Chapter 16 Hell Hound
Gallatin National Forest, Montana
"Still not getting a pulse," Nate snapped, resuming the CPR, his weight over Sam's chest held carefully. Joseph nodded, drawing another syringe of epinephrine and looking at Billy.
"Charge three hundred and sixty joules."
"Charging," Billy nodded, watching the charge climb on the machine next to him. "Three hundred and sixty joules."
Nate leaned back as Joseph injected the adrenalin and glanced at the monitor, taking the paddles from Billy.
"Clear."
Sam's body jerked up as the charge passed from one side of his chest to the other, his hair flopping back as he hit the ground. The sharp beep from the monitor startled them all, and Joseph stared at the small screen, his frame sagging in relief as the rhythm was established, the heart beating on its own.
"Christ!" Nate rocked back onto his heels, wiping the sweat from his face.
"No argument," Joseph commented, handing the paddles back to Billy and wrapping the three used syringes, tucking them into the trash container in one corner of the kit. "Keep an eye on him while I get this stuff packed away. Let me know if he looks like coming to."
Nate nodded, watching the strong pulse beating in the side of Sam's neck, his chest rising and falling steadily. He'd be dry as the desert when he woke, Nate knew from the way he'd felt when he'd come to, but they had water. He'd been two hundred yards from the box and only just within the leading edge of the goddess' personal field but every muscle and nerve felt beaten and cauterised; he couldn't imagine how Sam had stayed conscious long enough to shut the lid.
"Lee? You got a response from Shamsiel?" he said, touching the throat mike lightly.
"Negative," Lee's voice was indistinct and scratchy, possibly from the rock in between them, Nate thought, not a field interference. "No sign."
"Keep looking," Nate told him, stretching out his legs uncomfortably.
Billy walked stiffly back to them, looking down at Sam. "Good thing we didn't have to tell his brother that he'd kicked it here," he said.
Nate looked up at him and nodded. "Get your headset and go help Lee find the Watcher, we'll stay here until we have to move."
Billy turned away, going back to the SUV to grab a headset and jacket. Nate looked back down at Sam.
It was a damned good thing they didn't have to tell Dean that his brother was dead. It was going to be bad enough telling him about the rest.
"The arrest – his heart might be damaged," Joseph said, his voice quiet enough not to carry as he dropped cross-legged on the other side of Sam's prone body.
"Yeah, I know," Nate said. "Think it'll get worse?"
"I don't know," Joseph told him honestly. "Doc Hadley'll give us a better idea when we get him home."
Lee climbed the rock face, his eyes on the ground, noting the wide tracks in the thin soil on the top of the cliff's edge automatically. He looked around cautiously as Billy climbed up behind him.
"Bear around here somewhere," he said softly.
"Think it got Shamsiel?" Billy looked around, lifting his head slightly and smelling the cool air on the height of the ridge.
"Don't know, no blood here," Lee said, moving north along the edge of the cliff. He saw the broken branches where the bear had broken through, saw the tracks leading further up the ridge.
"Hey, found him," Billy said from behind him, and he turned to see the stocky, blond man leaning out over the edge. Moving up beside him, Lee looked down.
Twenty-three feet below them, Shamsiel lay on his back, the left leg of the tough hide pants he favoured cut away and a couple of thin branches, almost straight, bound together around his lower leg with the cut up leather strips. White teeth flashed against dark skin as he looked up at them.
"What took you so long?"
Billy sighed, shaking his head. "Can you get down there?" he asked Lee.
"Yeah, pretty sure."
"I'll get the others, we'll have to hoist him up here and then carry him down."
Lee nodded and looked along the edge for a handhold.
Sweetwater, Texas
The thick arm squeezed harder around him and Dean felt his air disappearing, his vision blurring then consciousness coming back with a slap as he felt a long, warm tongue slide softly up the side of his neck, the cooler drag of the teeth against his windpipe. Goddamn thing was going to bite him and that would be it, he thought in a panic, and why the fuck hadn't the medallion hidden him from the monster?
He forced his hand up, fingers stiffened, jabbing at the dog head's eyes and sucked in a breath as the skinwalker jerked back, the vice-grip around his ribs loosening slightly. The rattle of automatic fire distracted it further, and he felt his feet touch the ground again, the compression on his vertebrae easing off, giving him a second's relief from the pain.
The hot breath filled his mouth and nose and shifted to heat the skin of his throat and Dean heard the cannon boom of Rufus' revolver, felt a white heat plough into his side as the skinwalker dropped to the ground, dragging him down with it. The back of his head hit the asphalt and he screwed his eyes shut tightly, trying to hang onto the pinpoint of light through the growing darkness enveloping him, a hand gripping his arm and yanking him out from under the monster.
"Dean!" Rufus shouted at him, and he wanted to punch the sonofabitch, his side was on fire and his head was pounding.
"Dean," Rufus said again, his arm sliding under his shoulders, lifting him up.
Opening his eyes cautiously, he looked up at the hunter's worried face. "What the fuck happened to the hollow points, Rufus?" he asked sourly, coughing a little.
"Huh," Rufus said, sitting back on his heels, staring at him. "You're bitching? Now?"
"You shot me!"
Rufus' brows rose slightly. "Did not. Where?"
"Here!" Dean rolled onto his elbow, wincing as the movement dragged at the hole he could feel leaking his blood down through his clothes.
"In and out," Rufus told him, dismissing the injury after a moment's look under the man's jacket and shirt. "You'll live."
"That's the second fucking in and out on that side I've had in the last two years," Dean said disgustedly, letting the older man pull him to his feet. "I'm gonna look like Swiss cheese."
He looked around at the twenty or so dead bodies lying over the roof top. Most of them he'd accounted for before the leader had shown up, the rest were Rufus' work, stitched across with holes from the modified sub he carried everywhere.
"What happened?" Rufus looked down at the first-born skinwalker, the head still that of a dog – a coyote, he thought, frowning at it.
"Turned up and wanted to fight," Dean told him shortly, hobbling up to him, his hand pressed hard over his side. "The medallion had no effect on him and he had a few advantages."
Looking at the massive figure at his feet, Rufus blinked at the understatement. "Yeah, yeah, I can see that."
"Did you get the prisoners out?"
"Yeah, they had over ninety," Rufus said, turning back to look at him. "We've tested them all but we've gotta find some transport."
Dean nodded wearily. "Good, you go do that and get someone to take care of this."
"Got some whiskey in the truck –"
"Someone not you."
US-183 N, Texas
Rufus glanced in the backseat as he heard the groan again. "Zoe, how's he doing?"
"He's getting hotter," she said, the back of her hand resting over Dean's forehead. "Rufus, we need to stop, look at that wound."
"I agree," Penemue said from the passenger seat. "There must be infection."
And it had come on fast, Rufus thought uneasily. He pulled over on the shoulder of the pitted highway, watching Jack pull in behind him, both cars drawing under the shade of the trees that filled what had once been farmland.
"Alright, Penemue, need you in the back," Rufus said, getting out of the car and heading for the trunk. "Zoe, there used to be a creek, not more'n five hundred feet up the road, heading south-east. Get some clean water, as much as you can carry. Tell Jack to give you a hand with it."
"What do you want me to do?" The Irin got out, opening the rear passenger door and looking down at the man lying along the back seat, noting uneasily that Dean's hair and skin was dripping with sweat.
"Gimme a minute," Rufus said from behind the raised lid of the trunk. "We need a cleared space, a fire, groundsheet and tents down. We're gonna have to stay here until this is cleared up."
Penemue nodded and walked to the pickup parked behind them.
Pulling out the medical kit, Rufus balanced the big box on the rim of the trunk well and opened it. The order's unguents were all there, which would help a lot, he thought. He'd need the Qaddiysh and Jack to get Dean out of the car once they were set up.
The survivors of the skinwalker's camp had gone with Perry, following the hunter along the mostly-cleared roads north. He and Jack had dropped back when Zoe had told him that Dean was running a fever.
Closing the box, he put it down beside the trunk and walked around to the rear door, leaning into the back as Dean muttered something at him.
"Not home, yet, son," he said in a low voice.
