Chapter 9

The stairs seemed endless, but at last he reached one larger than the rest. He felt the gritty floor blindly with one hand, waiting for the landing to drop away – but it didn't; the stairs turned and continued upward. He groped for a door and, finding it, tried the handle.

Coldness stole over him, crept through his fingers and spread across his veins. He stopped, every aching muscle drawn tighter as the ice stole its way into his soul. Suddenly, his heartbeat seemed very loud in the dark stairwell.

Terror and darkness and evil waited for him through there. Jimmy released the handle and stumbled back. He sat on the ascending stairs for a moment, gasping and shaking. Unable to move. This was beyond him. He would die trying to escape this place.

A dull hum rose in his ears, louder than the beat of his roaring heart. He put his hands over his ears, but it persisted. Courage.

The word rose within him. Since the vision of his daughter's room, he'd come to think of the angel – because what else could it be? – as Guardian. Jimmy didn't know its true name, and why should he? An angel's name shattered glass and killed the unworthy. Guardian wanted him to survive, body and soul, from this torment. That was enough.

He stood and weighed his options. Before him lay the metal door and certain evil within. He didn't know what waited above him, but the stairs were mostly clear of debris and the air smelled better.

What would Sam do? He regretted the thought almost immediately. Sam might've gone through the door straight off; he was enthusiastic like that. The kid had a blindness to evil that didn't mesh with his career. It was probably why he'd died in that abandoned mall, outmatched and outnumbered by demons .

The hum rose again, almost painful in its insistence. Hope.

Jimmy nodded to himself and began to climb. Since he didn't have the courage to open the door, he was going to hope in the promise of fresh air. He'd watched The Lord of the Rings, after all. If you lost all sense of direction, you could count on Gandalf the Grey to set you straight.

Dim light filtered into the stairwell from the next landing. For the first time since his capture, Jimmy could see again. He pressed through the small opening in the door, careful not to swing the heavy door on its rusted hinges. It had seemed timeless in the dark, but now he wondered what time it was and whether the light could be dawn or dusk. Dawn, he hoped.

The corridor lay parallel to the edge of the building; all the doors opened to the right. He didn't see a single window, but light had to come from somewhere. It was dim ahead and darker behind, so he continued.

That familiar, cold prickle of fear returned to Jimmy's stomach. He wasn't alone. Heart pounding, he tried the doors and found them locked. He began to walk faster, looking for the light before the Other could reach him. The fouling stench of evil followed him. A prayer formed on his lips and in his heart. Jimmy fled, begging the Guardian for protection. He could not bear to have demons play in his head again.

He ran. His head swam with the Guardian's hum, the odd sense of building pressure in his mind that burned fire into his soul. He sensed greatness, power more immense than he understood. Then, blinding light.

He stood on a metal platform. He didn't know how he'd come to it, but a vast warehouse floor spread below him. The brick walls gave way to a glass ceiling as smooth and dark as obsidian, but the room was alive with the light of a thousand candles. He wasted no time spotting the room to the side, darker but less exposed.

Guardian's voice whispered in his mind a single word. Run.

He took the metal stairs three at a time, his footsteps a crashing din in the silence. When he was close enough to the ground, he dropped over the railing and landed in messy roll. His ankle twisted, but the pain felt distant, like the memory of a dream. He sprinted for the room, dodging between mammoth candelabras. The prayer on his lips retreated into his heart as his lungs began to burn. Open floor spread before him. He made one final dash and tore through the doorway into an old control room.

Jimmy tried to stop, but momentum propelled him toward the wall, his feet sliding on a layer of mildewed papers. He slammed into it, bounced back and regained his footing.

He crouched, wheezing, and looked around. A few candelabras just inside the doorway threw scattered light against old office furniture. Two desks and a few chairs had been pushed aside and forgotten, and behind him a filing cabinet lay prone on the floor, its contents crumbling into dust.

The room wasn't so much dark as dimmer and not small so much as narrow. The far wall disappeared into blackness as if the night opened up and swallowed it. Jimmy thought it must be another corridor – perhaps to a courtyard or exit. He couldn't be sure, but he hoped.

Jimmy wasn't stupid. The demons had to be somewhere waiting for him, and if they weren't downstairs they were nearby. He couldn't afford to wait around for the cleaning crew to remember this room.

Upon investigation, the hall was shorter than it appeared – more of an alcove than anything. He found the door easily enough. Its thick metal frame stood solid. He tugged the handle forward. A screech echoed through the small room and – of this Jimmy was certain – the entire building. The door hardly moved.

He needed leverage.

The room seemed to offer nothing. Jimmy kicked through layers of mildewed papers halfway rotted into the floor, finding nothing metal. The filing cabinet and desk were metal, though. Perhaps they would help.

