Chapter 6
Owen and Ray had initially been quite pleased with the Djinn's efforts. They saw the horror in Sam's head play out on his face, and actually rather enjoyed his screams as Jess died right in front of him and Alastair carved the flesh from Dean's bones.
However, by the time dawn broke and tried to chase away the bone-numbing cold of the March night, things had changed. They'd waited hours for Sam to break and tell Alastair whatever he knew - their patience was wearing thin, and they weren't happy with the progress their captive Djinn was making.
Owen and Ray were sitting in camping chairs by a portable propane-fuelled space heater, drinking black coffee from a thermos and watching Sam's suffering as he hung from the ceiling. "Whatever it's doing isn't working." Owen whispered, eyes squinting against the weak morning sun as he turned slightly towards his buddy. Ray sighed - he'd been thinking the same thing for the last couple of hours, and he knew just how to move this along.
Ray left Owen by the heater and went over to the Djinn. It was sitting on a table at the opposite end of the room, back against the wall and knees pulled up to its chest, trying to get as far away from the two hunters as possible. The Djinn looked up as Ray strode towards it, stopping a good three feet from the table. Even with the leverage he had on it, he wasn't going to risk getting any closer.
"You need to step this up. Whatever you're doin', it ain't working." Ray told the Djinn simply but intensely, and it frowned as it looked back at him. It realised exactly what the hunter was saying: Break this boy soon or we'll kill you. So, the Djinn kicked things up a notch.
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Sam couldn't see a clock anywhere in the barn, but he knew they'd been there for hours - long enough for him to have screamed and shouted into Alastair's gag so much he'd all but lost his voice. It was probably closer to a couple of days, but Sam didn't want to consider the fact that Alastair might have had Dean on his table for so long, and he put that thought out of his mind.
Honestly, he'd expected Alastair to have killed his big brother by now. The demon had managed to keep him alive, but Sam didn't understand how - either the blood loss from his wounds or an infection in any of the dozens of burns, some of which Sam knew went to the bone, should have been enough to kill him on their own.
He didn't look good, by any stretch of the imagination, but Dean was still alert and coherent. Although he didn't say a word to his little brother, or even make eye contact, Sam saw his eyes were open and focused and his responses to Alastair's whispers were quintessential Dean. Some of the things he suggested Alastair should do with his words even made Sam smile.
A lot of the time, though - especially after Alastair had started using the hot wrought iron instruments - Sam wished his brother wasn't so lucid. He knew he was never going to be able to forget the way Dean screamed when, in a fit of frustration, Alastair heated one of his iron pokers until it glowed bright yellow then burned right through the muscle high on Dean's left forearm and blackened the bone underneath. The way the veins stood out on Dean's neck as he screamed and his whole body went taut, Sam had actually seriously wondered if he'd have a heart attack or a stroke or something.
Every so often, Alastair would leave Dean in peace for a few minutes and come over to Sam. He'd untie the gag, maybe give Sam a glass of water, and ask him what Lucifer's plan was. Every time, Sam would tell him he didn't know and plead with him to let his brother go, then Alastair would coolly replace the gag and go back over to Dean.
Each time, Sam saw him whisper the same thing in Dean's ear, so softly that Sam could never hear it. He heard Dean's responses, though: he always told the demon to shove it, with various colourful suggestions as to where and how. Alastair wasn't particularly upset by this - it meant he had no reason to let Dean off the table.
But just after dawn broke in the warehouse and Ray threatened the Djinn, something different happened. Alastair asked Sam yet again what Lucifer's plan was, and got the same answer as every other time. So, he replaced Sam's gag and the youngest Winchester watched as he once again went over to Dean and whispered in his ear.
"You can make it stop, Dean." Alastair offered, ever so quietly. Sam still couldn't hear the words but he'd watched Alastair's lips and worked out what the demon was saying, although he had no clue what it meant. Every time Alastair whispered in Dean's ear, Sam wondered: what could Dean possibly give Alastair to make him stop this?
For the first time, Dean didn't answer right away. Confused, Sam's brow creased as he watched his big brother biting his bottom lip with bloodied teeth as he thought - he obviously knew exactly what Alastair's offer meant, and whatever it was, he was considering it.
Finally, Dean looked over at his little brother with sunken, bloodshot eyes, then back at the demon, apparently having made up his mind. That's the first time he's looked at me since Alastair said I was working with Lucifer, Sam thought sorrowfully, watching Dean take as deep a breath as his broken body would allow. Sam could swear he heard the ends of Dean's broken ribs grating.
