Muffled noises cut through the clutter in her mind, her body seemed so numb. Something touched her, shook her.
"Amelia!" a voice shouted, "Amy!"
She opened her eyes a slit to a worried Sam bent over her.
"Are you all right?" he asked, the words echoing around her.
Amelia's eyes drifted shut again as the pain threatened to overwhelm her. But then her eyes flew open, and she struggled to sit up.
"Jo! Where's Jo?" she grabbed at his shirt, eyes wild. "And Ellen!"
"They're fine," he took her hand and patted her head in a gesture that felt far too much like the demon's caresses. She shuddered. "Ellen and Jo got a salt line set up and exorcised two of them. What happened?"
"Did you test her?" Dean's voice echoed over to her, and suddenly she heard his voice as an echo from the past. "Probably best if you don't remember anything."
Sam tossed some water on her arm, and seemed satisfied when it didn't sizzle.
"What happened?" Dean asked, his head coming into her view. "Are they still here?"
Amelia swallowed, the taste of blood still fresh in her mouth, and Dean's unspoken words echoing in her ears. "Tossed me down the stairs, don't know what happened after that." She coughed, spitting up blood. "Passed out."
Sam cradled her head, giving her some water. Amelia swished it around, and spit the red-tinged water out.
"Got punched in the face," she grunted as she sat up, Sam's hand on her back supporting her. She hoped there wasn't too much blood smeared around her face. Until her head cleared up and she could decide how to act, she would play it close. Amelia wiped at her mouth with her sleeve, wincing as the fabric grated over her bruises.
Sam helped her stand. Her head swam, pulsing with sheer pain. Amelia tottered, the support of Sam's hand the only thing that kept her from falling to the ground.
"We need to get you out of here," Sam told her. "The demons are probably still around."
Amelia was fairly certain they had gone, but she wasn't going to argue. Dean pulled her other arm over his shoulder, and between them they carried her up the stairs, her toes dragging on the ground. Her shoulder twinged in pain. But the throbbing in her head drowned out any other pain. Electric guitars howled without stopping, accentuated with every jar and jostle. Amelia bit down on her lip to keep from crying out.
She heard Jo's shout from what felt like miles away, and Amelia forced her eyelids open.
"My God, Lia!" Jo brushed Amelia's hair out of her face to look into her eyes. "Are you alright?"
Amelia grunted out a pained laugh. "Not really. Got jumped by demons."
"I'm so sorry," Jo's face twisted up in pain at seeing her friend in such bad shape.
"Nothing too serious," Amelia hastened to reassure her. "Just a few bruises." She let her head fall back down when Jo took away her hand. It hurt to much to hold up her head, especially with her eyes open.
"Probably a concussion," Sam told Jo. "She was knocked out when we found her."
"Just get her to the car," Jo told him. "Mom and I will look after her. You guys see if you can find the demons."
"Sounds good. Be careful."
They loaded Amelia into the backseat of Ellen's car, Jo hopping in beside her for Amelia to lean against.
"Hospital?" Ellen asked as she climbed in the front seat.
"No," Amelia mumbled. "Motel."
"If you have a concussion, you should go to the hospital," Jo argued.
"No cun-gushun. Motel," Amelia growled, slumped against Jo.
"Well, you're stubborn enough to be a hunter, I'll give you that," Ellen sighed.
Between Ellen and Jo, they managed to get Amelia into the motel room and laid down on one of the beds. Ellen wet a washcloth, and rinsed off her bloody face while Jo patched up her raw knuckles and split lip. Amelia didn't even respond. She couldn't even hear them, for the buzzing in her ears. When they seemed to be finished, Amelia rolled over and buried her face in the pillow, trying to muffle out the world.
The demon loomed over her, knife in hand. Amelia lay on the cold ground, pinned down. Her shoulder ached where they had burned her tattoo off. Black smoke rushed out of the demon's mouth as it screamed. The smoke pressed against her nose and mouth, cutting off her air. A finger of smoke forced its way into her mouth, acrid and choking. She gagged, and thrashed, trying to escape.
Amelia flung herself over, and something grabbed at her feet. She lunged away, clawing at the air, and suddenly fire spouted from her hands. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she collapsed back onto the bed, paralyzed, staring at her hands, blankets twisted around her legs.
Fire?
Her head had cleared a little, enough so she could actually think. Which meant that either she had hallucinated fire coming out of her hands, or the demon blood had done something to her.
"Amelia?" Jo's voice came through the doorway from the other room. "You all right?" Jo's head poked through the door.
