A/N: Hey everyone. Yeah, I know I'm slipping on replying to reviews, but I'm just not finding the time. I hope you can all forgive me and just enjoy the chapter. I'm kind of having a bad weekend, my Grandma died. Anyhow, I know too I promised an update Saturday, but that just didn't happen. So I hope you'll enjoy and drop me a line. I love to hear what you're thinking about this one. Vonnie, I'll email you the cover art, sweetie.
Chapter 4: Match On A Fire
Thunder cracked on the heels of a lightening bolt, the sky fading back from purple to starless black. Joshua and Dean made their way to the old church. The steeple was crumbling, patches of the shingles that lined the peak falling down, exposing supports and roof trusses. Joshua laid eyes on the Catalina, gun ready as they neared the car, walking in slight crouches to keep to the confines of the shadows. Dean rounded the front end of the black car, seeing dents and scratches littering the front end of the vehicle. Blood splattered in the grill and radiator, pieces of fabric and what looked like dark leather was caught in the area around the emblems and hood latch which was slightly sprung. Dean motioned to Joshua, and the older hunter moved, leading the way into the church. Thunder disguised the squeaking of the broken hinges as Josh waited until the rumble was at it's loudest to open the warped mahogany doors. They cleared the foyer, sweeping the area with shotguns.
Dean moved ahead of Josh, going down the side aisle around broken down pews. Worn, rotting prayer rails with stained burgundy velvet peaked out from under pieces of the cathedral ceiling that had fallen. Dean pulled a white grease marker from his pocket and set about drawing various sigils on the floor, walls and the doors of the church, making sure that the demons could not escape. Joshua took the marker and was finishing the last of the signs while Dean pulled a slightly rotted alter cloth from the table on the platform and threw it down over a devil's trap, obscuring it from sight. Dust rose in lazily drifting motes, highlighted by another lightning bolt and Dean glanced at the wall when the light revealed a shadow. He turned abruptly, leveling the gun on a woman who stepped out of the hall and into the room with him.
"Whoa. That's close enough, sister."
"How nice of you to join us, Dean." She said, her eyes turning black, reflecting obsidian when lightning lit up the church through the broken out windows. She looked at the triangle contained in a circle that locked her inside the church. "Nice touch with the graffiti."
"Where's Sam?"
"Tucked away somewhere." She said, her hip cocked as she stared at the hunters before her. "Don't worry. We've treated him real well."
"I bet." Joshua said.
"Where is he, bitch?!" Dean barked.
She made a tsk-tsk sound. "Now, now, mind your tongue. After all, you are in a church."
"Yeah, one where you just happen to have free reign."
"Thanks to that priest a hundred years ago. The one who raped and murdered thirteen nuns on the solstice." She scrunched up her face and clapped her hands like a little girl getting her favorite toy. "That was just the best gift a girl could've asked for. Gave us such a comfy place to keep little Sammy."
"Give him back and we'll let you go."
"Oh, as if we buy that." a male voice said from the shadows. Joshua stepped in front of Dean just as the man stepped from the darkness, waving an arm. The older hunter grunted as he was flung into the sanctuary wall. Joshua's gun was ripped from his hands. He landed face down on the mildewed carpet. Dean ran to his side and helped him up, slinging his arm around his shoulders to support him. They backed away, Dean's hand holding a shotgun. The demons closed in on them, the female stepping on the alter cloth. She stopped when she was snared in the trap beneath her. The male stopped short, skirting the cloth and the sigil beneath. Dean fired the shotgun, Joshua taking his own weight and stepping away. The shotgun cracked in the dim interior, just as thunder rumbled, the combined noises deafening the hunters.
"Go! Kill him!" the woman screamed as the man staggered under the gun blast but didn't go down. The demon tossed Dean, halfheartedly, letting the hunter roll unharmed back to his feet. The man skirted them and headed for a door, leading deeper into the back of the church, towards the confessional. Joshua ran at him, tackling the demon into the wall. The man landed against the triangular sigil at the entrance to the hall. It worked, sticking the demon to the wall like a bug on flypaper.
"Regna Terrae, cantate deo, psallite domino, qui vehitur per calus caelos antiquos!" The demons shook, a high pitched sound coming from the female. The male fought against the trap, his eyes glossy black as the demon manifested.
Thunder shook the church's crumbling foundation, lightning cracking across the sky and Dean's chant stopped, stumbling as the thunder directly overhead made it feel like an earthquake in the confines of the church. The wall cracked, through the center of the trap and the male demon got free, striding to Dean and gripping his throat, lifting him from the floor.
"Ecce, edit vocem suam, vocem potentem: Akinoscite potential dei! Majestas ejus, Et potentia ejus In nubibus." The demon holding Dean began to shake as Joshua picked up seamlessly where Dean choked off. "Timendus est dues e sancto suo, dues Israel; ipse potentiam datet robur populo suo benedictus dues." The demon seized, dropping Dean who landed on his hands and knees, and the hunter rasped out the last words in tandem with Joshua.
"Gloria Patri!"
