Sam didn't see so much as sense that he'd found the right place when he spotted the mission style building just off the interstate. The hotel looked completely dark, despite it being about six o'clock, prime check in time. Sam had spent the greater part of the day driving up the highway, stopping at every motel and even the larger houses to ask Have you seen these two? What about this car? Every time he knew before he even asked that the answer would be no, and he quickly moved on. You didn't get to be the second best hunter in the world by ignoring your instincts. So when the small hotel appeared on the horizon and Sam felt that familiar drop in his stomach, he made a beeline. The abandoned Impala in the otherwise empty parking lot only confirmed his suspicions. Dean was here.

Certainty turned to puzzlement as Sam stepped cautiously into the building, salt rounds loaded in his gun and Ruby's knife in his belt. The place was abandoned. Recently. The interior looked modern and neatly kept, no different than thousands of hotels across the country. An experimental flick of a light switch proved the electricity was still on, but Sam didn't hear any of the usual mechanical sounds that came with running a large building. No television from behind any of the closed doors, no refrigerator humming despite the attached restaurant, no human voices. The check in desk was empty but for an unplugged computer and an unmarked desk calendar. Sam ran a hand along the dark wooden desk. No dust. Unlocked doors, no people, no power, and no signs of disrepair. Sam was certain Dean and Cas had been here, but there were no signs of recent struggle, and a quick sweep of the dozen or so rooms down the hall confirmed the lack of guests or staff. No signs of demon activity, to clean for angels, way too clean for monsters. This was creepy, and not a clue in sight.

Sam was about to step back outside and regroup, when he caught sight of a familiar scribble of handwriting. A dry erase board, something that would list restaurant specials, lay against the plaster wall, in the shadow of the reception desk. Finally, something to work with. Sam stepped closer, now definitively recognizing Dean's hurried scrawl.

Angels in the outfield. Vengeful spirit. Possessed Cas. R. M. Venganza.

Angels in the outfield. Shit. Sam didn't even need the rest of the message for the panic to start fluttering in his gut. That was Dean's emergency codeword. It meant that Cas was down for the count and Dean wasn't far behind. Vengeful spirit. Okay, simple enough. Possessed Cas. Not simple. At all. Sam was under the firm impression that angels couldn't get possessed. That had been the one thing they hadn't had to worry about. Not anymore. He wouldn't have ever mentioned it in front of Castiel, but Sam had seen the damage that could be done by an angel with good intentions. A vengeful spirit with all the power of an angel? Bad news was putting it lightly. R.M. Venganza. A name probably. A solid lead. Sam took a deep breath. Research. This he could handle. He just had to think methodically, like with any other case. Dean was counting on him to keep a clear head.

Sam left the ominous hotel, dropping back into the driver's seat of his borrowed car.

"Alright R. ," Sam muttered to himself as he flipped open his laptop, "Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?"

ghost/R/search_99

no results found

Venganza/search_99

3 results found

CHUPACAPRA SIGHTING AT VENGAZA GORGE…

CALIFORNIA MEDIUMS R-Z: VENGANZA, ROSAURA M. …

ESTEBAN VENGANZA, OCCULT COLLECTIBLE S ETC…

ROSAURA MARIANELA VENGANZA

Birth: late 1800's exact date unknown

Death: Early 20th Century. Exact date unknown

Claimed psychic abilities: Telepathy, hypnosis

Information of note: Known mainly from journals and logs from locals of Southern California, Rosaura Marianela Venganza was one of the last recorded mediums before the population explosion of the early nineteen hundreds and the fall of the occult from the popular eye. Witness accounts describe Venganza as beautiful, mysterious, and impossible to lie to. An innkeeper in her village of residence (name unknown, poss. demolished in the Industrial boom of the early 1900s) patrons of Venganza's establishment often found themselves compelled to reveal past secrets and betrayals. Eventually Venganza's talents became relatively well known, and her restaurant frequented by wives looking to see if their spouses were being unfaithful, and businessmen looking to see if they were being taken advantage of by their partners. Later in life Venganza became known locally for her ability to commune with spirits, and séances were not unheard of in the back rooms of her business. Details of her death are unknown, though it is rumored to have been at a relatively young age, no older than forty, and likely violently, as was not uncommon given the fickle relationship between those who dealt in the occult and their usually highly religious and superstitious customers.

