Episode Eight
"Sanguis Sanctus, part II"
Chapter Three
NOW
Under the white revival tent, Sam stood from the ribbon-laced chair. He watched Dean like Dean was the monster here, Dean with blood on his hands and face.
"Sam," he started. "Sammy, what-"
"You don't understand," Sam said, stepping backward on the dais.
"So explain it to me," Dean said. He'd been sure he was wrong. He'd convinced himself to trust in Sam. He wasn't wrong, goddammit. He wasn't wrong this time. "Explain it to me, Sammy," he said again. "Please, dammit. I'm listening. I'm here. Whatever's happening, whatever this is, we'll figure it out."
Sam just stared at him, like he couldn't believe anything Dean was saying. And that hurt, but okay, fair point. But it was different this time. Dean took a step forward, hand out, but Sam just shook his head and stepped back again, looking off behind Dean-
-At the bloodied bodies, some of which just looked like nice people in their church clothes, murdered as they sat peacefully worshipping - damned fucked up, but from Sam's perspective, his brows up, his breath fast as he took in the devastation and he looked at Dean again, shook his head just so-
Dean stepped forward again, beseeching. "Sam-"
"He was right about you. I can't believe it. He was right." Sam put his hand out to the side, stepped back again away from Dean, this look of terror on his face, and from the wings of the little stage came a young man who watched Dean warily as he reached for Sam's arm, and as soon as they made contact, both of them vanished.
"What the hell was that?" Dean turned to Cas, wide-eyed, breathing hard now that it was over. Sam was gone. Jesus.
But Cas was watching something behind Dean, and Dean spun-
The girl he'd shoved away from him was huddled there against the tent wall, shaking, staring, blood on her face, fingers white around a circlet in her hands. Dean took a step and she shrieked, hands up, silver band like a shield between them.
Dean rolled his eyes, put his hands out, murmured soothing "It's okay" and "No one's gonna hurt you" as he got closer. He crouched. Close up, he could see her light violet eyes, the way her nostrils were slit under a flatter nose. Just this side of inhuman.
She stared.
"Come on-"
"You killed my dad," she said, voice trembling. Her eyes went wet.
Fuck.
"Kid-" Dean said. He wasn't sure how to continue, but he didn't have to figure it out.
"Are you gonna kill me too?"
She stuck her chest out, chin up. Her hands were still shaking, little tears streaked down her face, but she stared at him. Brave.
Fuck.
"No. No I'm not. I just wanna ask you some questions, and then we'll take you to your mom, okay?" He glanced back at Cas who'd come to stand behind him, but Cas didn't have answers. Cas was only starting to understand the questions.
"She's dead," the girl said.
Dean looked out into the mess of tipped chairs, bloodied bodies, and back to her. "She didn't run?" Most of the women had run - even though they could have torn him apart, they'd run. He assumed it was because of the children.
"She was human. She died when I was a baby." The girl was gaining courage. She reminded him of Sam, the longer they talked. "It's just me now."
"Got somewhere else you can go?" And god, it wasn't the first time he'd had to ask a kid that. She nodded, and his shoulders slumped in relief. "Okay. Come on. You're gonna answer me some questions first."
She didn't want to go with him, that was obvious. But he picked her up and didn't give her a choice, made sure she was tilted away from the guy whose dark purple eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling as they made their way out, but she knew anyway; Dean heard her sniffling.
He put Cas on the phone with Kevin and Charlie, trying to suss out where home base probably was, while he dealt with the girl.
She sat on the bed in the motel room, stared up at Dean defiantly.
"What was that?" he asked.
"What was what?"
Sarcastic brat. "That, the tent thing. What were you all doing there?"
"Church," she said, swallowing nervously. "We're not allowed to talk about it."
"Why not?"
"Hu-" She stopped, marshalled herself, clearly resolved not to cry in front of him even though she kind of already was. "Hunters will find us."
Oh.
He nodded at the circlet still gripped in her hands. "And what's that?"
"The King's crown," she whispered. "We're... we're supposed to put flowers in it and... then he'll give us our wishes."
"The King. Sam?"
She nodded. "But we're not allowed to say his name outside Church."
"Why not? Hunters?"
She nodded again. "But demons too. Some of them don't like us praying to their King. But he's our King too! Dad says-" She cut herself off, mouth sewn into a line as she tried not to bust out wailing.
Dean pressed his lips together. Crap. This was all kinds of fucked up.