Simultaneous screams echoed over the thunder and lightning, black smoke pouring from both the humans as the demons were banished. Two corpses fell where they stood, long dead.
"Ace! Ya alright?" Joshua asked, crouching at his side as he helped Dean sit back on his haunches. Dean rubbed at his throat, pulling in a breath and nodding.
"Yeah. Let's find Sammy and get the hell outta here."
Josh looked towards the dead man. "It was headed for the back stairs. This place has a basement, caretakers quarters which leads to catacombs beneath. Goes back to before they started using above ground mausoleums because of flooding."
"That's gotta be where they're keeping him." Dean stood and headed for the door.
"Dean, wait!" Joshua called, spinning Dean when he caught him by the jacket sleeve. "You gotta be ready for this, man. It's pitch black down there, wet and moldy. Like a cross between the bottom of the bayou and a sewer. Caretakers chosen by the church were usually blind men because sighted men went insane after too long down there."
"All the more reason to get him the hell outta here, now." Dean jerked his sleeve free of the hunter's hand and shoved his way through the door. He pulled his flashlight from his pocket and turned it on, the beam finding damp, moss laden stairs. He followed them down, his gun and the light trained ahead as he searched the shadows for traps, other demons. Joshua covered him from three steps behind, his gun safely aimed over Dean's head as he took a slower, but consistent, pace behind him. They reached the bottom of the stairs, the smell of rot seeping through a water stained door. Dean fought back bile and motioned for Joshua to stop with an upraised fist. Dean smacked the padlock with the butt of his gun, the screws in the hasp pulling out of the wet wood. He hit it again and the lock and catch fell to the floor. He kicked them aside, turning the rusted knob with a squeak and shoved the door open, flashlight failing to breach the darkness.
"Stay here."
"Dean…."
"No Josh. It's Sammy. Stay here."
"Alright."
Dean stepped through the low doorway into a damp chill that seeped into his bones and made chills skitter across his flesh. The short hairs stood up on the back of his neck. He crossed the flashlight over his pistol, aiming both into the darkness. "No wonder the caretakers went nuts." He muttered as the shadows closed in, turning to pitch darkness as Joshua's light refused to shine inside the doorway.
Dean felt the sponginess of the boards beneath his feet as he stepped further into the room. His flashlight cut through about the first three feet of pitch, bright light illuminating greenish gray boards. Dean heard a small noise and moved the light in the direction of the sound, a red eyed rat darting back into the darkness. "Sonuva…" He lifted the light higher, not wanting to see any more vermin, imagining them crawling on Sam…biting. "God."
Dean woke, breathing heavily as he slid from the lumpy bed. That same dream again, his baby Sammy lost in the dark, crying and no matter how far or fast he ran, Dean's five year old legs just couldn't get him to his brother. Dean walked across the bedroom, hearing his brother's whimpers. He pulled the short stool closer to his brother's borrowed crib and climbed up the two steps, crawling inside the crib. Something furry brushed his bare foot and Dean saw mice crawling all over his crying brother. "Daddy! DADDY!" Dean cried, hearing his father's grunt to alertness through the paper thin wall between him and where his father slept on the couch. John's thundering footsteps came into the bedroom.
"Dean?" John stepped up to the crib where Dean's head and shoulders were over the rails, Sammy clutched as high in his arms as he could without upsetting his balance and dropping the wailing ten month old. John saw the gray furry bodies scampering over Dean's feet, scratching him, Dean's legs shaking so badly he could barely stand.
Dean's knees shook as he felt a rat scamper over his boot, breaking him free of the memories. He kicked the rat, the small animal giving a shrill screech as it bounced off the wall in the darkness. He heard a sound across the room, the rustle of fabric, drowned out by his breathing and the creak of the boards beneath his feet.
"Sammy?" Dean whispered, his pounding heart finally hoping he'd found his brother and that hope making him unable to stay silent. The beam didn't shine far enough into the corner so Dean stepped forward, the boards beneath his feet creaking and protesting the poor distribution of his weight as he remained hunched to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling. Water dripped on the back of his head, coursing through his short hair and down his neck, following his spine and sending chills and a feeling of disgust through him. He stepped forward again, stopping short as the wood beneath his left foot gave way and he plunged through up to his knee. He hissed as the rough splinters gouged through his denim and scratched at the joint. He shone the flashlight down and broke off the sharp point, pulling his leg back up as he crouched on somewhat safer boards around the hole.
Dean shone the flashlight down the hole, seeing still water, murky and shadowy. He leaned over and looked closer, the shapes floating in the water resembling something familiar. He gagged, pulling quickly back from the hole as the smell of rotting flesh and rancid water burned into his lungs. He gagged again, the smell coating his nostrils and mouth, tasting it as his stomach gave up the battle and bile rushed up his throat. He leaned to the side and vomited, knowing that if something was here it heard him when he went through the floor, so there was no longer any need for stealth. Finally, when his heaving stomach settled by degrees, he heard the sweetest sound… Sam's small whimper, the one he'd heard hundreds of times when they were kids.