Amelia swallowed, and forced herself to sit up and give Jo a small smile. "Uh, yea," she spotted a glass of water on the nightstand and took a sip. "Nightmare. I'm fine." She just had to get some time to think.
Jo studied her for a few seconds, then nodded, and walked back into the other room. Amelia rubbed her sore head. Superpowers or something? The demon did say she was a supernatural monster now, and demon blood would no doubt have strange properties. But fire coming from her hands? She shook her head, and grabbed clothes to take a shower. She could still feel the demon pressing the hand down on her mouth, the blood smearing around her face.
Amelia peeled off her clothes, and winced as her shirt pulled away from the burn on her back. Turning her back to the mirror, she craned her neck to look at the damage. An angry red weal lay diagonal across her tattoo, breaking the sigil and rendering it useless. Once the burn healed she would have to get the tattoo touched up again so it would work again. Not like it had stopped the demons the first time. Amelia hopped into the shower, gasping in pain as the water ran over the raw burn and her bruised scalp and hands. In spite of everything, though, the demons had left her alive. She would do some research, find out whatever she could about demon blood, and becoming a demon. As far as she knew, souls could only be twisted into demons in hell. So as long as she was alive she had nothing to worry about. The demons could have some huge plan for her. But she wouldn't cooperate with them. She stayed in the shower for a long time.
After her shower, she toweled off, and slapped a gauze pad over the burn before dressing. Hopefully they had found her charm necklace, she felt naked without it.
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Three days later, Amelia pulled the Firebird into the garage at Bobby's, and wandered into the house. Sam and Dean had remained to follow up on the demon case, and Ellen and Jo had split off in Kansas to check out a potential poltergeist.
"Hey Amelia," Bobby got up from his desk as she walked in.
"Hey Bobby," she nodded towards him as she took her things down stairs to the panic room.
When she came back up, he stood, leaning against the counter, arms crossed.
"You alright?"
She shrugged, and took a beer from the fridge. "A little banged up. How were things here?"
"Same as ever. Tamara had a problem with a minor deity out of India." He studied her.
A fading black eye haloed her left eye, and her knuckles were still wrapped up. She savored her beer, looking out the kitchen window.
"Anything I can help with?"
He shook his head. "Nothin' right now, do what you want."
She nodded absently, and wandered into the living room. Bobby returned to his desk, keeping an eye on her. She chose a huge Latin book on demons, and crashed on the couch, turning the pages with one hand, cradling the beer in her other. The chill felt good on her bruised fingers. Two beers later, Bobby started browning hamburger for supper, an ancient looking hunters journal in his hand as he cooked. He took a plate of spaghetti to Amelia, still on the couch engrossed in the demon book.
"Here," he gave it to her.
Amelia put the book to the side and took the plate. "Thanks Bobby." One of the core rules was no spilling food on the ancient books.
"Pretty interested in Annalis Daemoniorum, huh?"
She shrugged. "I realized there were a lot of things I didn't know about demons, I guess."
He took his own plate to his desk, and sat. "Like what?"
Amelia played with her spaghetti. "What do they want, you know? Creatures are easy to understand, usually they just want a meal, gods want adoration and sacrifice. Demons want souls, sure, but do the rank and file demons really give a shit about how many souls are in hell?"
"Demons don't make any sense," Bobby grunted. "They're just out to make chaos and sufferin'."
"I guess," Amelia munched on a mouthful. "I mean... Yea."
"What'd they tell ya?" Bobby asked. "They're all fulla lies, y'know."
"But even a demon could tell the truth, right?" Amelia wondered out loud. Bobby was her best resource for finding out about the demons. Maybe she could play it right, without revealing too much.
"What did they say?"
Amelia stopped eating. "They said they'd bring my brother back, even give me twenty years."
"Demons'll never offer anything outta the kindness of their hearts," Bobby cautioned her. "If they make'n offer like that, they have a reason and I promise it won't do ya no good."
"Ya see my brother walking around?" Amelia stabbed her pasta and ate in moody silence for a few minutes.
"That it?" Bobby pressed her after she had taken her anger out on her food.
"What do ya mean?"
"You're not buried in that book because some demon made you a generous deal you didn't take."
Amelia stared down at her spaghetti. "What happened with the Winchesters? Why were they involved with the demons? What happened a year ago?"
"The demons told you about that?" Bobby stared at her.
She shrugged again. "Mentioned it, really."
