Changes – chpt 5.
By: sifi.
OOooOO
The hackles of her host's body rose as a warm wind blew through the night around her. Everywhere there was only darkness. The moon was new, the sky shadowed in meandering billows of varying gray. Trees waved mockingly in the darkness and even the nocturnal creatures that once scattered in terror at her coming barely even paused in their evening hunts. Everything about this was unsettling. The body whose soul she'd held captive until she fed to fullness off it now seemed to squeeze like the walls of a prison. The child tethered to the wall of the womb, though little more than an unrecognizable mass of some vertebrate 'thing' swung like molten lead inside. And the incessant rush of fluids, and pounding of this monstrous muscular pump in the center of the chest was maddening! She wanted nothing more than for it to all stop! For everything to return to the comfort of the ocean of screams and cries she'd long ago grown to call home. These few inescapable and unceasing sounds made even silence preferable.
"Lilith..." the night breeze seemed to whisper.
She wheeled, straining the finite ability of her human eyes to see what may or may not be there.
"Lilith..." again it came from behind, forcing her to wheel and strain while that damnable pump thundered even harder in her chest.
"Lilith..." now on her right side.
The uneven ground seemed to roll beneath her feet.
"Lilith..." it came again until uncertainty and fear traded places with anger.
'Who DARES to mock ME!?' the succubus inside the body wondered, 'Angels? Or Gods?' But there was no response.
All around her the world fell silent, even until she could neither feel nor hear the beating of the human heart in her breast. The body took a breath and relief left her weak in the darkness.
Shuddering out a sigh she turned and gasped, her nose millimeters from another.
An alabaster face with elfin features and jade green eyes stared coldly into hers. 'Inanna!' "No!" she breathed and in a blink the face was gone. She wasn't even sure if the woman had been there, or just an image. 'This is...' "...not good." Something deep inside whispered.
Her breath panted harshly in the otherwise ethereal stillness and again, though more slowly this time, she turned toward the direction she felt her wards holding. 'How did I get out here anyway?' she wondered as she turned, her human eyes catching on a bright pair of winking lights in the trees on her left. From this distance, and in this pervasive darkness, there was no way to tell what color that light might be. A shiver worked its way up her spine, her flesh broke out in bumps while the hairs on the body stood on end.
Sweat pooled in uncomfortable places and a twiggish 'snap' wheeled her around only to face either the same, or even possibly another pair of lights. 'Run! Now!' she told herself. Her feet moved over the spongy rolling ground, the scent and feel of her wards faint as from behind great wing-beats shoved and drove her with walls of hot wind while somewhere inside she could swear she could hear the growing buzz of an approaching swarm, 'locust... no!' but as she ran into the darkness the quality of the weight behind her told the truth. 'They're coming for me...'
She gasped awake, sweat dripping with insectile speed down her back and sides. Her heart raced and breath came short as a chill shook her body. On her left she looked down at the human male beside her who now stirred and frowned.
"Mmm s'amatter?" he sighed wondering if it was just another of those mysterious 'pregnancy' moments.
"They're coming... they're coming and they're going to kill me and our baby." She let the human voice shudder. Humans... she scoffed knowing that her body's mate, like all males with wanted offspring on the way, would fight to the death if need be.
He sat up and coaxed her into his arms, "It was just a dream," he soothed, "Just a bad dream."
She shook her head and called up some tears surprised that it wasn't as difficult as she thought it would be, "No, Ron. You believe me don't you? You believe me... our baby is special, he has a destiny and there are people, evil people out there that want to hurt him. He's going to bring peace to the world and I can see them, they'll do anything to stop him..." she shook her head playing the part with consummate skill, playing on this human male's need to protect, playing on his fears, subtly twisting prophecy and doling it out in small dribs and drabs. By the time they really did come, this human would crucify himself to save a child that wasn't even his, if she asked it of him. Maybe I will... it could be fun to watch.
"Shhhh, shhhh Lily it's okay, of course he's special... he's ours," he smiled gently and rubbed his open palm warmly against her still slim belly.
"Say it Ron! Say he has a destiny!" she urged with just the right hint of near hysteria mixed among the desperation that was frighteningly, all too real.
"He has a destiny," Ron whispered gently against her temple, his own heart pounding, fearful of what was going on with his wife. Ever since her return from that crazy 'Chakra Cleansing' retreat in Pennsylvania she'd been different. She claimed her 'third eye' had been opened and that she was receiving visions. The visions had turned to nightmares just a couple weeks ago after she told him they were pregnant, and just a few days ago she'd started with this notion that their child was going to mean something to the world, not just them. And now this... Lily baby what's going on with you huh? Is this real? Or are you just going through some kind of pregnancy related psychosis? Please let it be some kind of psychosis thing... God, if you're really there... if you really exist... please... just make my baby crazy okay? Cause anything else... just ain't right. He prayed and eased her back down while in his arms.