"Okay." Dean whispered, through cracked and bleeding lips.
Sam watched in amazement as the leather restraints fell away, and the wounds and burns that covered his body faded before his eyes as Dean tentatively climbed off the crucifix table and gingerly put his body weight onto the newly-healed soles of his bare feet. When he then started to put on the jeans and t-shirt Alastair gave him, Sam actually started to calm down a little.
Dean's okay - Alastair is letting him go. This is good. He ignored the little voice in the back of his mind that told him this was just too easy, and there was no way Alastair would just let Dean go...
As Alastair led Dean away from the table and over to his tray of instruments, talking quietly, Sam felt two pairs of strong hands grasp his arms. He started to struggle, but the hands were like vices and the next thing he knew the full-body paralysis was back. Alastair's two anonymous demons loosened the ropes and manhandled him over to the crucifix table, and while they took off his gag and started strapping him down, Sam kept his eyes on Alastair and Dean and tried really hard not to notice that the leather restraints were still slick with Dean's blood.
He watched as the demon smiled and slapped Dean on the back, before giving Sam a wink and walking down to the back of the barn and out of sight. Dean stood at the stainless steel tray a little longer, head down, then slowly picked up an evil-looking black-handled Bowie knife.
As the demons fastened the last strap across his chest, Sam's paralysis evaporated and he immediately started to struggle against his bonds. "Dean! Help me!" he called desperately, and his brother turned and began to walk towards him, eyes downcast as he wiped his own blood off the 8-inch blade with the hem of his t-shirt.
"Dean! What are you waiting for?" Something was wrong here, but Sam couldn't work out what it was until Dean got closer: where Dean's warm, familiar hazel eyes should have been, there were two black bottomless pits. The eyes of a demon.
No. Dean has an anti-possession tattoo - he can't be possessed! Sam thought frantically, trying to wrap his mind around what the hell was going on here.
Suddenly, in a moment of terrible clarity, he understood. Dean wasn't possessed. This was the Dean that Alastair had made in Hell - the broken one that got down off the rack and put other souls on it.
Sam's blood ran cold as he realised what was happening. Alastair had let Dean off the rack because he'd promised to put Sam on it. Dean was going to use that knife on his baby brother.
While he didn't blame his brother for doing what he had to do to get off Alastair's rack, ever since Dean had told him about the things he'd done in Hell, one thought had stuck in Sam's mind. He'd come to the conclusion that he was very glad he'd never be under Dean's knife, because he had a feeling that Dean would be really good with it - scary good - and Sam had absolutely no desire to find out what that was like.
As the elder Winchester stood over the younger with the knife in his hand, Sam stopped struggling and looked up at Dean with an expression of absolute horror on his face. "Dean - no. Please!" he pleaded, heart pounding as he tried to reach whatever was left of his brother behind those black eyes. Dean's sable eyes were expressionless as he looked back down at Sam, turning the knife absently in his hand.
"Just tell me, Sam. Just tell me what Lucifer's plans are so I don't have to hurt you." Dean blinked away his black eyes as he looked down at his little brother, staring back up at him on the verge of tears. Dean's voice was soft and compelling, and if Sam had known anything worth confessing he would have spilled every word right there.
"I'm not working with Lucifer, Dean! I don't have anything to tell you!" Sam repeated, the stress showing in his voice now. His eyes followed the Bowie knife as Dean sliced the front of his shirt open, evidently not believing what he was hearing.
"I can't take your word for that, and you know it." Dean replied, avoiding eye contact as he cut Sam's sleeves.
As he listened in disbelief to the words coming out of his brother's mouth, Sam was struck with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. He was so busy thinking about where he'd heard that line before - I can't take your word for that, and you know it - that he almost didn't notice as Dean pulled the ruined shirt out from under him.
"Last chance, Sam. I don't wanna hurt you, so tell me what Lucifer has planned. Please." Dean asked one last time, knife in his right hand as he looked down at Sam. He looked like he didn't want to do it; he had all the right facial expressions and he was saying all the right things, but his eyes looked dead. They were missing the life he was used to seeing in Dean.
