SAM
Sam swallowed down the lump in his throat and stared at the crying, shaking kid huddled against the wall. "Max," Sam said, "it's gonna be okay. We're not here to hurt you."
Max clutched at his own hair. "Who are you? Why did you break into my house? My dad's gonna be home soon, and if he finds you here, he—"
"I need your help." Sam crouched down, trying to appear smaller. He was used to being taller than most people, but Max was tiny—so frail he would have looked younger than twenty-three, if it weren't for his eyes. His eyes were wary and wounded and not the least bit childlike. It was clear Max had seen some things in his life that left him incapable of innocence anymore.
"My...help?" Max stared at Sam, his voice still thick with tears. "Help with what?"
"I know what you can do, Max. I've seen it."
"What are you talking about?" Max shifted a glance to some arbitrary spot on the floor, sniffling.
"Your power. I saw you move the mug across the counter without touching it."
"Were you sp–spying on me?"
Brady snorted behind them.
Sam glared over his shoulder at the demon and turned back to Max. "Not exactly. I'm..." he smiled just a bit, "I'm like you. I mean I can't do what you do, but I have an ability too."
"You do?"
"I have these dreams, and sometimes they come true. I saw you, Max. I know that you've been practicing, and I know what you're planning on doing." Sam had fallen asleep less than an hour into the drive away from Stanford, and dreamt of a pale-skinned frightened boy who watched his father enter their garage and made sure he'd never, ever leave. When Sam woke up he told Brady what he'd seen. They changed their course to Saginaw to stop Max before it was too late.
Max stared straight at Sam with wide eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I think you know." Sam took a breath and looked at Max earnestly. "I know what you're planning on doing to your father."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Sam narrowed his eyes and said, "Yes. You do." He wasn't going to let this poor kid ruin his whole life by killing someone. No matter what had happened, there had to be a better way. "We're going to help you. We're going to make sure that what I saw doesn't happen."
"What do you want from me?" Max asked, wiping at his nose with a shaking hand.
"I need to do what you can do."
"You want me to...teach you?" Max asked.
Sam nodded. "Something like that."
"I don't even know how; I just figured out I could do this a few months ago!" Max looked over Sam's shoulder at Brady nervously.
Sam tried to think of something to say, anything that would calm Max down. "I wish I could explain it all, but it's better if you don't know, believe me. This will be over soon, and you can forget you ever saw us." He forced himself to broaden his smile, in what he hoped was a disarming gesture and added, "You can be normal again."
Behind them, Brady cleared his throat and moved to stand next to Sam.
"Wait! What are you—" Max began to pull away.
"It's okay. This isn't going to hurt. Much." Brady held up his hand and Max froze in place, mouth slightly agape and eyes caught wide in fear.
Max was in some sort of stasis—he couldn't even scream—but his breathing became more and more panicked, and his frantic gaze darted from Brady to Sam and back again.
"Keeneelah vehmehdeh keeneelah," Brady chanted. He walked towards Max and held up a beaten metal chalice. Sam didn't even know where Brady had pulled the thing from; it was just suddenly there. "Keeneelah vehmehdeh keeneelah."
"Maybe we should—" Sam started to say. His pulse jumped when the kid's face contorted in pain. "You said this wouldn't hurt him!"
"Zod ireda deh homil efafafe," Brady said, his voice growing in volume and authority, pressing the cup against Max's chest. The container slowly began to fill with blood. Miniscule spots of red, as fine as pepper, bloomed through Max's shirt and somehow, through the walls of the chalice. "Keeneelah vehmehdeh keeneelah!" Brady boomed once more, and pulled the cup away.
Max's eyes fell shut and his gasps slowed. Freed from Brady's hold, he slid to the floor. Immediately Sam was crouching there, a hand to Max's throat, feeling for signs of life. He found them, all right: a leaping pulse, deep even breaths. Max was simply unconscious, the amount of blood on his shirt negligible. Sam had made bigger messes with nosebleeds.
He stood back up, and Brady handed him the chalice. "No I didn't. I said it wouldn't kill him. He's alive, isn't he?"
Sam tore his eyes away from Max. He blinked at Brady, dumbfounded, and stared down at the cup in his hands.