Dean's eyes were moving rapidly behind his closed lids. Fever dream. Or hallucination. Rufus shook his head slightly. He could feel the heat coming off the man's skin from a foot away. The creek water would be colder than anything they carried; they could get the heat in his body down that way if nothing else worked.
He drew aside the jacket and shirt Dean wore, grimacing as he saw the weeping, pinkish stains on the t-shirt beneath them. Lifting it carefully, he already knew what he was going to see, angry red lines radiating out from under the bandage and the bandage itself soaked through.
Crap and more crap, he thought furiously. Perry and Zoe had done the clean out of the wound, but they'd left something in there to have sparked all this so fast. Lifting an eyelid with his thumb, he saw the enlarged pupil. At least Dean was out for the moment, he realised, letting it drop. He'd give him something as soon as they got him into the camp.
"Rufus –"
He looked down in surprise, seeing the man's eyes open a little, trying to focus on him.
"Dean, you got an infection," he said quietly, catching hold of Dean's hand as he tried to touch the wound in his side. "Gonna have to open it up again, clean it out properly."
"S'hot," Dean slurred, his head turning from side to side. "Wh' the fuck are we?"
"'Bout a hundred miles north of Clinton," Rufus told him. "Heading home."
"You tell 'Lex I got hit?"
The words hit him low down in his stomach and he swallowed against the dryness of his mouth. "Sure, sure did, Dean."
"Don' worr' her."
"No, I won't." He looked out of the car, seeing the Qaddiysh laying out the groundsheet, a small fire sending curling ribbons of smoke into the air. "Listen, you need to rest, alright? Gotta get this cleaned out and you need to sleep."
"'Kay," Dean said, his eyes opening a little wider, then rolling back.
"You ready?" Rufus called softly and Penemue nodded, walking fast to the car.
It took them five minutes to get the blanket under Dean and lift him out, carrying him over to the clean groundsheet and setting him down near the tent. Zoe and Jack returned, two of the big canvas water carriers filled. Rufus set Zoe to boiling them as he knelt beside the unconsciousness man and pulled off the sweat-sodden jacket and plaid shirt.
The medical kit held a half dozen scalpels, sterilised in their packs and Rufus laid two out on the lid, along with packs of gauze, packed syringes and needles, an ampoule of broad-spectrum antibiotic and a thick, wide elastic bandage. He glanced up at Jack and Zoe, both hovering behind Penemue and looking down at Dean.
"Alright, you two, you'll have to miss out on this particular medical lesson," he said brusquely. "We'll stay here tonight, so go find some dinner and get it ready."
They nodded reluctantly, turning to get their rifles from the pickup and heading into the woods. Rufus looked at Penemue.
"In the kit there're sachets of goldenrod and purple cone," he said slowly. When the angel nodded in recognition, he gestured to the pot that was boiling over the fire. "Get another pot and soak them in boiling water, they have to be soft enough to smear."
The tee shirt was soaked, and Rufus cut it away, lifting the pieces carefully aside and tossing them on the fire. Penemue had filled another pot with the boiled water and he got to his feet when the herbs were in and soaking.
Rufus lifted the bandage and the smell hit them both; the hole in Dean's side thick with stinking yellow pus, red streaks spreading out under the skin of his abdomen from the infected wound. Dean moaned softly, trying to push Rufus' hand aside, and the Watcher caught it, pinning it down beside him.
Wiping away the stinking matter, Rufus felt his concentration narrow down to the hole and finding whatever was in it. As he waited for the boiled water to cool sufficiently to use, he loaded a syringe with morphine and injected it, the sharp spasms of muscle relaxing as the painkiller worked through Dean's body. Penemue checked his pupils, nodding when they didn't react to the light.
It was a matter of washing and wiping and palpating the pus out of the wound, and the two men worked together, not speaking, knowing what was required, their fingers and palms reddened and blistered from handling water and soaked dressings as hot as they could stand to clean out the infection.
Jack and Zoe returned as the last of the fluid was being flushed, Zoe taking the brace of rabbit from Jack and going to the other side of the fire to skin and dress them as Jack walked to Rufus.
When Dean's blood ran clear from the hole, Rufus nodded at Penemue. The Watcher lifted the man slightly, holding his back off the soaked matting underneath.
"Jack, grab this crap, build up the fire a bit more and burn it all," Rufus said tersely. "And get me some clean sheets from the kit."
He poured the saline through first, holding a clean dressing underneath, looking for debris to float out of the wound. There were a few bits, there'd been more with the pus when he'd forced it out, but anything left in there would only cause the same reaction again. The salt solution was pink as it ran out through the torn flesh on Dean's back, but clearer, no signs of the infected yellow matter or the clots of blackened blood that had come out at first.
"I think it's clean," he said, closing the bottle and picking up the other one. "Hold him hard, Penemue, out or not, he'll feel this."
The alcohol trickled into the wound and Dean arched up against the agonising bite, the fallen angel holding him tightly as Rufus kept pouring it through.
"Okay, that came out clear," the hunter said, screwing the top back on and wiping his face. "That stuff good and soft, Jack?"
"Yeah," he told him, bringing the slightly cooled cotton bags with their pulpy contents. Rufus set a clean sheet under Dean and spread the hot poultice against the exit wound. He set the other poultice against the entrance hole and nodded to the angel to lift Dean higher, wrapping a wide bandage around his torso to hold both in place.
"Get another lot into the water. I'll change this in two hours," Rufus told the ex-paramedic, tying off the bandage. He looked up at Penemue with a humourless grin. "Now all we have to do is get him into a sleeping bag."
"I can watch him for a while," Zoe said softly, ducking as she came into the small tent. "You need to rest, Rufus."
"Yeah, not going to argue that one," Rufus said, rubbing a hand over his face. "Fever hasn't broken yet," he told her, crabbing sideways out from beside Dean. "Keep him as cool as you can."
He gestured to the bottles of water lined up to one side of the tent and the small, wet towel that had been wrung out and draped over them.
"I'll just grab an hour," he said, looking back at Dean's face. For the moment, he was quiet, but he'd been thrashing around earlier, fever dreams that'd had him shouting in fury at someone, then weeping and shaking. He wouldn't want anyone to see him like that, Rufus knew.
"I'll be fine, take as long as you need," she said, moving awkwardly around Dean's legs to sit next to him.
"Get Jack or Penemue if he starts moving again," Rufus told her. "Don't need you getting knocked out."
She nodded and he backed out of the tent, watching her for a moment before he zipped up the door. She wasn't that big and there wasn't a lot of room to get out the way if Dean did start swinging again. He'd zipped the sleeping up as high as it would go, but it wasn't that much of a restraint. He walked to the fire, seeing the Irin's eyes open in the firelight.
"Zoe's watching him," Rufus said quietly. "Keep an ear open in case."
The fallen angel nodded.
Inside the tent, Zoe settled herself beside Dean, lifting his head onto her lap, and smoothing back his hair as he muttered something softly, a frown drawing the dark brows together.
"It's okay, Dean," she said softly, reaching for a towel and tipping water over it as he shifted in the bag, his head turning to the side. "You're going to be fine."
His skin was heating again, she could feel the moisture in his hair, at the back of his neck and she pressed the cold towel down over his forehead.
"Alex?"
"It's alright," she said, her voice dropping a little as she moved the moist cloth over his face. "It's going to be alright."
He seemed to relax, brow smoothing out as she stroked it.
Litteris Hominae, Kansas
Jerome looked around the library, all the signs of the attack gone now, the warm, golden light filling the room and lighting the polished wooden tables just as he remembered. Sam wasn't there, nor Marla. The hunter had returned two days ago and gone straight to West Keep, under the care of Bob Hadley and Merrin, and Marla was spending most of her time with him, sharing the information the doctor had deemed it safe for him to exert his energy on, but, the legacy thought, needing also to be there, to help his with his recovery. The two had grown close, trying to decipher the prophet's transcriptions.
Jasper sat next to Katherine, and Felix was back as well, looking more frail, his faded blue eyes filled with determination. Oliver and Frances sat opposite them, and Bobby and Ellen had taken the chairs closest to his end of the table, the Qaddiyshin, Baraquiel and Shamsiel, seated on the other side.
"You're saying that the Grigori have the mirror with them?" he asked, looking at Jasper.