"I gotcha baby, I'm not gonna let anything bad happen to either of you okay?" he smiled.
"You promise?" she asked turning onto her side and pressing her rump against him until she could feel him stir.
"On my life Lil. Now you go back to sleep and don't worry your head about another thing." His lips pressed against the back of her head while his hands roamed the hills and valleys of her body.
She took his hand sliding it up under her nightshirt and over her rear, leaving him caressing her while she slid her hand to his hardening manhood squeezing until he gasped and groaned, his arousal soaring while he explored her private places. She used everything in her nature and the arsenal of her experience to drive him into an undeniable frenzy of need. She cried denials that her wiles would not let him hear, she struggled until he made her raw and bruised though he had no memory of it. And she made him coarse driving his gentleness away, supplanting it with cruelty so that when he was done and his seed expelled she lay on her side, forcing tears and whimpers from her host and leaving the male adrift on a sea of guilt and self loathing. His need to protect her and the child grew in time with his guilt. His devotion would soon be fully realized.
OOooOO
"Did you do it?" Spencer asked with his arm around her, keeping her from falling off the stone on which she wobbled.
She nodded, breathing hard for another moment, "Yeah." She turned meeting his bright eyes and easy smile then shook her head.
"What?" he asked drawing back to the stone the sidhe had brought for him.
"You, here... accepting all this... just taking it in stride... it's like..." she shook her head, "I never would have expected any normal person to be able to deal with all this."
The wiry young man shrugged sheepishly, "What was I supposed to do? Walk away from what will without a doubt turn out to be the most extraordinary experience of my life? The proofs, the affirmation of so many suppositions..." he shook his head, "there's no way I could turn my back on the opportunity to see, or... or take part in something this... monumental."
"You'll never be able to share it with your friends."
He gave her a cockeyed smile, "Not my friends from the BAU anyway. I'd like to think when all this is said and done that maybe I've made a few different ones."
"I think you're right," she nodded smiling easily as she clasped him companionably behind the neck. They turned their attention once more to the polished stump that, at this moment, provided a window into Lilith's little hidey hole.
"So, now what?" he asked glancing over at the little bed of soft ferns and grasses that her recuperating body lay on just a dozen or so yards away.
"Enki..." she nodded though her expression tightened betraying the depth of her concern while her hand swept away the image of Lilith's bedroom, in its stead, wiping into view the impala, parked at the far end of a highway rest stop with Dean in the back seat, for the moment sleeping peacefully.
"When will the potion be ready?" he asked.
"By sunrise."
"But you have to wait 'til he breeches the wards before you can use it to bind the wraith inside him... what if it breaks free while you're all fighting Lilith or that Ron guy?"
"That's why you're going to be here watching. If something goes wrong you're our last hope." She smiled running her finger over the image of the man she loved.
"Mmm," he half smirked, "Great, I'm Obi-wan."
She huffed and spocked her eyebrow at him, close, affiliated with Nabu actually.
"Do you know that twice in my career I've had to shoot someone, and both those times I was aiming for non-fatal parts, and each of those times I hit fatal spots." It was his way of giving her fair warning.
Laura grinned, "Something told me you weren't very handy with a gun... don't worry, it's just going to be a syringe... and it's only as a last resort, I don't want you in the fray at all..."
"But?" he asked.
"But... if you have to shoot him, just go for the delt... right here..." she patted the outside of his upper arm to drive the point home, "exact same place you get your flu shot."
"Okay." Spencer nodded smiling faintly. There was part of him that was in complete awe of the entire situation and yet another part of him that wondered if he wanted to return to the BAU. There was no doubt that what they did was incredibly significant, but this... this was something he'd never even dared to hope could be real, and here it was, and here he was in the thick of it all. I wonder what mom would say if I told her about all this... would she think... no. I couldn't do that to her... the irony is that she'd really be the only one who could understand what I'm feeling about all this.