It certainly looked important enough to be a valuable relic. Ancient, hand-forged and weathered to a dusky patina, the metal was almost warm in Sam's palms, and he detected faint humming, vibrations that felt like pins and needles. A few, scant tablespoons of blood quivered in the bottom of the bowl. Max's blood. Azazel's blood.
"Drink up," Brady said, "before it gets cold."
Sam curled his lip. This was nine kinds of wrong. Drink up? Saliva pooled at the root of his tongue and he wanted to gag. But Brady nodded his head and touched a finger to the bottom of the chalice, nudging it upwards. Sam looked at Max's slumped form one more time. He closed his eyes and on the back of his lids, he saw Jess on the ceiling. He saw her beautiful spun-gold hair fanned out and singeing. He remembered the unmistakable stink of burning human flesh. He felt the breath-stealing heat as it came at him in waves.
And then he brought the cup up to his lips, and drank.
The way Dad had raised them, Sam knew far too well what a mouthful of his own blood tasted like. Max's blood had the same metallic aftertaste that blood always had, but there was something else...bitter and foul and disturbingly familiar. Sulfur, Sam thought, and then he forgot about the taste altogether as something inside of him awoke. He sunk to his knees and let the empty cup fall to the floor. It bounced off the linoleum in slow motion, landed again, and rolled to a stop at Brady's feet.
The demon picked it up and grinned, his black eyes shining.
Brady had told Sam that his dreams were only a small part of Azazel's gift, but he wouldn't be able to access the rest on his own. The few drops Azazel had given him weren't enough to do any real damage.
When the extracted blood ran down Sam's throat, he realized, with perfect clarity, exactly what Brady had meant. Azazel's power roared to life inside of him, claiming Max's ability as its own. It thrummed through Sam, fevered and hungry. The air around him began to quiver, waking to life and taking on force. Everything shattered—the windows, the lights, even the mug on the countertop.
The din woke Max, and he scuttled backwards into the corner, whimpering.
Sam dragged himself upright, and leaned against the countertop. His brain felt too big for his skull and his whole damned body was shaking, but he felt good…like he'd run a race and won. He tried to turn towards Max, to make sure he was okay, but then his gaze got stuck mid-turn. He looked down at his hand, pushing against the countertop and thought he could see something...almost like a double-image, a hazy outline of shadow around his skin. He moved his finger and watched the shadow swirl around it, like a little cloud.
Brady smiled at Max as he crouched down beside him. "How ya doing? You feel okay? Sam wants to be sure you're okay."
Max, trembling, shook his head. He hugged his knees tightly and began to sob. "Th–that was...all I had. How am I supposed to protect myself now?"
Brady smiled reassuringly and patted him on the cheek. "Aw, come on. We won't leave you defenseless. Will we, Sam?" He reached into Sam's jacket, pulled out his gun, wiped it thoroughly with the corner of his shirt, and handed it to Max.
Sam watched Max wrap his bony fingers around the handle of the gun and wondered, distantly, why he felt like something was wrong. He turned back towards the counter and looked at the shattered pieces of the mug.
"Take care of yourself, kid," Brady said to Max. He stood up and turned back to Sam. "We should get going."
Sam knew Brady was trying to tell him something, but the pieces of the mug were still quivering, and there were shadows dancing through the air.
"Sam." Brady snapped his fingers in front of Sam's face.
"What?"
"We need to go. You blew out all the windows. We're not going to stay here and wait around for the sirens, are we?"
"No." Sam shook his head. "No, you're right. We should…we should go." He looked at Max one more time, and then followed Brady out the back door.
"You gave him my gun?" Sam snarled, shoving Brady against the wall. A cloud of dust shook free from the impact. The house they were staying in was old, abandoned, and dark, but it was also out in the middle of nowhere, which made it safe. They'd stayed here for two nights. Sam barely even remembered the first one—he couldn't even remember leaving Max's house. "What the hell's wrong with you?"
Brady laughed, and pulled down on Sam's arms, right by the elbow joint, until he let go. "I'm a demon, Sam. You don't have to worry about your prints or anything, I took care of it."
"Prints!" Sam pointed at the newspaper on the table and yelled, "He blew his fucking brains out, and you think I'm worried about whether my prints are on the gun?"
"Well...yeah." Brady shrugged.
"Max killed himself because of what we did to him."
"Sam—"
"No. I don't care how you spin this, we're done."
Brady ran his hands through his hair in frustration and sighed. "Max was a broken kid. He was gonna off himself one way or another."