"Francesca has proof that the Grigori were in Russia when the palace was ransacked. And they would've known the power of that mirror," Jasper said, nodding. "If they have it with them, it would explain how they're controlling the cambion."
"Would the mirror even work with the young one? The boy? His power is enormous."
"He is young," Katherine reasoned. "Perhaps the threat is to the man and the boy behaves because he has an emotional bond with him?"
"Perhaps. Maybe. If," Jerome said, gesturing abruptly. "If it's true, it's still no help. We do not have their location, nor the location of the demon or the tablet."
Or Chuck, he added silently to himself. He'd come to be very fond of the writer over the last two and a half years. And he could imagine all too easily what Chuck was going through now.
"We wanted to run the spell again," Bobby said, looking at him. "See if anything's changed."
"What makes you think it has?" Jerome asked him, glancing at Ellen. She shrugged.
"Nothin' … that we know of," Bobby said truculently. "But it won't hurt, will it?"
He sighed and shook his head. "No. It won't hurt."
"One goddess has been recaptured and locked away," Baraquiel said, looking from Jerome to Bobby. "The other is moving west and north and Michel and Francesca have given the location for the first vampire as being in the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. We need to get a team there to intercept Nintu, before she frees Usiku."
"Dean'll be back in a day," Ellen said, an edge to her voice. "He'll want to organise that, along with what needs to be done about the Grigori base, if they can find it."
"We don't have much time," Baraquiel argued. "And Rufus said on the radio that Dean had been shot."
"Doesn't change a thing." Bobby backed Ellen up, looking at the Qaddiysh with a set jaw. "He'll still be making that decision."
He watched Baraquiel and Shamsiel exchange a fast look, sighing slightly. There was no one else who could make those kinds of decisions here. At least, not risking screwing up whatever Dean might've had in mind to handle it.
At the back of his mind, Rufus' disquieting disclosures about what Dean'd said while under the influence of the fever lingered. He'd seen him under pressure, knew what that looked like. But the fact was that Dean hadn't really been around much since he'd gotten back from Iowa, and had been distant with both him and Ellen, focussing his attention on the keep, on rebuilding and finding the information to shut down Hell, to get Chuck and the tablet back, on finding the Grigori.
When Sam had died, in Cold Oak, Dean had been the same, he thought now. Driven. Desperate. So lost to everything that he'd made the deal without thinking it through. He'd done the same thing when Alex had been dying in Chitaqua, he realised slowly. Made the deal with Death as if the entity could'nt've taken them both right there and then. Was that what he was doing now, he wondered? Looking for another impossible way to get her back? Was that why he wasn't letting go? Rufus had told them about the apartment, not a thing changed or packed up or moved.
"Oliver," Jerome said, breaking through Bobby's unsettled thoughts. "Get the spell set up in the situation room and could you tell Father Emilio what we're doing?"
"You want to do it now?" Jasper asked, glancing at his watch.
"Yes," Jerome said, looking at Bobby. "Might as well see if anything has changed."
"You talked to Dr Hadley," Sam insisted, moving slowly down the staircase, keeping up easily with his brother who was listing to one side with every downward step.
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean –" Dean said, trying to gather his arguments.
"It means that there's no permanent damage done," Sam interrupted impatiently. "It's nothing like you had."
"Doesn't mean you're ready to go out there, Sam," Dean said, slowing at the curve in the staircase, the pull and bite of the holes in his side more pronounced with his weight on one foot. "We don't even know if she's still heading in the same direction."
"Michel confirmed it yesterday, Dean," Sam bit out, ignoring the staccato beat against his chest as he gripped the balustrade. "We don't have much time; one of us needs to get out there."
"Not you."
"You're not interested!"
"Right about that," Dean admitted readily. "Bobby said that the spell showed nine markers now," he added, sucking in a breath as he reached the bottom of the stairs and waited for Sam. "And that Boston isn't flickering around anymore."
"But they can't find it on the large scale map," Sam said, walking slowly after his brother as they crossed the situation room. "Which means it's shielded somehow."
"If I can't get to Chuck, I'll go after the hell hound," Dean said, shrugging carelessly as he eased his way up the steps to the library.
"Through the gate no one's located?"
"There are other ways into the borderlands."
"You're not going alone," Sam told him softly. Dean looked back at him, a lop-sided smile not reaching his eyes.
"I already had this conversation with Rufus, Sam."
"You'll have it again, not just with me."
"No. I won't."
Turning away, he walked to the end of the table, sitting down with a silent sigh of relief. The infection had gone, well and truly, by the time they'd crossed from Oklahoma into Kansas, but he felt weak, exhaustion just a few steps away at any time. The doctor had said it would pass, provided he got some rest now. He'd agreed blandly and ignored the advice, seeing Liev first, then Elias and Nate, then going over to check on Jackson and the rebuilding at the farms. It was taking its toll, he acknowledged unwillingly to himself. He was looking forward to getting through this meeting, back to the keep and into a bed.
"We ran the location spell again," Bobby said to him without preamble. "Showed nine markers this time."
"Not another tablet?" Dean asked, glancing at Jerome.
"No, we don't think so," the legacy answered. "Something else with Metatron's signature but we're not sure why it didn't appear on the previous attempts."
"Where is it?"
"In southern Colorado," Ellen said, leaning on the table. "There was an earth tremor in the area a few days before, it might've changed something in the geological structure holding whatever this thing is."
"What about Boston?" Dean asked Jerome, pushing aside the thought of another mystery for the moment. There'd be time to deal with the scribe's other works after Hell was closed.
"The signal is steady but only on the city itself," Jerome said, rubbing a finger over his brow. "When we moved to the larger scale map, it disappeared."
"Local shielding, Sam said."
"Possibly," Jerome admitted. "Most likely a spell the demon uses to deflect attention from whatever he has set up on this plane."
"Nintu is heading for Utah, and we have a location for the first vampire," Baraquiel cut in. "There is a very small time window for us to intercept her at that location."
Dean looked back at him, considering the angel's ill-concealed impatience. He was right, of course. His dreams had been filled with the dark goddess since Iowa, with the increasingly ominous threat she represented to everything they'd built.
"Peter and Elias can take point," he said, glancing up the table at the two hunters. They nodded, expecting the orders. "Penemue, Joseph, Vince and Lee go along."
It was a major pain that almost all the women were out of action now, he thought, doubling up the men's workload. Nothing anyone could do about it. He'd revised the worklists as much as possible.
Somewhere deep, feeling eddied and he ignored it, focussing his thoughts back on the discussion.
"That acceptable?" he asked, looking at the Qaddiysh.
"Very," Baraquiel said, leaning back and looking at the hunters. "When can you leave?"
"We'll get our gear loaded and go tonight," Peter told him. "What about Michigan? Any word from Boze or Jo?"
Dean looked around at Bobby as the old man grunted.
"Confirmed pack of twenty five," Bobby said acerbically, frustrated by the number of problems and the distances between them. "They can't get into the camps, but they're attacking in daylight and the fields aren't getting planted."
"What do they need from us?"
"Boze asked if Franklin could take a bunch of his boys up, go on the offensive."
"We don't need them here, not at the moment," Dean said, considering the request. "Yeah, send them over, tell Franklin to leave a couple of his people there when they're done, train up the people in Tawas."
Ellen nodded, making a note on the pad she had in front of her. "We need another team to get down south, look at the fields and gins for cotton."
He felt a small lurch in his stomach as he nodded, driving the memory back and down. "How thin will that leave us here?"
She looked at him. "Depends on how many and who you send."
"Drew and Riley," Dean said, thinking through who was left here. "And Kelly and those people he's trained from the bunch Elias brought in." He rubbed a hand over his face. "That leaves you, Rufus and Bobby to look after things here."
"Really?" Ellen arched a brow at him. "And you'll be –?"
Dean straightened up in the chair, ignoring her and looking at Jasper and Katherine. "You said there were other ways to get to the borderlands of Hell. I need to know what they are."
"Dean –" Bobby started to say, eyes narrowing beneath the brim of his cap.
"No," Dean snapped. "We can't keep hoping there's gonna be something more in the transcripts of the tablet." He looked around the scholars sitting at the table. "You've been through all of what Chuck wrote, haven't you?"
