3 – Take My Bones Away

Sam knew he was dreaming, because Mom was making him breakfast.

This never happened. He only knew her through photographs, and an occasional story he could get out of Dean when he was really sloshed and his defenses were down. But here he was, sitting at a table in a house that was presumably theirs (again, he didn't know), and she was pouring him a bowl of cereal.

"Something wrong, honey?" she asked, putting the bowl in front of him.

He looked up at her, feeling torn. She looked just as she had in all the photographs, and yet he felt this was all wrong. He wanted to linger and run away in equal measure. "What's going on?"

Her eyes were kind and concerned. "What do you mean?"

Sam's stomach did a small flip. Did he even want to say? He had a feeling he might break the spell if he did, but didn't he want to? He wished he was sure. Sam was afraid something terrible had happened to him, and this was a retreat. Could he remember what happened? Did he want to?

Suddenly Sam remembered the most horrible thing Dean had ever told him. Leaving the house the night of the fire, Dean had smelled something weird, and he said only in retrospect did he realize it was their mother's flesh burning. Dean said once he realized that, he didn't stop throwing up for two days. He told Dad it was the stomach flu. Sam couldn't even cope with the horror of that thought. No wonder he had to get drunk to talk about it. No wonder he had to get drunk to pretty much live. He had his problems with Dean, but he didn't envy his brother everything he'd seen or done. He knew Dean and Dad were both hiding things from him, but Dean's were somehow worse. Maybe because he was closer to his age, and really shouldn't have seen those things yet.

Sam found his mother looking at him curiously. "Honey, are you sick?" She put a hand on his forehead, and he genuinely recoiled, as if her touch was unwelcome. It both was and wasn't.

"No, I – I don't understand what's going on." He stood up and went to the window, because it seemed weirdly bright. He was expecting sunlight, but when he opened the curtain, there was nothing but fire. The entire world was on fire.

He turned back to his Mom, only to see she was on fire too. Her hair was a wreath of flame crowning her head, and her skin was a shifting glaze of lava. Her eyes were still hers, still soft blue, until the very end. "Run, Sam," she said. "Run."

Sam gasped and woke up, only to find himself in a cage.

It took him a moment to realize he still wasn't dreaming. But he was indeed in a cage, one small enough that he couldn't stand up in it, and his cage was sitting on the altar of a church.

It was a genuine church, with a stained glass window casting multicolored shadows on the rows of polished wood pews. There were maybe a dozen people sitting there, of varying races and genders, but mostly in their twenties. "Hey," Sam said. "Let me outta here."

The nearest person to him, a woman with blonde hair, turned to look at him, and she had black demon eyes. "Hush, little bit," she said. "We haven't decided if you're a sacrifice or a bait dog yet."

"I say we eat 'im," a guy in a Gold's Gym t-shirt said. "At that age, they're just like veal."

"What?" Sam sat back, hoping they were joking. They were, weren't they? They were just trying to scare him. Demons didn't eat people.

Unless there were some who did. Just like there were some who apparently went to church.

"My brother is going to find me," he said. "He's going to kill you all."

The blonde demon chuckled, and her eyes flicked back to blue. The vague resemblance to his mother was startling. "Don't worry, we're taking care of Dean. Maybe he'll get to watch you die."

Sam sat back in his cage, and watched, and waited. As soon as he got a chance, he needed to break the hell out of here.

Dean came to with the taste of blood in his mouth, and a deep, throbbing ache in the back of his head. He kept his eyes closed, until he could use his sense of hearing and smell to orient himself.

He had vague memories of the motel attack, and could still feel it in the ache of his bones. He was hearing dripping water, but not like from a runny tap. There was a kind of echo, a stranger splash sound, and he realized he was hearing water hitting stone. Was he in a basement? Something like that. Although he was pretty sure there weren't many basements in California. A cave then?

If he wasn't alone, someone was being very quiet. But demons could do that. He weighed whether he should open his eyes or not. His left shoulder was really hurting.

"I am genuinely impressed by you, Dean Winchester," a woman said. The female demon from the motel, the leader. "Playing dead until you get the lay of the land? Classic. John teach you that?"