But she was rallying. "Dad said, 'Damn demons think they got the keys to the kingdom.' But they don't. They don't," she said softly. Earnestly. She was what, maybe seven, but she had conviction. She looked up at Dean. "The King is gonna save us."
How, he wanted to say. But he watched her, holding back grief, looking at him like she was willing to die for something, parroting her father's words, a man who'd clearly had strong faith. So he instead he said, "Tell me about the King."
She frowned, brought the circlet closer to her chest. "Are you gonna kill him too?"
Dean sat on the other bed and she turned to face him. "No. No I'm not. I just need to talk to him, make sure he's okay. He's my brother."
Her eyes went wide at that. "The King's brother? The Righteous Man? Oh no."
Dean frowned, tilted his head. What the- Okay. He was getting a picture now. Righteous Man, the King. The demons had some kooky religion all about the boy king, Sam, he remembered, but they'd ditched that whole thing, Sam's destiny or whatever. Although the Righteous Man thing was obviously still in play, according to Abaddon. And if monsters somehow co-opted the religion-
But she'd gone white, mouthing oh no with her eyes closed like he was going to cut her throat right then and there.
"I'm not gonna hurt you. I just wanna know about Sam."
She looked over at Cas, still mumbling at the phone, back to Dean. "He's... nice."
"Nice?"
"Really nice. And smart."
"Have you actually talked to him?"
She looked doubtful. "Nooo? But everyone says so, he's so kind. My friend Elspeth got to crown him last week and she said he smiled at her and let her kiss his forehead. You can tell when you see him. He loves us. And he's helping us. So we can go to hell."
"You want to go to hell?"
She shrugged. Looked back to Cas, down to the floor. Dean was aware he might have reached the end of how brave a little kid could be, but he needed to know.
"Where is he now?"
She shrugged again.
"Come on kid-"
"I don't know," she wailed. "Please don't kill me. I don't know where he is. We just go to church and sometimes he's there, please don't kill me yet-"
"I said I'm not gonna kill ya, jesus kid-"
"But you're the Righteous Man! I don't want to die yet, I don't want to go to Purgatory!"
Dean stared. The word itself was bad enough on edge as he was, but the thought of this little pigtailed brat there, blood on her face and for fuck's sake, why hadn't he cleaned the blood off her face, christ-
"Dean."
Dean looked up, the smell of woodsmoke and blood still in the back of his throat, to find Cas looking into his face intently.
"Dean. Are you all right?"
Dean looked from Cas to the girl. She hugged the circlet to her chest, rocked with it, sniffling.
"Y-yeah. Fine. Did you find out where homebase is?"
"We think so. Kevin and Crowley wanted to go right there, but I told them you wished to handle this yourself, that they should stay back for now."
"Think they'll listen?"
Cas lifted his brows, shrugged in doubt. "Probably not."
"Crap-"
"That's why I told them we were with Sam right now."
On cue, Crowley and Kevin showed up in the room, Kevin looking a little green at the mode of transportation.
There was a beat.
"Well? Where is he?" Crowley said.
Dean grinned at Cas, just a little. Cas preened.
"Not here- wait!"
Crowley turned, hand already on Kevin's arm.
"Wait. I need to handle this. Just trust me."
"But I can get there faster-"
Dean put a hand on both of their shoulders and marched them backward toward the bathroom. He nodded back at the kid. "Somebody's gotta get this kid to her... some kinda family."
"Who is she?" Kevin asked.
"An orphan, now," Dean said, his tone forbidding more questions. "Can you get her wherever she's going, Kev? I need Crowley."
"Yeah. Sure." But he didn't look sure. He shifted to look at Cas.
Cas tilted his head in some kind of silent agreement. "Don't worry. I will accompany Dean-"
Dean closed his eyes. This was not happening. "I don't need a goddamned chaperone dealing with my own brother!"
The room was quiet. The goddamned chorus just kept looking at each other, Crowley, Cas, and Kevin, a bunch of fucking mother hens who just didn't get him and Sam, okay? Even Cas was still figuring them out through the filter of his newfound humanity.
"If you're going to see the King," a small voice said, "could you take me with you?"
Dean turned to stare at the girl. She'd rubbed the blood from her face herself, she'd smoothed her hair down, she was sitting tall.
"What?"