The men and women shifted their gazes, to the table, to the shelving against the walls as they nodded assent.
"If there's a good way to get in to get the trial started, it's on a part of the stone that Chuck didn't get to before he was taken," Dean continued, his voice deepening slightly. "But we have no way of finding Crowley or Chuck or the tablet. We do know what has to be done to begin the trials," he said, turning to look at Bobby and Ellen, knowing their arguments, the counters ready in his mind. "And we have to get started on this, before it's too late. We've got something that'll kill the dog –"
"Might kill the dog," Bobby interjected angrily.
"Will kill Cerberus," Shamsiel spoke up, looking from the old man to the keep's leader. "The sword will kill anything hell spawned, except for the archdemons."
"And we know what has to be done," Dean said, as if the pair hadn't spoken, looking around the table again. "So, what I need to know is how to get there."
Sam stared around the table in the silence that followed. No matter that Dean was probably right, he couldn't believe that no one was going to argue with his brother.
"Not alone, Dean," he said into the quiet. "I'm coming with."
"Fine," Dean said dismissively, lifting a shoulder in a half-shrug at him. He looked at Felix. "You said that the guides could take us to the other planes."
The old man glanced uneasily at Jerome. "Yes, but the price might be –"
"I don't care what the price is," the hunter bit out caustically. "How do we summon one of these things?"
"Ah … well, I have a ritual for one of the Crows," Felix hedged. "But they're territorial, you see, and you'd have to go –"
"Just get me the ritual and where we have to do it, as soon as possible," Dean cut him off, impatience riddling his voice. "The only other priorities here are the Grigori – finding either of the locations in this country – and finding Chuck."
"Have you heard from Castiel?" Father Emilio asked quietly, from his position near the hearth.
Dean's expression darkened. "No."
"He had a summoning spell, for another angel," Oliver said tentatively. "He summoned an angel called Balthazar here when we needed the holy oil –"
"We're not looking for help from Heaven," Dean said and the warning was explicit in the harshness of his voice, in the flatness of his expression. "Every time they're involved, they screw it up worse. Just get the information about the guide."
Bobby waited in the shadows beside the door, straightening up as Dean came out, alone, as he'd hoped.
"Dean."
Turning to look at him, Dean let out a gusty exhale, forcibly tempering the irritation he could feel bubbling up.
"How's the side?" Bobby asked, walking over to him.
"It's fine," he said, looking at his watch.
"Didn't look so fine, watching you hobble up the stairs."
"It'll be fine," he amended. "Happy?"
"No," Bobby growled. "I'm not fucking happy. You're throwing yourself at this like it's the only thing you go left to do, not even thinking about doing it the smart way – that's not like –"
"Bobby," Dean cut through, holding up a hand. "If I shut down Hell, half the problems are solved, right?"
"'Test unto death', the transcript says, Dean," Bobby said, dragging in a breath. "That's not fifty-fifty."
Dean looked away, shrugging. "So, someone else'll have to shut up Heaven. We got plenty of good –"
"Dean, she's dead, you can't bring her back," Bobby interrupted, his voice low and earnest. "An' throwing yourself –"
"I know she's dead," Dean cut him off, his voice low and harsh, his expression flattening out to a cold stare. "I fucking well know that." He dropped his gaze for a moment, staring at the ground, as the walls of his mind bowed under the pressure of keeping it all held back, all held in.
"You think this is about trying to find a way to get her back? Or thinking I'm looking for some way to check out? It's not," he grated, looking back at the older man. "I've had it with this weight, Bobby, I'm fucking sick and tired of carrying everything and getting nothing back. I've paid, Bobby. I've paid with every fucking thing I ever wanted. I've paid enough! If I can shut up the gates, and get that squared away, everyone here, everyone left, has a chance to get on with it without the odds being stacked against them. That's all I want now."
"Dean –"
"No." Dean shook his head. "There's nothing else to say. You – and Rufus and Ellen – you of all people should know what I'm feeling, what I'm doing."
He turned away and walked up the stairs to the illusion-covered road, finding his way to the Impala.
Bobby stood in front of the order's door, listening to his footfalls die away in the distance, the engine of the black car rumbling to life and the car pulling out. He did know, at least partly, what Dean was feeling. That was what scared him.
I-64 E, Indiana. May, 2013.
The headlights showed another gaping crevasse in the concrete road, and Dean slowed, swearing softly under his breath and shifting into reverse, twisting around to look for the exit ramp they'd passed.
"I don't know why we don't just try the secondary roads," Sam said, leaning back in the seat.
Ignoring him, Dean found the ramp and pulled off, following the line of battered hulks that had been swept from the canted road slowly until he could see a clear road heading east.
Sam was getting used to the silences, pressing on anyway, hoping that eventually he'd hit a topic that his brother would talk about.
"We should look around Boston, before we try this," he said as the headlights showed a remarkably clear stretch of two-lane highway. What had once been a two-lane highway and now bore a distinct resemblance to a gravel access road, anyway. "With the gun, killing Cerberus would be a sure thing."
Dean exhaled. "Ninety square miles, Sam," he said thinly. "That's why we're not wasting time looking around Boston. Over half a million people used to live there."
"We could try the spell there," Sam suggested. "Maybe the shielding –"
"Would be less effective the closer we got? Come on."
"You know what we're doing, right?" Sam turned to look at him, profile just visible in the dim lights on the dash. "We're making another deal."
"I know."
"And that's okay with you? After everything that's happened?"
"No." Dean eased off the accelerator, flicking a sideways glance at his brother. "No, it's not. But I got nothing else to go with right now."
"We could go look for the gun –"
"And even if, by some miracle, we found the house, Sam, what do you want to do? Run in there waving our little black swords and demand it back?" Dean snapped at him, his patience gone with the argument. "King demon, two or more of the Grigori, who knows how many nephilim and cambion – we think there're a couple of each but we don't know that – and we're going to launch a frontal assault?"
Subsiding against the passenger window, Sam didn't respond. Frontal assaults had been Dean's specialty … before.
"You want me to drive for awhile?" he asked a moment later.
Dean frowned. "No."
"Just asking, in case your side is hurting, or you want to sleep or anything," Sam clarified the offer placatingly.
"No, I'm good."
"Rufus said you weren't getting much sleep."
There was a long silence, then Dean glanced at him. "You got something to say, Sam? Get it out."
"I'm worried about you," Sam said slowly. "We could've taken another week, waited until you'd healed up a bit more. We go in there and you're not right …"
"I'm fine."
"No. You're not," Sam said abruptly. "You haven't been fine since Iowa and you–"
The car swerved to the shoulder, tyres squealing when they left the tar and sliding on the rough surface of the road as Dean braked and stopped.
"We're gonna get this straight here and now," he said, turning and looking at Sam. "You're here against my better judgement, not because I want you here. I am not fucking interested in personal conversation, not now, not ever. I want to get to New York, call that fucking guide, get into Hell and kill that fucking dog. That's it. That's the extent of what I want to talk about – you got that?"
Sam stared at him, heart still pounding a little at the suddenness of the stop, at the look on his brother's face.
"Yeah, I got it."
"Good," Dean said, turning back to the wheel and starting the engine. "Cause if you say another word about anything else, you're walking home."
He pulled out, foot heavy on the accelerator and reached across to the stereo, jamming his finger on the play button. The music filled the car, loud and heavy and insistent and Sam closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the glass of the window beside him. Just like old times.
US-50 W, Colorado
The pickup and SUV were parked off the side of the road, half-hidden beneath the rapidly spreading forest. Vince and Lee stood next to them, guns loaded and held. A little deeper under the trees, Penemue crouched beside a small pool, staring into the dark, reflective water, waiting for an image to appear. Elias, Joseph and Peter watched and listened to the woodland.
The Qaddiysh sighed as he failed to pick up any trace of the goddess, turning his thoughts to the mountains in France instead, calling the image of the lit table in the situation room of the Chambre d'Ombres, the chapter of the Litteris Hominae, and Michel, the group's tall, lanky programmer. The image appeared immediately, the water clouding under the surface as it became clearer, the table with its lit markers showing the progress of the dark woman as she traversed the mountains north of them.