Dean straightened, the beam of light shooting in the direction of the sound, finally falling on his brother. Sam shied away from the beam, crying out in pain as Dean caught the tight clenching of his eyelids against the glare, the redness of them in the chalkiness of his face. Dean dropped the light to illuminate the floor near his brother and not blind him while still watching as Sam turned his head into the object at his side, a leather clad shoulder.
"No, don't hurt us! Please! Dean, don't let them take me! Don't let them take me again!" He clung to the arm in shadows, his words a low slurred moan, that Dean's light couldn't quite penetrate. The hunter moved forward again, crouched low, slowly, so as not to frighten his brother. Sam pulled his legs back, trying to move further away from the light, away from the stranger, and closer into the leather at his side. Dean's light finally fell on the object as Sam whimpered and pulled closer to it, the thing sliding sideways into the beam. A rotting, still fleshy head connected to the shoulders beneath the leather, gray and covered with greenish lichen and bits of cartilage and tissue, shadowed Sam's face as he tried to hide between it and the beam. The skeleton, Dean saw was clothed in a dark leather jacket, tee shirt, jeans and boots, all barely hanging on, half rotted and not concealing the rattling of bones, and squelching of rotted meat as Sam's movements jostled it.
"Sam?"
"No…Don't hurt us!" Sam grabbed the skeleton and kicked away from Dean with more strength and fear than Dean could have imagined. "Leave us alone! I won't let you hurt him again." Dean shone the light slightly higher, catching more of Sam's face in the beam. Sam's eyes watered profusely, his pupils like pinpricks, the contraction evidence of being long deprived of light. Dirt caked Sam's face, mud like in the fissures of his chapped lips and the lines of pain and distress around his eyes and mouth. Darker shadows on his face and neck showed Dean that his little brother was covered with bruises. His jaw and chin had a dark layer of better than week old stubble, his usual deep reddish brown, and the reason Sam never let it grow. His cheek bones, even with the forming beard were more prominent than Dean remembered.
"Hey, Sammy, shh. I don't know what happened to you but I'm right here." Dean put his shaking hand to his own chest and slowly moved closer to his distressed brother. "I'm right here."
"No. Another trick…" Sam growled, leaning the corpse tenderly back against the wall of the chamber. "You want me, fine, but I'll be dead before you lay a hand on him again."
"Sammy, that's not me! I don't know what happened to you, what the demons did to you…."
"Demons?" Sam's head shook, shadowed by the flashlight beam Dean shone on his chest, like standing in front of headlights in the darkness. Dean could just see the tips of his lank hair and glistening eyes, shining with a feral quality that worried him. "No! You're the demon!" Sam launched at Dean, taking him hard to the floor only feet from the hole that led to the flooded catacombs below. Dean felt the boards give, throwing out an arm and gripping something hard yet flexible beneath his hand, feeling leather and laces. He'd grabbed the rotting corpse's boot. Dean pulled, at the same time Sam reared back to punch, upsetting his brother's tenuous balance. He managed to get them away from the breaking floor as another board splintered, falling with a splash to the fetid water below.
A flashlight beam shone in Sam's face and he cried out, the sound cut off abruptly as the butt of a pistol came down on his head. Sam crumpled at Dean's side.
"Sammy!" Dean cried, sitting up and reaching for his unconscious brother, pulling him against his chest. "God, he's burnin' up!"
"C'mon Dean. Let's get'im outta here."
Dean pulled Sam closer when Joshua leaned in. "I got 'im."
"Dean, there's no way you're gonna be able to carry him up those stairs. We gotta get him somewhere we can see to find out how bad this is." Dean looked at the shadow of his brother, even though he was unconscious, still not shining the light directly on his face.
"Alright." Dean handed Sam to Joshua who picked him up over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. Josh bench pressed Sam easily as he stood, powerful legs straightening beneath the added weight. Dean readied his gun, but followed Joshua out of the chamber and up the creaky, slippery stairs ready to catch Sam if Josh lost his footing.
They made it to the ground floor of the church, the lightening sky showing through the windows, through the holes in the roof. Dean's eyes were glued to his brother's form, seeing filthy clothing, tattered and smudged with blood and god knows what. The smell of rotted flesh came off of Sam in waves, hair hanging with something stringy like moss. Dean felt bile rush up his throat which he forced down, wanting desperately to just get his brother safe.
They made it to the Joshua's big black truck. "Get in Ace, I'll hand 'im to ya." Dean climbed into the crew cab truck, taking Sam from Joshua's arms, laying him across his lap and tucking his feet into the foot well. He leaned over his brother to hand off the shotgun he still carried. The smell wafting from Sam had Dean gagging again. He pushed through and pulled Sam closer while Josh shut the back door. He felt the heat coming off his brother in waves, pale face patched with spots of color high on his cheeks, the filth broken up by streaks of sweat.
"Just hang on Sammy. I gotcha now." Dean whispered as Joshua pulled out.
A/N: Well, they got him back. What's next? I don't know when I'll be able to update, but will shoot for at least one chapter later this week.