"How would you know?"
"Trust me, I know."
"Trust you?" Sam folded his arms across his chest and said, "No. I should have never trusted you. Get out." He walked over to the door (what was left of it anyway), and opened it.
"Sam—"
"Get OUT!" Sam screamed and the old walls of the house groaned in protest as his rage pushed against them.
Brady nodded and said, "See you soon," before vanishing.
Dreaming wasn't something Sam had looked forward to in a long time. Most nights when he felt himself falling asleep, he hoped he could get rest without dreaming, or at least not remember his dreams when he woke. Too often he dreamt of Jess, consumed by flame right before his eyes. Even on the nights he didn't dream of her, he still dreamt of death. The deaths of random strangers he'd never seen before.
The night after he'd kicked Brady out, Sam dreamt of a man his age, with long black hair, tied back in a braid. He was standing in a forest, watching a deer.
Sam walked up behind the stranger to get a closer look at the deer. The man sensed him coming, turned to him in confusion and asked, "What are you doing here?" The deer fled, frightened off by the noise.
"Who are you?" Sam asked.
The man stared at him, with dark brown eyes that looked almost black in the moonlight. "Liam. My name's Liam."
"Liam. I'm Sam." Sam reached out his hand and Liam shook it. It felt odd. The feeling of flesh against flesh was missing, but when he took Liam's hand he felt something—a familiar energy, and then suddenly he knew. "You're like me."
"I am?" Liam asked.
Sam nodded. "You have a psychic ability, right?"
Liam smiled, "You're inmy psychic ability, dude."
"What?"
Liam spread his arms out and said, "This...this is mine. I can do anything I want in my dreams, and I can go into other people's dreams too."
Sam nodded, impressed. "You can pull other people into your dreams too, apparently."
"I knew there were others out there, like me." Liam shook his head. "Every night for the last three weeks, I've been coming here and calling out, trying to find the others." He grinned at Sam. "You're the first one to answer."
Even though it was night-time in Liam's dreamscape, the moon was full and the forest was well-lit. Sam followed Liam down a path through the trees until they got to a lake.
"This is beautiful," Sam said, watching the moon's reflection in the water. "Your gift is amazing."
"Thanks. It is, I guess." Liam looked out at the water with Sam and asked, "What can you do?"
Sam shook his head, "I can move things with my mind, and I have dreams, but...nothing like this. I guess they're more like warnings."
"Oh yeah?" Liam looked at Sam oddly. "Did you dream about this?"
"What do you mean?" Sam asked, and then he was drowning. Something had flung him through the air so quickly, so violently that he couldn't draw breath before he hit the lake. Why would he have to, it was only a dream, it was only a dream…
Sam struggled against the water and swam back up to the surface. Liam was standing on the shore watching him.
"He says I have to stop you."
Sam coughed out a mouthful of tasteless water. Almost right, the feel was like water, but water was never so empty."Who does?"
"The man with the yellow eyes."
Sam's fear and confusion vanished instantly and his rage came flooding back. "You've seen him?"
Liam nodded, smiling, "He visits me every night. In my dreams. He tells me he has plans for me, but that you're going to ruin everything." He laughed and said, "You know it took me forever to figure out where you were. I found your brother easy enough, but you..."
Sam dove back under the water and swam for the shore. When he came back up, he pulled as much of the water in the lake as he could with him, knocking Liam onto the ground with the force of the tidal wave. He walked over to Liam who was lying on the wet ground, coughing up water. "What did you do to my brother?"
Liam laughed, rolled over onto his knees and stood up, brushing the dirt and leaves off of his pants. "Nothing. I just watched his dreams—trying to find you." He stood up and smirked at Sam. "Your brother has some weird dreams."
Sam grabbed Liam by the throat and growled, "If you hurt him, I will hunt you down and kill you."
Liam rolled his eyes and the ground beneath them buckled, throwing Sam off balance.
Sam landed on his ass in the dirt and glared at Liam.
"I'm Godhere!" Liam announced, arms spread wide. "You can't win. Not in here."
"You're probably right," Sam said. He reached out with his mind, grabbed Liam and flung him against a tree, as hard as he could. Dreamscape or not, his power didn't seem to care. He walked over to where Liam had fallen and dropped down on top of him, pinning him under his weight with his knee. He wrapped his fingers around Liam's throat and squeezed. "So let's take this outside."
