8 – Orpheus
Dean was not completely sure why it happened. He was just glad that it did.
Taraka, as a version of himself, was tormenting him in the cheap motel room of his mind, and then suddenly he just stopped. Taraka, using Dean's black eyed face, looked off towards the ceiling. Dean felt, distantly, a burning pain in his chest, and realized this pain, whatever it was, was hurting Taraka too. It was also making his grip on Dean slippery and weak. And Taraka couldn't attack Sam or Dad if he was dead.
Dean didn't wait to see if Taraka would regain control. He pounced, tackling Taraka, and sending them both plunging through the wall.
Would hurting Taraka here matter? Would it have an effect on him in the outside world? Dean didn't know, but he kind of hoped so. Even if it didn't, he was going to enjoy this.
Dean slammed his fist into Taraka's face over and over again, feeling something like bone crack under his knuckles. Taraka finally managed to buck him off, and threw him out into the parking lot. Dean hit asphalt and rolled, coming back up to his feet. Did that bastard think he was going away that easy? "This is foolish," Taraka insisted. "You cannot eject me. I own you."
Dean was dizzy, and suddenly saw two different things at once. Through his right eye, he was here, in the parking lot; through his left, he was somewhere else, bringing down a building. Dean felt the power leaving him, did not understand it or what was happening, but he told himself to stop. And the building stopped crumbling.
Dean turned and looked around with his half vision, and saw Evangeline staring at him in what appeared to be horror. He gathered up that power he could feel in his mind, burning in his chest, and aimed it at her like a fist.
Evangeline's head rocked back, as if she had indeed been punched, but it wasn't blood that flew out of her mouth. It was her demonic self, all black spectral smoke, and it seemed to burn up and turn to ash in the air. Her body collapsed to the street.
Dean felt the mental pull of Taraka trying to wrest his power back, and suddenly he could only see the motel parking lot, but it was wavering like a heat mirage in the desert. Taraka's grasp was slipperier than he wanted Dean to know. But Dean knew. He could feel that invisible hand trying to crush his mind and soul losing tension. This might be his only chance to break free, and he wasn't going to waste it.
Dean imagined he had his favorite .45, and suddenly he did. He started blasting holes in the closed motel room door, and just because he wondered how much control he had over the environment, the motel and parking lot were suddenly replaced by Uncle Bobby's junkyard. Taraka was just standing in the aisle between rows of crushed cars, looking bewildered. All this time, both Dean and Taraka were aware of the growing pain from the fire that seemed to have settled in his chest and taken root, a volcanic ember of creeping death. "You stupid son of a bitch," Taraka said. "If I die, you die."
"I'll take that bet," Dean said, shooting him in the face.
Taraka reeled, stumbling backward, but he kept his balance, and glared at him with a neat new hole in the center of his forehead. "I'm not powerless yet." He raised his hand, and Dean flew backwards, crashing into a cubed car. It knocked the wind out of him, but funnily enough, his chest hurt too much for any secondary pain to get through.
"Oh, but you're close," Dean said, and he imagined he had two guns. Suddenly he did, and he fired them both at Taraka, the multiple bullet strikes making him jerk and fall backwards. "And I'm gonna push you over the edge, asshole, even if I have to go with you."
All things considered, it wasn't a horrible death. In fact, considering the circumstances, it was probably the best he could hope for.
John knew something weird was happening, but he wasn't sure what.
He was going for a shoulder shot, but it looked like he caught Dean in the upper chest. It missed his heart though, and he was pretty sure he missed his lungs, or at least he hoped so. Since part of a building fell on his head, he wasn't sure.
Okay, the debris mostly missed him, thanks to the Dumpster he was hiding behind, but something strange was going on. First of all, he expected Taraka to dump the building on him – why did he stop? John peered over the top of the Dumpster to see that Taraka was stumbling backwards, as if he was being shot by someone else. But he wasn't.
Then the female demon he was with jerked back suddenly, and the demon came out of her as if purged, then burned up. He didn't hear an exorcism spell, so he didn't understand how or why that was occurring. But Taraka seemed to have forgotten all about him.
Taraka was still reeling backwards, blood leaking copiously from Dean's chest wound, and for just a second, it looked like only one of his eyes was black. What the hell was this?
John readied his rifle and climbed over the rubble, headed out for the street. The closest demon henchmen to Taraka seemed to be already dead, including the girl. He was half tempted to call out Dean's name, but refrained for the moment. Was there any way to fight a demon possession from the inside? He never heard of such a thing, but the way Taraka's body seemed to spasmodically jerk, it was almost as if two beings were fighting over control of a single body. Maybe with the ammo slowly killing Taraka, Dean had found a way.
"That's my boy," John said, taking aim at a demon across the street. Maybe there was some hope after all.
Taraka was losing the fight. Dean knew this, because he kept trying to cheat.
