A/N: Vacation plus writer's block= super late update, sorry!
Little bit of torturing towards the end. Nothing super graphic but if you're squeamish, you've been warned.
Research was a hell of a lot easier behind the veil. As a member of the spectral plane, John didn't have to bother with avoiding alarms, interrogating witnesses or well, ghosts interfering.
Sure, there were drawbacks- his spirit was still tied to Hell's Gate, though he supposed he'd poured enough of himself into his journal and the Impala that he could latch on to those as well. Hope Dean doesn't figure that out. Could interfere with the plan.
He still had to watch his back, make sure other hunters didn't cotton on to the fact that he was still lurking around. Demons, either.
That aside, life as a wavelength of electromagnetic energy wasn't so bad. Didn't have to sleep or eat. Forget digging through dusty pages in a library basement-he could tune into Spirit World Chatter better than any psychic.
And boy, were those ghosts talking.
The electric hum of their voices suddenly filled his head as he let down the barriers that prevented the spirits from constantly flooding his consciousness.
Demon King… Apocalypse…
…rise again. Get to feel earth under my feet. See my darling Lucy again. Hold her in my arms.
An angel, falling out of heaven, imagine!
What's this going to mean for us? I can't leave, not yet.
Hunters crawling all over the place. Can't do a damn-
Demons and angels, oh gracious me. It's an exciting time to be dead, it is.
John rolled his eyes at the last utterance, conjured up by one Mabel Bernhardt, who at her own insistence was "eighty- one years old but only twenty-six years dead". She'd been the only one to notice the hunter as he'd crept away from Hell's Gate that night, amid the chaos of the demons. Friendly old bat. Had to give her the slip though…
John pushed deeper, pulling in energy from farther corners of the veil, casting his net wider. Here the voices were too indistinct to make out, but he could feel their energies vibrating along an invisible string.
Darkness, fear, confusion. Demon talk. Someone's made it topside. John felt himself tense. Or rather, the memory of his corporeal body tense. It was harder than expected, shaking off the remnants of human sensation.
Could be Azazel. The thought of finally getting his hands on the slimy bastard made him vibrate with whatever mojo made spirits tick. He's the reason I'm still here. Can't move on until I make him pay.
But first, he needed information. The demons had been too quiet, sequestered in Hell where John couldn't reach them. He knew what they had planned for Sam though; deep down inside he'd always known.
He focused in, following the traces of energy like an invisible trail of breadcrumbs. If he was lucky he might get a glimpse- Sickly yellow pupils flashed for a moment before John was yanked back as if a rubber band had been stretched tight and suddenly released. Spent my payload for the day, he thought grimly as he felt his tenuousness grip on reality waver.
Not yet. Can't go vengeful until everything's in place. Gotta warn Dean… A nearby window shattered without warning. With a deep breath, John willed himself out of existence; into that cold grey twilight land of the restless and lost.
Dean paced around the small kitchen. Opening cupboards, closing them, shifting chairs. He twisted to cap off a beer bottle and promptly left it on the table, forgotten.
His heart had taken up residence somewhere in his esophagus, bulging uncomfortably whenever he tried to swallow.
Cas.
He could taste the name at the back of his throat; a bitter kiss.
"Son, what in the hell is wrong with you?" Bobby asked, regarding him carefully. He'd always had a soft spot for Dean in particular, and had figured out long ago that the boy did not respond well to being pushed or coddled. He needed a rational reason to express his emotions; otherwise he'd just keep burying them six feet under, though they'd eventually claw their way to the surface and bite him in the ass.
Dean threw his hands up in the air as if to say, where do I start?
"Alright, calm down. Let's take this one step at a time."
Dean blew a heavy breath out through his nose, moving to shut the door leading into the living room, which effectively barred Cas from overhearing the conversation.
"I know you two have a history-"
"You make us sound like a pair of freaking exes!" Dean burst out. "I-it's not like that" he can't know, can't ever know. That part of me is dead and buried.
"You trusted him and he betrayed ya," Bobby said smoothly, "and now he's back and you feel like you're up shit creek without a paddle because he ain't the guy you used to know."
When Dean huffed loudly through his nose and turned away.
"Well lemme tell you something," he continued, speaking to Dean's back. "You don't have a choice right now. With Sam off God knows where, your screwed-up friend might be the only lead we've got. We can keep a sharp eye on him, but we've gotta give him the benefit of the doubt here."
Bobby read Dean's discomfort in the way his muscles stiffened and how he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
For a long minute he was afraid the elder Winchester wouldn't respond at all, but finally he gave a jerky little nod.