One specific patron of Venganza left behind a journal detailing his encounter, after which he claimed to have been compelled to…

Sam read on, skimming the surprisingly lengthy article. Sites like this were usually about ninety percent urban legend and ten percent hysteria, but a lot of the details were lining up. If this R.M. Venganza had died violently and come back a ghost, between her supposed abilities and her need for revenge she would be a prime candidate for vengeful spirit territory. The geography was just vague enough to be a match, and if she owned an inn back in the day, why not move to another one when the old one was destroyed? It was making sense, not that it made Sam feel much better. He stared at the grainy sepia toned photograph that accompanied the article. She was beautiful, but something in her eyes told Sam she wasn't someone you crossed, and she probably hadn't gotten friendlier in death.

"You rang?"

Sam jumped in his seat as Gabriel appeared out of thin air. He casually unwrapped a candy bar, tossing the wrapper into the backseat as Sam got his heart under control. Sam got why Dean had always freaked when Cas showed up like that.

"Earth to Winchester," Gabriel chirped, rapping on Sam's forehead around a mouth full of snicker's, "You called, I answered. What's up?"

"Dude," Sam said at last, "I prayed to you like two days ago. Where have you been?"

"Oh I'm sorry," Gabriel said, rolling his eyes, "I've been a little busy tearing Heaven's infrastructure down to studs. Sorry I couldn't jump to a summons from my favorite pair of monkeys and their angel sidekick. Come to think of it, where is the rest of your little supernatural boy band?"

"That's why I'm calling you," Sam gritted out, "Dean and Cas are missing."

Gabriel paused with a frown, tilting his head as if listening very carefully.

"You are correct," he agreed, "They're not here."

"I already knew that."

"No, I mean they're not here," Gabriel corrected him, "On the earthly spectrum."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Sam demanded.

"It means our brothers have gotten themselves into some serious shit." That at least they could agree on.

"I'll say," Sam affirmed, "Dean left me a message, Roanoke style. He used his and Cas' SOS codeword." He showed Gabriel the rest of the note Dean has left, as well as the research he'd managed on Rosaura Venganza. Gabriel's expression grew more grim as he absorbed the information, skimming the long article in seconds.

"This isn't good."

"How in the hell does a ghost possess an angel?" Sam asked, at which Gabriel scowled.

"It's not supposed to be possible. I've sure as hell never heard of it," Gabriel told him, "Unless…"

"Unless what?"

"Unless this Venganza woman was really telepathic, like it says," Gabriel continued, "It's possible, and this is a leap here, but it's possible that she could have used her psychic whammy to somehow enthrall Castiel's vessel, which would weaken his Grace's hold just enough for her to take control. Castiel would still be there, basically stuck as a celestial battery while Venganza pulls all the strings. It's pretty impressive, actually. You'd have to be a ghost/empath to pull it off."

"I'm not sure 'impressed' is the right attitude to have right now," Sam suggested with an eye roll, "How do we stop it?"

"The more important question," Gabriel corrected him, "Is where the hell are they?"

Gabriel looked quizzically at the mysteriously abandoned hotel before disappearing. Sam nearly dropped his computer, then sighed in frustration as the archangel reappeared in the doorway of the white stucco building, examining the doorframe with scientific concentration.

"Thanks for the warning!" Sam huffed as he got out of the car to join Gabriel at the hotel's entrance.

"Sorry," Gabriel retorted, sounding not sorry at all, "I forgot I needed your permission to move ten yards to the right."

"Jesus, you're worse than Cas."

"I'll be sure to tell him that once I find him for you." Sam swallowed his biting response. Gabriel was right. This was serious business. Gabriel ran his hand up and down the aluminum doorframe.

"Well shit," Gabriel murmured.

"What is it?" Sam asked, "Hidden sigils?"

"No. It reminds me of…well, me," Gabriel said at last, looking surprised, "There's a seam here to a pocket reality. Like the kind of pop up space I used to set up to pull off tricks." Gabriel walked further into the hotel, Sam following.

"So are we in the other reality now?" Sam asked.

"Nope. I guess you could say we're walking past it, but I am not the guy to have a terminology debate with," Gabriel continued, hands out in front of him as though feeling for furniture in the dark.

"This is all pretty subtle for a vengeful spirit," Sam mused, "I didn't really think they were capable of thinking this clearly."

"Unless you're shady internet research is correct," Gabriel said, continuing through the lobby, "In which case Venganza spent most of her life chillin' with peeps from beyond the grave. It's like she went into the afterlife with the ghostly equivalent of a PhD in how to manipulate the spirit world."

"So Dean and Cas probably walked right into a trap. Great. …What are you doing anyway?" Sam asked, still a little unclear on the whole "pocket dimension" concept.