"I want to give him his - I want to see him just once before you kill him-"
"I'm not-" Dean calmed himself, found he was heaving breaths, surrounded on all sides by people who thought he was on a mission to kill Sam - "I'm not going to kill him. I told you. But you can't come with, kid. This guy's gonna drop you off with some family," he said, thumbing at Kevin. "And you just keep your nose clean, don't talk about church or Sam, don't hurt anybody, and hunters'll leave you alone. Got it?"
She nodded. Then she took a long moment to think, offered out the crown half woven with flowers. "Will you-"
Fuck. "No," he said quickly, crossed the room to push it back to her chest. "You just keep it, okay? He'd uh. He'd want you to keep it, okay? To remember him." Jesus.
She looked down, nodded slow.
Kevin went to her, frowning. Dean thought he was trying to spot what kind of creature she was, whether he was likely to be monster chow as soon as they were out of sight of Dean, but he walked toward her and held out a hand.
"What's your name?" Kevin said.
"Tiffany."
"Okay Tiffany. We're gonna take a little trip together. It'll be fun." She took his hand and Kevin looked back at Dean with a shrug.
"Keep your phone on," Dean said. "Let us know if you hit trouble."
"Will do."
Five minutes later, after Kevin had taken Tiffany into the bathroom and washed her face and tried to fix her hair and she went to the potty or whatever, they were gone.
"Well that was horrible."
Cas nodded, grave. "Are you all right?"
Dean shook his head, in disbelief, not in answer. "Yeah. I'm. Okay, Crowley. You know where we're goin'?"
"Latitude and longitude, courtesy of your IT Department."
"Then what are we waiting for?"
"I don't know. A 'please' would be nice." Crowley waggled his head in expectation, then relented a moment later. "Oh, all right. Hold tight, my little leeches."
It wasn't so much the twisting tearing sense of being pulled apart and put back together that turned his stomach. It was the sense of other, a thing he could only call black in his head, void, smoke, whatever the opposite of Grace was, not that Dean would know. He looked over at Cas; Cas would know.
But Cas was already stepping forward, toward a large building in the distance.
Around them spread croplands, another tiny town. "Where are we?"
"Talltree, Illinois," Crowley said. "Four little red dots here, including a couple of half-finished exorcisms where Marnie Moose left the job half-done. We have a theory-"
"I don't care."
"-That Sam isn't exactly happy to be here."
"If he's even here," Dean said. "And you don't need to tell me about Sam, okay? You just keep it zipped when it comes to Sam. His name better stay the fuck out of your mouth."
"But-"
"Zipped."
Dean started toward the warehouse in the distance. Maybe half a mile's hike, and he needed the time to think. Whatever Crowley thought, he hadn't been at the weird revival twenty minutes earlier. He hadn't seen Sam smiling at a crowd of monsters. He didn't know Sam.
"I told you you didn't know him," Sam said, teeth gritted. He blinked heavy.
"Pack everything up. Everything." Natalie was still dressed in clothes from Sam's duffle, the nicest things he had that weren't Fed gear. In her usual form, they draped from her shoulders.
"But-" some voice said.
"Now. Unless you want the Righteous Man on your ass."
Gasps in the room, and sudden activity, and Constance was at his side then, pressing a cloth to the gash on his cheek. "We can't move him," she said. Sam detected bitterness. "Thanks to your pitbull-"
Frederick shot to his feet. "Excuse me? He was betraying our position. All you were doing was giving him a little less time to screw us over. I was stopping him."
Sam chuckled briefly, ribs protesting. "I told you he wouldn't give up."
"Shut up!" Frederick shrieked. He started for Sam, but Natalie held up her hand.
"Pack up what you need," she said to Constance, watching Sam with a kind of cold that was difficult to read. "I want him ready to go in five minutes."
"But he's-"
"Five minutes," she said. She came to Sam's side, watched him. Sam blinked up at her, willed his vision to focus on her face. "I had such hopes." She brushed a length of hair from his forehead, grazed the cut on his cheek with some regret. "But we will make it, with or without your help."
"The thing is," Sam rasped. "I feel bad for you. All of you. But you can't just take what you want and call yourselves worthy of it. Believe me. I know a little something..."
He trailed off, breathing hard. He hadn't slept in days, but it felt like he was sleeping all the time, Lucifer kept him company, carved him up now and then, but even that was a sort of yo-yo between feeling strong enough to withstand his own collapsing mind after being dosed, and crashing into full on psychosis when they drained him. He didn't even feel the leather cuffs binding him to the cot anymore.
