to get away.
Dean fought through his brother's defenses and leaned over him, grabbing Sam by the shoulder. The kid was completely soaked in sweat. Dean shook him again, harder this time. "Sam!" he yelled.
Sam gasped and opened his eyes, staring up at his brother confusedly. He looked around for a few seconds, blinking, trying to figure out what was happening.
"What is this, wrestling practice?" he asked sarcastically, catching Dean a little off guard.
He laughed. "Yeah, and you're pinned, as usual." Dean smirked and rolled off of his brother. He sat up against the headboard and looked down at Sam.
"Hilarious," Sam mumbled distantly. He stared up at the ceiling and Dean waited.
"What did you dream about?" he finally asked. If Sam wouldn't start this on his own, he'd do it for him.
"Same weird stuff," Sam replied cautiously, and for a moment Dean feared he was being lied to again. Sam seemed to fight off his reticence, though, and spoke again. "There was more this time. I saw the monster, and there was this guy…"
Dean waited again, partly for Sam's benefit and partly for his own. Sam grimaced and rubbed his head.
"Headache?" Dean asked.
Sam nodded lightly, then he squinted and groaned, bringing up his other hand. He clenched his jaw, his muscles tensed, and Dean knew something was seriously wrong.
"No," Sam whined desperately, squirming in pain. He started to roll onto his right side, away from Dean, but Dean pulled him back the other way, and after a brief resistance, Sam let him. Dean brought them together, and his brother curled up against him, trembling, as the vision took him.
He stood his ground in face of the screeching behemoth, and with a defiant, warlike scream, he drew his knife across the struggling man's throat, spilling his blood upon the altar.
The creature tensed and struck, and the world faded.
Sam cried out in pain as the vision ended, the strain of two visions so close together almost more than his mind could bear.
"You're okay," Dean said soothingly, not quite able to keep the fear out of his voice. "You're okay, Sammy, come on."
Sam vaguely perceived that Dean was holding him tightly, a strong right arm looped around his back beneath his shoulders, a left hand at Sam's side. His head lay against Dean's chest. He struggled to move: the position wasn't exactly comfortable, but his muscles felt heavy and useless, and his head like it might explode at the slightest provocation.
Sam focused his eyes, a significant accomplishment, and Dean seemed to notice.
"Sammy? You here with me, man?"
Sam whimpered in the affirmative and tried to nod his head.
"Can you talk?"
That was a good question. Sam moved his mouth around a little bit before finally forcing out a meek, "Yeah."
"Can I…uh, let go now?" Dean ventured uncomfortably. Sam had thought he'd never ask.
"Yeah."
Dean slowly and carefully pulled Sam off of him and laid him on his back. Sam held his breath; everything hurt. Dean seemed to notice his discomfort. "You okay?"
As much as Sam wanted to say yes, he couldn't. He hurt too much to be okay. He shook his head gently.
"Head?"
"Everything. Head's worst," Sam slurred, squinting up at Dean. The memory of the vision was starting to push its way back into his consciousness. His head throbbed again, and he saw himself slit the helpless man's throat. He grunted, as much out of revulsion as pain. "I killed somebody…"
Dean brought his hand up, stopping him. "I'm all for sharing, man, but right now, you look like the living dead," Dean said quietly. "You need to get some sleep."
Sam acceded without a fight, but that didn't change anything. As much as he wanted to lay off his brother, as much as he needed to feel independent and strong and capable, he couldn't keep it in. Not now. Not with all this pain. He took a shuddering breath and turned onto his side, away from Dean.
Dean must have heard the sound, because he reached his left arm over Sam's side, draping it protectively across him. It was an unthinkable display of affection, something Sam hadn't known Dean was capable of. Sam almost pulled away, but came to the sickening realization that he couldn't. Allowing himself to be held like this was an equally unthinkable display of weakness, but at this point, he had nothing left to lose: not his pride, not his strength. Not his manhood, certainly. Those things had already been taken away.
All that was left was fear. So Sam let his brother hold him, closed his eyes, and tried to go to sleep.
What woke Dean this time was the sound of car doors slamming outside the motel room. He tensed instinctively, carefully pulling away from Sam and turning to face the door. It was light, and when he glanced at the clock, he noticed it was almost 8:30. They had slept right through the alarm.
"Fuck," Dean whispered to himself just before the first shot sounded. The door splintered, a dime-sized hole appearing in it through which daylight spilled into the room. Dean rolled back to Sam and shoved him off the bed, and Sam crashed to the ground between the wall and the bed with a startled cry. More gunshots sounded, more holes appearing in the door and walls. "Stay down!" Dean yelled, rolling off his side of the mattress and dropping into the space between the beds.
Dean looked for a gun before remembering that all the weapons were secured in the trunk of the car. Then, on a countertop just across the room, he saw his cell phone. Shit, was he really willing to call the cops? He didn't suppose he had much choice. He brought himself up into a racing start stance.
He bolted for the phone, but just before he reached the counter, he heard another gunshot. Pain flashed through his side and he dropped instinctively.
"DEAN!" Sam yelled, his head peeking over the bed.
"Stay there!" Dean yelled again, reaching up and grabbing the phone off the countertop, holding his left flank with his free hand. It felt wet, but he didn't have time to look at it. He started to dial, but stopped when the gunshots did. He heard car doors slamming again, then tires screeching out of the parking lot.
Sam rushed over to him, dropping down beside him.
"Sammy," Dean said sternly, grimacing. "Pack our stuff. As fast as you can. We need to be out of here before the cops show up. Or before those inbred militia hicks decide to come back and finish the job."