He shook the thoughts away and watched as she turned her attention fully to Dean, and as she'd done with Lilith to plant the dream in her mind, dipped a finger into the side of his head. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. This time the smile that crossed her features was warm and gentle, something about it radiating love that was tangible in the very air. It's strength and warmth drew living things to it, filled them and made them wanton with its wholeness. Spencer shifted uncomfortably, taking a moment to rearrange his sudden 'surprise' while simultaneously observing everything he could about how the physics of this particular world seemed to work. So far, this realm beyond 'the veil' seemed to be built on creative energy, whether it was positive or negative was what determined the landscape, and so far as he could tell just yet, the sidhe and Laura's spirit were keeping a sharp eye on him. That fact gave him to understand that there were places here that might not be safe for him.
OOooOO
There we go... that's better... Sam sighed internally, Thank god there was some truth to that vision the Asag gave me. He was referring to an alternate state of consciousness that the creature under Lilith's dominion had shown him while its master used him. In this alternate consciousness Lilith had taken Dean to hell and Sam had buried his body in a salt plain. All the while Ruby had stuck by his side, teaching him how to use his abilities, teaching him how to exorcise demons from their hosts, and intimating that he might one day be able to usurp their strength to empower himself. She'd told him that if he worked at it enough that he'd be able to kill demons, not just send them back to hell, and she'd been right, at least in his head. He was honestly amazed that the information was true and that aside from being able to kill them, well at least igigi, he did also have it within himself to absorb the creature's strength, the question is can I do it because I'm Marduk or is it because Azazel's blood is in my veins? Does it matter at all?
He slowly tilted his head to the side, glad to be rid of the cervical collar, and even more relieved that there was no real pain anymore, just muscle soreness. The medical staff was at a loss to explain it as anything other than either a technical 'glitch' or as a miracle depending on whoever was asked.
He closed his eyes and breathed, trying to fight back the exhaustion that threatened to force him to rest. His mind flew back by hours, the sensation of absorbing the first igigi's energy coming back to him. The scream that brought half the floor's nursing staff charging to his room echoed in his memory and the realization of just how close he'd come to nearly complete paralysis broke him out into a sweat once more. He couldn't say what it was that made him so certain, but he WAS certain. It was as if all the pain he'd felt before feeding on the creature's energy was little more than his body nearly 'asleep', the pins and needles almost a joke.
Its energy, once usurped for his purposes, became warm, fanning out from his arm through the whole of him. And just after he called out to any others that might be nearby, his muscles began to cramp. Burning white hot in a way he hadn't felt since he was a teenager going through his first explosive growth spurts, his muscles pulled or pushed and a hideous crawling sensation in the depths of his very bones ground like crystal shards, biting, twisting and gnashing at the bony fragments before it pulled them together, pinching, poking and cutting as bone was broken down and then repaired. The damage that had been done in mere seconds beginning to reverse itself at a grossly accelerated rate, bombarding the young man with weeks worth of pain and suffering condensed into minutes that felt like hellish eternities.
Those screams of pain, with their undertone of intense fear brought a flush of embarrassment to his cheeks even now. When they'd rushed him back down to CT, afraid that he might have done something that had broken apart the compression fracture they'd found at C-2 or the one at T-7 he hadn't cared about much more than stopping the pain. There was no way to describe it, there was no instrument he'd ever encountered that could help a person try to understand what exactly he was feeling, and for several long agonizing moments he wondered if it might not be better to just let himself be paralyzed and not have to feel anything again.
Finally they'd tranquilized and mercilessly restrained him until his muscles quit trembling and he could breathe without wanting to add a scream to it, and just about an hour later the doctor had come up to his room, scratching his head and muttering about miracles.
"I don't know how to say this... you had two compression fractures Mr. Crosby, one of the problems with fractures of this nature is that they're very delicate, the slightest movement can shear the fragments out of place which would in turn possibly damage the spinal cord."
"What're you saying? Am I gonna be paralyzed?" Sam panted, fighting the haze of meds to try and understand, he'd been sure he could move and that it was even causing less pain than before. Maybe by trying he'd done more damage than he thought, maybe holding the igigi hostage had been too taxing and had caused too much pressure on just one side of his spine.
He tried not to panic.
"No... I don't know how, maybe it was our scanner, maybe the imager... I just don't know Mr. Crosby, but you are one very very lucky man..."
As his eyes slid closed and his breathing deepened he could have sworn he'd started to fly. He was somewhere along a black ribbon of road, approaching a scenic rest stop where his four wheeled home sat shrouded in shadow, almost invisible except for the golden glow throbbing mellowly in the back seat.
"Dean?" Then he was on the ground approaching the vehicle. 'Nuh no… this is like when she… no not Dean… not again… I won't hurt him again! Nothing can make me hurt him again!' he tried to turn away but instead felt coolness soothing the heat of his fear. Something certain and gentle eased him through his guilt until he reached the car.