"No," Liam said, his voice weak under the pressure of Sam's fingers. "No. You can't do this."
Sam sneered and tightened his grip. "The next time you see him, tell the yellow-eyed man he's right."
Liam's eyes rolled back into his head and he dissolved into nothingness along with the forest around them.
Sam woke up in a cold sweat, reached for his phone and called Dean. The phone rang once, twice, three times, and Sam's heart beat faster with every ring.
"Sammy?" Dean answered groggily. "It's four in the morning...what's wrong?"
"Sorry. Sorry, I just–I just wanted to be sure you were okay."
"Yeah Sammy, I'm good." Dean let out a loud yawn. "You know, you never told me how that interview went."
The tears of relief in Sam's eyes came unbidden, and he chewed on his lip to keep his voice steady. "The interview," Sam laughed weakly. "The interview went great; if I keep my grades up, they'll give me a free ride."
"Way to go. That's awesome." Dean paused for a moment and added, "Did you ask them about maybe taking some time off?"
"Yeah. Yeah, they said I could, but I think..." Sam cleared his throat, "…I think I need to just keep going. Keep doing what I'm doing."
"Jess would've wanted that, Sammy." Dean paused. "I mean, you knew her better than me, obviously. I just mean—"
"I know what you—" Sam started to say.
"She would've wanted you to be happy. You deserve it Sam."
The exhaustion of the day and the self-loathing that lying to Dean brought on made Sam's head ache. He pushed against his temple and said, "Thank you."
"Brady still watching out for you?"
Sam let out a huff. "Yeah. Yeah he sure is."
"Good. Tell that douche I owe him a beer next time I stop by."
"Yeah, okay." Sam ran his hand through his hair. "Dean...this is gonna sound crazy, but can you do me a favor?"
"Crazy? Coming from you?"Dean chuckled.
"Don't go back to sleep, okay? Please?"
"I'm pretty tired, man."
"Please, Dean."
Dean was quiet for a second and when he spoke again, his voice was tinged with worry. "Okay. You got it. I'll go grab some coffee or something."
"Thanks."
"When can I go to sleep again? In a week?"Dean tried to make a joke of it.
"Tonight," Sam said resolutely. "You can sleep again tonight." He swallowed hard and wrapped it quickly. "Bye, Dean."
"Sammy, wait—"
Sam ended the call, stared at his phone for a few heavy seconds, and then called Brady.
DEAN
Manning, Colorado made Golconda look like a bustling metropolis. It wasn't just empty, it was abandoned—shops boarded up, buildings in the fifth decade of disrepair. The place was practically a ghost town.
The emptiness in the air, coupled with Sam's phone call from the previous night, turned what should've been a merry vampire-slaying party into a stone drag. Keeping the phone call a secret from Dad was making him irritable. Additionally, he was dead tired, even though he'd nodded off at dawn despite Sam's weird request to stay awake. Nothing had happened, so Dean was left wondering exactly what had triggered Sam's worry. Did he have one of his freaky so-called premonitions? If so, this one had been a dud. Hopefully, Daniel Elkins believed in the glories of caffeine and kept plenty on hand.
Dean followed Dad's truck as he pulled down a dirt side-road, swearing at himself when the Impala jostled roughly across the uneven ground. "Sorry, baby."
Elkins didn't exactly welcome them in with open arms. He gave John a nod that was half respect and half old-but-unforgotten anger.
Dean followed Dad in, and raised his hand in silent greeting.
Elkins' decorator must've taken a page from the Bobby Singer playbook, with the notable exception of paneling instead of faded wallpaper. Books sat stacked in leaning towers, piles of miscellaneous refuse heaped in every corner, and the whole place smelled of smoke and bourbon and old paper. The glassy eyes of the head of an eight-point stag, mounted over a cluttered desk, followed the men across the room. Sorta gave Dean the creeps, to be honest. He half expected it to spring to life and start speaking in tongues.
The old hunter paused to let the Winchesters pass, staring at Dean with a scrunched expression. "Ain't I met you before?"
Dean shook his head and smiled, confused. "No sir, I don't think so. Pretty sure I'd remember meeting the best vampire hunter on the planet."
Elkins let out a guffaw. "Is that what your daddy told you? Heh." He looked over at John and said, "We ain't countin' Albuquerque then, are we?"