He opened his eyes. He was in some kind of basement, mostly poured concrete, but some stone and slate. The only light came from a rusty lantern tucked in a far corner. The Latina was a vaguely human shaped shadow. His wrists were chained together over his head, and he was hanging from a heavy metal hook embedded in the ceiling. He could reach the floor, but only just. They didn't want him getting too comfortable when they could use gravity to slowly dislocate his shoulders. "So you know my father, huh? I can't believe it. You know what he's gonna do to you when he finds you, right? And he's gonna find you."

"By the time he picks up the right trail, we'll be long gone. With the two things he most values in life." She finally emerged from the shadows, and touched his chest. He tried to back away from her touch, but couldn't, and she knew it too. She smiled, and he saw it hit her dead black eyes. "Well, one. We don't have too many uses for your brother besides sending him an ugly message."

He jerked, attempting a kick, but he had no leverage. "You leave him the fuck alone, you bitch."

"Such nasty talk. You should have your mouth washed out with soap."

"I told you I'd go with you if you let him go. I meant it."

"Oh, you'd be my obedient little lap dog?"

He gritted his teeth. "Yes."

She ran a fingernail along the edge of his face, finally sinking the nail in on his chin, digging deep into his flesh. He couldn't help but flinch at the pain, and from the grin she gave him, that had been what she was waiting for. "Ooh, that is tempting. But you're probably gonna be anyway, hon. So no. Nice try, though."

"What do you want?"

She put her hands on his collarbone, and he wondered if he could headbutt her. His jacket was gone, and he assumed that meant they got all his weapons. But maybe they didn't. He still had his boots on. "Why, we want your Daddy. He's an asshole and a killer, and we're gonna gut him like a trout."

"Good luck with that."

She kept grinning, showing perfect white teeth. Dean got the impression this demon had taken over an actress, or at least an actress wannabe. She was pretty enough. "You think we can't."

"I know you can't."

She ran a hand through his hair, and he tried to jerk his head away, but he was dealing with a serious lack of traction. "You overestimate him, and underestimate us. But you wouldn't be daddy's little boy if you didn't." She then licked the blood dripping off his chin.

"What are you, eight hundred? I think statutory rape charges apply here."

"Oh, you wish, you –" she paused, making a sour face. She then took a couple of steps back, and spit out his blood. "Ugh. What – what is that?"

"What is what?" So that bottle of herbs Jade gave him did work. Why did he have to guess he'd have to eat it, though? She could have told him ahead of time.

She continued to spit, and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "What have you been eating? You taste disgusting."

"You a vegan demon? Now I've heard everything."

She was still making a sour face at him, and Dean found it hard not to smile. "I'm going to enjoy beating the smart ass out of you."

"I'm going to kill all of you," Dean replied. He wasn't shouting; in his mind, he was already drawing up plans.

"It's adorable how you think there's still hope. Hold on to that." She left, and he dimly saw a door open and close, and heard it lock with a kind of brutal formality. Good.

Dean had a look at the hook above his head. There was no way he was pulling it out of the ceiling, but it was thick and sturdy enough that maybe he could climb it. Could he reach the wall behind him?

It took longer than he'd hoped, and it hurt like fuck. He managed to turn himself around, and slowly pulled himself up the hook, using his upper body strength. He was glad he'd done all those pull ups now. All of this kept aggravating the injury in his left shoulder, but it couldn't be helped. He could live with pain if he could get himself free.

When he was able to reach the wall with his boots and use it to help him climb up, it took some of the weight off his shoulder, and was a little better. But gaining any traction was precarious, and he could lose it any second. Finally the muscles in his arms began to tremble, absolutely done with fighting gravity.

There was no way this was going to end well. As soon as he got the chain off the hook, he would fall to the floor, with no way to protect himself. He could crack his head wide open, kill himself with a skull fracture, or just break his tailbone or possibly a vertebrae. He may be free but paralyzed or unconscious, unable to capitalize on it in any way. But he didn't really have a choice. He released the hook and flung out his hands past the hook.

And hit the floor like a five hundred pound sack of shit.