'Are you sure?' he wondered but had no clue who he was asking. And though he heard no answer, he leaned down and looked into the rear window where the older man lay curled on his side sleeping. "I'm coming Dean, we'll take care of this together okay? Just wait for me, don't try and take her on by yourself okay?"
That golden glow flickered and dimmed until his brother was just as disconnected from his own soul as every other human they encountered, until he was just another lost but breathing meatsuit with everything that made him special drown in tarry darkness.
'The wraith... it's hooking deeper into him...' he knew and raised his fist. "Dean!?" he pounded on the window, "Dean! Wake up!"
OOooOO
Laura slumped, panting hard and grasped the edges of the stump where the image of Sam pounding on the Impala's window slid away and was replaced with a gleaming smooth surface as if the stump was varnished to show off its rings.
Behind them on the grass a cadre of sidhe scowled, some speaking with obvious anger toward her spirit as they fussed over her body.
"Are you okay?" Spencer asked softly, frowning deeply between her apparent exhaustion and the sidhe's reaction to what she was doing.
She nodded then shook her head and spoke at the cache of small warriors until Mustardseed came to stand before her.
She dropped her hand onto the warrior's shoulder, "Take him to Imdugud…" she asked then spoke privately to him, "Be sure he knows this one's patron is Nabu and he is to be treasured."
"Does he know?" Mustardseed asked with a wry smirk then shook his head, "Of course he doesn't… why do I bother asking…"
She smiled and turned back to Spencer, "You will wait with Imdugud until the others arrive and you will stay hidden until there is absolutely no other option is that clear?"
The young agent swallowed hard but nodded, "You're going to leave me with a demi-god who's in charge of pestilence and famine…"
"Yep." She nodded then dropped a hand onto his shoulder, "He does the bidding of his god… Lilith is the one you have to worry about…"
"And the wraith if Dave can't control it… what's his real name?" he asked, though it didn't matter. He'd seen the other names in her cell phone directory and there was only one other name that went as well with 'Sam' as he remembered from a couple years ago. The only problem was that he'd have to wait to confirm his suspicions.
"Enki." She answered without hesitation leaving Dr. Reid nodding as if he should have known. "Yeah, the wraith too. If I can't get there in time to help and to look after you you're going to have to look after yourself Spencer, this isn't a joke, it's not an hallucination, it's not a dream. You're not back in your hospital bed dreaming all this through a haze of meds and concussive trauma. Your friends are NOT sitting at your side fretting over your state of consciousness… if you're not careful you could easily wind up in the crossfire and that would leave you dead." She admonished harshly, driving the point home until his face went pale and his lips turned into a fine barely distinguishable line.
"I understand."
He helped her rise and escorted her to where her body lay before taking her offered hand in his.
"I hope to see you soon…" she clasped his hand, "be safe."
All he could do was nod while smiling tightly. The last two days, the events, the creatures, the realities came crashing around him, leaving him stunned and speechless and a little nauseated, as she centered herself and lay down within her body just long enough to pick it up and with MilkThistle and a few others at her side, started moving through the trees and out of sight.
A sharp poking at his knee caught his attention, "Where is she going?" he asked.
"For a swim." Cernunnos emerged from the trees saving Mustardseed from having to pantomime an answer.
The young agent looked him up and down, from his wild bushy head of hair, down the whole of his very hairy body, his legs looking as if they were covered in lambs wool, down to his cloven hoofed feet, he's naked… that's all hair… he's Herne… and back up to the tell-tale stag's antlers sprouting from his head.
"You're Herne the Hunter aren't you?"
"That's one of my names," he smiled reaching up to drape his arm around the boy's shoulders, "So tell me… this Agent J.J. you're always thinking of… why don't you pursue her?" he asked turning the young man in the opposite direction.
"What? Because… she… and she just had a baby…" he stammered.
"Mmm," Cernunnos moaned delightedly, "a fertile woman… you need to plant some seeds my young friend and learn to celebrate life! I could help you if you'd like to take a detour, there's plenty of time before we enter into battle and the women in the area we're going to are RIPE for some celebrating of their own…" he offered.
"Uuuhhhmmm…" Spencer's voice faded as they approached the veil on the far side of the grotto where the shorter God stood for a moment, hooked his fingers into the fabric of the barrier between worlds and shifted it first to the right and then slid hundreds of miles of it behind them until they stood in a small park where a man sat gasping, exhausted and slumped on a bench.
OOooOO
Tbc.
Please R&R.
Thanks.
Sifi.