John smirked. "Everybody has their off days." The Winchesters trailed Elkins into the kitchen and John sat down at the small, scarred table, pushing aside mugs of stale morning coffee. Dean stood point at his father's left shoulder. "Hear you're having dog trouble?"
"Craziest damn thing. I was out looking for a vampire nest—found it too, finally." Elkins shook his head, a gray shock of hair falling over his brow. "I come back home and the place was just…torn to shreds." He nodded back towards the living room. "My bookshelves were knocked over, my safe cracked open and bent in half…hell, they even ripped up my damn mattress."
"What were they looking for?" Dean asked.
Elkins chuckled. "Something they ain't never gonna get."
John stared at the old hunter as if the man had just dropped a sack of puppies in the river. "You son of a bitch."
"You mind your tone with me—" Elkins growled.
"You've had it this whole time?"
Elkins glared, his expression guarded until a small smile started to break through. "Had what?" he asked.
"You know damned well what!" John slammed his hands on the table and stood up.
"Dad?" Dean looked back and forth between the men, ready to step up if need be. He had a gun tucked into the back of his jeans and he'd pull it in a New York minute.
Elkins raised a brow at Dean before leveling his gaze back to John. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't. What I dohave is a huge nest of vampires twenty miles from here and I ain't taking 'em all down by myself. If you and your boy help me clean out that nest, maybe I'll remember where I put it."
Dad shook his head and laughed dryly. Dean exhaled hard; he didn't realize he'd been holding his breath.
"Dammit, Elkins. We would've helped you anyway."
SAM
"He was a monster. You should have put him down," Brady said under his breath, walking next to Sam on the sidewalk.
"He's human," Sam said wearily. "I took care of it. He won't hurt anybody anymore."
"You know, I'm still impressed you got into his head."
Sam looked at Brady, confused. "What do you mean?"
"Well usually, you guys are immune to each other. That's why he couldn't find you in the first place."
"Maybe when we took Azazel's blood out of him, he stopped being immune."
Brady snorted. "Well obviously, genius. No, I mean before that. You got into his head all on your own. Found him in his dream before you ever knew who he was."
"He said he was calling for me, for us." Sam clenched his fist, remembering what else Liam had told him. "He threatened my brother. He said Azazel came to him in his dreams, told him that I had to be stopped."
"Huh. Well that explains it then."
"It does?" Sam snapped.
"Azazel let you in. He probably thought Liam was going to take you down easy."
Sam felt a wave of cold satisfaction run through him. "He was wrong."
"Damn right he was," Brady said, leering at Sam.
Fighting Liam had been exhausting. He couldn't do nearly as much awake as he could asleep, so taking his blood hadn't been all that difficult once they'd pinned him down. Liam fell asleep after the ritual, just like Max had. Sam wanted to be sure that he couldn't do anymore damage, so—still reeling with the rush of Azazel's blood—Sam forced himself into Liam's dream with all the grace of a battering ram. He found Liam huddled by a tree. The dreamscape looked off; it was the same forest, but it had lost everything that made it feel so real. The richness of the colors, the smells, and the textures had all been dulled down into muted shades of grey.
Sam solidified the tree Liam was leaning against and brought its roots out of the ground. He made the roots wrap around Liam's arms, legs and chest, and sent them back down into the ground.
Liam didn't even try to fight back. His gaze was unfocused and his eyes were glassy.
"I'll let you go in a day or two," Sam said crouching down beside him. "Once I'm sure you can't hurt anybody anymore."
"What happens when you let him go?" Brady asked.
Sam's jaw twitched.
The night after he'd taken Liam's power he'd looked in on Dean's dreams. He didn't stay long, just long enough to be sure he was safe, and that Liam was nowhere to be seen. He'd left Dean's dream, his brother none the wiser, and walked back into Liam's forest.
Liam was as pale as the ash-colored earth he laid on and when Sam looked for a pulse, he nearly couldn't find one. He felt a weak flutter under his thumb and imagined he saw Liam's eyes shift ever so slightly, looking towards him. 'One more night,' Sam thought. 'Just to be safe.'
Brady looked up at the street sign they'd just passed, and turned left. "You don't think he's gonna hunt you down? Or Dean?"
"If he even thinks about it, I'll stop him," Sam growled.
