Sticks and Stones
Disclaimer: I can't believe I had forgotten this but needless to say I still don't own anything Supernatural.
a/n: Yeah I know, it's short and stodgy and it's not my best but aarrgh…I'll just apologise for it and be done.
Chapter 4
"Well thanks anyway, I'll talk to Mikey next week at school about tryouts." Dean ended the call and made a face. "Well that's the fourth name on the list in the group of death and he's out too."
"Maybe we can try the diner again it's nearly lunchtime." Sam sat back staring at the computer which sat amidst a pile of books on his bed. "Y'know there's not a lot of spirits or demons that are associated with frostbite and revenge. Like zero results."
"What about astral projection or a Tulpa like Mordecai?"
"A Tulpa needs the strength of numbers to make it real, and there's no website this time. Astral projection might be possible but it still doesn't explain the frostbite symptoms." Sam looked over as Dean rubbed a hand across his eyes, wincing as he made contact with the bruising on his face. "Hey you okay? How's the head?"
"Yeah I'm good. Wish these marks would stop itching though."
"It means they're healing. You're lucky they weren't worse or in more extreme places, you could've lost a body part." Sam smirked.
Dean shuddered. "Thanks for the visual image bro." He picked a pillow up from the end of his bed and launched it at the grin.
Sam saw it coming a mile off but was restricted in his movement by the laptop and books so he raised his arm and deflected the projectile. The pillow hit his arm and rebounded onto the bedside table where it clean sweeped both the lamp and clock radio.
Music blared out in the room.
Dean noticed several things. The song was Angel of Harlem, he knew all the words but would never admit it.
And Sam now stood frozen, breathing like he'd just ran a race, his laptop lying sideways on the bed and various books scattered on the floor.
"Sam? Sammy you with me?"
Dean moved between the beds and switched the radio off. "Hey, you okay?"
Sam seemed to focus on him and nodded before averting his eyes and busying himself with righting the computer.
Dean sighed and watched his brother pretending to be fine. It was as though Sam thought that movement and disregard for his reaction would make it all go away. Not gonna happen.
"Sam, you'll get past it don't worry."
"Yeah. I shouldn't worry about you dying at all cause that'll work." Sam hand clenched as he made himself keep still, resisted the urge to pull at his torn skin. He could do this for Dean.
"You know this isn't about the deal Sam. The trickster was messing with your head cause he was pissed at us. You can't keep worrying about what's happened or what's gonna happen. Just…"
"Please don't tell me to live for the moment Dean or not to worry or give it time. I can't do any of those things."
Dean closed his mouth. It freaked him out a little that Sam's voice was suddenly so calm, sounded so rational. "You can't keep letting this get to you either." He noticed the way his brother's hands were shaking.
"What if the trickster was right?" Sam looked at Dean, despair etched across his face, the words barely audible. "What if I can't save you?"
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Dean parked the car down the road from Getty's Diner and they walked along the footpath in silence. Dean was more than a little worried about his brother's current state of mind but couldn't exactly take a break in the middle of a job to deal with it. Neither of them would risk lives over their own frailties.
Sam had all but clammed up except to go over details of their next move which wasn't exactly rocket science. Find these kids and scare them into giving out some details of what had gone down with Adam. At least it might prove Sam's theory of death by irony.
They walked in, Sam watching to see if his brother recognised any of the group. Dean nodded his head towards the back of the room and walked over sitting down without invitation opposite the couple at the table. Sam slid in the bench seat next to him.
"Beech and Mikey, we need to have a few words." He nodded in Sam's direction, "This is my partner."
"We haven't done anything wrong." Mikey sat back feigning indifference.
"Well now who said you had? Oh of course apart from flushing someone's head down a toilet."
"We need you to tell us what Aidan Walker and Anna Bourke did to Adam." Sam looked directly at Beech as he spoke. "You won't get in trouble but we need to know if we're gonna stop any more deaths."
"Don't say anything, they can't make you tell them anything. Unless you're gonna charge us." Mikey smiled.