His head bounced off the poured concrete, and both white sparks and black blotches exploded in front of his eyes. He had to lay there for a minute, uncertain if he was going to win his battle with consciousness or not. He may have lost it for a second, he wasn't sure, but the pain in his shoulder and the burning exhaustion in his arm muscles brought him back. Dean rolled over onto his stomach, and as soon as he was sure he could without screaming, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked at the chains binding his wrists together. He couldn't figure out the locking mechanism, which probably didn't matter, since he wasn't sure he had anything to pick them with. He pushed himself back until he was sitting against the cool wall, which gave a little comfort to his strained muscles. He didn't worry so much about his head, because you had to have a brain to damage it, right?

A quick check showed he did indeed still have his silver boot knife. At least they missed one. But the more he thought about it, the more Dean realized the chains might make a better weapon in his current state. They were heavy and formidable.

As soon as he was able, Dean got to his feet, and crossed the room, standing beside the door. He knew it was locked and he couldn't pick it, so he was going to have to wait for someone to return. He desperately hoped it was the leader.

He didn't have to wait too long. He heard the scrape of a key against the lock, bringing him out of his semi-doze, and waited while the door opened and a demon stepped inside.

The wedge of light from the outer hall showed the empty hook, and the demon stopped just inside the room. "Wh –"

Dean hit him full on in the face with the chain and his doubled fist, shattering the man's nose on impact. Warm blood spurted on his hands and face as Dean slammed him in the face again, this time pinning him against the wall as he punched him over and over, reducing him to a pulpy mush. Dean wasn't sure you could knock a demon unconscious, but the man slid down the wall, a bloody mess with no fight left in him. The keys to the room had fallen to the ground, but there was more than one. Key to the chains? He grabbed them, and tried it. The chains fell off his wrists and looped on the floor. He hastily picked them up and wrapped them around his left hand. These chains were fantastic. He pulled out his boot knife and now had two weapons. Dean still hurt, but adrenaline was washing away his aches. If he kept moving, he'd be as good as gold.

He shoved the demon in the dungeon room, and closed and locked the door on him. If he regained consciousness – a big if - he'd have to wait for someone else to let him out.

There was a very brief hall leading to rustic wooden stairs that ended at a door. Dean climbed them as quietly as possible, and put his ear to the door, listening intently. He gave it a minute, and when he couldn't hear anything, he eased it open.

Dean wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it hadn't been a room that looked very much like a priest's office in the back of a church. It even smelled vaguely of incense. What the hell was this? Had demons taken over a church? Why? Dean did a cursory once over for holy water, but they'd cleared that out, if it ever existed here. Same with rosary beads.

When the door opened, Dean was almost caught off guard, but recovered quickly enough to charge the incoming demon and shoulder tackle him to the floor. Dean then put all his weight on his knife and drove it through the demons neck, crunching through cartilage and bone as he bucked wildly beneath him and threw him off. But Dean smashed the butt of the knife into his face, catching him in the eye.

"You fucking psycho –" the demon spat, attempting to roll away from him. But Dean grabbed him and plunged the knife through the back of his neck, finishing the job he'd started in the front. The demon's head fell off and hit the floor before the rest of his body did, gushing blood into the red carpet below. The demon abandoned the body in a cloud of black smoke that disappeared through the air vent. A demon could possess and use a headless body if it really wanted to, but it was like trying to drive a car without a steering wheel, so if they had a better option they generally took it.

But the demon divesting his meat suit was an alarm bell for every demon in the joint, and Dean knew it. He wasn't even on his feet yet before the door exploded open and a couple of demons came charging in, but Dean managed to jump up and give one a faceful of chain before the other one threw him across the room. He hit the desk painfully and fell behind it, almost losing hold of his knife. "What the fuck ..?" the female demon said. Not the leader, the redhead from the motel.

"How did he – Jesus fucking Christ! Did he lop Tony's head off?" The male demon said this. He was a new one Dean didn't recognize.

The female demon grabbed Dean by the back of his neck before he could lunge, but as he stood he drove the knife into her gut and twisted immediately, making a wide hole. They were eye to eye, and she looked genuinely startled. The male demon punched Dean in the side of the head, and he lost a grip on his knife as he stumbled back, white stars exploding in front of his eyes. But Dean held on loosely to consciousness, and as the male demon grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, Dean spun, and looped the chain around his throat. Then, standing back to back with the demon, he bent over and pulled on the chain, yanking the demon off his feet and choking him, attempting to break his neck.