He rummaged through the desk's drawers, pushing past a scrap of paper that had curled in on itself like a scroll. His fingers brushed something hard, something that stung. He jerked back, surprised, then reached for it again.

Jimmy didn't know what the relic looked like, but this odd stone didn't look like any bone he'd ever seen. He turned it in his hands. A tingling sensation swept up his fingers. The current danced up his arm and through his chest, leaving him feeling weightless and powerful and unstuck in time.

It felt like unlocking a door. He smelled ozone and rain, caught a flash of thunderstorm on the prairies. Light surrounded him, bursting from a deep well within him. It filled the room with radiant light. He saw three smoking bodies – demons – on the edge of the circle, just inside the doorway. He stared, awed by the stone's strength.

Then the light sucked back in upon him. His energy left him in a whoosh. Jimmy fell to his knees, consciousness fading, as the thunderbird egg began to glow.

/A.H.O.F.\

"I think I got it," Jen announced, holding up her laptop like a trophy.

The blue glow of her screen blazed against the final throes of sunset seeping through Ben's windows. Sam's looked up, his eyes achy from the sudden onslaught of light. He rubbed them and squinted at the screen, trying to make out the words without reaching for the laptop.

"Can I see?" he asked.

Jen glanced behind him. Sam knew she was checking with Kristen. She'd been parked on the counter behind him all day reading his files and criticizing his investigative methods. He hadn't been able to tune her out, either. It had been like listening to his dad's lectures for hours, until he thought the vein in his forehead would burst.

Three false alarms and Kristen's irritability had taught him some prudence in matters of computer privileges, but Sam's patience was wearing almost as thin as his temper. Ben had left to run errands, and Sam didn't think he could take any more of Kristen's verbal abuse. He could suck up to dick bags to get the job done, but If she called him an abomination one more time, Sam thought he was willing to die for some retribution.

Some people just got to him. They crawled under his skin and wouldn't leave.

Sam was surprised when Jen slid the computer across the table. With Kristen watching his every move, he wouldn't be able to call for help, Sam supposed. It was a good thing he was in a hurry, then.

He reviewed the web page. An industrial warehouse on the outskirts of the old Kansas City rail station was shut down in the 1930s after the gunmen massacred members of a rival gang and decorated the building with their bodies. The location stood out for both the high body count – 54 – and the brutality of the murders.

Since the early 1900s, the building was partially renovated once before the new buyers thought better and the railway fell out of favor. In the 1960s, it was lumped in with the old station and designated a cultural landmark, which spawned a few urban legends. Some had lingered, and one or two were probably true.

It was a good lead, Sam thought. If the site was the epicenter of demonic omens, it would be a solid lead, too. He checked the address against his AAA road map. Bingo.

Sam spun to face Kristen. "I'm going to need my phone, a tape recorder, my rosary –" he paused, his frustration bubbling over. "No, fuck it. I need my damn car, okay? Everything we need is in the Impala."

Kristen raised an eyebrow. "I take it you found something."

He extended a hand, palm up. "Phone."

"Ben has it-"

"Now." He took a deep breath and counted. "Please."

She handed him the cordless home phone. Sam dialed without looking at the numbers, working off reflex. He said a prayer under his breath that Bobby and the hunters hadn't figured it out and gone in yet. They wouldn't survive without reinforcements.

"Singer Salvage Yard-"

Sam let out a sigh of relief. "Bobby, it's me."

"Good God, Sam. Are you okay?"

"You wouldn't believe the shit I've been through today," Sam said, giving Kristen a pointed look, "but I think I know where Jimmy is."

He relayed the information slowly so Bobby had time to write it down. Sam could hear soft chatter in the background over the quiet clicking of weaponry being checked. The hunters had been waiting for his call.

"Sam, I need you to get here now, and if you can't I need you to meet me at the warehouse," Bobby said.

Sam held his hand over the mouth piece. "He says he needs backup at the warehouse." He looked between the two women. "We need to get moving."

Jen shifted in place and looked away. "We should probably wait for Ben."

"You aren't-" He clenched the phone in his hand. Buttons on the dial pad beeped at random. On the other end, Bobby said something he didn't hear.

"He is the oldest," Kristen said with a shrug. "He knows this stuff better than either of us."

"This is happening tonight," Sam shouted, "and you three are coming with me. I almost died once going up against two with a prophet. I'm sure as hell not facing an army unarmed.

"Ben's been gone all afternoon. How are you okay with that? How do you know they haven't gotten him already?"

"Because I'm right here."

Sam, Jen and Kristen jumped and whirled toward the foyer. Ben set down an armload of paper grocery bags and shut the door behind him. He picked up two, set them in the refrigerator without unpacking the contents and handed the other one to Sam.

The bag dragged his arm down. Sam hoisted it onto the counter and peered inside. Table salt.