"Steward," someone said.
Sam opened his eyes again to find her watching him, teeth bared, and she whirled with sparking anger - or he thought he could see the sparks, they might have been imaginary - and she calmed herself immediately.
"Be careful with that. Constance, bleed him, then pack that up too."
She directed the creature to set the bowl - the bowl with his blood in it, he recognized - on the floor under his arm. They'd been spooked at church. He saw that from the frenzy of them coming back to where he lay in the dark, not fit, now, to be shown in public. Good for the red in him, and that only.
And then she was gone, shouting orders and exercising her anger at Dean, at Sam, on whoever was in her path, and Sam couldn't help a little laugh, smile.
"You think you got it wrapped up, don't ya," Frederick said, coming over.
"My brother's gonna kill you."
"Get outta here, Connie," Frederick said.
Constance frowned between them, hands on the buckle of one of the leather cuffs. "No-"
"I'll pack him up. Just get on out."
She must have left. Sam didn't know. He closed his eyes a moment, opened them to find the shadow of Frederick above him - and jerked in his bonds at the fresh slicing pain in his side.
Frederick showed him the knife, slicked his thumb along the blade. He popped it into his mouth and closed his eyes as he sucked it clean. "So much better straight from the cow."
Sam gritted his teeth. He had handled Lucifer. He could handle Frederick. But Dean was so close. Dean was so close. If he was going to die, he wanted it to be Dean. His breath came fast at the thought, lightheaded, when he looked up, it was Dean over him, Dean who jabbed his finger into the wound in his side and twisted, and Sam's mouth dropped open in agony.
Not Dean. Not Dean. This is a monster. Dean's not a monster.
Winchester up.
He blinked again and it was Frederick. The searing in his side, the wrongness, and the finger coated in his blood, and it was Adam, it was Adam, no, no Adam was in a cage, Adam had been dead long before Sam had met him.
"There's a certain something," Frederick said, "about your blood. Just the right seasoning. Real humans are so... bland."
The shadow over his head disappeared, two sets of claws on him then, at his hip and on his chest, dragging him close, and then the heat and strange violating sensation of being drained, what Dean must have felt when he'd been turned by that vamp, when Sam had let him be turned. What those demons must have felt when Sam bit them open and drank them dry-
His breath came quick, he pulled at the bindings holding him down, at the claws digging into his hip, his ribs, Frederick's teeth tore at his flesh in his eagerness, Sam's head went back into the thin pillow beneath it, straining, mouth open. Hold on. Hold on. Dean was minutes out.
Frederick sat back on his heels after a moment, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Sam went limp on the cot, breath irregular, he tried to focus.
"Natalie," he managed, gasping. "Natalie won't allow this-"
"Gonna tell mommy on me?" Frederick tilted his head at Sam. "You think I didn't come into this operation prepared to take her out. You forget I'm a hunter, Sam. I got everything I need. In fact, you just sold me. Yeah." He looked Sam up and down, nodding to himself. "I'm gonna keep you for myself. I've decided religion's not really my thing. I'll let that bitch out there kill your brother, then I'll kill her."
That focused him. He didn't think Dean would let a fenix kill him. Dean was a hunter, Dean knew how to kill a fenix. Probably. But no matter what, he had to derail this idea-
"She can't kill Dean. You'll be on the run from him for the rest of your life."
"Yeah? Think so? Because Tim says he and his boys managed to take you down back in the day and they never saw hide nor hair of your knight in shining daddy issues."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Because I never told him- Don't talk about my family-"
"You're right though. It'll be easier with both of us on it. Me and Timmo, partners again. Eatin' like kings. Get it?"
"Don't- this is suicide, just-" Sam froze as Frederick stuck his finger into the wound in his side again. Breathed through his teeth, tried to focus.
Frederick brought his red fingers up to his mouth, inches from Sam's face, the slurping - obscene. "Yeah," he murmured low, into Sam's ear. "Kill the bitch. Take you to Tim, have ourselves a fine time."
Frederick would kill him. Frederick and Tim wouldn't keep him alive, they didn't have the restraint. Frederick for sure didn't, and Tim hadn't much when he'd been human, and he wasn't that anymore, by the sound of it.
No. No. He couldn't die when Dean was just minutes out. He blinked at the ceiling, marshaling his will. His cuff was looser than it should have been. Constance had done that. He had a chance.
He was going to survive. For once he was going to do what Dean was counting on him to do.