"Dean, I can't tell you what Lucifer has planned because I don't know!" Sam shouted, frustration and desperation getting the better of him, but Dean just sighed. He obviously didn't believe a word Sam was telling him, because he held the tip of the knife to his little brother's chest, at the top of the left pectoral muscle near the front of his shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Sam." he replied, sadly, and pushed down.
Sam watched out of the corner of his eye as the blade touched his skin. He saw it sink into his flesh like it was warm butter, slowly and smoothly down to the bone of his ribcage. He watched as the knife tracked across his chest, diagonally down towards the tip of his sternum, the blade making a clicking sound as it skipped over his ribs. The edges of the wound opened up like Dean was undoing a zipper, revealing the bright red muscle beneath.
The shock of his big brother actually deliberately slicing him open like that dulled the pain at first. But when Sam's brain caught up and registered that there was a nine-inch wound pouring blood down the left side of his chest, the pain hit him like a freight train and it was all he could do not to scream at the top of his lungs.
"So that's what those muscles look like on the inside." Dean apparently wasn't at all upset by the sight in front of him - his little brother trying to control his breathing, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched, much like Dean had done when he was the one on the table.
"Remember, Sam, you can stop this anytime you want," Dean reminded him, tracing the definition in Sam's abs with the tip of the knife as he spoke. The keen blade scratched the skin, but didn't break it.
"I don't... know anything... Dean." Sam repeated, softly, between breaths. The wound on his chest burned every time he inhaled, just as Dean intended - Sam's body was doing Dean's job for him, keeping him in constant pain.
Dean's response was to cut along the bottom of Sam's right pec, from the side of his ribcage across to his sternum. Sam felt every millimetre this time, but he only allowed himself to groan as the blade sliced through muscle and nerve fibres. "Don't fight it, Sam. Tensing up only makes it worse - believe me." Dean advised, and Sam looked up at him in astonishment.
"Alastair wasn't kidding when he said he broke you. There's something seriously wrong in your head, Dean!" Sam was surprised at how detached his brother was. What's broken inside him that he can do this without batting an eye?
"Maybe so. But that's not what you need to be thinking about, Sam." Dean said, as he heated the knife in Alastair's gas ring. Sam's eyes fixed on the rosy glow of the blade as Dean held it over his navel, and he could feel the heat as the tip came within millimetres of his skin. Like Dean had done, he altered his breathing to try and avoid touching the metal.
"Tell me what Lucifer is planning, Sam. Tell me what you know and I'll let you go." Dean repeated, and Sam smiled mirthlessly. He knew there was nothing he could say that would stop what Dean was doing, and it was obvious how this story was going to end.
"Do what you have to do to be sure, Dean, but I don't know anything," Sam told him, and he sighed.
"Don't worry, I will." he replied, and cut into Sam's washboard abs with the hot knife, just above his right hip.
The heat of the blade cauterised the blood vessels as the knife bit, and Dean was careful not to cut more than halfway through the thick muscle as he opened up an angry red wound all the way across Sam's abdomen, from the point of the right hip to the left. Sam couldn't help it now - before he knew it, he was screaming.
After that, Dean made sure he hardly stopped.
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"I don't think this Djinn can get the job done." Owen told Ray, quietly, looking over at their captive Winchester.
It was now almost midday, and the sun streaming in through the windows highlighted the tears streaming down Sam's pale cheeks. "There's obviously some awful stuff going on in that boy's head, but it just ain't working. I reckon it's time we get our hands dirty." he added, and Ray nodded his agreement. Owen smiled; he'd been looking forward to this.
Ray picked up his silver, black-handled Bowie knife, dipped it into a jar of lamb's blood, and walked across the room towards the Djinn. It instinctively stepped back, eyes fixed on the knife, but found its back hard up against the wall. The look on its face said it knew exactly what Ray was planning to do.
"Last week, when we brought you that demon hellspawn and told you to look through its mind, you said you saw what Alastair did to Dean Winchester in Hell." Ray started, calmly enough, keeping his eyes on the creature in front of him as the knife in his hand slowly dripped blood onto the floor. "How can it be that those things're happening in this boy's mind and he hasn't told you jack since you started?" he went on, the anger starting to show in his voice.
"I used the things I saw in that demon's head - I made Alastair repeat what he did to Dean Winchester, and Dean is doing those kinds of things to his brother right now, but he's just not breaking!" The Djinn didn't want to admit it, looking over Ray's shoulder at Sam hanging from the ceiling, but that boy was stronger than it had thought.