"Okay. Whatever you say, champ." Brady stopped walking. "Here we are: Holy Trinity Cemetery."
"Can't we just do..." Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting back the headache he'd come to identify with the new powers weaving themselves deeper into him. "Whatever it is you do? Teleport or—"
"Sure! And while we're at it, let's sky-write 'Sam was here!' so Azazel knows exactly where we were and exactly where we're headed!" Brady shook his head and added, more quietly, "Look. I hate traveling like a human. It takes forever and it's boring, but it's safe. He can't track us this way."
"But you did it at Liam's."
"That was a ten foot hop. Doesn't cause much of a ripple in the space-time continuum. You need to brush up on your metaphysics, buddy."
Sam looked at the gates of the cemetery. "You know, this city, Colma—it's an actual necropolis. The dead outnumber the living by over a thousand to one."
Brady snorted, and clapped Sam on the back. "See, that's why you're such a hit with the ladies."
They walked up the sloping main road past ornate marble crypts, monoliths and statues of weeping angels. The cemetery was enormous, and well-maintained. Brady turned to the left and Sam followed him towards an open grave—a burial.
"Tell me who we're here for again?" Sam asked through gritted teeth. "And why we had to interrupt them at a funeral?"
"Calm yourself, prissy-pants." Brady pointed to their right, uphill, towards a small, discreet shed. "We're here for the groundskeeper, Hans Müller."
Sam followed Brady up the hill and stopped in his tracks when he saw a man with hair so blonde it looked white lying on the grass, next to the shed. "Is he...okay?"
Brady walked a few steps closer to the man and kicked at his boot. "Yeah, he's just napping. Hans here likes to self-medicate." He kicked Hans again, this time in the shin. "Don't you, Hans?"
Hans let out a weak wince of protest and sat up, groggily. He blinked up at Brady, shielding his eyes from the sun. Then he turned to Sam, back to Brady and scrambled backwards in an undignified crab-walk until he hit the side of the shed. "What are you? Holy God, what are you?"
"See, Hans here, he has very special gift." Brady put his hand against the shed and looked down at the man. "He can see anyone's true face."
Sam looked at Brady and wondered, not for the first time, what a demon really looked like. He sat on the grass and looked at Hans, holding up his hands in a calming gesture and said, "It's okay. Brady, he's...not like us, but he's here to help."
"No," Hans said, shaking his head. "No, I can see him. I can see what he is."
"I'll just give you two some room." Brady rolled his eyes and pushed off the shed, walking away from them.
Hans looked glassy-eyed at Sam. "I can see what you are."
Sam swallowed. "What am I?"
"You're like me," Hans laughed, an unsettled noise. "You're cursed."
Sam nodded. "You're right. I'm cursed, just like you, but I can help you."
"Nobody can help me. I have prayed every day for God to lift this curse from me, but it just...gets worse. Every day I look in the mirror and I can see..."
"Brady," Sam said, quietly, knowing Brady would hear him. "It's time."
Unlike the telekinesis, which had flooded Sam's system so thoroughly it took him hours of practice with Brady just to rein it in, the power he'd taken from Hans was just there. The ability to see the way Hans had felt as if it had always been there. Sam left the cemetery with Brady and turned towards the demon as soon as they were outside of the gates. It had started raining, and between the heavy drops, the far-too-close lightning and the dizzying rush of Azazel's blood, it took Sam a full minute to realize he was actually seeing Brady for the first time.
The demon's true face bled out through human skin—easier to see when the lightning crashed, like the darkness of his soul was backlit.
Sam had prepared himself for the worst, or so he'd thought. He'd imagined demons as corrupted, dead things with hideous deformed faces and empty eyes. Brady just looked off. His eyes were black underneath their pale blue exterior, and his mouth was stretched just a little bit too wide.
When Brady spoke to Sam, his lips pulled back to reveal pointed teeth and his words spilled out like ichors, sliding down his chin and reaching out for Sam with tendrils of black smoke. Sam took a step back and Brady laughed. His already-twisted mouth opened wider, revealing a long, oil-slicked tongue and for just a second, Sam could see flames covering the demon's whole body.
"You alright, Sam?" Brady asked. "Need to take a breather?"
Sam shook his head. "No. Let's keep going. South. You said the next one was south. San Diego."