"Well now that I know what I'm dealing with I think I can find-" Gabriel stopped suddenly, "Gotcha."

"What?"

"Dean. He's right there," Gabriel said, "Well, right there and one dimension to the left. You get the idea." Sam reached out, half expecting his hand to land on an invisible Dean, but of course it simply touched empty air.

"Can you tell if he's alright?" Sam asked, "Can you feel Cas?"

"His soul's still attached to his body," Gabriel said, wrinkling his nose, "So I'd say alive, and Cas…" Gabriel closed his eyes, and Sam could tell he was going by the touch of his Grace now, looking for his brother.

"He's there," Gabriel said after a moment, "He's dampened by something. The ghost, I assume. It's like trying to get cell reception from under a lead blanket."

"Then we'd better get them out," Sam said firmly.

Dean awoke slowly, dazed. His head was fucking killing him. He and Cas must have had a crazier night than he remembered. Still trying to pull his thoughts together, Dean spotted his angel across the room, drawing something on the floor. What was he up to?

"Hey, Cas…" Dean started, smiling before Cas turned around and the events of the previous night came crashing back to him. That wasn't Cas, and Dean wasn't hung over, he was most likely concussed, not to mention tied to a chair in the hotel lobby, as he discovered when he tried to stand.

"What the hell," Dean grumbled, straining his wrists against the painfully tight knots. Was this ghost in the freakin' Navy or something?

"You're awake," Castiel's voice pulled Dean's attention back to the ghost, "Good."

"Let him go," Dean ordered immediately, his own predicament forgotten, "Cas, I know you're in there! We're gonna beat this freak together, you hear me?" The spirit ignored him, bending back down to finish whatever she had been drawing on the floor. Dean noticed then the white lines and sigils that covered most of the tiled lobby, radiating out from where he was bound. It all smacked a bit too much of ritual sacrifice for Dean's liking. He became engrossed in trying to decipher the symbols, and he jumped when the ghost spoke again, this time right in his ear.

"Ah, mi corazón, you are quite beautiful," Venganza purred, tracing a warm hand along Dean's jaw, "But I would expect it to be so, if you were able to tempt an angel down from Heaven for love of you."

"Don't fucking touch me," Dean spat, recoiling from the spirit's burning caress.

"Does my hand not bring you comfort?" Venganza asked, raising Castiel's hands in illustration, "This body brought you great joy last evening as you danced, and as you made love in the darkness."

Dean flinched as the ghost laid bare all of their previous night's activities, swallowing down bile to think she might have been observing their most intimate moments.

"You are not Castiel," Dean growled, fighting his bonds, though he knew it was useless. Cas' face contorted into a cruel smirk.

"Struggle if you wish," Venganza laughed, "If you escape, where shall you run? If rescue comes, how will they find you? You are in my world now."

"What are you talking about?" Dean demanded. A sick anxiety built in his gut at the triumph in the spirit's expression.

"Foolish boy, you departed from the mortal plane the moment you entered this hotel," Venganza informed him, mocking him with Cas' rough voice, "When I took possession of this angelic vessel I divided the two planes even further. You are not on Earth anymore, and there will be no return for you, you have my word."

"What do you want him for?" Dean asked, trying to find something of Cas in this monster.

"Do I need an excuse to want power?" The ghost countered.

"There's always a nefarious plot," Dean said with a humorless smirk.

"Perhaps," Venganza agreed, reaching into Castiel's waistband to pull out a familiar hunting knife.

"Hey! That's my knife!" Dean cried indignantly. No way he was gonna get ritual sacrificed with his own freakin' blade.

"Yes, it is," the spirit agreed, testing the sharpness of the steel.

"Let me tell you something," Venganza continued, "A little tale of my past."

"Great, story time." Dean rolled his eyes, but the ghost continued, ignoring him.

"I was born with a gift. I could see people's thoughts. Eventually I could put new thoughts where I wanted them. Suggestions. Compulsions," Venganza admitted, "I did my best to use this gift for good. I tried to help people, perhaps occasionally also helping myself, but regardless. Do you know how I was repaid?"

"I'm guessing not with a fruit basket."

"With death. One philanderer enraged when he found out how his wife knew he was a cheating dog, and I found myself watching as my body was burned in the empty desert like so much trash." Venganza's eyes, already burning, filled with seething anger. Dean tried to draw away from the heat coming off of Cas' skin.