"Are you saying you can't break him?" Ray asked, staring intently at the Djinn. It recognised that this was a life-and-death question and paused before it answered, wondering if there was any possible way it could phrase its response that wouldn't make Ray kill it immediately.
"It might take weeks. If he knows anything in the first place - I can only see his desires and nightmares, so..." it trailed off, and Ray rubbed his temple wearily as he thought that over.
"All right." he sighed, before he suddenly and viciously plunged the bloodied 8-inch blade into the Djinn's chest, all the way to the hilt.
Eyes wide with surprise, the Djinn grasped at the knife sticking out of its chest as it slid slowly down the wall. Ray pulled a pair of leather gloves from his pocket and calmly put them on as he watched the Djinn collapse in a heap on the concrete floor, gasping for breath. Its eyes flashed purple as it died, and Ray grabbed the body by the wrist and started to drag it out into the warehouse. Even dead, he wasn't going to risk touching it with bare hands.
"What are you going to do with its sister?" Owen asked, as he held the door open so Ray could get the Djinn through it.
"Never had this thing's sister, Owen. Killed it weeks ago." Ray smiled as Owen chuckled, dragging the body around the corner and leaving it by the wall. The Djinn's covering of intricate tattoos was slowly fading - as Ray went back inside and Owen shut the door behind him, the crumpled body lying discarded in the cold warehouse already almost looked human.
With the Djinn dead, Sam had started to wake up even as Ray was still dragging the body outside. He didn't come to right away, though; it took a few minutes until he could even open his eyes, and then he was only semi-conscious. It was almost half an hour before all the Djinn's poison worked its way out of his system - to make the horror that had transpired in his mind seem real, the Djinn had to dose him pretty heavily. It had quickly discovered that it was much harder to create a realistic hell than a typical white-picket-fence paradise.
Fortunately, though, Sam didn't remember any of the horrors that had taken place in his mind. In its last seconds of life, to spite Owen and Ray, the Djinn had done its best to make him forget what it had inflicted on him over the last ten hours. It didn't want this poor kid to spend his last hours replaying that nightmare over and over - the Djinn was quite sure the hunters would give him all the nightmares he could handle all on their own.
Once Sam was completely awake, he immediately wished he wasn't. His shoulders ached, his hands were almost totally numb - a combination of poor circulation and the cold March air - he was starving, and he had a splitting headache. It took him a minute to remember why he was hanging from the roof by his wrists in an empty warehouse, but when he saw Owen walking towards him it all came flooding back.
Oh God, why can't this have all been a bad dream?
"Rise and shine." Owen smiled and slapped Sam hard across his left cheek, bringing fresh waves of pain from his fractured cheekbone. Sam didn't know it, but most of the left side of his face was swollen and he had the beginnings of a spectacular black eye.
"You don't look so good. Bad night?" Owen smirked, and Sam glared silently back at him. There was a nagging thought in the back of his mind that the hunter didn't just mean the fact they'd kidnapped him and hung him from the ceiling, but Sam didn't want to imagine what else he might be talking about.
"Don't worry, Sammy, we've got plenty more in store for you." Owen grinned as Ray came over and stood next to his buddy. He just looked at Sam, taking in his swollen face. Sam couldn't see it, but trails of dried blood that ran down his face and neck had been partially washed away by tear tracks, his eyes were puffy and bloodshot and the left one was swollen half-shut. They'd hardly touched him, and he already felt like he'd been hit by a truck.
"All right, boy, this is how it's gonna go. You're going to tell us what you know about Lucifer or we're going to make you tell us," Ray informed Sam, matter-of-factly.
"I don't know anything about Lucifer, but I know that doesn't matter to you. So just get on with it, okay?" The words were out of Sam's mouth before he knew he was speaking. These guys were going to hurt him in whatever ways their twisted minds could come up with, regardless of what Sam did or didn't tell them. He understood that very clearly, and he didn't feel up to sugarcoating it.
"True, but if you tell us what you know we might kill you faster." Owen smiled, and kicked Sam hard in the ribs. The blow knocked the air out of his lungs, and he found himself once again gasping for breath. Ray joined in, punching Sam repeatedly in the ribs and stomach with a set of brass knuckles.
Owen and Ray took turns using Sam as a punching bag, bruising almost every square inch of his stomach, chest and back, and cracking a few ribs for good measure. They took their time, and when they were done it hurt Sam just to breathe.
