CHAPTER 11
Sam hit the wall with a hard smack before falling to the floor. Winded and acutely aware of the throbbing pain coursing through his body, he staggered to his feet before the Rawhead could strike him. He 'created' another Taser, firing at the beast as it stormed towards him and watching it shake and convulse with a vengeful sense of satisfaction.
Then he noticed another behind it, and three more behind that one.
"Shit," was all he managed to articulate as he pictured another Taser and moved to the side so he wasn't backed up against the wall and had room to maneuver. He fired at the closest, immediately making himself yet another Taser and firing again, but they were coming too fast. There were now six still on their feet and one of them got past his assembly line of Tasers and dealt him a sharp blow to the face.
He felt himself hit the floor even before the stinging pain in his jaw registered. His hunter's instincts made him roll quickly to the side and back onto his feet. He backed up quickly as the entire hoarde (flock? pack? posse? he had no idea what the correct terminology was) was now advancing on him, spreading around for a more coordinated attack than he had thought they were capable of.
Goddamnit…dream Rawheads seemed to be smarter than the real things. Then a thought struck him. Dream Rawheads. He was too used to fighting the normal way, the awake way and he had just followed his natural habits and reactions. Fists and material weapons. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated on the advancing beasts, trying to picture something non-threatening in their place. He winced at what came to mind but stuck with it, pushing the projection outward.
In the blink of an eye, all six live Rawheads plus the six dead ones on the floor suddenly turned into tiny, fluffy white rabbits. Sam breathed a sigh of relief as he looked around the room at the cute balls of fur hopping about harmlessly. He immediately decided, however, that this was something he was never going to mention to his brother in fear of endless hours of ridicule.
Yelling coming from upstairs snapped his attention back to the task at hand and he sprinted back towards the stairs, trying not to tromp on any of the rabbits in his haste. It was Tasha's voice he could hear and she was shouting a stream of curse words that would make Dean flinch. Taking the steps three at a time, he reached the closed door between himself and the racket. It was locked and he unconsciously reverted to his 'awake' tactics and shouldered it open.
He was just in time to see Tasha hit the far wall and drop to the floor. A blanket of anger and rage fell over him and he strode over to where Sheldon stood, grabbing his shoulder and twisting him around to face him. The student did seem surprised to see Sam there but his face showed more anger than anything else. As his fist connected with the man's large nose, Sam glanced down and noticed the knife embedded in Sheldon's shoulder.
He snickered. He'd have thought that with all of Sheldon's poking around in Tasha's head he would have known about her prowess with a blade.
Sheldon went down with the punch but vanished as he hit the floor. Sam spared a glance towards Tasha, who was picking herself off the carpet, a defiant and determined look on her face. He was grateful she looked her real age of twenty-four again this time round. "You okay?" he asked quickly, looking around the room for Sheldon.
She nodded. She was standing by the dresser and Sam noticed a picture tucked under the wooden border. It was of her father and an attractive dark-haired woman that he vaguely recognized as her mother from the bloody corpse he had seen in the first dream. Apart from that, the room was pretty bare considering it was the room of a teenage girl. The only personal touch was a Creed poster on the far wall. It seemed Tasha had always lived ready to run, just like he and Dean had.
"You remember this is just a dream, right?" he asked her.
"What are you talking about, Sam? Did you get hit on the head or something?" She gave him a genuinely concerned look.
Sam sighed. Apparently a new dream meant a new train of thought for the dreamer. He was about to start explaining the dreamroot all over again but Sheldon suddenly rematerialized behind him, the hunter's only warning being Tasha's shout of "Behind you!"
He spun around but didn't have enough time to escape the shot Sheldon fired from the twelve-gauge shotgun he now held in his hands. Sam felt the blast hit his chest and knew he had fallen to the floor but everything else seemed to be a swirling mass of confusion and pain for a few seconds. He could hear Tasha calling his name and clung to her voice to bring some focus back on the surroundings. He found her crouched next to him and her attention seemed to be centered on his chest. He looked down to see blood, a lot of blood.
Shit, his blood. The bastard had shot him.
"Take that you persistent piece of shit!" Sheldon snarled at him as he came up behind Tasha. Sam could barely breathe, never mind move, and watched helplessly as the dreamwalker grabbed the girl by the hair and dragged her away from where Sam lay. The hunter was choking, the coppery tang of his blood in his mouth. His sight was fuzzy and he was losing strength quickly as the blood seeped out of the holes in his chest. A panicked feeling started to encroach on his rational thought. Tasha was putting up a fight against Sheldon but he seemed to have inhuman strength, apparently another talent he'd picked up in his months of dreamwalking. Sam did notice, however, that the knife was gone and there was no sign of the wound in his shoulder.
Sheldon could heal himself, he realized. Well, if Sheldon could do it, so could he. He had to because he was useless to Tasha just lying here dying on the floor.
