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Chapter Nine
So Bobby was right. I screwed up. I'd let that freak eyed bastard get inside my head, and now I'm no closer to finding Sam then when I was sitting inside my car at Bobby's garage. Everything I saw and felt was so damn real. Too real. Sam's body was so cold and lifeless against my own, I almost believed . . . no he's alive. He has to be.
And the fire – it brought me right back to the heart thumping, knee shaking fear I felt the night my mother had died. I'd never wanted to go back there. I'd never wanted to feel that amount of pain rip through my heart again. But this was worse – this was worse on a whole new level of the word. I hadn't just lost my mother this time, I'd lost Sam, too, and the hole it left in my heart could have swallowed up the Grand Canyon with room to spare. I'd felt him slip from my grasp, and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening.
"You ready to give up and go back where you belong, Winchester?" My hands balled into tight fists at the sound of the hoodoo priest's voice and as he sauntered from the shadows, I pushed away from where I was leaning against the Impala. "You're not gonna try to hit me, are you, Dean? Because I can assure you that would go really badly for Sammy if you did."
"His name's Sam, you sonuvabitch," I snarled, trembling with the need to pulverize his smug face.
"And my name's Devin." Smoothing a hand across his silver-gray dress suit, he straighten his tie, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. "Bad habit, I know," he commented as he put a cigarette to his lips and lit it with a lighter that looked vaguely familiar to me. As he snapped the lid closed, he noticed me staring at the lighter, and lifted it so I could see the Marine Corp emblem.
My eyes widened at the sight of my father's initials engraved into the silver. Snaking out an arm, I reached to snatch it out of his hand, but it vanished the moment it touched my grasp. "Where the hell did you get that from?"
"From the same place I got this scar," he replied, touching his fingertips to a long raised scar above his right eye. "You didn't really think I gave a rat's ass about Stephen's little grudge against you, did you?"
"So this whole damn thing is about my father then?" I said as understanding dawned on me. "If you hurt Sammy, he'll come after you an' nothing will stop him from tearing you apart."
"Oh, I don't doubt that he will, Dean." Devin took a long drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke in my face. "But none of this would have been even necessary if he had just taken care of the matter of your brother himself."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Why doesn't it surprise me that he didn't tell you." He laughed, and at the ominous sound of it, a shiver of dread spiraled down the length of my spine. "No matter though, he will eventually – he'll have no choice."
"You know where he is, don't you?"
"I make it my business to know where all my enemies are at any given moment." Taking another puff off his cigarette, he breathed out through slightly parted lips. Within the hazy smoke I could make out the image of my father cleaning one of his guns in a rundown motel I'd never seen before, but the smoke and image faded before I could make out any details that might lead me to finding him. "Your father's cowardice and self-serving motives have brought us to this, and I intend to see it through to the end."
"My dad saves lives."
"And you, Dean?" He smirked. "Do you save lives as well?"
"AS many as I can from sons of bitches like you."
"You'll take more lives than you can ever hope to save," he countered smoothly, and grounding out his cigarette with the toe of his shoe, he disappeared only to reappear seated on the roof of the Impala. "And so brings us to a glimpse of the middle of the little Winchester saga."
"What the hell are – " The words died abruptly on my lips as he flicked his wrist again, and with it the ground beneath my feet opened wide and swallowed me whole. Excruciating heat burned and seared its way through my skin as darkness gave way to fiery flames. From all around the deafening sounds of people screaming filled my ears.
There wasn't even a second to try to comprehend what Devin had done to me or where the hell I was before I was up on a rack amongst a whole helluva lot of other terrified people. Shackles made of razor sharp barbed wire cut deep into my wrists, and tore at my flesh as I desperately tried to yank free of them. A cry erupted from deep within my throat, and I bit down hard on my lower lip to stop the next one from coming as something cut across my back splaying my skin wide open.
"I've been waiting a long time for this day, Dean Winchester," came a voice at my ear, and as I shifted my head to the side, I saw a pair of shimmering obsidian eyes staring back at me. "And I think I'm really gonna enjoy watching you break apart." With that said another blow came hard across my back, ripping away more of my skin.
It went on endlessly – days stained in blood-soaked terror – nights of sheer obliterating hell. It never ended. It never ended. It never ended. My mind shattered with each crack of the whip. I'd forgotten about my dad - Sam. I forgot everything except for the feel of pain. My body was ripped apart in ways I can't even begin to explain. And from all around me, the same thing was happening to everyone else, but I was lost to it. The only thing my mind could see or understand was the feel of the lash -hardened leather inlaid with shards of jagged glass and finely honed bone, constantly ripping me apart. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't die, but finally I could understand the true meaning of Hell.
"It can all stop at any time, Dean," came the voice again, but now I had a name to go with the hideous face. Alistair. "Just step from the rack and give in to the rage you feel inside."
"No," I muttered through bleeding, swollen lips, and the lash came down hard against my face splitting it wide open. Every day he said the same damn thing and every day my reply was the same – until I just couldn't say no any longer. My insides were so twisted – the pain so unbearable I would have done anything . . . given anything to make it stop – so I stepped down from that rack and I took up that damnable whip, and I made them all suffer. Their pitiful screams in my ears only served to fuel the rage that burned hotter within me than the searing heat surrounding me. A wicked smile curled on my lips as my lash cut through their bone. They begged – God, how they begged . . . and I liked it.
The whipped snaked back, slicing through the hellish air with an ominous hiss, but just as I drew it forward again to strike, stark searing pain ripped through my shoulder, and I felt myself being lifted away from the screams and cries of my victims. Within a heated breath, I was back at the side of the road with Devin still perched on the roof of my car.
Tears blurring my vision, my knees buckled, and I slid bonelessly to the ground. Again, everything had been so real. The putrid scent of sulfur. The demons goading me on. The pain I saw every damn day in those people's eyes as I killed them over and over again. And the sick feeling curling in my stomach at how much I'd enjoyed their suffering.
"Wh-what did you do to me?" I rasped, throat as raw as if I were still in Hell.
"I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition, Dean," Devin said as he slid from atop the Impala, and crouched beside me. "And I can send you back there at any point I choose – everything you try to do to save Sam will only serve to destroy you both . . . so go back where you belong and leave him where he is."
"I'm not leaving my brother," I uttered with a firm shake of my head.
"You've been gone a really long time, Dean, do you actually believe he's still waiting for you?"
"I know he's still waiting for me." There wasn't even a shade of doubt in my mind that Sam was still trapped somewhere in this reality. I could hear his voice in my head, grounding me and drowning out the sounds of those pitiful screams that threatened to shatter my mind. "And nothing you can do to me is gonna keep me from dragging him out of here."
"Then you leave me no choice," he warned as he pushed himself to his feet. "Your brother has to die." With that said, he disappeared in a rain of fiery smoke and ash.