"Remember, you can stop this anytime you want," Owen reminded the younger Winchester, but Sam stayed silent - he figured his best bet was to say nothing at all.
As Ray went over to the table by the wall to select his first 'toy', Owen used a penknife from his pocket to cut the shirt off Sam's body, provoking an incredibly strong sense of déjà vu. Why does it feel like someone's done that to me before? he wondered, as Owen tore away the tattered remains of his cotton t-shirt.
Sam sure as hell didn't remember ever being in a situation where someone had cut the clothes from his body - that seemed more like something that Dean might be into - but there was a faint memory nagging at him in the back of his mind, and he just couldn't grasp it...
Sam's train of thought was interrupted as Ray returned with an evil little smile on his face, holding a small coil of something that looked like rope. When he got closer and Sam could see what he was carrying, a shiver ran down his spine that had nothing to do with the chilly autumn air. Ray wasn't holding a coil of rope - it was a thin black whip, made of plaited leather.
Ray grinned as Sam's eyes widened ever-so-slightly, despite his efforts to remain impassive. "Made this myself a couple 'a years back, from the skin of a werewolf." Ray unravelled the whip, and Sam could see small flecks of dried blood along its four-foot length. His heart rate rose as Ray walked around behind him, and Owen took a few steps back - he evidently didn't want to be anywhere near the whip when Ray was swinging it.
Sam heard Ray stop a few feet behind him, and he knew exactly what was coming next. He closed his eyes and tried not to tense up - he remembered hearing somewhere that tensing up made it more painful. But, when Ray launched the whip at Sam's bare back, he decided it didn't matter whether he tensed up or not: he couldn't believe there was any way that could hurt more.
Sam heard the whoosh of the whip cutting through the air, then the crack as it made contact and broke through his skin, drawing a long red line across the back of his shoulders. By some miracle he managed not to scream - mostly because the shock of the thin braid of leather took his breath away.
Sam had been hit, shot, stabbed and scorched quite a lot over the years, but the sting of Ray's whip was a fresh kind of agony and he'd never felt anything quite like it before. The fact that it caused so much pain, but with relatively little damage, was exactly why Ray liked it so much.
Each stroke of the whip caused such little injury that Ray was able to take his time and carve out an intricate lattice over much of Sam's back, making the youngest Winchester cry out in pain with almost every blow. He broke the skin consistently, slicing partway into the huge muscles in Sam's back but not cutting so deep he hit bone and caused uncontrolled bleeding. By the time Ray was finished, there was a red curtain of blood running from the welts on Sam's back and soaking into the waistband of his jeans, but there was very little actual damage done.
Owen and Ray did their best to remedy that, though - they spent the next nine hours tearing and slicing and carving at Sam in progressively evil ways, trying everything they could think of to wring out information he didn't have to give.
When the sun finally set outside and Sam's little corner of Hell started getting dark and cold again, any hope he still had of being rescued was fading with the light. Right now, he just wanted it to be over - the prospect that this could all be finished soon was now more inviting than it was terrifying.
Owen and Ray stood in the shadows a short distance from Sam, who was slumped over in a chair with his chin resting on his bare chest. This was the closest thing he'd had to rest since Owen and Ray had cut him down from the ceiling a few hours back and tied him to the metal chair, when they'd wanted easier access to his fingers and hands. But even now, beaten and bloodied as he was, Sam was still lucid enough to take in his captors' hushed conversation.
"I'm just gonna say it. Either this kid is unbreakable, or he doesn't know anything," Owen told Ray, and Sam heard the Southerner sigh.
"It don't matter, either way. We need to be out of town tonight, before someone comes looking for this boy," he replied, matter-of-factly - like he was discussing the weather, not how to get away with murder.
"Later, when the roads are clear?" Owen suggested, and Sam understood exactly what they meant. Don't want to be disposing of a body during peak hour. Best to wait till everyone's home for the night. He'd had the same discussion with Dean on occasion, although never about a human being.
I must only have a couple of hours now. Guess Dean's not coming after all, Sam thought despondently, tuning out the rest of Owen and Ray's conversation; he didn't want to hear any more. He hadn't thought much about Dean over the last few hours, but the notion that he probably wouldn't see him again hurt more than anything those two had done to him all day. Sam was just starting to wonder whether he'd wind up in Heaven or Hell when a noise jolted him out of his reverie.