"She's not far ahead," Penemue said in a whisper. "But its high, a very high twisting road that has been battered and broken."
Elias rubbed an eyebrow. "You see any signs, uh, road signs?"
"I see a nine."
"Ninety-two," Elias nodded. "Twists through the mountains east of American Fork, the cave system is on the northern end of the route."
"We'll be too late," Peter said, his shoulders slumping.
"Maybe, maybe not. Cross-country is very difficult through there," the auburn-haired hunter said, turning to look back at Penemue. "Anything else in the magic mirror?"
"No." The Qaddiysh got to his feet, tugging at the light down jacket he wore. He found the westernised clothing too close-fitting and uncomfortable.
"You want to travel after nightfall?" Peter looked at Elias.
"No, not really," Elias said with a sigh. "Country looks empty, but it won't be, and lights are a give-away for miles. But I'm not sure we got a choice."
He looked at the sky. "Tonight's full moon, it'll rise late, after eleven. We'll get some grub, some sleep and take off when it rises, should be able to travel some distance using it."
Peter nodded, waiting for the Qaddiysh to precede him from the clearing, his gaze and gun on the woods as he backed out after him.
Under the moonlight, the landscape was reduced to a flat two-dimensional chiaroscuro; colour bled out leaving only light and shadow, the road climbing between blocks of charcoal and silver. Peter watched the darkness as Vince drove, the dark-blue SUV almost invisible on the black asphalt.
"What's that?" Lee asked from the rear seat, leaning close to the window on the driver's side.
"What?"
"There, Vince, stop," the young man's voice rose slightly. "Lights."
Looking out over the folded hills and deep valleys, they saw them, unflickering against the side of the peak, golden in a world of black and white.
"Settlement?" Peter turned to look at Vince, one brow lifted. "Rufus and Bobby have been speculating of many more survivors there are out there than what we've found?"
"Maybe," Vince answered, glancing back at the pickup stopped behind them. "Whatever it is, we should check it out."
"We might not have time," Peter said.
"We'll have to make time," the younger hunter said, pulling on the handbrake and getting out of the car. "Gimme a minute."
Peter watched him walk back to the truck, calculating and recalculating the distances in his head. There was an extremely good possibility they would miss Nintu anyway, at the rate she travelled. They couldn't afford any more delays.
Vince was back in less than two minutes, the door swinging open. "We'll look on the way back," he told Peter, releasing the brake. "I set the trip counter at the turnoff to get the ninety-two right – we'll use the counter number to find them again." He wrote down the number under the mileage counter and tucked the notebook back in his jacket pocket. "Good eyes, Lee."
"Did Elias think it was survivors?" Peter asked, another possibility occurring to him as they continued up the pitted and cracked road.
"No," Vince said, his voice dropping low as he glanced across at him. "No, he thought it might be something else."
Fort Lee, New Jersey
The skyline was gone, Sam realised belatedly as they drove toward the river from the Jersey side. Aside from the lights that had always delineated it, even the shapes, dark against the brilliantly starred night sky were broken and short, nothing over a few stories seemed to be standing now.
As if he'd said it aloud, Dean nodded abruptly, pulling to one side of the road as they came closer. Only the shells of the buildings remained, brick and steel lifting their broken bones into the darkness.
"Streets'll be full of crap," he told Sam, nosing the black car in between the side of a low building and the wreckage of a bus that had mounted the sidewalk, both overgrown with weeds, grass pushing through the cracked concrete and saplings rising from the building's interior. "We'll walk in from here."
"Where do we have to go?"
"Anywhere on Manhattan, Felix said," Dean called back over his shoulder, getting out and locking the door and walking back to the trunk.
"I thought guides could go anywhere?" Sam got out and locked the passenger door, walking around the car.
"Apparently not. The lore says they're territorial." Pulling out the gear bag, Dean passed the flashlight and a shotgun to his brother. "Stay close, I'm wearing the medallion, but I don't know how big the field is."
It'd covered the car while he was driving, he thought, lifting the bag onto his shoulder. The only time he'd tried to use it to protect someone else, he'd been lying on top of her. The memory was dismissed instantly and he closed the trunk.
"Where are we?" Sam looked around the thick woods that lined both side of the road, overwhelming the buildings and piles of rubble and cars.
"Fort Lee, I think," Dean told him, walking east of north and skirting the piles of rusted metal that blocked most of the road. "George Washington Bridge." He gestured vaguely ahead of them. The automatic was in his hand and he watched the blackness under the trees to either side of them, the moonlight bright enough to see the obstacles on what little remained of the road.
"Nature didn't waste any time," Sam commented as he looked around. Another ten years and it wouldn't be a road any longer, just a series of broken and eroded pieces of concrete, meaningless artefacts under the canopy of the forest.
The bridge, a dual level suspension bridge with towers at either end, spanning the Hudson River, seemed mostly intact. Both men stood by the long approach and looked at it, the lower level stygian even with the moonlight.
"Guessing we'll take the top?"
Dean snorted. "You want to see what's living down there, be my guest."
"Nah, I'd like to live."
The approach was an almost solid wall of crushed and twisted vehicles, enmeshed together and uniformly rusted. Setting the bag further over his back, Dean exhaled and looked for a place to get over or through, moving slowly along the obstruction.
"You think this was from when it started?" Sam asked, staring at the cars, trucks and buses that had been mashed together.
"Probably," Dean said disinterestedly, finding a place to climb over the truck and bus frames that seemed to have brought the traffic to a final halt here. "Had a hell of a fender-bender right here and all the people that were trying to get out behind it had nowhere to go."
He looked back down at Sam. "Come on, there's a way through here."
Sam followed him up the side of the bus. There was nothing left but the frames, some of the panels, the doors. Everything that could be consumed had been. He stopped next to Dean, on the top of a semi cab that had somehow jacknifed over the roof of the bus.
Ahead of them was a sea of twisted metal wrecks, three or four cars high in some places, slewed across the lanes and jammed against the metal railings, torn apart or crushed together.
"Crap," Dean said, with feeling.
"They'll all be like this, won't they?" Sam asked him, looking down the river. "The tunnels and the other bridges?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah, I think so. Everyone panicked."
"What about a boat?"
"Current's too strong unless we can find one with a motor that's still working and some fuel for it." Dean said, looking across to the side. "Supposed to be foot and bike paths on the sides, we'll try for those."
He shifted across the top of the cab, picking his way down over the long fixed tray and the steeper slope of the trailer, making sure of every foothold as he stared down at the protrusion of sharp steel edges that were all that was left of the cars underneath.
"Watch your footing," he warned his brother, unnecessarily, Sam seeing the same potential for impalement.
Within the first couple of hundred yards from the approach to the tower, both pedestrian and bike paths had been covered by cars attempting to force their past the initial crash, but further along, there were less obstacles, and they were able to move around them. The concrete had split and cracked, steel reinforcement mesh and rebar curving up like daggers from the crumbling holes. The bridge was a little under a mile in length, and Sam saw a line of light against what was left on the island as they crossed finally into Manhattan.
"Anywhere here?" he asked, leaning back against the last steel pylon.
"That's what they said," Dean agreed absently, dropping the gear bag and unzipping it, pulling out the bowl and the packets of herbs and powdered stones. He mixed the contents together in the brass bowl and drew the long black blade, brow rising a little at the fine-edge cut it made on the back of his forearm. Sam watched as the blood dripped into the bowl.
"You'd better bind that up, the ghouls are feverish in the city tonight."
The voice was deep and thick and rich with nuance and both men swung around to see a man standing behind them, dark eyes hooded beneath black brows, the glint of white teeth between fleshy lips in an expression that wasn't entirely friendly.
Dean lowered the point of the long knife, sliding it casually back through his belt as he wound a clean dressing over and around the cut and studied the guide. Five foot ten, at most, but stocky, plenty of muscle on the wide shoulders and around the bull neck. Jet-black hair fell thick and straight, brushed back from the forehead, and his skin was olive-toned, a heavy shadow over jaw and cheeks and throat.
"You're a Crow?" Sam asked, straightening against the post, one of the Irin's knives in his hand, point held loosely down.
The man laughed. "I'm the Crow, my friends," he said, genuine humour flashing in the dark eyes for a moment then disappearing. "Kopaki, guide of guides."