"You're hurt," Sam replied worriedly, pulling up Dean's shirt and inspecting the wound. "It looks like it's just a graze, but you need…"
"You can sew me back up when we find a new place," Dean gritted authoritatively. "Get us packed up. We need to go now!"
Sam looked at Dean uncertainly. "Okay," he agreed, not without difficulty.
They had managed to get out of there just ahead of the police, and Sam found them a room across town with little difficulty. They were in the bathroom, and Sam was in the process of sewing up his brother's wound, which was high on his left side.
"It'd be pretty tough to sew this up myself," Dean commented transparently, wincing as Sam pulled the needle through.
"If I hadn't been here, you'd have had a gun," Sam replied coolly, trying to control his anger. "You wouldn't have had to try to get to the phone. You wouldn't have gotten shot."
"Yeah, you're right. This is all your fault," Dean groused sarcastically. "Get off it, man."
"Wish I could. I almost got you killed," Sam whispered darkly.
"Just stop it!" Dean yelled, a little more desperately than Sam expected. "We had this conversation. You're safer here with me."
"Yeah, but you're not. Why is it always about keeping me safe? Why the hell can't I take care of you?"
"By leaving?" Dean grunted, flinching as Sam ran the needle in again.
"No!" Sam yelled back, progressively unraveling. "I don't want to leave, man. But I'm putting you in danger by being here. The drugs make me too stupid to help. And I'm not that much safer with you anyway. I mean, Aphorael already has a new body, and how the hell would Washington even find out if I was admitted?"
"So what the hell is keeping you here?" Dean asked angrily. "I mean, you've clearly thought this through."
Sam looked down and fixed his attention on his work, avoiding Dean's eyes as much as he could. He knew exactly what was stopping him from leaving, and for whatever reason, he decided to cop to it.
"I'm scared," he whispered. "After that last vision, how much it hurt; after what I saw, and with all this stuff happening to me," Sam couldn't stop himself at this point. "I'm terrified."
The anger left Dean's face instantly, replaced with a disgusting kind of pity. "It's okay, man. You've got every right to be scared."
"It's not fucking okay!" Sam shouted back, angry, desperate tears in his eyes. "I'm putting my brother in danger because I'm scared to be alone. What kind of man does that make me?"
"Sam…" Dean had a hangdog, guilty look in his eyes.
"Don't look at me like that," Sam mumbled. He poured some alcohol onto the now fully sutured wound. Dean yelped in pain as Sam stood to leave. "Put a bandage on it. You'll be fine."
Dean was reclining on his new bed, Sam sitting across from him. Everything seemed as if it were falling apart, and Dean had to be the one to keep it all together. It was unbelievably hard. But not, he realized, as hard as what Sam was going through.
"My guess, the bastard had us followed after we left. I wasn't really looking for it, so I didn't notice," Dean concluded. "He gave us some time to get out of town, and when we didn't, he sent those guys to scare us off."
"He didn't follow us this time," Sam said. "I was careful."
"Yeah, I know."
"So what do we do now?"
"Same thing we were going to do before those dipshits shot up our room. Find that creature."
"And what do we do then?" Sam asked. "What's the whole end game strategy here? Do we shoot it? We don't have a clue how to kill this thing. And if it's anything like what I saw last night…"
"Right, yeah. You said you saw it. What did that son of a bitch look like anyway?"
"It didn't look like anything I've ever seen, even in books. And it was huge. It's gonna take a whole lot of firepower to kill something that big."
"What else did you see? You said something about killing somebody last night."
"I…slit some guy's throat. Above the altar. Spilled his blood all over it. Except, I don't think it was me. I think what I saw was the past."
"And the second vision?" Dean inquired.
"There weren't two visions. There was just one; when you interrupted it, I got the second one when I woke up, showing me the end. It's like it had to show me the whole thing."
Dean looked down guiltily, not that he could have known any better. "So, I shouldn't wake you up from nightmares anymore?"
"I don't know. I guess not," Sam mumbled. "Shit, Dean, what the hell do I know? Everything's so fucked up."
"Not for much longer, man. This is a farm town; there's gotta be some dynamite around here somewhere. We'll find it, find the creature before it wakes up, and blow the thing into tiny little bits. Then you'll get better, and we can stop being cuddle buddies."
"What makes you think killing this thing will make me better?" Sam asked.
"What makes you think it won't?" Dean shot back with a cocky half-smirk.
Sam looked up at him skeptically. "Dean, you're my brother, and I'd die for you, but that is a terrible argument," Sam chortled.
"Whatever, I wasn't on the debate team in high school. Because unlike my brother, I wasn't a total dork."
"You know, if I killed you, I could get away with it by telling them I'm crazy," Sam snarked. "Just something for you to think about."
It had taken them the rest of the day to acquire the dynamite they needed. It was dark and they were on their way back to their new motel room, driving back along a winding country road well outside the center of town.
"You realize, if we get arrested now, we're going straight to Guantanamo Bay," Sam said pointedly.
"Yeah," Dean agreed. "I guess I'm cool with that."
The engine sputtered for a moment, then completely died. The headlights went off.
"What the hell?" Sam said as Dean turned the car onto the side of the road with what momentum remained. He turned the key several times to no effect. Sam grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and turned it out the passenger-side window. He saw a figure standing in the distance, a figure in a long black robe. "Dean, pop the trunk."
"What?"
"Pop the trunk and get out of the car NOW!"
Dean looked where Sam's light was pointing just as the figure's hand shot up, and every window in the car shattered.