And he was dying. He knew it had been a fatal shot the instant he had seen the mess his chest was in. He hadn't forgotten that if he died in a dream, he died in real life. Sam pictured Dean returning to the motel room to find him dead and the thought of his brother's despair coupled with Tasha's cries of both anger and pain helped refocus his mind.
In the real world it would have been a fatal shot but in here, anything was possible.
He tried to concentrate on his chest, picturing it whole again. It was a feat not easily accomplished with the huge and disturbing distraction of Tasha losing the battle to Sheldon's superior strength as he threw her violently down on the bed. Desperation began to fog Sam's thoughts as he strained to fix his wound and he didn't seem to be getting anywhere. It just wasn't working.
He thought of when Sheldon had shifted from the threesome-in-the-car dream to this one, how he had tried to push Sam towards awakeness, and decided to try for that instead. If he didn't wake up soon, he was a dead man. He shifted his focus towards the place that felt like the edge of the dream, the place he had avoided the last time. He found it and realized he could grab it, but that would mean leaving Tasha in here alone.
He hesitated and hauled his weakened body around so he could see the commotion on the bed. Tasha was still putting up a good fight and he heard Sheldon grunt as a booted foot sank into his groin. The dark-haired man hauled off and punched her in retaliation and Sam almost changed his mind but he knew leaving her now would be her only chance…and his. So he went.
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He awoke with a start, sitting up on the bed, clutching at his chest and sucking in a deep gulp of air. He was fine, he realized almost immediately. There was no blood, no pain, and he could breathe again. His heart was racing a mile a minute but apart from that, he was fine. His eyes darted over to the adjacent bed and a new wave of fear struck him when they fell on Tasha. She was still sleeping peacefully, her breath slow and even in the silent room. It was eerie how calm she looked, in complete contrast to what Sam knew was going on inside her head this very instant.
Sam pushed himself to his feet and ran to the sink, filling a glass with a quick spurt of water before rushing over to the table. Tasha was drastically outmatched in her dream and had very little chance of even holding Sheldon off, never mind killing him, so he had to move fast. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but ignored it – he really didn't have the precious seconds to spare. He scraped shards off the chunk of dreamroot into the glass of water as swiftly as he could, swirling it in the glass as he dashed over to the bed. Tasha didn't have time to waste so he perched himself on the edge, leaned over, and drove his tongue into her mouth, sweeping it back and forth over her own. It was honestly the fastest way he could think of to get her DNA and was surely far less invasive than what Sheldon was attempting right now. He sat back up, downed the glass, and waited.
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It only took a second before he heard her frantic cries from outside the motel room again and he lunged for the door. As expected, on the other side he found the room he had just left. She was still struggling with Sheldon on the bed but, to Sam's horror and fury, her wrists were now tied to newly-appeared bedposts and her top was ripped open in the front, exposing her lace bra. She was squirming and thrashing but Sheldon had her legs pinned and her cries held more fear in them than anger at this point.
Sam lunged without thinking, throwing his bulk across the bed and knocking himself and Sheldon off the other side, putting an abrupt end to the sadistic laughing. The hunter scolded himself for the move and made a mental note to keep his reactions dream-based from now on, rather than the slow, limited methods of reality. Brain over brawn. It would be the only way he stood a chance against the more experienced dreamwalker.
This time, however, the classic physical method had worked. Sheldon was clearly taken by surprise at Sam's reappearance and swore as he struggled to get out of the hunter's grip on the floor. Sam let him go and rolled away, instantly conjuring a gun into his hands and shooting at Sheldon. He was hoping to have moved quickly enough that Sheldon wasn't able to summon up a defense but received no such luck. All Sheldon did was hold his palm up and the bullets bounced harmlessly away.
Sam wanted to stay on the offensive so he gestured to the dresser behind Sheldon and made it crash down on top of the student. He used the distraction to get to his feet and spared a glance over at Tasha, who was staring at him wild-eyed and tugging furiously at her restraints but otherwise seemed to be okay.
The dresser suddenly flew into the air, shattering into a thousand pieces that disintegrated into nothingness as they dispersed. Sheldon was on his feet in a flash, his jaw set in a tight, angry grimace aimed directly at Sam. He flicked his fingers at the hunter and Sam went flying into the wall behind him, unable to figure out a defense for that move. As he dropped to the ground, he noticed Sheldon raising his hand again and scrambled for some method of defense. He pictured Ruby, of all things, in her petite but lethal blonde-haired form standing in front of him.
Sheldon hesitated, an appraising look actually reaching the sick son of a bitch's eyes at the sight of the pretty demon who had suddenly appeared. She was poised and in a protective stance, ready to defend Sam with the demon-killing knife in her hand. Sam let out a huff of annoyance at himself. Hiding behind a female wasn't the most impressive way to stay alive, but it was what had come to mind in the spur of the moment.