Dean wanted to wipe the smile off this boy's face so badly but instead he smiled and leaned in real close. "That's right Mikey but you might want to think about how you've been treating Adam, what you've said to him lately." Dean held up one finger. "I mean Aidan teased him about being a coward and he ended up playing chicken with a train."
Sam's eyebrows shot up a little at Dean's deduction but he didn't speak, watching as his brother held up a second finger.
"Chris decided to sing a little rhyme about worms and hey presto he's living the dream, except he kinda choked on them. Now I don't know if you've heard about Karl…"
"We know, Loren was there she told me what happened. Said you'd saved them." Beech sounded scared. "Loren said it wasn't Adam…"
"Beech will you just shut up. If Adam's paying some muscle to try and scare us he's going about this all wrong."
"No, I'm scared and Loren's scared. Karl almost drowned." She turned back to Dean. "What did you want to know?"
Mikey slammed his fist on the table and stood up. "You coming?"
Beech hesitated then shook her head.
"Fine." He stormed out the door.
"What did Anna do?"
"She thought it'd be funny to set him up y'know. Make it seem like she wanted to meet him cause he had this crush on her. It was weird, I mean she was always horrible to him and he still liked her. Anyway, she started smiling and kinda flirting with him from a distance then slipped him a note to meet her behind the gym after school. He went and well…she had like the whole football team there waiting. They roughed him up a little and y'know paid out on him at school for showing up."
"She tore his heart out." Sam looked grimly at Dean as he spoke, part of him understood the anger Adam must've felt. He'd had a taste of being bullied, always being the new kid and being good at school made you a target. To his advantage though, having an older brother like Dean kind of made it go away fairly quickly.
"So what else do we have to worry about? What else has happened? Have you…?"
"No, I swear I haven't done anything. I guess that's the problem though, I should've done something to stop it."
"What about Mikey?"
"He's pretty upset about Chris and the others although he won't say anything. Just after…after Chris died he beat up on Adam and another guy, Lars, pretty bad after school one day. Karl and Aidan stopped him and they said he had a knife. I don't think he would've used it, it was only for show."
"You need to stay inside this weekend. Make sure you're not alone and don't go out anywhere by yourself. Get in touch with the others and tell them the same thing. You still got the number I gave you?" Dean watched as the girl nodded, eyes wide open. "Good, use it if you need it."
Dean rested his head back against the cheap plastic and closed his eyes after Beech had left. "Jesus Sam what the hell are we dealing with here?"
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Dean put a cup of coffee on the table next to his brother, careful not to put it too near the ancient looking text that was being read. He walked back to the computer and sat down, sipping the hot fluid and staring at the latest search results hoping for inspiration. He tried to recall some other details from last night and a thought struck him.
"Sam, I can remember thinking its face is nothing but shadow – what if it was y'know, just shadow? Is there another type of shadow demon that's more solid than the ones that attacked us and Dad in Chicago?"
Sam paused, his eyes searching the Library assortment across his rumpled quilt until he found a grey book much the same size and shape of a standard bible. He flicked through the pages for several minutes.
"Apart from the daeva, maybe a shadow mantra? It's a lesser demon that's attracted to hate and offers revenge. It's usually summoned though and requires a blood sacrifice to bind the deal. There's not much else in here except it notes that this demon goes largely undetected because the victims are normally held responsible for the crimes it commits. No mention of the frostbite thing but..."
Sam turned the book around for Dean. "It's a possibility but there's nothing to tell us what it's capable of doing. At least if it's demon we know how to waste it."
"But that would mean that Adam brought this on and there's another dead body somewhere."
"C'mon we need to watch him and see what his next move is."
Dean began loading salt shots and checking his gun. Sam grabbed some flares for good measure.
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It was mid afternoon when they reached Adams' house and Dean opened the driver's door. "I'm just gonna check, make sure he's home."
"Let me go, you seem to make him a little nervous."
Dean was about to protest when his phone rang. Before he said anything, a girl's shrill voice spoke hysterically.
"Yeah okay Beech calm down. Where are you now? Dammit I said don't go anywhere. Listen to me, turn around and go home, we'll deal with it. Yeah so do I."