"There are probably dozens of creatures in there," Cas said. "What's the plan?"
Dean bit his lip watching the building, then spun and sank back down behind the stack of shipping boxes. The "warehouse" had turned out to be an old shipping company, abandoned when the train stopped rolling through. A network of tracks overgrown with weeds crisscrossed the in and out. Patrols of monsters were quickstepping it around the perimeter - clearly their appearance at the tent church thing had put them on red alert.
Great.
"Distraction?"
Crowley narrowed his eyes at the milling monsters. "I'm on it," he said, a bit dark.
"What do you know about this weird religion thing, anyway?"
Crowley looked at Dean. "It's not a religion, it's a cult. And I thought we had stomped it out of existence decades ago. Apparently not."
"And the chances Sam's working with them because he wants to be?"
Crowley frowned. "I told you we had a theory."
"Save the Toldja Sos. Just tell me what I'm walking into."
The demon screwed up his face in distaste. "He could be brainwashed. He could just sympathize with them. You know our Moose-"
"No way."
"You saw him at the church, Dean," Cas reminded.
"Whatever. We'll figure it out when we have him back. You," Dean said, poking his finger at Crowley, "distraction. You and me," he said to Cas, "We're going in."
Two agonizing minutes later, Dean was tapping his thigh in frustration, waiting for whatever Crowley had up his sleeve to go into motion. "Come on, come on-"
The sound of a howl echoed over the flat landscape, chills down Dean's spine, momentary rise of panic. "Hell hounds."
"Dean, look-"
Teams of monsters, rag-tag at best, spilled from the two doors they could see from their vantage point. They'd learned their tactics from TV, it was obvious, and they didn't stand a chance if Crowley had even one hell hound waiting for them. Kind of pathetic. Dean'd feel bad for them if it were any other situation.
"Great. Ten down, god knows how many to go," Dean said. "Ready?"
Cas gripped his angel blade. "As I'll ever be."
It went about as well as any unplanned assault on an enemy with numbers unknown could have gone, considering the enemy was just a bunch of Ned Flanderses with teeth and claws and speed and instincts. And Sam. They had Sam.
He cut them down, again and again, silver bullets, sometimes a slice across the throat - it wasn't possible to assess what kind of thing each thing was, but if it got back up, it got put down again another way, and that was all there was to it. Angel blades killed just about everything.
Red settled over him, he slipped into battle mode, so familiar, even comfortable, the smell of campfire, the knowledge that Cas was at his shoulder, and that they were working forward, toward Sam, where Sam was waiting, Sam was the finish line, he almost expected brother honey south, he almost expected a third man at his other shoulder, he almost almost-
"Dean!" Sam said, appearing at the top of a stairs, hands out. "Stop."
"Sammy-" And he did. Stop. Chest heaving, he looked around. Bodies lay limp, moving here and there but nothing with purpose, except for the ones who looked at him with terror where before they'd been fighting him, at the sound of his name, they'd gone all statue-esque. A moment later, Dean remembered the Righteous Man! as they turned and fled.
They were in an alcove, a room made of walls of stacked boxes off to the side of the shipping floor. There was blood on his face, down his side dripping.
"Dean, let me explain."
"I'm all ears, Sammy."
Sam came forward, wary, eyeing Dean's blade. Dean cursed and threw it away, put his hand out empty.
"You don't understand, what I'm trying to do here-"
That familiar tone, that pitch of Sam's every single fucking time he begged Dean to trust him, to believe in him, goddammit.
"I get it," Dean said. "I do. Believe me, I see why you'd want to help them, Sam. You... You feel like you're just like them, right? A monster?" His brain slipped into high gear, sorting through everything he knew about Sam, his worst fears, his highest hopes. "If you can save them, you can save yourself? Right?"
Sam narrowed his eyes, looked unsure. Nodded hesitantly. "That's right. I'm helping them."
"But Sam, you're not a monster. You're not. You're not like them, okay? This isn't you-"
"Not like them-" Sam wrangled his emotions into check. When he opened his eyes, Dean could see him struggling to keep it together as he kept coming down the stairs. "I am. We're the same." Until he was at the bottom of the stairs-
-And in a lightning quick movement, had disarmed Dean, gun spinning off, had him flipped onto his back, forearm pressing into Dean's throat.