Owen had disconnected the propane tank from the heater and was rolling it over to Sam, while Ray brought over a small gas burner. "Gonna set up a heater for me?" Sam's voice was scratchy and his throat hurt from all the screaming and yelling he'd done over the last nine hours, but the Winchester in him couldn't resist the smart-ass comment.
"Don't worry, Sam, we're going to warm you right up." Owen smiled as he connected the gas burner and lit the flame, while Ray brought over a collection of metal instruments that reminded Sam of fireplace pokers. He had an awful feeling he knew what was coming next.
As Ray heated up one of the smaller iron rods, he watched Sam watch the metal turn a cherry red. "I don't know whether you'll be happy to hear this or not, but Owen and me are pretty sure you don't know anything about Lucifer's plans. Apparently, demons lie." Ray didn't seem particularly upset about it, though.
"Who knew?" Sam's voice was a whisper, but it was dripping with sarcasm. I could have told you that.
Ray's response was to press the red-hot tip of the iron rod unmercifully into a fresh cut high on Sam's thigh, drawing a cry of pain. "Don't need y'all to talk now, Sam. We've got a couple of hours to kill until it's safe for us to get outta here - from here on in, it's just gravy. Punishment for your sins, you might say." Ray put the end of the poker back in the fire.
Sam glared at him as he tried to take deep breaths, not these short, shallow gasps that his traitorous body was sucking in. The wound in his leg was still burning as Ray pushed the freshly-heated tip of the poker into a shallow stab wound further down Sam's quadriceps, and was rewarded with another scream.
For the next couple of hours, Owen and Ray took turns inflicting on Sam whatever torture they could devise. They didn't have to worry about keeping him alive anymore, and any mercy they might have shown earlier in the day was gone. By ten o'clock, the combination of constant pain and mounting blood loss meant Sam was only semi-conscious; he wasn't paying attention to anything his captors were saying, or making any more patented Winchester smart-ass comments. The only noises he made now were cries of pain - like when Owen used a white-hot iron rod to burn through the serratus muscle on Sam's left side, all the way down to the ribs beneath.
"Goddamn it, Owen, the kid is giving me a headache!" Ray shouted from across the room, where he was sitting at a table planning their escape route. He was trying to concentrate, and apparently found Sam's tortured screams distracting.
"All right, all right; don't get your knickers in a knot!" Owen shot back, then picked up the remains of Sam's shirt and pushed it roughly into his mouth before he used the hot metal to sear deep into his left triceps muscle, just above the elbow. Sam screamed again, the gag not doing much to suppress the cry of pain.
Owen traced the ridges of Sam's ribs with the hot metal, getting another muffled cry whenever he lingered in one spot and started burning through the bruised skin. At this rate we might not need to shoot the kid, Owen thought, looking at the myriad of red - and sometimes blackened - wounds covering Sam's body.
They stood out starkly against the unhealthy pallor of his skin, and Owen got the distinct impression Sam might expire any minute now. The pulse in his neck - which had been strong all day, no matter what they'd done to him - was now almost invisible under the bloody skin, and his breathing was shallower and less regular. The kid couldn't even hold his head up anymore.
If he hadn't sprung Lucifer from his cage, I might even feel sorry for him.
Owen didn't feel sorry for Sam, though; he wasn't about to waste his pity on the guy that set the Devil free and started the Apocalypse. Instead, he left Sam trembling and gasping for breath and went to reheat the iron rod.
This chapter drove me mad for two weeks. I know EXACTLY what comes after this, but I wasn't so clear on how I was going to get there... I'm still not sure how happy I am with this chapter - it's not my favourite, by a long shot - but it turns out it's hard to strike a balance between adequately describing the scene and leaving enough to the imagination.
So now it's time to tell me what you thought :) As usual, I don't mind whether you send me an essay or a couple of lines: just send something!
Hugs and cookies all round for those of you that have taken the time to give me your thoughts! (Especially spnrules1, EvilSquirre1, mmmmmriley, and also monkeymuse :D)
And if you liked it, don't forget to hit one of the 'share' buttons at the top of the page and tell everyone else! ;)
I don't think Ch 7 will take too long to materialise, but I warn you, I'll lose a week when I head up to Sydney for Supanova - where I'll find James Marsters, Sean Maher, Amy Acker and Corin Nemec (among others). Worth it, don't you think? ;)