He'd yank locations right out from under him. Bobby's became a swamp, became a parking lot, became a hellscape of burning lava and black rocks. "Is this supposed to scare me?" Dean wondered. He searched the landscape with his guns raised, looking for a target to hit. But Taraka had taken to hiding, which was just another sign of the power slipping through his fingers.
Dean felt a deep tearing sensation somewhere in his chest, the pain so blunt and different than the burning that it made him pause. "I still have your body. I can still rip you apart."
"Go for it. Use the last of your strength killing me. We both go down together."
"You're not afraid to die? What's wrong with you?"
"I don't wanna die. But if dying means you can't hurt my family, so be it." Where the hell was he? Dean turned the ground solid with a thought, and shifted the view from the hellscape to a forest. Okay, it gave Taraka trees to hide behind, but at the rate it was going he was gaining no traction. And then suddenly, something occurred to him that was stunning in its simplicity. "Holy shit. You're afraid to die."
"I do not die!" His voice boomed so loud it seemed to shake the ground. "I am eternal!"
"Not anymore." Dean hadn't really explored this weird connection he had with Taraka, but now he was. They were both dying; they could both feel it. That glowing ember in his chest was a raging forest fire now. Dad had shot him with something fatal to the demon, but it wasn't doing Dean any favors either. "You don't want to go back to Hell."
"It's my realm! I should be its leader!" He sounded impotent with rage and almost sad. Dean came within a hair's breadth of pitying him. He was a demon leader without a country. How incompetent did you have to be to be demoted in your own dimension?
"We all got baggage, buddy. But we all don't slaughter people for shits and giggles."
Suddenly Taraka was behind him, holding a knife to his throat. "Don't you? You like killing monsters. That scares you more than death, doesn't it? You know you're a monster at heart. You belong with us."
Dean turned the gun, aiming it over his shoulder, and shot Taraka in the face at point blank range.
The knife slid along Dean's throat as Taraka fell away, but he didn't care. He couldn't kill him here; Dean was going to believe that was true until it was or it wasn't. Ignorance was bliss, right?
"You motherfucking bastard," Taraka said, dropping the knife and grabbing his face.
"C'mon man, you just called me a monster. You gotta expect a monster move."
Distantly, in the outside world, Dean could now hear Sammy shouting Latin words. Exorcism spell. There was a mild pull to Taraka, but not much. He was too big a demon to be booted by that. Although, if he continued to weaken, it might be enough.
Taraka glared at him, the massive hole in his face healing up. "I will drag you to hell, Dean. If not today, tomorrow."
Dean shrugged, raising his weapon. "Or I'm putting you there. May the best monster win."
From the way his blood felt like lava, Dean was pretty sure the point was almost moot now. Either one of them was about to win, or they were both going to lose.
Sam had failed to find Jade.
He made his way up the street, trying to stick to shadows, shouting the exorcism ritual as its own protective charm. He'd only had to throw holy water at two people, and shoot at one, so he felt lucky. But where had Jade gone? He'd had to step over a couple of bodies, but none of them were Jade. He was glad, but he remained really confused. How could she just disappear like that?
The smoke cleared enough at the end of the block that Sam was able to see Dean standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by corpses. At least he was still alive.
He seemed to be drunkenly stumbling, which would be in character, but when did he have time to get loaded? But then Sam noticed the hole in his chest that was leaking an awful lot of blood, and that his eyes seemed to be cycling between regular blue and demon black. What the hell was going on?
He kept reciting the exorcism rite, on the off chance it would help, and his Dad crept out of an alley and came to stand beside him, holding his rifle at the ready. It looked like the smart demons had fled, either in advance of the fire or in the advance of them. Maybe both. Sam wanted to ask his Dad about Dean and tell him about Jade, but had to finish the chant first, as it was useless if you didn't finish it.
He finally came to the last word, and Dean fell to his knees on the street. The spectral smoke of a demon came vomiting out of his mouth, but it seemed to turn to ashes in the air, joining the rest of the choking debris from the fire. There was no demon black in his eyes anymore.
For a moment, Dean was conscious, and he said what sounded like, "Sayonara, asshole." Then his eyes rolled up to whites, and he collapsed face first to the street.
"Dean!" Dad slung his rifle over his shoulder and bolted to him, checking for a pulse. Sam assumed he had one, just because he was still bleeding quite a bit. Dad picked Dean up, and asked, "Where's Jade?"
Sam was forced to shrug. "I dunno. I haven't seen her."
"Shit. We're just gonna have to come back for her. We need to get Dean to a hospital now."
Sam almost said, "No shit," but managed to keep it to himself, and took point on demon watch as they returned to the car. He was inexplicably angry, and didn't really understand it until they made it back to the Impala, and Dad put Dean in the back seat. Dad was drenched in Dean's blood, and that's when it clicked for Sam. He was furious at him for what had happened to Dean, and it wasn't even about the gunshot wound that Dad must have given him.
This was all Dad's fault. Every single thing that had happened to them from the kidnapping on. And if Dean died, Sam was never going to forgive him.