The female demon had pulled the knife out of her own gut and came at him with him, but he dropped the chain and the demon on his back, and kicked her in her open wound. She went flying back with a swallowed scream of pain.

A third demon had joined the fight, and blindsided Dean with a punch to the face that seemed to impact right on his cheekbone. He thought he heard a crack, but didn't feel any pain as he rammed an elbow into the demon's throat. (Adrenaline was a beautiful thing.) He hoped he crushed his voice box, but he didn't know for sure. At least it sent him falling back.

Now there was a fourth demon that jumped on his back, sending a new flair of pain through his injured shoulder, but Dean just bent over and flipped the demon onto the desk. He was aware of a fifth coming up on him in his peripheral vision, and spun into a side kick that got him in the knee, and sent him falling to the floor howling, as he'd managed to break the leg.

A blow to the back of the head sent more sparks shooting across Dean's vision, and a kick to the face split his lip on impact, bringing more blood to his mouth. But when they came back in for a second kick, Dean managed to catch the leg and pull, sending the demon crashing to the floor.

Suddenly he felt cold steel at his throat, a knife with a sharp blade just cutting into his skin. A male voice growled, "Enough, or I rip your fucking head off, you filthy piece of shit."

Dean threw his head back, catching the demon in the nose, which crunched on impact. He could feel the blood spurt onto the back of his neck. But this demon was better than the rest, and never lost hold of Dean or the blade. Dean felt blood now running from his throat, as the knife was puncturing his skin. "I'm gonna cut off your head and shit down your neck, you little –"

"Enough!" The female leader was back. "Lars, hold him, but don't cut too deep. We need him mostly alive."

Dean finally had a chance to catch his breath, which was probably for the best. He needed to reserve some strength for the next fight, and the room was now packed with demons, glaring at him with volcanic hatred. Well, those who weren't still on the floor, groaning over their various injuries.

The redheaded demon sat on the edge of the desk, holding her guts in with her arm. "What the fuck is he, The Terminator?"

"I told you," the leader said. It sounded like she was gloating. "John Winchester's little blunt instrument. Daddy's favorite boy is his own personal attack dog. A pit bull in human form." She leaned down into his visual field, but was keeping out of reach, in spite of the knife at his throat. "You are as soulless as humans come, aren't you? You're an empty box of broken rage."

"Come closer and say that."

She smiled. "Your Daddy did quite the number on you. You're going to be a hollow husk for the rest of your short, brutal life. And you call us evil?"

He glowered at her, only now aware he had blood in his eyelashes. "I'm gonna kill you."

"You're going to try, honey." She actually reached out and patted his head, like he was being a pathetic little boy. He tried to shake her hand off, but that just made the knife cut deeper into his neck. "It's good to have goals."

"Let's kill him now," Lars suggested. "We can't have him here if he's this dangerous."

"But he's what we're going to use to drive John crazy," the leader replied. "I say we pack him on ice and send him to the pit. Then we film the results and make sure they fall in John's lap. He'll be so mad with grief he'll be easy prey."

"Dream on, bitch." Pack him on ice and send him to the pit? Was that a weirdly worded death threat? He felt like he was missing some information here. Or it was the head injury. Maybe both.

"So we're keeping the veal alive?" Lars asked. Now what the hell did that mean?

The leader shrugged. "For now, I suppose. Let's see how well Dean fairs first." She looked down at him, and gave him a deeply patronizing smile. "Would doggie like to fight more demons?"

Dean spit at her. It was mostly blood, and it missed, but he felt he got his point across.

Lars smacked him on the back of the head, but the leader just chuckled, genuinely amused. "You hang on to your one defined personality trait, Dean. It might help you live through the night."

No matter what, Dean planned on living through the night. So he could rescue Sam, and kill all these sons of bitches. He didn't care what he had to do, he would do it.

But he had a sinking feeling it wasn't going to be nearly that easy.