Brady nodded. "She'll still be there tomorrow. We can take a break if you—"
"I don't wanta break!" Sam yelled, over the crash of thunder.
"Okay. You're the boss," said the demon, hands like long, bony, claws lifted in a soothing gesture. "Do you want to catch a train? Borrow a car?"
Sam watched a woman—human, just a human—walk past them and flinched when he saw her steel-faced expression shimmer and shift into a feral scream. He turned to Brady and said, "A car. Let's take a car."
Lily Hammond was sitting in the corner of 'Becky's Beans' coffee shop.
Sam recognized her immediately. It wasn't just the brief flicker of yellow he saw in her eyes when she let out a heavy sigh—a duller shade of the same yellow he'd caught in his own eyes in the side mirror of the car—it was the pain of loss. Beneath her skin, beneath her shaky but quiet exterior, there was a pain so deep her eyes looked like they were bleeding. When she brought her coffee mug to her lips, Sam noticed her hands; they looked like they were glowing, ever so slightly. The light he saw in Lily's hands pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm. A heart-beat.
Brady walked over to the counter and ordered himself a triple-shot espresso, and a mocha with extra whipped cream, for Sam. "Thanks," he said when the barista handed him his drinks, and she smiled at him pleasantly, forgetting all about the $5.86 he owed.
"I hate whipped cream," Sam said when Brady put the mocha in front of him. He'd picked a table in the corner with a clear view of Lily.
"I know you do." Brady picked up three packets of sugar from the little black box on the table, tore them all open at once and poured them into his espresso cup. Then he took three more packets and repeated the procedure.
"That's disgusting." Sam gave Brady a flat stare.
"I like sugar."
Sam took his spoon and scooped out as much of the whipped cream from his mocha as he could. Then he dropped the whole dollop into Brady's cup.
Brady kept grinning and took a sip of his espresso, wiping the excess whipped cream off his mouth with the back of his hand. "See, unlike you, I appreciate the finer things."
"Did you pay for these?"
"You're cute." The demon folded his hands and rested them on the table. "Money is a human construct. People will do anything for it because they need it to do...just about anything. I don't. Neither do you."
The mug of mocha was still far too hot to drink. Sam tapped his fingertips on its handle, watching Lily. "Last time I checked, I still had to pay for breakfast."
Brady chuckled. "Wait until we get to Guthrie..."
Lily stood up from her table, put on her coat, and headed for the door.
Sam stood up from the table and followed her.
Brady drank down Sam's mocha in one long gulp, and went after them.
Sam followed Lily back to her apartment building and 'accidentally' bumped into her by the mailboxes. He introduced himself as a student of SDU and said he was there to look at the sublet.
She shook her head saying she didn't know about any apartments for rent in the building. Sam apologized, said he must have gotten the wrong number and told her he was sorry to hear about Amy's death. Lily's skin turned even paler and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but didn't say a word.
Amy was Lily's girlfriend. She'd passed away just over a week ago when Lily accidentally touched her bare skin.
Since taking Liam's power, Sam's dreams had been different. They didn't come to him randomly anymore but if he focused on anyone, even if all he had was a name, he could slip into their dreams.
Brady had told Sam about Lily as soon as they'd started heading west from Michigan, and he'd seen enough of her tragic life to understand that her gift was a curse. She stopped hearts with a touch. She'd killed her pet, two close friends and her girlfriend, all within the last few months.
Sam reached for Lily's shoulder, trying to offer comfort, but Lily flinched back, yelled, "Don't touch me!", and ran up the stairs.
After a minute, Sam followed her up the stairs and waited by her apartment door until Brady let him in. The demon cocked an eyebrow at him and Sam shook his head. "Let me handle this one."
Brady rolled his eyes but followed Sam into Lily's kitchen. She was standing by the sink, quietly crying, fingers curled over the edge of the counter.
Sam took a breath. "It's not your fault, Lily. None of it is."
Lily whipped around and looked from one man to the other in panic. "How did you get in here?" She yanked open the drawer to her left and snatched out a kitchen knife. "How do you know my name? Whoareyou?"
Brady laughed, pointing at the knife. "I like this one! She's feisty." He opened his fingers and Lily's knife flew from her grasp into Brady's hand. The demon brought the knife straight down, lodging it in the kitchen's butcher-block countertop. Lily stared at her empty hand, dumbfounded, and brought it up to her mouth. She was shaking.