"I'm afraid blonde's not on the menu for tonight," Sheldon sneered, firing his magically appearing shotgun at the demon. She flinched but otherwise stood her ground.
"You'll have to do better than that," she hissed. "Why don't you start by getting a nose-job, Pinocchio."
Sheldon looked genuinely surprised. "Uh-hoh!" he cheered. "You managed to make a hot bionic woman to defend you." The words were directed at Sam, who was pulling himself to his feet behind the blonde. "How brave you are." Sam didn't miss the sarcasm. "But you're still a dead man."
He waved his hand and Ruby was gone. He waved it again and Sam was slammed back against the wall behind him. Another wave and Sam hit the far wall with a hard smack. He could feel ribs cracking in his side as he crashed through the drywall and into the unforgiving timber studs. He was flung a third time and his back was slammed up against the solid window frame. He struggled to amass any amount of mental energy to throw back at this guy but the extreme pain was making it difficult.
Tasha was screaming at Sheldon from the bed, straining against her bonds to lift her head and see what was going on. "Stop! Stop! You're killing him!"
Sam realized he was completely outmatched and wasn't going to be able to save himself this time, let alone Tasha and he rolled his head towards her from where he sat slumped against the wall, gasping for air.
"I'm sorry," he rasped, knowing what was in store for her once Sheldon finished him off. "I tried…" He saw the shotgun appear again in Sheldon's hands, the barrel leveled once more at his chest.
"Oh spare me the sentimental crap," Sheldon snapped humorlessly. "Just so you know," he sneered at Sam, "Because you've been such a royal pain in the ass," his eyes flickered to Tasha and back to Sam, "I'm gonna be extra rough and I'm gonna cut her fucking heart out when I'm done."
"No wait, Sheldon," Sam pleaded but knew it was pointless. He scrambled to throw some kind of dream mojo at the man with the shotgun but he realized the bastard was blocking him somehow without even breaking a sweat. He saw the dark-haired man snicker as he pumped the 12-gauge but the crack of the shot never came. Instead Sheldon simply keeled over, dropping the gun and falling to the floor with an anticlimactic thud. He lay still and Sam noticed there was a large hole in the side of his head and his right temple was pretty much gone.
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Dean parked his car on a nearby street rather than on campus grounds. What he was doing here, what he was planning, was murder. Not killing a monster or even a possessed human who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but murder. The premeditated, cold, calculated murder of a human being.
Correction, not a human being. Not in Dean's mind. Not this guy. Sheldon had lost that status the second he'd threatened Tasha. Even the thought of what the bastard planned to do to her, what he could be doing right fucking now, made Dean's skin crawl and his blood boil with anger. Nobody threatened the people he loved and got away with it. And he could deny it until he was blue in the face but the truth was, he loved Tasha. If he had to kill somebody to protect her, so be it. He'd do it for Sam - hell, he'd done it for Sam - without flinching.
He crept through the parking lot and across the grassy area at the side of the Psychology wing of the Greenwood Building. He almost couldn't believe his luck to find a walk-out entrance directly to the basement and he jogged down the steps two at a time. He made quick work of the steel door at the bottom and slipped inside to find himself in what looked like a storage room. He ventured out into the hallway and passed a few doors with numbers on them before reaching a wooden door marked 'Prof Lounge'.
Yahtzee.
He pulled his lockpick back out and fifteen seconds later was standing next to a couch in a plushy-furnished sitting room looking down at a sleeping Sheldon.
He pulled the 9mm from where he had stashed it in the back of his jeans, being careful only to touch it with the flap of his shirt. He had chosen a Beretta, a recently acquired addition to the Winchester arsenal. After all, Sam was always watching those CSI shows and he couldn't help but worry about the forensics of this crime scene being traced back to him and costing him his comfortable 'deceased' status on the FBI database. That and he didn't want to lose his favorite .45.
He patted the sleeping man's pockets and found a small baggie of dreamroot. He stuffed it inside his own jacket and snapped his phone open to hit Sam's speed dial number. Sheldon's chest was rising and falling so he wasn't dead yet, which was not good news. It meant Tasha, and likely Sam, were still in there going through God knows what. It meant Sheldon was still a threat to the sleeping pair. Dean figured it couldn't hurt to call first, just in case Sam was awake and had an update for him.
When he got no answer, he bent Sheldon's arm up and placed the sleeping man's fingers around the hilt of his disposable Beretta, curling the index finger around the trigger. He placed the muzzle against Sheldon's temple and took a deep breath, the implication of what he was about to do hitting him.
He thought of Tasha and pulled the trigger.
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A/N: I'm on a roll! That's three chapters in four days! Thanks so much to all of you who have reviewed so far and to those who have the story on alert. It makes this adventure so much more fun for me to have your feedback :-)
Sorry for the slightly darker content in this chapter - hopefully it wasn't too bad despite the touchy subject matter. I should have the next chapter posted in a day or so.