"You said we'd need it." Ben nodded. He clapped Sam on the shoulder. "Would you believe they're out of the good stuff?"

Sam forced a smile at the joke, but then he'd smile at almost anything if it meant gaining Ben's help. An experienced prophet might be invaluable. He turned into the corner and held the phone back to his ear. "Still there?"

"My eardrums ain't," Bobby said, "but it sounds like we can expect you to the party."

Sam didn't have the energy to laugh. "Is Dean-"

"The best thing for Dean right now is we find Jimmy before it's too late, okay?"

Sam nodded, but his uncle's words didn't sound hopeful. They sounded like he was trying to avoid the bad news. Bobby would tell him if his brother was dead, but by the forced cheer on the line Dean probably wasn't far off. A ball lodged itself right in his throat. It hurt to swallow. He tried to clear his throat, but the lump was too solid.

"I just want my brother back, Bobby," he managed.

"Well, let's get him back then," said Bobby, as if storming a malevolent warehouse brimming with demons out for a blood sacrifice was the easiest job on the planet. "See you soon." He disconnected the line.

Sam stood and listened to dial tone for a minute while he composed himself. He took deep breaths, clearing his head of Dean's health and Jimmy's peril and his own approaching demise, whether by demonic or angelic agents he couldn't be sure. It took that whole minute, but the despair did subside.

When he turned back to the kitchen, the three prophets stood waiting.

/A.H.O.F.\

Rise.

The voice crackled through the darkness, a piercing whistle. Jimmy groaned. He wanted the noise to stop so he could sleep, but his ears rang. The voice rang through like a badly tune radio.

A heady mix of petrichor and sulfur filled the small room, too pungent to go unnoticed. He forced himself upright, head spinning. The bodies still lay prone near the doorway. He crawled to the nearest one, a woman with auburn hair, and dragged her out of the sight.

Her body was dead weight. Jimmy struggled, trying to show more consideration than she'd gotten in life. She'd been taken first by a demon and then by death – by Jimmy. If he hadn't reacted, maybe a hunter could've saved her. He didn't even know her name.

Jimmy turned the body over and recoiled. The woman's face was blistered, the eyes blackened holes. Her face had frozen in a grimace around cracked lips. But that wasn't it, because the woman herself looked peaceful. The horror lay beneath the skin.

He saw darkness within her, a consuming blackness that clung like smoke an inch below the surface. It infused itself into the vessels and nerves into the rough shape of a human form, but it was a grotesque imitation. The features were twisted and barbed.

Jimmy shuddered and stepped back from the body, a dry heave forcing its way up his throat. Evil permeated the air around the woman like thin fog. He could feel it lingering on his hands where he'd touched the corpse, dirty engine grease he couldn't quite wipe off.

The world felt different, fractal. It was as though a separate, invisible reality had existed alongside this one his whole life, but he was only just now seeing it. The world was more than it seemed. Unreasonably, he felt tears well in his eyes. It was just so damn wrong! He wasn't supposed to have this gift.

Strength, Guardian said, its voice more a background thought than a sound. Jimmy, in his limited understanding, knew that his mind translated the voice into words. In its pure form, Guardian could better be described as celestial intent than as a being.

Thick hands clamped around his shoulders and hauled him upright. He gasped then gagged as the incipient corruption of evil slithered over him. Prayer momentarily escaped him. He didn't feel strong. He felt weak, defeated. Wretched.

The demon spun him around. Empty pits of eyes stretched over sagging, grayed skin. Its pale mouth wore a crooked smile in shades of drowned flesh. The strength drained from his limbs as the demon shoved him through the doorway and into the light.

Jimmy tried to close his eyes, but he couldn't help but see. The warehouse was tainted with evil, a darkness that couldn't be dispelled even by thousands of dancing candles. Demons lined the far walls or stood among the interspersed candles. How hadn't he seen this before?

The demon pushed him forward, toward the open center. A metal chair waited beneath the dark skylight. He wobbled on knees that had turned to gelatin. Strength, he reminded himself, but even as he thought it the word died on his tongue. He had never felt so really, truly alone in all his life.

He was going to die here, and he didn't want to die. He wanted to find Sam alive in some library, his eyes bright and overeager and happy. He wanted to eat pancakes with his family, to hold Claire one last time. He wanted that chance to host the morning radio show, but it was gone now.

He stepped over the tip of a chalk pentagram drawn onto the concrete floor. Ropes lay coiled on the floor around the chair. This is it, he thought.

Memories and could-have-beens floated through his mind, promising him a way out if only he asked. They wanted him to beg, to bargain for his life before they snuffed it anyway. Tears wet his cheeks, but somehow he wasn't crying. He forced their temptations down and found his seat within the circle.

It took all the strength he had.