"We need a gate to the borders of Hell," Dean said shortly. "And a ride back out when we're done."
"Is that all?" Kopaki gestured expansively around them. "What about my head on a plate? My firstborn? My fucking eye teeth?"
"Is there a problem?" Sam asked, stepping toward the guide.
"The Winchesters would like a ride in and out of Hell, and he asks if there's a problem," he said to the sky, rolling his eyes.
"You know us?" Sam took another step closer to the Crow.
"Not personally, of course, but yes, I've heard of you." He looked from Sam to Dean. "The King of Hell is looking for you – quite diligently, I might add."
"Can you do it or not?" Dean asked pointedly, looking down at the bag at his feet. "I got another ritual for a reaper, if you can't."
"Oh, I can do it." The guide looked around. "But it will cost."
"Naturally." Dean's lip curled up. "What's the price?"
"Where do you want to go – exactly?"
"River Acheron."
"There's a gate that will take you there in Texas," Kopaki said, glancing at Sam. "Austin. I'll meet you there."
"No," Dean told him tightly. "Somewhere around here, somewhere close."
The Crow looked at him, his expression darkening. "The only gate close to here is in Boston, my friend. I suggest most vehemently that you pick another."
"Why?" Dean felt Sam's gaze on him, ignoring the tacit warning in it.
"It is not a safe place to cross." The guide glanced around the silent street. "It is the personal gate of the King."
"Crowley's gate's in Boston?" Dean asked, turning to lift a brow at Sam. "That suits us just fine."
"Dean –"
"How much?" Dean cut him off, looking at Kopaki.
"You will grant me a favour, when I have need of you."
From the expression on his face, Dean realised that the seemingly innocuous demand wasn't going to be that easy. "What kind of favour?"
"Any kind I need," Kopaki said, his mouth stretching out in a smile that went nowhere near his eyes. "That's the price."
"Dean!" Sam cut in between them, staring at his brother. "A moment?"
"Of course," the Crow said, moving away. "Take as long as you like."
Glancing over his shoulder, Sam watched him walk to the corner, then turned back to Dean. "A favour? Anything? Are you kidding me?"
"You got an alternative? 'Cause I'm not seeing one here," Dean said tersely, staring back at him. "We need a way in – and if it's Crowley's personal gate, maybe we can find out something about where he's living when he's topside?"
"Maybe we're walking into a trap to be served up to Crowley!"
"Decider?" Dean grinned humourlessly at his brother as he held his fist over his palm.
"Christ, don't –" Sam turned away, shaking his head. "This is not what we should be doing, not now, not after everything you did to get me free, Dean."
He looked back at him, seeing the mulish expression on his face, knowing his brother wasn't going to listen to him.
"We can figure out another way," he tried again.
"No," Dean said, his eyes flat and dark. "There's no other way. Jerome, Jasper … you – you would've found it by now if there was."
"We haven't given them much time –"
"We don't have much time, Sam," Dean said, half-turning as frustration finally broke through. "We won't get more time. Look at what we're dealing with here," he added in a low voice. "Cas, grabbed and dragged back to Heaven – we don't know what's going on up there, but we can't count on their help. Crowley's got Chuck translating the tablet and the Qaddiysh say that the tablet itself holds some magnitude of power that could probably wipe us all out, even without the others. We didn't kill those sons of bitches, and there are more of them on the way east now the snow's gone. Some angel told Father McConnaughey that Hell had to be shut before Crowley could get any further and before the archdemons got loose … we are out of time. The only thing we got a shot at is closing the gates of Hell. That's it."
Listening to him, Sam felt a sinking recognition that he was right. They never had any goddamned time to get themselves off the back foot and take the offensive away from whatever it was that was trying to kill them, kill everything.
"It doesn't matter that it's a crappy deal – fuck, that's all I do is crappy deals," Dean said, and Sam heard the recognition in Dean's voice as well. "It's the only deal. I gotta take it."
"I'm going in with you," he said, turning around to face his brother. "No arguments."
Dean shook his head. "No argument."
"Go ahead." He looked bleakly at him.
Alpine Scenic Highway, Wasatch Mountains, Utah
The concrete paths and tourist signs had long since gone. Peter looked up at the mountainside, the shadowed overhangs and fissures clearly visible in the pale dawn light, and drew the black knife the Qaddiysh had given him. Neither vampire nor goddess was hell-born but the edge was keen and he had no doubt that it would take off the head of anything that came his way.
Lee and Joseph had drawn the short straws and were remaining with the vehicles. He could hear the crunch of the bootsoles of the Qaddiysh, Vince and Elias behind him, the box heavier on his back than it had been half an hour ago, and the mile and a half climb to the caves ahead of them.
Here and there, the remains of the chain that had marked the entrance to the cave system lay rusting on the ground. Winter hadn't quite left the mountains, and the bitter air blew past them, moaning in the stalagmites and stalactites that were visible from the entrance.
"You feel anything?" Elias looked Penemue. The Qaddiysh shook his head.
"No, it feels empty, dead."
"Better make sure of that," Peter said, turning on his flashlight and heading inside. It didn't take that long to investigate the interconnected tunnels and caverns. And the prison of Nintu's first vampire was obvious, the rock wall at the side of the farthest cave smashed into pieces, a pool of dark blood painting the floor beside it.
"She's freed him and given her blood," Penemue said softly, looking down at it. He tipped his head back, his breath rushing out in a long, tired exhale. "We were too late."
Elias looked around the cave. One set of tracks led out through the thin, glittering sand. A man's tracks. Not big, but distinctive. At the end of the toes, long claws left their indentations in the sand.
"Where is she heading next?"
"To free Raat," Peter told him. "Alain calculated the prison to be in the very north of Canada, above the Arctic Circle."
"Gives us some time," Elias mused. "What about the goddess, will she come back this way?"
"They haven't found the prisons of the other first born monsters," Penemue said with a shrug. "She might."
He looked at the hunters. "What does mean for our priorities now?"
Elias glanced at Peter. "We'll take a look at those lights."
"Yes," Peter said, nodding. "Then back to Lebanon."
Nahant, Massachusetts
Trees crowded close to the shoulders of the road, hiding the stone and brick residences still standing, their roots reaching out, cracking and lifting the slabs of asphalt and tilting them over. Dean grimaced with every hard, lurching crunch of the wheels as they rose and fell over the obstructions, his breath hissing out with each scrape of the oil pan and exhaust pipe over the jagged edges.
"How much further?"
"Half a mile," Sam said, leaning toward the windshield, eyes narrowed. It'd taken them five hours to drive the two hundred and twenty miles, the first two hours finding a way out of New Jersey, and the last two negotiating the devastation that had once been Boston. He could see the darkened patches on Dean's shirt, the sheen of perspiration still coating his face as he struggled to find a less punishing way through for the car.
"That's it." Sam pointed to the left, where the cracked and fallen pillars of a driveway were just visible through the saplings and undergrowth.
The black car bumped over the remains of the iron gates, Dean swearing softly under his breath as he eased them over, hoping that nothing sharp was going to take his tyres out. He hadn't been able to see the gates lying on the ground when he turned in.
Branches and burgeoning foliage brushed the sides of the car as they moved slowly down the narrow road. Dean followed the barely-there curve and pulled up when the headlights revealed two walls of a half-collapsed brick building, the sharp tang of salt on the light onshore breeze filling the car as the engine ticked in the silence.
They got out, Sam looking around as Dean went for the trunk, this time to retrieve the long, black knives. The medallion was warm against his skin and his thoughts were remote, detached from what they were about to do.
"We need to hurry, darkness and that pendant will protect us from their view for now, but once the sun has risen, even the medallion may not hide us all."
Sam's head snapped around as Kopaki spoke next to him, his heart racing at the unexpectedness of the guide's appearance. Dean glanced at the Crow, gesturing with the knife.
"Your party, lead on," he said coldly, passing one of the black metal blades to Sam and tucking his gun into his jacket pocket. He wasn't sure if it would do anything down there – wherever down there was – but it was a reassuring weight he was loathe to leave behind.