Bobby understood that as his cue to leave, casting a weather eye over the man standing hunched over the sink before he did.
Dean let out a small sigh of relief as the door clicked shut, before suddenly realizing that he was alone with his thoughts. He fought his first instinct, which was to run out the door, hop in the Impala and go until he couldn't see anymore, maybe find a nice cliff to drive over.
He settled for the second impulse, swallowing his beer in heavy gulps.
Distances in Hell were vague and unspecific. Sam wondered whether this was merely a function of time, which seemed to move in fits and starts, or if the distances themselves actually changed at random.
He walked with Azazel up a winding spiral staircase made of rough stone, circling upwards for hours. They seems to be walking up out of the bowels of the Pit, hewn in by damp, rotting earth on one side, while the other dropped off into sheer blackness.
When they reached the top, dry, desolate earth stretched as far as he could see, broken only by scorch marks that scored long, ugly gashes in the ground.
Sam opened his mouth to ask where they were going, seeing as the place appeared deserted for miles. However, Azazel merely ploughed on; after a hundred feet or so, Sam found himself facing a squat metal bunker that shimmered ominously in the heat.
He didn't think to question this, for the blood had made him bold and incurious.
"Ah, before we go in, you'll need this." Azazel handed Sam a razor, glimmering white under the blazing sun. "Precautionary measure."
It felt so warm and inviting in his palm.
"I don't need it," Sam said quickly, thrusting the tool back into the demon's hands. "I'm all juiced up, right?"
Azazel tilted his head quizzically, smiling slyly. "If you insist, Sammy. Though I think you'll come to find that you were, well, born for this sort of thing. With a little help, anyways." He gave a horrible wink before muttering something in an ancient and perverse language, the words crackling off his tongue. A large square of metal shivered and dissolved. Azazel bowed his head, holding out an arm in a mockingly gallant manner. "After you."
Sam found himself inside a small, circular space, much like Bobby's Panic Room back upstairs, minus the iron and Devil's Traps of course. Instead the walls were coated in a mixture of rust and blood. A huge wooden table dominated the center of the room. A blood-soaked figure of indeterminate gender lay draped across it, the only sign of life a faint and rapid heaving of the chest.
"Today you'll be observing." Azazel gave Sam a slight push towards the gristly display. "Take notes, college-boy, there's gonna be a test."
Sam felt his stomach twist, and he knew with a sickening certainty that his pulse was quickening with excitement, not fear. Some part of me wants this, to feel my hands slick with blood, organs wet and glistening…
He closed his eyes, breathing harshly through his nose. I have to fake it, that's all. I can pretend I'm enjoying it, just have to remember who I am.
Sam forced his lips into a grin as Alistair emerged through the front, a pristine white smock tied daintily around his neck.
"First things first: Professionalism," his cold voice drawled. "Some demons think they can just reach in and yank a heart out any old way but…" he shook his head despairingly, "that's simply barbaric. You need to have style." Alistair reached into the empty air and drew out a gleaming scalpel. Then, in one swift motion, he raked it across the torso of the thing on the table. It let out a low, tremulous moan as the new gash, stretching from one collarbone to the opposite hip began to leak red.
"Start slow," Alistair purred. "Some little, tiny, preliminary cuts," he punctuated his words with careful flicks of the scalpel, raising wells of blood along the victim's leg, "and thennnn you go in." He spread the lips of the chest wound slowly with his finger, worming his way inside.
The thing on the table screamed, banging its head back, eyes rolling.
It's dead already, think of it like that. Can't save 'em. Think about the fish you caught with Dean in Mississippi. Damn big trout. Flopped around for almost five minute before Dean skewered it. Dad was so proud.
"It's a shame Dean's not here," Alistair muttered . "He's going to be the true prodigy. My piece de resistance if you will. Now you have potential and all but I'm afraid you'll just never measure up. Ironic isn't it? On Earth as it is in heaven. Or, Hell in this case."
"Shut up!" Sam felt the blood bubbling to the surface, the metallic tang lurking at the back of his throat. Dean would never do something like this. I'm the tainted one, the one who needs saving.
The demon shrugged, "Whatever you say now doesn't matter. It'll all come to pass whether we like it or not. The Apocalypse is nigh. We just need one more straw before the camel comes crashing down. I believe Dean is coming for you, Sam." Alistair looked right at him, his sunken eyes shrewd and calculating. "And when he does, we'll have you both right where we want you."