"I told you to leave me alone," Sam said through gritted teeth, heaving breaths. "I told you-"
And a moment later, Dean had turned the tables, hooking a leg behind Sam's knee and rolling - a rookie move but Sam was far enough gone he fell for it. Dean kept him down with a knee in his breastbone, both of his wrists pinned with one hand. Sam's long legs kicked without purchase.
"Guess your shoulder's healed up," Dean said. He needed time to think. Demon blood, Sam's connection with monsters - Dean had never figured out how to deal with any of this stuff in a way that ended up with him and Sam on the same side of the argument. He felt a warm hand drop onto his shoulder.
"Dean," Cas said.
Dean turned to glance at Cas. Cas was peering at Sam, down the length of him and back up to Sam's rebellious face. Then he closed his eyes and his posture relaxed into what Dean recognized as prayer. Which meant Cas thought-
Dean looked back down at Sam, searching. Sam just watched Cas, uncomprehending, looked back at Dean and tensed to fight back-
Dean clocked him and the sound of the back of Sam's head hitting the rough concrete floor cracked like a foundation giving way.
Maybe it was.
Dean sat back. Looked at Cas. "He's not, he wasn't-"
Cas glared at Sam. "I don't believe so."
"Excuse me," a shaky voice said.
She was hiding under the staircase, a girl maybe early twenties. She put her hands out as she stepped out of the shadows, looked like she was preparing to meet her death.
"He's in the back room, up in the third floor office."
Dean looked from her to Sam on the ground. "That's not Sam?"
The girl followed his gaze. Shook her head. "Sh... shapeshifter. Please get to him. I tried to help - But Frederick, I think-" She stopped, closed her eyes to compose herself. "Please hurry," she said without opening her eyes. She knelt in front of Dean then, bowed her head. He could see a pink scar snaking up around her neck. "Please be quick."
What the - Righteous Man, right. He was gettin' kinda really fucking sick of that damned title. He looked at Cas. "Watch her, okay? I'm goin' after Sam."
He'd retrieved his gun and blade, but it seemed like after the boss battle with fake Sam, the rest of the monsters in residence had high-tailed it. Fine with him.
Fake-Sam was awake when he knelt to tie him up - it was always possible this girl was lying, though he wasn't sure why she'd try to get him to kill the guy they'd been worshipping or whatever, either way, he wasn't going to risk shooting someone who looked like Sam until actual Sam was found - but anyway, possible shapeshifter Sam was awake and sneering at him.
"You don't get it. He's not even really your brother. And he doesn't need you-"
Okay. Nevermind. Definitely not Sam.
Dean took out fake-Sam with a silver bullet to the heart, and then it was everything he could do not to run full tilt for the back staircase he could see across the dim lit warehouse floor, half hidden behind some boxes but leading up to a walled off second and third floor of offices. Dean crept along, probably too quickly to be safe, but not quickly enough with that girl's voice in his head, please hurry, I tried to help, please hurry-
He took the stairs two at a time, then a crash from upstairs, a yelp, thud, silence, and he was up clearing the landing of the second floor a moment later, up the second set of stairs to the third floor in the next breath.
There was only one office on the third floor. Abandoned moving boxes, slumped stacks of paper, rotted dried out potted plants scattered the lobby the stairs opened into, and there at the back was an office that spanned the whole width of the small third floor. It was dark; no lights on in the lobby, no light on in the room that he could see through the office window, and apparently whatever windows faced the outside afternoon light had been blocked out.
"He's coming," Dean heard. A whisper, he heard it only because everything else in the warehouse was silent. And more after it, sibilant and hushed and unintelligible, repeated muttering.
Gun up, Dean took his time clearing the stacks of boxes, but then he was at the door, breathing in, out, in again, and he nudged it open with a foot, aimed his pistol around, but it was black in the room, just vaguely outlined shapes in the low-light. He headed for the windows and yanked up the blinds-
Surge up rise up Dean is coming.
A hot release in his hand, thumb joint on fire but he is free, hand free to free the other while the thing drinks so mindless like the animal it is, Sam hisses at the greedy mouth ragged the edges of his flesh there, like Jesus blood and water if he is dead, but he's not, or he's not Jesus - he's certainly not Jesus. He could be dead.
It is enough to shove them over, it is enough to take the thing by surprise, and he is desperate, Dean Dean Dean, desperate, and there is only one thing he can do so he finds the head and he presses down into the red he presses down and holds until the thrashing is stopped until the kicking is stopped and -
And if he is damned, he is damned, he always was and always will be, but Dean is coming.
He's coming.