The Crow moved to the cliff edge, and began to pick his way down to the water, the moonlight turning the grey sand beach to charcoal and lighting the white foam on the crests of the small waves that rippled along its edge. Aside from the soft sough of the sea as it touched the shore, the night was silent, the grinding of their boots over the coarse sand loud in their ears.
"What is this place?" Sam asked in a low voice, and Kopaki turned at once, dark eyes narrowed in warning, one finger pressed against his mouth.
At the end of the beach the cliffs jutted out, not very high but rough, worn into sharp-edged twists and hollows by the relentless action of the waves, the softer rock eroded, leaving harder pitted cores that caught on their clothes and chewed through their boot soles. They clambered around two small headlands, interleaved with tiny beaches, before the cave appeared, and the Crow stopped.
"The gate is in there," Kopaki said, his voice barely a whisper. "I go no further."
"Bullshit!" Dean whispered back, leaning threateningly close to the guide. "Deal was in and out!"
Catching Dean's hand, and surprising the hunter with the strength of that grip, the Crow traced a symbol on the inside of his wrist. Dean looked down, feeling a burning sensation crawl over his skin as a thin line of greyish light followed the fingertip, flaring momentarily when the drawing was complete then fading away.
"When this glows, you will know it's time to come back," Kopaki leaned close and breathed against his ear. "The gate will open and let you out and I will be here."
He nodded, pulling back uncomfortably from the guide and turning for the cave mouth.
"This is a bad idea," Sam muttered as they crossed out of the moonlight and into the darkness.
Dean didn't disagree. He stopped for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the black interior of the cave, listening to the murmur of the water as it washed in and out of the cave's floor. Ahead, he could see a shimmer, against the rock walls, a faint reddish outline.
"There it is," he told Sam and strode forward.
Following his brother through the shimmer, Sam flinched as his body seemed to erupt in flame, gasping as everything disappeared – light, sound, touch and feeling – his stomach cramping up with the vertiginous wrench that spun him around, arms flailing outward. He hung for time uncounted in that non-space, eyes stretched wide open, lungs aching with the lack of air, his heart sledging against his ribs, then felt the hard ground under his feet, stumbling forward into Dean's back as he blinked in the subdued sunlight.
Acheron, Border of Hell
The river was wide, flowing without a ripple past them. Dean walked across the springy green grass and under the cover of the willows, looking around for a familiar landmark. It looked like the stretch he'd arrived in before, the willows still trailing delicate green fronds in the dark water, the cliffs on the others side rising black and grey and the soil bare and ashy and puffing with yellow-grey smoke, escaping from god-knew-where.
"Where are we?" Sam asked, crouching down beside him under the low-hanging branches. "Is this the Acheron? Or the Styx?"
"Stop talking!" Dean hissed at him, leaning out to look down river. The mists that seemed to shroud the water in both directions a few hundred yards away swirled and parted as the prow of the ferryman's slender vessel pushed through it.
"Is that –?" Sam breathed next to his ear and he nodded.
They watched the boat move upstream against the current, three people sitting in the middle of the curved hull, the tall, wild-haired man whose skin was tinted a faint shade of silver sculling the craft expertly to the bank.
From the noxious fog on the other side, Cerberus emerged, stalking slowly to the bank, and Dean felt Sam tense beside him, his brother's exhale warm on the back of his neck. He looked back over his shoulder, eyes narrowed in warning and Sam swallowed, forcing a comment back down his throat.
When the souls had gone through the door in the cliff, the boat pushed off the bank, heading downstream again. Dean let out his own breath as Charon's gaze remained fixed to the river. The dog had vanished in the fumes rising from the ground upstream and he rocked back on his heels, thinking about the best way to take it.
"Dean, that thing is the size of a tank!" Sam whispered to him.
"It can't see me with this," he told him in a low voice, tapping his finger against his chest. "I need to find a place to cross."
He edged out from under the willow branches, looking at the river in both directions. Meg had led them upriver, to find the stones. He'd gone downriver and seen the quay for the damned after only a few hundred yards. He had the feeling that was consistent, up and down the lengths of the river near the gates to their own plane. Upriver was do-it-yourself, downriver was pay the boatman.
"We're going across, together, right?" Sam said, catching up to him as he turned upriver, walking fast.
"No, you stay on this side," Dean said shortly, lengthening his stride as they came to a curving bend. "It'll see you."
"How'm I supposed to back you up –?"
"There they are," Dean cut him off as he caught sight of the stones. From this side of the river, they were large, flat and spaced no more than a yard or so apart. He tried not to think of how they'd look from the other side and getting back over them.
"Just stay here," he said, turning to his brother as he gestured across the river. "If it all goes south, you get across here, but that dog can't see you on this side and once you're in the middle of the river, it'll be able to, so I need a promise that you'll stay put once I've gone over."
Sam looked at the stepping stones mutinously. That wasn't the deal he'd had in mind. They both had the knives; he'd been thinking more of a decoy/butcher arrangement.
"This is a bad idea," he said, turning to glower at him. "I'll be too far away to help if you need it."
"I won't need it, Sam."
The unshakeable confidence, the implacable tone, infuriated Sam more. He knew that if he didn't promise, Dean would just turn around and walk back to the gate, willing to put it off until he could get rid of him. He could feel his brother's impatience, radiating from his motionless frame. Reluctantly, unwillingly, he nodded.
"Alright, I won't come over unless you're in trouble."
Dean felt a thread of relief trickle along his nerves. It was bad enough going to toe to toe with the huge goddamned dog, knowing that the mutt wouldn't be able to see him. Having to watch out for his brother at the same time would've made it impossible. And he wasn't convinced that the heart attack, or whatever it'd been, had left no damage. The doc had said he couldn't find any damage. That wasn't a guarantee.
He drew the knife and turned away, walking down to the edge of the water and jumping lightly to the first stone. It was barely more than a stride to get from one to the next and he landed on the opposite shore, watching the mist shiver and part and close up again warily, moving sideways toward the section of the cliffs where the door had opened.
Glancing around, he was almost at the point on the bank where the boat had drawn up when he heard the rasping breath behind him. Cerberus stood three yards away, midway between bank and cliffs, looking around, the wolf's nose raised slightly as it sampled the air.
Damned thing smelled him, somehow, Dean thought distantly, shifting the grip of the hilt in his hand and crabbing slowly closer. He looked at the three heads, wondering which to take first. The wolf was the decision maker; he'd thought that the last time. The other two were definitely just grunts. Edging toward the cliff face, he looked up at the thick neck and rough pelt that joined the wolf's head to the chest and shoulders and wondered bleakly if the blade he held would get through that mass of fur and muscle to something vital underneath.
Cerberus froze, all three heads dropping at the same time, eyes fixed on the cliff. Realising it was the only chance he was going to get, Dean sprang forward, ducking underneath the wolf's head, scything the short sword up. The dog moved to one side, as if it had sensed him there and the keen black blade drove into the dhole's neck, severing the windpipe and the thick tendons to either side as Dean dragged it across and down, blood like ichor spouting out over him as the wolf howled and the hyena screamed in pain. The blade caught for a second in between the vertebrae and he threw his weight forward, twisting it free and slicing through the remnants of the skin and sinew and muscle running above the spine, the broad, flat head dropping to the ground. He was turning as he dropped after it, but not quickly enough, a bolt of pain from the hole in his side slowing the movement and his right arm was suddenly paralysed as the wolf's long incisors punched into his shoulder. The wolf head threw him up and the hyena's jaws caught him, and in the tangle of snapshot images that he registered, Dean glimpsed the gleam of silver against the yellowing enamel, feeling the bite of the chain digging into his throat a fraction of a second later as the wolf dropped it's head and the hyena raised its snout. He dropped the knife and tried to get his hand in between the chain and his neck. The fucking medallion chain was going to throttle him.
Sam watched his brother duck under the wolf's jaws and sweep the black knife upward, saw the beast move and the blade bite into the yellowish-red fur of the dhole's neck instead of the wolf's. He was on his feet, by the edge of the water when he watched Dean half-thrown from the wolf to the hyena, saw him drop the blade as his hands flew to his neck, heard the deep growling crunch of the hyena's massive carnassials as they began to cleave the bones of his brother's shoulder.