"We're here to help," Sam said, taking a few careful steps in Lily's direction.
She shook her head frantically. "You can't help me. You don't know what I've done."
Sam nodded. "I do. I know exactly what you've done, because you dream about it every night. Every single night."
"That doesn't make any—"
"I'm like you." Sam sat on one of the stools in the kitchen, far enough away, he hoped, to not appear threatening. "I have gifts. Like you."
"Gifts?" Lily laughed bitterly. "What I have is a curse. I would do anything to be normal. Anything."
Brady clapped his hands together. "Well, then you're in luck!"
Sam resisted the urge to turn and glare at him, keeping his eyes on Lily instead. He'd wanted to handle this a certain way and the demon wasn't making it any easier. He kept his voice steady and sincere. "We can free you from your curse, Lily. If that's what you want."
Lily nodded, and rubbed at her nose angrily. "What I wantis Amy back! What I want is for everything to be like it was a year ago before I turned into some kind of grade-A freak."
"I know. Look I…" Sam bit his lip before continuing, "…I lost someone too. My girlfriend. I was going to ask her to marry me."
Lily's eyes softened and she blinked as a tear tracked down her cheek. "I'm sorry."
"I didn't get to save her, and I couldn't help you save Amy, but I can help you. I can make sure that you never hurt anybody else again. That has to count for something, right?"
Lily took a few hesitant steps towards Sam and sat on the stool next to him. "What do I have to do?"
Brady put the chalice down on the countertop and smiled. "All you have to do is trust us."
"Trust you. I don't even know you." Lily sniffed and shook her head. "I must be crazy. You two broke into my apartment and I'm sitting here talking to you."
"You're not crazy," Sam said. "And you're not a freak. You're just…infected."
"With what? A virus?" Lily paled.
"Something like that." Sam looked over to Brady and gave him a nod. Explaining things further was just going to get Lily more wound up. After the ritual, she'd be calmer. They could talk more then.
"Keenelah vehmehdeh keeneelah," Brady began chanting.
Sam tuned out the rest of Brady's words and watched Lily's eyes droop slowly shut. She slumped forward, resting her arm and head on the edge of the wooden kitchen countertop. Her arm was stretched out towards Sam, fingers slightly curled and her palm turned up. Little drops of blood started rolling down her arm and pooling in her hand.
The chalice slid towards Lily's upturned hand as Brady finished chanting. The blood rose out of her hand and floated through the air as a fine mist, until it was sucked into the cup. Sam watched the soft light of the metal pulse in time with Lily's heart and then stop as the last drop of Azazel's blood joined the rest. He brought the chalice to his lips, and drank.
The blood ran down Sam's throat, warm and bitter with sulfur. He closed his eyes as Lily's power became his. Through the pleasant fog in his mind, he felt his heart beat louder and louder. When he opened his eyes again, his hands looked like they were glowing, pulsing with a whole new kind of energy. He realized, at that instant, that Lily's gift wasn't about death. It was about life. She could take it away, and—if she acted quickly enough—she could give it back.
"Lily," Sam said quietly. You could have saved them. You could have saved all of them.
But when Lily opened her sad brown eyes, and Sam saw a flicker of hope, all he said was, "You're cured."
Brady grabbed the chalice and tucked it back into whatever trans-dimensional jacket-pocket he kept it hidden in. He grabbed one of the apples from the bowl on the counter and took a big bite out of it, making a loud, crunching noise.
Lily reached her shaking hand out towards Sam's, flinching back just before touching his skin.
Sam took a steady breath, pulled his new power back deep inside to keep it under control, and took her hand. He brought her fingers up to his cheek and said, "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
Lily stared at her hand. She traced her fingers down his cheek and then lifted them away, staring at them a few seconds more. "Why didn't you come sooner? If you'd come a month ago…" Her face flickered between rage and despair, and then crumpled. "If you'd come two weeks ago, Amy would still…"
Sam watched Lily's shoulders shudder as she lost herself to her sorrow. Part of him wanted to reach out and pull her towards him, offering whatever comfort he could…but underneath that he was furious. She was right. He should have come sooner, he should have stopped this, he should have saved Lily sooner, he should have saved Jess and he could have if he hadn't fought so damn hard to be normal. He stood up and looked at Lily one last before turning and leaving her apartment.