"And I thought," the spirit continued, "Ah well, at least it is finished, and now I can be done with this world and it's selfish people. But instead of being rewarded for my years of service, I am trapped, a wandering spirit, bound to the astral plane. I am angry, but what is to be done? Nothing. So I drift, and I wait, for one hundred years. Then I feel things begin to shift. I hear things. 'The Apocalypse is coming'. And then it does not. I hear this a few times."

"You're welcome," Dean grumbled, but Venganza is telling her story.

"Nothing ever comes of these prophecies, but still I think to myself, 'Things are changing, Rosaura, and you should be ready.' And what is it for me to compel a mortal or two, to prepare my new inn, to give it just the touch of magnetism for the right kind of guest? It is nothing. And so I make my plan, and I wait for the perfect host. I cannot leave this world, but I had faith that if I made the entrance pretty enough, the right person would walk into my realm willingly."

"Which is of course exactly what Cas and I did," Dean muttered. God damn it. "And Cas knew something was off and I didn't pay it any attention." Stupid.

"Indeed, your angel was determined to notice me," the ghost agreed, "It was a very delicate game, keeping him docile, but not to arouse your suspicions. Though you proved the most effective distraction of all. I should thank you."

"Let me out of this chair and I'll show you how welcome you are," Dean promised, anger overriding his embarrassment.

"I hardly think you could harm me in this body," Venganza smiled, "Really it is the ideal host. With my abilities and your lover's raw power, there will be very few obstacles. It's a shame you won't get to see my work, but breaking out of this dimension requires a sacrifice, and I'm afraid that duty falls to you."

I fucking knew it, Dean thought to himself. He really hoped Sam caught up to them soon, because Dean being a blood sacrifice and Castiel laying waste to the earth on the mission of a vengeful ghost were definitely not in his top five.

"What do you even get out of this whole deal?" Dean fished, trying to stall for time now, "It's not like you can get revenge on your murderer. What do you want?"

"Simple things, mi corazón," Venganza assured him, a dreamy expression falling over Cas' possessed face, "Freedom. Mobility. The blood of all who oppose me flowing freely through the desert sands."

The ghost began to circle the room, casually slicing open Castiel's palm with Dean's knife, placing blood sigils at various points of the walls and floor, humming merrily all the while.

Shit. Dean was going to die. He was going to die at the hand of his own possessed angel boyfriend because of some psychotic telepathic ghost, and he hadn't even gotten the chance to go all the way with said angel boyfriend. Dean was beginning to deeply regret being so apprehensive about taking it up the ass.

"No way Jose," Gabriel said shaking his head.

"What are you talking about?" Sam demanded, "We have to get them out of there!"

"I don't think so," Gabriel retorted, "I merge these dimensions back together, this Venganza woman walks away wearing Castiel like a well tailored suit. You wanna be the guy who let a pissed off ghost with all the powers of Heaven loose on the general populace? Cause I sure as hell don't."

Damn it. Gabe was right. Getting out was probably the reason the spirit possessed Cas in the first place. Sam ran a distracted hand through his hair, taking a deep breath before another idea occurred to him.

"You can't pull them out," Sam agreed, "Could you get us in?"

Gabriel considered his words carefully.

"I could get you in," he said finally, "But you'd be on your own."

"You wouldn't come with me?"

"If that ghost took down Dean Winchester and created a pocket dimension of reality wearing Castiel," Gabriel said flatly, "Do you even want to think about what she could do if she got under my skin?"

"But you're an archangel," Sam argued.

"Yeah," Gabriel agreed, "With the firepower to nuke the continent should I say...I don't know…get possessed by a psychic ghost. Come on, Winchester, you're supposed to be the smart one."

"Okay, fine. Send me," Sam ordered, considering what he would need to take with him, he had Ruby's knife, and a sawed off full of salt rounds. What else did you take to fight off a ghost/angel? Sam heard the clink of metal, and when he looked up, Gabriel was holding out an angel blade, handle first, for Sam to take. It gleamed dangerously in the space between them.

"That will hurt Cas," Sam objected, brow furrowed.

"Then be careful with it," Gabriel told him.

"Dean would die before he let me use an angel blade on Castiel," Sam said, taking a step backwards.

"They could both die if you don't," Gabriel insisted, "I'm not telling you to kill my brother. The blade would purge the spirit from his Grace, and after I pulled you out I could heal him."

Sam nodded, taking the blade from Gabriel's hand. He rebelled at the idea of harming Cas, but if it saved their lives he would handle it.

"Alright," he said with a deep breath, "Zap me in."

Gabriel raised his hand, looking at Sam with serious gold eyes.

"Be careful," he warned, and Sam nodded. Gabriel snapped his fingers and Sam's sight went dark.