He was on the first rock before he'd considered what he was doing, long legs making the run across the river easily, the dog oblivious to his approach from behind. Jumping onto its back, Sam drove the slender black blade through the back of the hyena's skull, its mouth flying open as the sword severed both spinal cord and the primitive nerve centre controlling the jaws. Dean dropped to the ground and Cerberus lurched backwards as Sam hacked through the thick neck and the second head fell.
He barely caught a handful of the thick, tufted ruff running up the back of the wolf's neck when it swung around, spraying him in the ichor that fountained from the torn necks, his wrist creaking as it took the weight of his body, giving way and the monster's momentum catapulting him over the shoulder.
The sword blade was up as Cerberus spun around to face him and he stared up into the blood red eyes of the wolf's head, his arms tensing automatically as the dog ran onto the point of the sword. The still-keen edge cut through the muscle and fur protecting the side of the neck and Sam ducked as the head snapped at him, feeling the teeth on one side of the mouth tear down his back, then he was under the jaw and dragging the sword across the throat.
On the ground, Dean lay on his back, his shoulder shrieking in time with his pulse, blood pouring from the deeply crushed and torn wounds, throat glass-filled and raw where the chain had cut into his windpipe. His eyes flew open as he heard the wolf's high-pitched howl of pain and rage, looking up to see his brother doused in a geyser of stinking ichor as the last head hung from a thin scrap of skin and then fell, the enormous body toppling to one side and hitting the ground with a ground-shaking crash.
Sam turned to look at him, wiping the thick black ooze from his eyes and face, spitting it out of his mouth. His eyes widened as he saw the growing pool of blood soaking into the grey earth around his brother, and he stumbled across to him, dropping to his knees. Pulling Dean's hand from his throat, his face screwed up when he saw the deep indent in the flesh there. The shoulder was worse, he thought, and panic kicked in for a moment as he watched the blood flow unimpeded down Dean's chest.
"You killed it?" Dean rasped at him, and the question, so incredibly irrelevant at this precise moment, so exactly typical of his brother, brought him back to himself.
"You're bleeding out," he said furiously, stripping off his jacket and shirt, turning the jacket inside out to get the lining sleeve free of the black-soaked outer. "Don't move."
Dean leaned back, eyes half-closed as the pain his nervous system was registering in greater and greater detail started to shake through him. Sam had killed the dog, he thought dazedly. Sam had completed the first trial. What the fuck did that mean? He felt his brother's hands, packing a wadded up piece of cloth against the tears in his shoulder, wrapping it around the wounds tightly with the ripped-off sleeve. The pressure made it worse.
"Dean, come on," Sam said, sliding an arm beneath his left shoulder and lifting him up. "We gotta get out of here. I need the med kit to stop the bleeding."
"You killed Cerberus, man," Dean said, looking at the wolf's head, the red eyes glazed and staring now, the light gone from them. "Fuck it, you killed it."
"We can talk about this when we're out of the borderlands, alright?" Sam asked, grinding his teeth together as he took his brother's weight, Dean's knees giving way once he was upright.
"No," Dean said suddenly, digging his heels in and dragging Sam to a shuddering stop. "No, you killed it. You got to complete the trial, Sam. You have to make the contract."
"I don't –"
"You have to, or this is been wasted," Dean insisted as his fingers searched through the pocket of his jeans for the paper he'd written the ritual on. Every movement sent a new wildfire of agony through his shoulder but he pulled it out, a crumpled ball, spotted with red and black blood, and handed it to Sam.
"Here? Now?" Sam asked, looking around uncomfortably and back at the paper in his hand.
"Yeah," Dean replied, swaying slightly as he felt a wetness trickling down his side. Damned hole had opened up in the fight, he thought distractedly. That was going to make getting across the stones fun.
"Can you stand?"
Dean nodded. He was okay standing. He didn't think he could move.
Smoothing out the ball, Sam looked at the words written in his brother's neat block lettering. They looked Enochian, but he couldn't be sure.
"Where did you get this?"
"Just read it, Sammy," Dean told him tiredly.
"CNILA SIBSI QADAR IAOD," Sam said slowly. "IALPURG IPAMIS PRDZAR CACRG INOAS TELOAH."
He looked at Dean. "Is that i–"
Every cell, every blood vessel erupted into fire at the same time, and Sam's body convulsed helplessly, head thrown back and mouth stretched wide open in a soundless scream as the excruciating pain incinerated him from head to foot.
Dean stared in horror at his brother's expression, his own pain wiped from consciousness as he reached out for Sam. He snatched his hands back as his brother's skin burned them, a turgid heat radiating out from Sam's body like a blast furnace, convincing him that his brother was cooking from the inside out.
It stopped as suddenly as it had begun and Sam collapsed to the ground, his chest rising and falling in ragged rhythm as he sucked down lungsfuls of the bitter, toxic air, his muscles twitching as the nerves overloaded, his body involuntarily drawing in.
No, Dean thought, dropping to one knee beside him, cautiously touching Sam's arm. Not burning, the tendons weren't shrivelling and shortening with the heat, it was his brother's mind convincing his body he was burning. He pushed aside the memory of how his fingers had felt, touching the scalding skin a moment earlier.
"Sam," he said insistently, ignoring the steady trickle of blood he could feel running down his side, down his back, the piercing ache and throb of crushed bone and flesh in his shoulder. "Sam! It wasn't real. You're okay, you're not burning. Sam, you hearing me?"
Sam opened his eyes, looking into Dean's face. "Not?"
"No, just a – a – a hallucination, dude, you're okay," Dean prevaricated, looking for reassurances, not sure there were any around to be found. "See?" He touched Sam's face, laying the back of his hand on one reddened cheek. "Not burning."
"Dean –" Sam said, sitting up slowly, feeling the exhaustion and ache permeating his muscles from the intense contractions they'd gone through. Everything hurt. "It feels – I don't know."
"You were right." Dean shook his head. "We have to get out of here. You're fucked up and I'm fucked up and this is no place to be fucked up." He struggled to his feet, holding out his left hand to his brother. "Can you walk?"
"Yeah, I think so," Sam said, accepting the hand and feeling his legs shake and slowly stabilise as he got to his feet. "Not sure I can jump across the stones in the river."
"Well, let's take it one step at a time and see how we do," Dean said, blinking back the edges of grey from his vision. Under the steel control of handling the practical considerations facing them, Dean felt his rage seething, a growing maelstrom of disbelief and fury that this too had been taken from him. He ignored it, as he ignored the pain and the blood and the residual heat he could still feel in his brother, sliding his left arm around Sam's ribs. They hobbled slowly back along the river bank to the stones, leaning against each other to make walking possible.
A sharp burn on his wrist cut through everything else and he looked at it, seeing the sigil of the Crow blazing with a silver light against his skin.
"Whaddya know," he slurred unsteadily, looking at the stones in the river. "Time to go."
Nahant, Massachusetts
The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth, the whiskey was lambent in the glass on the desk, but Crowley was pacing the glowing Persian rugs, a thin thread of unease goading him back and forth across the long room.
Something was wrong.
He felt the moment the wolf's head was severed, freezing mid-stride and staring at the fire.
NO!
The air rushed in to fill the place he'd been and the flames curling over the logs shivered in the sudden draught.
In the poisonous yellow-grey light of the borderlands, he stood by the carcass, staring at it, unable to move. The great, slab-muscled body had shrunk a little, the earth around it black with the blood that had drained out, staining the fur at the ragged edges of the chest. All three heads lay separated, eyes open and staring and dulled in death. The glint of silver caught the demon's eye and he knelt beside the wolf's head, opening the mouth and lifting out the chain, the round disc hanging from it avoiding his eye somehow.
Winchester.
The thought came to him, filled with certainty. Under the hyena head, the oily gleam of black metal protruded and he reached for it, pulling his hand back as the incautious movement to touch the blade sliced through the tip of his finger, and a red-gold light bubbled in the thin line of the parted flesh.
Blood metal.
The mists on the other side of the river swirled and shifted as a vagrant and scented breeze blew across the water. Crowley saw movement in the mist, too distant to make out, to even discern if it was corporeal or merely the airs shifting around on the healthy side of the border.
He looked back at the wolf's head, one hand reaching out to gently close the red eyes, the other clenched tightly around the pendant.