Dean shoved his phone in his jacket and gunned the engine. "Mikey's arranged to meet Adam at the school to sort this out. Only problem is, now he's not answering his phone."
"You think Adam went along? He would've known it was a set up."
"Yeah but who's setting it up? Moron Mikey has probably just walked into his very own trap."
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When they pulled up at the school, the gates were locked so they parked on the road and walked along the path looking for an entry. It didn't take them long to find a hole in the chain link that looked like it saw regular use. They slipped through and crossed the concrete towards the main building.
"Main doors are bolted, we'll have to check the side doors and windows." Dean came down the main stairs not surprised by the outcome but worried at how long it was going to take to get inside.
"I'll…I'll go this way and meet you round the back, call me if you find a way in." Sam flinched inwardly as he spoke but he knew it was the only way. "Be careful."
Dean knew Sam was going against his instincts to get the job done. He knew Sam would be struggling with this decision and he just hoped it wouldn't distract him and get him hurt. "Yeah Sam just take it easy and call if you see anything."
Sam took a breath and began moving along the left side of the building. There was only one door about half way down he could see but there were numerous windows to check. He finally reached the rear of the structure and quickly checked the back but everything was secured. Turning around the corner he stopped and looked along the other side of the school.
No Dean.
He willed his knees not to buckle. Dean had probably just found a way in and was about to call him. Sam stared at his cell phone as if he could make it ring.
"No." Sam's mouth went dry as he press speed dial and called his brother.
Voicemail.
Sam redialed.
Voicemail.
Sam ran along the building frantically checking for any signs that Dean had gained entry but came up empty. His hands shook as he heard Dean's message again.
"Dean please pickup."
As he stared helplessly back the way he had come, his eyes caught sight of another structure across the concrete. The gym.
Sam started sprinting.
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A painful ache behind his eyes was the first thing he became aware of, the second thing was that he couldn't move his hands. To a hunter, your hands often meant the difference between life and death, being able to defend yourself or die.
The feeling of panic rose with his level of consciousness as did the pain in his head.
He remembered seeing Adam running towards him, still too far away to be a direct threat, then nothing. The nothing could more than likely be directly attributed to the head trauma and he wondered if being knocked out twice in twenty four hours was a new record for him.
Probably not.
Dean realised he was sitting in a chair, arms bound behind him and his legs secured as well. Glancing around he was pretty sure he couldn't see his brother although he could see at least two of everything else. Not good.
He would just have to wait this out until Sam found him. By the look of the room and its contents he was still on school grounds, he wasn't sure where exactly but surely he couldn't have been moved too far. He had no idea how much time had elapsed since he had been king hit.
He wriggled his wrists to see if he could loosen the rope maybe get to his phone but all he accomplished was to rub a few layers of skin off his hands. He felt the warm trickle of blood run down his palms and fingertips. Good job he berated himself, before he tested to see if the added lubricant helped loosen his bonds.
A voice much closer than he cared it to be startled him out of his personal inventory, also highlighting the fact that his senses were somewhat malfunctioning. Being surprised was not something Dean was accustomed to but he recovered like a professional.
"Do you like how it feels? Helpless, pathetic, impotent?"
"Whoa hold on a minute there sunshine, I think that last one is taking it just a bit too far don't you think?"
The blackness that belonged to the voice moved fast and Dean felt his head snap back as a cold fist collided with his jaw.
"Y'might want to invest in a pair of gloves there frosty. The ladies aren't so impressed with cold hands."
Another solid hit to his face made his eyes water as Dean found out the hard way this tactic was just going to get him unconscious again sooner rather than later. He tried to control his breathing and waited, squinting to focus his eyes.
"I will get the truth out of you just like you said, do you remember how Dean."
"What? What truth you freak?"
The shadow answered in a whispered voice next to Dean's ear, punctuating each word with a face or body blow that rocked the chair each time it connected.
If. I. Have. To. Tie. You. Down. And. Beat. It. Out. Of. You. Myself.
tbc…