He sighed. "Well, some things aren't mine to tell, but I'll give you the gist of it. A few years ago, the demons had a plot to spring Lucifer from his cage in hell, start the apocalypse on earth. The idjits got themselves tangled up in it. Demons were putting pressure on Sam, angels were after Dean. It was pretty hairy for a while but they pulled together and stopped the whole thing."
Amelia considered this. "Why the Winchesters?"
"You'll have to ask them if you want to know, that's what ain't mine to say."
They ate supper in silence for a while.
"The demons just gave up after that?" Amelia asked.
"More like a regime change. The demons that wanted Lucifer free are out of power. How did the topic come up?"
Amelia shook her head. "That part's fuzzy." The lie came easy. "I remember the demon talking about the different factions. She said something about things slipping through the cracks, and the Winchesters came up."
"Did you tell that to the Winchesters?"
She nodded. "Yep. They needed to know."
"Sorry you hadta go through that. Demons are nasty sonsabitches."
"I'm alive. I think it went pretty well all things considered."
Amelia washed the dishes, and returned to ponderous book with a new beer.
After ten or so pages, Amelia started talking, very quietly. Bobby went still, and listened.
"They burned off my tattoo, I'll have to get it redone once it heals," she said, staring down at the page.
"Did they possess you?" he asked very quietly, hand clenched tight on the arm of his chair.
She nodded, once. "Felt like... Felt like," she couldn't find the words, and took a long drink.
"You weren't possessed when they found ya," Bobby asked the question without using so many words.
"Holy water," Amelia told him. "I'd been drinking it for two days. The demon smoked out pretty quick."
"Clever," Bobby grunted. "Don't blame ya for wantin' to read 'bout the bastards."
That night Amelia went for a very long run. Five miles from the junkyard out in the hills, Amelia jogged to a stop. Time for a little experimenting. Last night she had awoken again to fire flickering from her hand. Nothing in the book had mentioned the effects of demon blood. She would have to try and find out herself.
After an hour, she had produced exactly three sparks, and had a marvelous headache that rivaled the one she had received from the knock on her head. On her jog back to the house, her nose started to bleed. No way it wasn't connected. After using up half a roll of paper towels to try to stop her nose from bleeding, she crawled into her lumpy bed gratefully, the pillow cradling her aching head like it was from the bed of a god.
The demon had her bound to a table, slicing and cutting at her. Amelia could feel her warm blood trickle down her body, and the cold knife slitting off her flesh and skin. She bit back a sob, but tears rolled freely down her face.
"You'll break," the demon comforted her, caressing her face. "They all break, in the end."
Raising the knife high, Amelia could see the it glint under the red sheen of blood, the demon plunged it down, into her heart. As the cool metal slid into her body, she jerked, arching her back as her body tried to start her heart again. Her vision quickly faded as her chest was covered in a crimson flood, and she sank down to the table again.
Amelia jumped from the bed, screaming, to stumble and crash into a heap on the floor. She clutched at her heart, laying as she fell, taking huge breaths and shaking. Every frantic beat of her heart was something to be treasured. After a minute when the sheer panic started to abate, she smelled smoke. Amelia raised her head from her sweaty palms, and glanced around. Smoke curled up from her blankets.
Wonderful. Jumping up, she tore the blanket off the bed, and stomped at the smoldering spot until it stopped. She left it on the floor, just in case it was still burning somewhere, and checked her watch. Too early to get up, really, but she had no desire to sleep anymore. She had to learn how to control this thing, otherwise she would burn to death in her sleep one of these nights. Or fry someone who tried to wake her up from a nightmare. Amelia went for a run in the cool morning air, and watched the sun rise as she tried to create flames from thin air. Soon she had a bloody nose and a horrible headache, but she had produced a few match-worthy flames that flickered for a second over her palm before disappearing.
As she jogged back to the house, holding her sleeve to her nose, she realized that it might not be such a great idea to get better at making fire. Whatever the demons' end plan was, it obviously had something to do with her, and the demon blood. Maybe getting better at controlling the flame meant she was going down the path they wanted her to follow. None of that mattered if she burned a house down in her sleep, though. Amelia took a shower, eyes closed to not irritate her pounding head, the blood from her nose staining the water that swirled down the drain. Maybe she could put fire out in addition to making it? It was worth a shot. Less aggressive, for certain, and it would help when she woke up to her blankets burning.
And the nightmares and abilities start! I thought fire fit Amelia's personality, and it definitely will be a hard ability for her to keep concealed. Should make for interesting developments in the future.
I loved writing Bobby in this chapter, he's such an old cranky dear. :) Let me know what you think! As always, thank you so much for reading, your comments and reviews definitely keep me going. :)